<\/p>\n
One of my favorite movies is the old film, Anne of a Thousand Days.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>After her turbulent affair and If one thousand days seems short, what is this business One hundred days?\u00a0 I think President Obama has done pretty well with these 100 Of course, 1,000 days may change history–as they did in the case of Anne Boleyn. \u00a0Or, these 100 days may wind up being among the most significant in American history. \u00a0But–and this is an important but–we won’t know that for quite some time. \u00a0The importance of individual days are most typically revealed only in the longer term.<\/p>\n Patience is an under-rated virtue these days.\u00a0 <\/span>But anyone who works for justice and The course of human history is like a river, sometimes it flows so Human history happens in fits and starts, Fosdick said, “a 1,000 years.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of my favorite movies is the old film, Anne of a Thousand Days.\u00a0 After her turbulent affair and brief marriage to Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn awaits execution in the Tower of London and reflects on the fleeting 1,000 days she spent as Queen of England.\u00a0 “One thousand days,” she ruminates sadly on the events…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion-in-the-public-square"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nbrief marriage to Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn awaits execution in the Tower of
\nLondon and reflects on the fleeting 1,000 days she spent as Queen of England.\u00a0 <\/span>“One thousand days,” she ruminates
\nsadly on the events of her marriage.\u00a0
\n<\/span>“Only one thousand days.”<\/p>\n
\nabout 100 days?\u00a0\u00a0Barack of a Hundred Days? \u00a0<\/span>One hundred days
\ninto a presidential term seems–pardon my skepticism–relatively
\ninconsequential.\u00a0 <\/span>Sure, some
\npolicies can be established, ideas generated, new partnerships formed,
\ndirections set, and tone changed.\u00a0
\n<\/span>But 100 days is a wink of human time, especially in relationship to the
\nenormous challenges facing us:\u00a0 <\/span>the
\nworld is undergoing a massive period of economic, technological, philosophical,
\nreligious, and social transformation on a historical scale not seen since the
\n17th<\/sup> century.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\n<\/span>The media wants to talk about 100 days?\u00a0\u00a0It hasn’t even happened yet, and I’m already tired of a week’s worth of media chatter on 100 days.<\/span><\/p>\n
\ndays–about 6% of what will be his current term.\u00a0 <\/span>But no matter the success, progressive Christians would do
\nwell to take the longer view as in the words of Psalm 90:4, “For a thousand
\nyears in your sight are like a day gone by.”\u00a0 <\/span>Or, in the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., “the moral arc
\nof the universe is long.”\u00a0 <\/span>One
\nhundred days is the briefest bits of time, almost imperceptible in any
\nmeaningful historical way.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\nsocial transformation knows that change does not occur on neat timelines or in
\npre-packaged media holidays.\u00a0 <\/span>No,
\nworking on behalf of a better world–a fairer, more just, more equitable world–a
\nworld where human beings in all sorts of circumstances might flourish–is tough
\nbusiness.\u00a0 <\/span>Even in the most
\noptimistic times of American history, progressives recognized this.\u00a0 <\/span>In 1922, at the height of
\npre-Depression enthusiasm, the liberal Baptist preacher Harry Emerson Fosdick,
\nwrote:<\/p>\n
\nslowly that one would hardly know it moved at all; sometimes bends come in its
\nchannel so that one can hardly see in what direction it intends to go;
\nsometimes there are backeddies so that it seems to be retreating on itself.<\/i><\/p>\n
<\/span><\/p>\n
\nfight, tragic and ceaseless, against destructive forces.”\u00a0 <\/span>But, with faith, he argued that change
\n“is not aimless, discontinuous, chaotic change,” but a “path” of God’s justice
\nthat moves history toward its spiritual culmination.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\n<\/span>1,000 days.\u00a0 <\/span>100 days.\u00a0 <\/span>All are but moments as the moral arc
\nbends.\u00a0 <\/span>Work for change.\u00a0 <\/span>Keep the long view.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>And remember that old-fashioned virtue:
\npatience.<\/p>\n