Discussing the effects of friendship on your life and faith
Until I listened to
"Hamilton" last week, I really didn't think about the age of the founding fathers,
during the Revolutionary War. I didn't see their youthful zeal and friendship that carved a bond that wouldn't be easily stopped. I am blaming that young great writer for my discovery of this. I have poured over documents by Thomas Payne and others, during my Revolutionary War instructions to my children. We read Ben Franklin's Autobiography, one time on a whim {I don't think that he was ever young or old for that matter:)}. We discussed the formation of this great nation, as Homeschoolers, ad-infinitum. Were they friends? That really didn't come to my mind as a question. They were a conquering force and they accomplished their goal. That was all I cared about. They invoked the name of Christ and God, in much of their whittling out of comradery, a great and growing nation.
Miranda shook me to think of the reality of what was the fuel of their passions, on the positive side. Words and relationships were a large part, as well as a common foe, of the development of their unity. Who trusted whom? How did they come to decide that fighting was the way to deliverance from their sense of oppression? Friendship, words between friends forged a bond that is still spinning through the universe of unified ideas, for good or for ill.
The turning of their common passions upon one goal had given them amazing success. It was their right use of words to provoke one-another to a common goal that grew the seed of thought into the tree of a nation. After the revolution, when the dust began to settle, their real and deepseeded differences began to surface. Are they still friends, who watched comerades die for the causes that they espoused? It is hard to live on after that. That was shown and acted out in the play, as I listened to the soundtrack. Regret is a hasty and nasty aftermath of any war. Perhaps the losses after the war were an inevitable part of the process. But I think today of the importance that our system of government continue to grow into a system that tries to grow unity and not exacerbate conflicts. Let us take this cogent and gripping, youthful look at the founding of America to find the unity that makes us Americans; which is so beautifully expressed in the colorful array of actors on the stage. We are still one country and we are no longer one color.
It could have been the story of Crispus Attucks, but it would have been a very short play, then. It was the story of Alexander, told in living color of the common composition of our present state. We are still as crazy about America, after all these years. I hope that this story will live in the history of America as more than a passing fancy. The passion that makes a bunch of colorful rappers take on the story of Alexander Hamilton is a monument to the unity and love that we still enjoy. Thank you God, may it ever be, that whatever color and culture we are, we can embrace Hamilton as our father and strive to better the world on account of it.
