"A thousand points of light..."

We've heard a lot about our 41st President, George H.W. Bush the past few days.  I already posted my own tribute to President Bush (see "Hail to the Chief"), so I will not do so again here.  However, I would to like comment on a phrase that he used during his Presidency that I was reminded of again this past week.  President Bush first used the reference to "a thousand points of life" during his acceptance speech at the 1988 Republican National Convention.  The speech was written by Peggy Noonan and Craig R. Smith and compared the growing volunteer movement in America at that time to "a brilliant diversity spread like starts, like a thousand points of light in a broad and peaceful sky."  He would repeat the phrase in his inaugural address on January 20, 1989:

I have spoken of a thousand points of light, of all the community organizations that are spread like stars throughout the Nation, doing good.  We will work hand in hand, encouraging, sometimes leading, sometimes being led, rewarding.  We will work on this in the White House, in the Cabinet agencies.  I will go to the people and the programs that are the brighter points of light, and I will ask every member of my government to become involved.  The old ideas are new again because they are not old, they are timeless: duty, sacrifice, commitment, and a patriotism that finds its expression in taking part and pitching in.

President Bush's son, our 43rd President, George W. Bush referred to the phrase yet again in his eulogy yesterday at his father's State Funeral at the Washington National Cathedral:

He strongly believed that it was important to give back to the community and country in which one lived.  He recognized that serving others enriched the giver's soul.  To us, his was the brightest of a thousand points of light.

It seems so simple enough to understand.  Service to others.  Duty.  Commitment.  Sacrifice.  Patriotism.  Simple, but incredibly beautiful, poignant, and just as relevant, if not more so, today as it was when the President Bush #41 first used the phrase.  We too can be one of those thousand points of light.  We too should be one of those thousand points of light.  Now, perhaps more than ever, when others, including our current President mock the phrase - we need a thousand points of light.

America is and will always be that bright, shining "city on a hill", as long as its citizens believe in those thousand points of light.