Welcome to this Sunday’s  Third  Degree: Weekly  Interrogations on matters public and private that force thinking and response. Today we target: Legacy and Wonder

  • Do the cathedrals of the earth provide legacy and wonder?
  • If fortunate to have read Ken Follett’s,  Kingsbridge novels, particularly, “Pillars”, don’t legacy and wonder, reliant on resilience, effort and excellence, win out though arrayed against  stark frailty of ambition and, so often, disappointing, human nature?
  • At least for a time, then struggle continues and so it will ever be?
  • Yesterday, was there worthy legacy in the neo-Gothic wonder of our own Washington National Cathedral–83 years in construction?
  • Architecture aside, did a Celebration of Character and Courage recognize worth and wonder of contributions and sacrifice  50 and more years ago in South East Asia?
  • Ever mindful and respectful of personal and collective loss and cost, is the enduring Vietnam legacy:  Commitment to country counts and continues?
  • Twenty-one years ago on a delegation visit to  Hanoi, were the words and presence of retired Defense Minister   Võ Nguyên Giáp wise or merely reflective of relentless reality:  “Nous etions  les victors et vous aussi—-mais le coute, le coute?”
  • “We were the victors and you (plural) were too but the cost….the cost?”
  • Don’t legacy and wonder always require cost?
  • Is there value in the words of Formula One racer, the Marquis, Alonzo  de Portago (killed in the Mille Miglia of 1957), “ Take what you want from life, but pay for it?”
  • Are the pillars then, the wonder and the legacy, not the stone, brick and mortar kind, however grand,  but the people, always the people, willing to pay?
  • Is there an approximate American, Athenian/Spartan mix that can enable wonder and legacy?
  • Can luxurious America, with all its comforts, be stern enough of spirit and spine to shepherd our own best interests?
  • Will there be winners and losers in the process?
  • Isn’t erecting cathedrals, or just tuck-pointing pillars, really hard work?
  • Do legacy and wonder ever come easy or cheap?

Socrates reminds: “The unexamined life is not worth living. The actions and  answers are yours.