We awoke this morning to a foggy, gray world. But the forecast promised it would clear up, so we hoped for the best and headed into downtown Washington, D.C. We visited the Viet Nam Memorial and saw Frederick Hart's "The Three Soldiers" sculpture. About the time we arrived at the Lincoln Memorial, the sun came out in its full brilliance. When we turned around, we saw the Washington Monument with the Reflecting Pool in the foreground. It was Washington at its best...uncrowded in perfect sixty-five-degree weather.

My niece was with me as we began the ascent to see Mr. Lincoln. She and her twin brother are our daughter's age and they're African-Americans, having joined Gary's brother's family (and thus ours) through adoption. I told her Dr. King had a dream that black and white kids would some day play together. She asked if that meant black and white kids didn't play together in his day, and I told her it didn't happen often. As we silently continued, it occurred to me that we were living Mr. Lincoln's and Dr. Martin Luther King's dreams.

The speeches on the wall at the Lincoln Memorial moved me. I had to wipe a tear when I read the Second Inaugural Address. This section got to me:

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

No wonder Martin Luther King, Jr., chose the Lincoln Memorial as the place from which to give his "I Have a Dream" speech.

From there we saw the Korean War Memorial and the WWII Memorial, all breathtaking. The fountains at the latter were dazzling in the sunlight. But isn't it sad that we have so many wars?