How Will We Leave the City Upon a Hill?
Peaceful Politics Please #10 of 11
I’ve studied quite a bit about Ronald Regan because I like to use his marriage to Nancy as an example of what a grand relationship is all about. My interest and admiration until now has had very little, actually, to do with his politics. Though I was part of the landslide that ushered him into a second term in 1980, as a very young and very brand new mother, I had little time (and little maturity) for anything but my own state of the union.
Forty-plus years later, however, as I added a study of his administration into my presidential deep dives, I came across Reagan’s Farewell Address to the American People from January 1989: delivered as America was on the brink of a transfer of power.
It touched me deeply. Especially the end. And especially today. What a contrast.
Below are the final few paragraphs. And here’s the video — look into his eyes.
If you’re as touched as I was, please add your prayer to mine that, together, we can do more than ‘mark the time’ we have on this earth as citizens of the “city upon a hill”, but that we will “make a difference” and leave her “more prosperous, more secure, and happier” (as well as more diverse, inclusive, unified), than when we arrived.
And that’s about all I have to say tonight. Except for one thing.
The past few days when I’ve been at that window upstairs, I’ve thought a bit of the shining “city upon a hill.” The phrase comes from John Winthrop, who wrote it to describe the America he imagined. What he imagined was important, because he was an early Pilgrim — an early “Freedom Man.” He journeyed here on what today we’d call a little wooden boat, and, like the other pilgrims, he was looking for a home that would be free.
I’ve spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don’t know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind, it was a tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind swept, God blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace — a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors, and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.
That’s how I saw it, and see it still. How Stands the City?
And how stands the city on this winter night? More prosperous, more secure and happier than it was eight years ago. But more than that: after 200 years, two centuries, she still stands strong and true on the granite ridge, and her glow has held steady no matter what storm.
And she’s still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the Pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home.
My friends, we did it. We weren’t just marking time, we made a difference. We made the city stronger — we made the city freer — and we left her in good hands.
All in all, not bad. Not bad at all.
And so, goodbye.
God bless you. And God bless the United States of America.
Image: US Capitol building, Washington DC, USA by anujakaimook, Adobe Stock