I enjoy words.
Mottos are most charming. Especially the Latin ones assigned to places like states or schools.
Kansas, the last state where I lived before moving back to North Carolina, has a particularly poetic motto.
The human story compressed and romanticized into four Latin words.
It means, “To the stars through difficulties.”
Imagine the weatherbeaten Kansan crying out across the dry expanse of the late winter’s field, “Ad astra per aspera! Ad astra per aspera!”
Yes, I am fond of the Kansas motto.
Missouri, the state where this blog was born, has a very practical motto. Salus Populi Suprema Lex Esto. Written just like that with the first letter of every word capitalized. Translated, “The welfare of the people shall be the supreme law.”
Did you hear the gavel drop at the end? Who needs an exclamation point when the staccato rhythm of the phrase declares itself unquestionable?
Missouri is, after all, the Show Me State.
Before Missouri, I lived in Illinois where the motto is simply, “State sovereignty, national union.” No time for flourish or verbs when there’s snow to shovel, a country to feed, and an industrial powerhouse to build.
Plain, unembellished English will suffice.
Of course Chicago, the city where I lived in Illinois, has its own Latin motto. Urbs in Horto, meaning “City in a Garden.”
While millions of lush corn and soybean acres perennially populate the rest of the state just steps outside the greater metro area, the Chicago Historical Society says the garden in Chicago’s motto refers to its own city parks.
Go figure.
Before Kansas, Missouri, and Illinois, I lived many yesterdays in North Carolina as a girl, a young woman, and a newlywed.
Our motto reads like a wine label. Esse quam videri.
Our translation channels Shakespeare. “To be rather than to seem.”
Bravely, it begs the question, “Who are you?”
“Who will you be?”
“Are you the same inside as you seem to be on the outside?”
In the state I’m in, I’m not sure how to answer. Here, I trudge through memories thick as mud. The days fly in my face like the incessant Wichita wind. Worse come the life-altering changes that are unexpected, yet inevitable all at once.
But here I cope. I pick up to try again. To push through sadness. To get back to work. I remember the energy in the pace. Is it still there?
I pose John Calvin’s statement as a question, post tenebras lux?
“After darkness, light?”
Only one way to find out.
* * *
…continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill His good purpose. Philippians 2:12-13 NIV
Now for our song. Funny, I thought the words were, “Try to live up to the state I’m in,” but the lyrics say otherwise. Still it fits: Air I Breathe by Mat Kearney.
Who are you and what’s your motto?