Wrechard III

Seeking Visions:

This continues to be a discussion I want to bring back to the front. Karrde mentions that he wonders how long it will be before the catastrophic collapse of the surviving models finally happens. When will it be unavoidably obvious that we cannot continue? No one knows.

There is another matter at least as important, however: where the next models will come from. Daniel and Wretchard point directly to the answer. They come from tradition.

Wretchard's quote -- from 1 Kings 19 -- is more telling than mine on this particular point. It's not just that Elijah was in need of a vision. It's that he went back to the beginning to find it. He went back to the place where his tradition began: the place where the Ten Commandments were handed down. The answer to the question, "What are you doing here, Elijah?" is never given by the man himself: but it was a good question. Why have you returned to the beginning of things?

At Gettysburg, Lincoln returned us to the beginning: "that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." He went with us back to the beginning. What he found there was new strength, but also a new charge that was not imagined by the Founders.

I wonder what we will find there.