Monday Morning Music Ministry

11-28-16

I was a young boy in 1961 when I heard on my transistor radio that a Russian “cosmonaut,” Yuri Gagarin, had orbited the earth. A few years after the Soviets had launched Sputnik – the first man-made satellite – into earth orbit I remember being amazed at these scientific developments, as I was aware that the American government was scrambling to keep pace.

I was aware because 1957 had been declared the International Geophysical Year, and that all sorts of school programs and textbooks had begun posing the challenge to nervous 12-year-olds like me the rhetorical question: “You don’t want us to fall behind the Communists, do you?” So kids seriously thought of doing their physics and chemistry homework, and dreamed of being astronauts instead of cowboys or G-Men.

In my naiveté, after hearing that radio news bulletin, I scrambled for pencil and paper, as if this moment would be lost to history if I didn’t write the name of Yuri Gagarin. I recall that I could only phonetically scrawl, “Eeuree Gaggarin.”

Ironically, many people have forgotten Gagarin and Alan Shepard, Neil Armstrong, Gus Grissom, Gene Cernan, and many others, including astronauts Borman, Lovell, and Anders, who read from the Bible to earthlings during a lunar mission. Even President Obama seems to have forgotten a lot of the mission of space exploration, as he transferred many American capabilities to Russia.

There is no more Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Twenty-five years ago many nations of Eastern Europe and the “Warsaw Pact” foreswore Communism, with hardly a drop of blood shed. Other nations have discovered freedom – sometimes with steps forward and back along the way – and the very latest movements are toward nationalist pride, and the rejection of centralized control.

Winds of liberty blow across the globe. Except in spots like North Korea and Cuba.

These memories returned this week when Fidel Castro died, aged 90. He was 90 in human years – some would say “inhuman years.” He kept alive ancient strains of selfish totalitarianism, a regime built on hate and resentments rather than love and constructive fellowship. Democracy might not be the panacea for every society, but you can be suspicious of the leader who cloaks his tyranny in mantles like “peoples’ republic” and “democracy” when self-determination is forbidden.

I was 10 when a TV in the local bowling alley was turned to the news, and the anchor warned parents against letting their children see the disturbing footage… so of course I gazed intently. Black and white movies of Havana streets with dead bodies and pools of blood. “Batista flees” was a headline I remember in the New York Daily News about the dictator, scarcely less brutal or corrupt than Castro would be, whom Fidel routed. My father quoted the New York Times description of Castro as an “agrarian reformer.”

A year or two later Castro declared himself a Soviet-style Socialist and visited a United Nations General Assembly session in New York. He famously stayed in a shabby hotel uptown; trashed his rooms; and embraced Soviet leader Khrushchev. I attempted one of my first caricatures and political cartoons as a budding artist – it was a natural subject because Castro dominated the news in those days. The bay of Pigs invasion. The Cuban Missile Crisis.

Through the years he settled in as the hemisphere’s resident dictator, often shunned on the world stage and frequently accommodated by neighboring and worldwide economies.

My wife, as a girl, had neighbors who fled Castro and had their sugar lands confiscated. I worked summers in college at a factory manned almost exclusively by Cuban émigrés. Many of them – some, doctors and lawyers whose credentials were not yet recognized in the US – told me with tears in their eyes of murders they witnessed at the hands of Castro’s police; and telling me earnestly how they appreciated freedom and loved America probably more than I did. I eventually met Fidel’s sister Juanita, whose shame and abhorrence of Cuban Communism was not matched by the other sibling Raul.

Cuba remained grindingly poor during Castro’s term. He would bleat, and international leftists continue to maintain, that the US embargo was the cause. This was palpable nonsense. It was a policy not to engage in trade: not a blockade. Canada, other Latin countries, all of Europe, and of course the Soviets traded all they could; and provided aid to Cuba.

Three points are dispositive, especially as the media now will be awash in rosy nostalgia for the eccentric guy with the beard.

First, Cuba was, and remained, poor for precisely the same reason that the citizens of Socialist economies in Latin America, in Africa, and around the world, suffer poverty. Stifled initiative, inherent corruption, and artificial allocation of resources.

