Hope for a kinder, gentler America, do not let it rest

Looking back over the reports from the last few days, it was stunning to see five living presidents, with their wives, gathered together to say farewell to one.

Wonder what they were thinking? Wonder if they thought about their own funerals and what will be said by those who knew them, and what history told us about them?

Somehow, I think that President Bush knew what would be said about him, that in the end, was the most important thing that can be said of anyone. He was a good man!

The following is a great article but I pulled out a couple of things that stood out for me.

 At George H.W. Bush funeral, hope for a kinder, gentler America
Chicago Tribune
Dahleen Glanton
December 5, 2018 

President Donald Trump, from left, first lady Melania Trump, former President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama, former President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former President Jimmy Carter and Rosalynn Carter attend the funeral of George H.W. Bush. (Alex Brandon/Getty-AFP)

"At this moment, we are desperately clinging to the promise that America once represented, hoping that somehow we can begin to live up to the greatness the world has come to expect of us and that we once expected of ourselves."

"Meacham called Bush “America’s last great soldier-statesman, a 20th-century founding father.” 

But Bush’s Texas minister, the Rev. Russell Levenson, told us not to consider this the end to an era.“It doesn’t have to be,” he said. “ Perhaps it is an invitation to fill the hole that has been left behind.” 

“My hunch is heaven, as perfect as it must be, just got a bit kinder and gentler,” he said in closing. 

I don’t know about heaven. But maybe America can be."