The Green Tara Project

Ten years before Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, abolitionist and reformer Theodore Parker wrote these words:  “To make one half of the human race consume its energies in the functions of housekeeper, wife and mother is a monstrous waste of the most precious material God ever made.”

I have to admit:  When I first read these words, I wondered, “What the heck is wrong with being a wife and mother, two of the hardest jobs in the world?”  But then I re-read the sentence, and it struck me that the first two words are really the crux of his statement – ‘to make.’  I love that a pasty old white guy from 159 years ago recognized even then the lack of choice for women and the importance of women and sum it all up in one sentence.  Brilliant.

Parker authored many works, and many of his works have been attributed to influencing generation after generation of abolitionists, from Abraham Lincoln (whose Gettysburg Address turns 149 today), to Martin Luther King, Jr. And where are we, as a Nation, as a World, and as human beings, today, decades and centuries and scores of years after the eloquent words of these men?

In less than four weeks, Green Tara Project will once again be in India, endeavoring to make a difference.  And I’ll have the amazing principles of my heritage to take with me.  In particular, I can borrow Lincoln’s words, “It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain,” and put them in the context of human trafficking, so that they may read: “It is for me, the living, the able, the educated, the lucky to use the gifts granted to me by Fate or the Grace of God to resolve that the plight of all women and girls, boys and men, who suffer and die as slaves shall not be in vain.”

Today is the 149th anniversary of Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg Address.  His words speak as freshly and clearly today as they did back then.  Take some time to absorb the 270 words he spoke that day that resonate to current global struggles.

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”