Second, there are thousands and thousands of Cubans who had their property confiscated or their businesses shuttered. My wife’s neighbors were sugar growers before they fled the island. Neither Cuban citizens nor American investors ever received compensation, even almost 60 year later. THAT is why Washington refused to “normalize” relations – that, and the righteous rage of hundreds of thousands who emigrated to the US with nothing their lives.

Finally, Castro summarily executed many opponents; imprisoned many more; set criminals and mental defects on boats alongside multitudes who braved the open sea in flimsy boats. His defenders in Noo Yawk and the media point to universal health care and free college in Cuba as glories of Castro’s regime, but have been unmoved for decades by closed churches, spying on Cuban citizens, and the denial of political activity.

Stooges like Jimmy Carter and John Kerry weep tears for Castro; popes like John Paul II and Benedict, surprisingly, visited him, and the current wearer of the Shoes of the Fisherman admired the dedicated Cuban atheist. Other people, the usual gang of leftists, love Castro for reasons of their own (romantic?) but more likely, and frankly, would be in favor of closing Christian churches in America, too; and suppressing political dissent, as in that promised land.

In a sense, Castro had more integrity than his apologists in America: you can trust a Communist to be a Communist. Liberals will excuse any offense if there is lip-service paid to “education,” “health,” or redistribution of someone else’s property (except their own). Castro was a wolf in wolf’s clothing, worse than Jesus’ memorable warning in Matthew 7:15.

And as Kipling wrote,
“As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins.”

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Click: Komm, Susser Tod

11-21-16

Thanksgiving approacheth.

Oh, good! (or, “Oh, no!”) – Turkey. Trimmings. Leftovers. Football games. Black Friday sales. Take down the Indian corn and gold-and-orange decorations quickly, and put up pine wreaths and red-and-green.

I wonder, and I hope, about the number of people who remember the “real” origin of the holiday. Not the Pilgrims and Indians in casting-call costumes… but remembering our blessings and their Source.

I am wondering about a couple other things this season. As in past years, I note how few people say “You’re Welcome” anymore. Have you noticed? Take a survey – listen to interviews on TV, or how store clerks respond. “You’re welcome” is an endangered phrase.

Notice, it has been replaced by “No problem,” or “No prob.” Or “Sure thing.” Or “You betcha.” Or “Thank YOU.”

Curious.

This is not a moral failure; just a conversational tic of the sort that enters the language. Similar to so many people larding their sentences with “y’know,” or beginning conversations with “So…”

But I have a serious thought whose way-stations are observations like this.

The first American Thanksgiving celebration was organized specifically to give thanks to God for bountiful harvests, safety, and peace with neighbors and environments.

“It is meet, right, and salutary that we should at all times and in all places give thanks to You, almighty Father, everlasting God, through Jesus Christ our Lord…” So reads the ancient liturgy preceding the Sanctus.

We give thanks to the Lord, for it is good; we present offerings; we make joyful noise unto the Lord.

It has occurred to me that God covets our thanks, because it shows our hearts are mindful of His many blessings, and this is proper. But have you ever thought that sometimes we should say “You’re Welcome” to God?

“You’re Welcome, God”???

When we think on this, we better appreciate the unique relationship God has – and wants – with us: He does thank us. Often. Humble servants that we are. He thanks us abundantly.

When you receive answers to prayer, the sovereign Lord is also thanking you for faithfulness.

When you are blessed, it is a Thank You from God for seeking His face, and praying earnestly.

When a loved one is healed, or saved, or in some way moved, it may also be in some small way God thanking you for having faith, witnessing, sharing Christ.

Like prayer itself, Thanks is not a one-way street. God honors our faith; the Bible reassures us of this many times. And what is that except a “Thank You” from the Lord of Creation? Can that humble us?… but remind us, too, of how we are loved.

“For God so loved the world that he gave His one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.” Back to football! – these are the words of the “John 3:16” signs you see in the stands.

