Editorial July 5, 1999 Issue

Pursuing a more spiritual life? Don't look back

Russ Gerber

"What would he have been thinking at that moment?" I wondered as I was reading a biography of Harry Truman recently. Mr. Truman was being driven by limousine from the Capitol in Washington, D.C., toward Georgetown. He had just finished serving nearly eight years as president of the United States and was now entering private life. In his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, author David McCullough describes a brief moment of the former president's ride home. The limousine approached 7th and D streets, and the driver stopped for a red light. "It was," Mr. McCullough noted, "the first time that a car in which Truman was riding had had to stop for a traffic light since 1945."^{Truman (New York: Touchstone, 1992), p. 922.}

A more spiritual way of life calls for going forward and not looking back.

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