I hear a sermon. I think of change and courage.

Just watched my favorite Methodist minister deliver a tough sermon. It dealt with change, not how merely to accept it, but to meet it with courage and conviction based on both on the ideals of one’s faith and the words of the Galilean.

I secularized it, as I am prone to do, based on my chosen profession. I thought of two public entities. One, a state, faced the stench of the bitter poverty and hopelessness of much of its people. It stands last or near last by every standard of decency that can generated by good government. Fortune has abandoned a large swath of its area. Accordingly, and following a long history, its leadership decided to embrace cowardice once again, announcing a commitment to its faith by cutting taxes for the super-rich, damning the poor, and raising “thinking poor” to a religious dogma of the highest esteem.

Now a smell of sulfur, generated by fiery greed, joins the stench of poverty and hopelessness.

The other, a city, facing the Great Depression and a huge in-migration of those fleeing its impact, voted to borrow money, to be repaid by its people, and build a massive structure across one of the most treacherous bodies of water in the country. The decision led to avoiding the worst ravages of the Depression. It also helped create economic development that would increase with time. It provided jobs, not resentment, for the hopeless immigrants.

Fate often simply depends upon thinking of a higher or lower order.

At the end of time, the first entity will still be poor and last among peers. The other will still be a national icon and, among the hearts of many, the most beloved city in the United States.

The minister quoted Thomas Carlyle on change. It was effective. I might add, though, from my view, the words of The Bard from Hamlet, “… there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

Enough said.