Some people like to refer to Jesus’ birth as God’s Christmas present to humankind. Yes. But we also can see Jesus – God in the flesh to dwell among us – as God’s Thank-You note. The best Thank-You note possible… while we were yet undeserving. But He thanks His children who have open hearts and pure spirits.

When you pray, pray literally: “You’re welcome, Lord: You are welcome in my heart.”

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Click: Thank You

11-14-16

The thing I like most about holidays is that they remind us, at least one short day a year each, of things worth remembering or commemorating or honoring.

The thing I like the least about holidays is the human tendency to compartmentalize, especially in these busy days.

Check the box… put away the decorations… the events are over for another year… back to work.

Except for Halloween, I guess I can’t think of a holiday where that is not a crying shame. We should anticipate, meaningfully celebrate, meditate, share, teach our children, and linger over the heritage and purpose of holidays (and holy days, their first ID).

Surely is the case with Veteran’s Day. It is almost an awkward holiday, with its curious history, shrouding legends, and hybrid purpose. Several countries observe it – mostly the remnants of the victorious nations in the Great War. Originally called Armistice Day, it was designed to observe the day, or, ironically, the minute, when World War I ended. In America, arguably a post-patriotic place in some corners, its goals are somewhat lost in the wash of July Fourth, Memorial Day, and other holidays festooned with flags and fireworks.

The 11-11-11:11 legend, if true, has a monstrous presence in the PR Hall of Fame. For even one soldier to be gassed or to die during the stopwatch-interregnum for the sake of a convenient publicity ploy, was appropriate only as an aspect of what already was the stupidest of history’s stupid wars. The “Armistice” associated with the 1914-18 war, as it receded in relevance and the awful shuffle of subsequent bloodlettings, was changed to “Veteran’s.” Its purpose is parsed this way: on Memorial Day we honor those who died; on Veteran’s Day we honor those who served.

Worthy. That is, if we observe it “worthily” (as in partaking of the Host worthily) – which puts the onus on the rest of us. Something to pause and contemplate.

It is well and good that we honor veterans and thank a service member. Vets don’t feel the love enough. But, honestly, the value of this holiday is for us, the living, rather, that we not merely shake a vet’s hand, but join arms and continue the work we recognize them for having undertaken. That would be a meaningful celebration of Veteran’s Day.

At the risk of denigrating the holiday or any single military veteran, I want to share my thoughts this weekend, as I contemplated those who have served… and what kind of people are veterans of what kinds of service.

My father was a conscientious objector before the United States joined World War II. He relented, enlisted, and went on the serve as an Army gunnery instructor in Kentucky and Albuquerque; and then in the newly formed Air Force as a meteorologist who overflew the Normandy invasion. No less cynical about war after his discharge as Captain than before enlisting, he was proud of his service.

I thought of him this weekend when I watched a terrific movie, Hacksaw Ridge, about WW II c.o. who served as a medic in the bloody battle of Okinawa. Desmond Doss, a Christian opposed to taking up weapons, performed miraculous and numerous acts of heroism, dragging wounded soldiers from active battlefields. He modestly estimated 50 soldiers; his Medal of Honor citation said 75 soldiers; his platoon mates claimed more than a hundred. The movie, directed by Mel Gibson, is a must-see.

Pfc (later Cpl) Doss was a hero – a super-hero? can we imagine? – but he was also a veteran, and not “merely” a veteran. Service members who were not deployed overseas are also veterans. Wives and daughters who worked in defense factories also were vets. Those who “kept the home fires burning” – teachers, farmers, firemen, weathermen – also were veterans of the war effort, serving where they could, the best they could.

But I don’t want to cast this in the past tense. Those who wear the uniform around the world will be vets when they return. And I think, with a wonderment that frankly I cannot describe or, I fear, emulate, of those who redeploy and return, again and again, to theaters of war. Those vets deserve special thanks. And so do their wives and children and parents, many of them worrying and praying, but also prideful and cheering; sometimes, curse this government, on food stamps or public assistance.

We admire these service-men and women. They serve. Serve what? The flag? Of course, but they serve us. They will never meet most of us, but they serve us. They do not love war; that is not why they serve. They love peace… especially the peace, and security, of the neighborhoods that produced them. And the flag that, earlier, inspired them.

