Doug E. Pudge

My Pilgrimage Moment

You know, I was thinking. Every year when the decagang goes out on the Pilgrimage, there always seems to be a defining moment for the Pudgeman! This year it happened in Gettysburg. After viewing a half hour lighted map presentation that explained the highlights of the three day battle where about 51,000 Americans lost their lives, I walked across the street to the Gettysburg National Cemetary. In the cemetary was a memorial that was put on the spot where President Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address. Probably the most famous speech ever delivered by Mr. Lincoln. The moment moved me and thankfully "Where's Jim" was there to capture this moment for me. There was something very special about this place to me and I hope that the words of President Lincoln will bring home some meaning to you as well:

"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."

Be blessed beyond belief today.

posted by Doug E. Pudge @ 7:48 AM