Gettysburg Address paraphrased

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With the election of President Obama, various writers and talking heads have compared him to Abraham Lincoln. As Lincoln's Gettysburg Address came to my mind, I felt compelled to paraphrase it for today's economic crisis:

Four score and some years ago, our forebears brought forth on this Kansas prairie the Crystal Springs community, conceived in Mennonite tradition and dedicated to the proposition that all members bonded together shall survive adversity. Now we are entering another era of severe economic depression, testing whether the community spirit so conceived can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield with financial fraud and abuse. We have come to commiserate and to name those at fault.

It is understandable that we do so. But in a larger sense, we cannot waste time faulting any people, corporations or sector of our great nation. We cannot get lost in such trivial pursuit, although it may feel good to do so.

The U.S. economy will eventually right itself, but in the meantime we must tighten our belts and carry on through the dark days ahead. We must adapt ourselves to the fact that the world economy will be different. We must apply the principles of our fathers and mothers, supporting each other as needed with the gatherings of friends and family, economizing as they did with popcorn for snacks. We shall show that the sacrifices of our mothers and fathers to build a better life for us shall not have been done in vain—that this community spirit under God shall have a new birth of freedom and that the principles of faith and stewardship, of the people, by the people and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

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