Thinking larger, true patriotism is not only about flags and uniforms. That is when we think of patriotism as love of country in the larger sense. Love of nation. We don’t really have equivalents of the German words “heimat’ (roughly, home town, homeland) or “volk” (roughly “folk,” of course; but the people we love, our heritage, shared memories and loyalties). Veterans there are who serve the same flag and country that the military does.

Teachers who work 60-hour weeks and lay out their own funds for classroom supplies… factory workers who still take pride in their work, their place in the line… charity workers who do work for the poor… parents who adopt… and so many more. My wife was in hospital for many ailments, including heart and kidney transplants, and I was astounded at the service and sacrifice of nurses. Doctors have skills; nurses have hearts.

When people serve people and the community, they serve the country too. When they rest their weary selves, they are veterans, and should be honored too.

A step further, to appreciate the nature of heroes and veterans. At the risk, again, of being misunderstood. It should be recognized that, say, the 9-11 responders were brave… but, honestly, they were doing their jobs. That is not to denigrate their service: it is to recognize and encourage each other, all of us, that our jobs are honorable. And unique. And worthy of recognition on days like Veteran’s Day… veterans of our individual challenges and triumphs.

Veterans of war ought to be honored (and cared for back home). Veterans of life’s toils in this one nation, under God, indivisible, if we can maintain that, should honor laborers and creators, teachers and preachers, even political volunteers, too; and every loyal citizen who loves country.

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A song that has become associated with veterans actually began life as a song, by Bill Carlisle, written after his grandfather’s death. It has been recorded by groups as varied as Flatt and Scruggs and the Grateful Dead. He tells the story and song in this video, recorded shortly after I met the country music legend.

Click: Gone Home

11-7-16

For a few weeks here, I have been pointing my usual concerns to the presidential election. It has been a legitimate detour because the choices – the crises – we face are more momentous than any in memory. Also, the nature of our regular topics, including spiritual and patriotic matters, are dispositive this year. That is, the nation is about to reconfirm our standards and values, or depart into uncharted territories. Everyone senses it.

Many people will think that Hillary represents continuity, and Trump will bring the Unknown to office. I argue, in these days before the election, that the situation is precisely the opposite.

I have urged friends and readers who, like most citizens, are enthusiastic about neither candidate, to ignore the candidates as much as possible, and vote for the policy outcomes most important to them. This is why parties have platforms, why congressional caucuses compose manifestoes, why candidates offer “contracts with voters.” Officeholders, once elected, often break their pledges, but we still have yardsticks to measure and hold them accountable.

In this regard, “I hate them both” becomes a fatuous position. Generally, people dislike Trump but distrust Hillary: reason enough for a thoughtful choice. Personally, my view of Trump as a vulgarian of malleable principles has evolved – mostly because, during the campaign, he has evolved, and actually has articulated a set of positions. These positions are strong, consistent, and far more detailed than of any presidential candidate since Reagan.

Oddly, his manifesto has come under the radar – not, for instance, with the PR fanfare of Gingrich’s “Contract with America” in 1994 – and, ironically, subsequent to the primaries and his nomination. Yet on immigration (moderated), international trade, school choice, abortion, Constitutional issues, taxes, judicial appointments, health care, regulation, and other issues, he has become this generation’s issues-oriented candidate. Who would have thought?

Moreover, his positions, especially for a man of chameleonlike attitudes and ideological U-turns through the years, are consistent with longstanding goals of Christian activists, right-wing loyalists, and “movement conservatives.” Many of these goals have been frustrating failures to activists, but Trump trumpets them. Not timid because of past failures of the governing class, he doubles down. Liberals decry these stands, but Establishment Republicans, in whose hot-houses these views were hatched, strangely are silent. Why?

Well, Trump is not one of “them.”

Surely he is not, and that is one reason he has caught the imagination of the electorate. Many prominent elected Republicans have not endorsed him; and only one major newspaper has. He has, by traditional standards, repeatedly committed political suicide; but he refuses to die. Scandals, gaffes, embarrassments… and he rises in the polls. The “world” “hates” him, but he is dead-even in polls now; and I believe will prevail.

