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The Better Angels of This Moment
Meeting stillness, choosing kindness, and remember who we are — even now
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“We are not enemies, but friends… The mystic chords of memory… will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
— Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address, 1861
Better Angels.
I recently heard the term again, on a podcast probably, and that phrase always strikes me. Appealing to our better angels. Our better natures. Our moral selves.
I’m not talking about the winged kind, of course, but the quiet, steady voices within us that whisper kindness, patience, and courage. The parts of ourselves that choose compassion over judgment, understanding over fear. Lincoln called upon them in a time of deep division, reminding a fractured nation of the shared humanity that binds us. And I think we could do the same right now — wherever we are in the world, because it feels like, for a variety of reasons, the…
