I find myself walking on Memorial Bridge towards Washington DC.  Memorial Bridge is the same bridge President Kennedy’s caisson crossed to bring him to Arlington National Cemetery for his final time.  The direction I am walking is the direction of hope. Although Washington DC isn’t where hope for a new country began, it is now where hope rests.  I’m walking towards the National Mall.  The Washington Monument rises up and demands my attention.  The Washington Monument commands the national Mall and rightfully so; but I know where I’m going, Jefferson is calling me.  The symmetry of the Mall is in keeping with the original design of DC.  Everyone and everything in its place.  Yet somehow Jefferson seems to be out on an island all by himself.  It’s odd to me that the writer of the Declaration of Independence and a writer of the United States Constitution would be in a place that looks almost like an afterthought.

It’s nearly two miles from where I started my walk to Jefferson’s Memorial.  I stop briefly and look at “newer” memorials including Martin Luther King Jr. And President Franklin D. Roosevelt.  I continue my journey and I take a lot of pictures, I really want to remember what I am seeing and there is too much to see.

When I finally arrive at Jefferson’s Memorial I walk around the back and I find myself all alone staring inside at a towering figure calmly standing there facing the White House.  He isn’t on a horse or pointing at something, he is just standing and watching.  He is watching us.  He is watching you and me.  I know this because he said, “I have sworn upon the alter of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”  Because Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, helped write the United States Constitution and was there when this great nation was formed, he knew the United States would be susceptible to tyranny now, from within.  That is why he watches.  That is also why he is on an “island” at the National Mall.  Jefferson was different from the rest.  He didn’t react to what was happening, like many on the Mall were required to do, he could anticipate the trouble that would lie ahead.  I’ve met people like Jefferson, some are celebrated and many are shunned.  It’s hard to “know” what’s going to happen when people don’t want to hear about it.  Jefferson took it all in.  He understood how things worked, how people thought and I’m thankful he did, even if history has somehow pushed him aside.  Jefferson’s greatest works can be found at the National Archives, the Declaration of Independence,he wrote, and the Constitution of The United States of America.  I’ve seen them with my own eyes, it makes a difference to see them for yourself.  Don’t rely on a picture in a book, go see your history for yourself.

Go!