There is something extremely profound at work. For all of Trump’s brand of charisma or his unorthodox appeal, it is not about him. And it is only partly what he says. It is what he represents. Almost despite of himself. He is giving voice to an inchoate but tsunami-like Spirit of the Age. He is the inheritor of a bubbling brew of protest figures. Barry Goldwater; Howard Beale, the maverick TV newsman in the movie Network (“I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more!”); George Wallace; Spiro Agnew; Ronald Reagan; Pat Buchanan; Ralph Nader; Pat Robertson; Ross Perot; and various columnists, talk radio hosts, and cable news people.

Beyond that, Trump represents the same, or similar, packages of discontents that have fueled the Le Pens in France; UKIP and Brexit in England; Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, and anti-immigrant, small-government, nationalist leaders in Italy, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Sweden, and even Iceland.

Given the tide of right-wing populist passions throughout the West – none of it coordinated, not yet – it is evident that if Donald Trump had not emerged, the Silent Majority would have manufactured someone like him.

What kind of president would he make? Hillary, as noted above, surely would be a continuation… of Obama, of Bill, of ObamaCare, of endless and purposeless wars in the Middle East, of endless and purposeless bureaucrats, of the familiar old faces and tired old policies. Trump might come to office, with no baggage and few commitments, and run the government as a CEO would. He could appoint powerhouses to Cabinet posts; would formulate programs and deadlines to deal with priority issues; and hold periodic board meetings to check the progress on his agenda. How refreshing a prospect; what a difference.

Or… he could appoint lackeys; bluster his way through controversies, and relish arguments more than solutions. Unlikely, but a possibility. But hour by hour, Americans are willing to take the chance rather than vote for Hillary. And that is apart from the larcenous and perhaps treasonous future of Clinton Inc., about which facts are being revealed, also virtually hour by hour.

As in other parts of the world, “the old order changeth.” Citizens are now eager to break with their old parties, to punish and abandon old politicians. Apart from the over-arching issues I listed above, I can explain the flight from Hillary and Democrats, and the tide toward Trump, in a way I have not seen analyzed elsewhere.

In recent years, many social conservatives often remained loyal to Democrats – at least their House members; or because of unions’ appeals; or with sympathy for Obama as a Black, or other ethnic concerns. This year I politely have eavesdropped in areas of Michigan and Pennsylvania and Colorado. In factory and suburban and executive neighborhoods. And I have heard people who used to caricature Republicans now bitterly complain about Democrats and leaders like Hillary. Why? Their priorities of unrestricted immigration, sanctuary cities, LBTGBTQ (sorry) “rights,” and pedophiles’ access to Women’s rest rooms. Candidate aside, the Party has changed.

On one less inflammatory issue, liberals like Obama and Hillary boast about the increased numbers of people on food stamps. Conservatives, and, once upon a time, even Democrats, used to work toward the day when nobody needed to be on welfare assistance.

The coming populist wave is easy to understand.

If the wave is postponed, Canute-like, four or eight years, or fails in its essentials, ugly things might happen in America. I already anticipate violence in the streets, looting, and other such “civic protests,” if Trump wins. Count on it.

If Trump loses, many of us, patriots and Christians, will recognize that our country is lost. Suburbanites, shopkeepers, and churchgoers might not take it to the streets, maybe not, but many of us will be ready for radical action and fundamental change. We will say “thank you” to the old system, keep portions of it, and work, really work, to build something new. There will be opposition to us; we will have to accept the rejection of friends and family members; and we will turn to civil disobedience.
All of which, counterintuitively, would be a very traditional reaction to our current crisis. Thomas Jefferson himself said that in each generation, the Tree of Liberty might have to be nourished with the blood of patriots.

I will enlist. But it is my belief, with a couple days to go, that Enthusiasm and Momentum are building, as they always do, toward an election wave. Let us pray.

In any case.

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Click: Turn the Tide – A Prayer for America – Abigail Miller