Monday Morning Music Ministry

8-16-21

The thoughts I want to share here are important, I think. They are to me, and I think should be to patriots and people of faith. Reflections on a theme are what constitute essays (rather than articles or sermons) and this week I also share a little diary of reading-matter that have paralleled and fueled my thoughts.

… I could say my “angst.” For many of us share an apocalyptic view of the current condition of America – of the West, of the cultural period in which we live, post-Christianity. Overall, we are encouraged since we have peeked at the end of the Book and know how our story ends. But we are in an awful place now; growing worse by the day in myriad aspects; and there will be torment before the End of Time. The Book of Revelation also makes that clear. A glorious spoiler, as it were.

I was talking with a like-minded friend this week, crying in our beer (seltzer water, actually) about the state of things. The virtual impossibility of turning things around. How can we resist? Fight back? Redeem? Rescue? How to insulate? What is next? Where is safe? Who is sane?

I have been re-reading the poetry of Edwin Arlington Robinson, an enigmatic American who was personally reclusive but simultaneously specific and universal in his free verse about everyday people and their character. Pessimistic, said some; fatalistic. He invented a town that was his setting, Tilbury Town. Edgar Lee Masters did the same with Spoon River, but of a different flavor.

Theodore Roosevelt, who “discovered” Robinson and gave him a government job with the instructions to think of poetry first and paperwork second – his lone exception to bending Civil-Service rules! – admitted that he did not always understand Robinson, but he recognized his genius.

In his poem “The Dark House” Robinson wrote,

Where a faint light shines alone, Dwells a Demon I have known.
Most of you had better say “The Dark House,” and go your way.
Do not wonder if I stay….

There he is who was my friend, Damned, he fancies, to the end–
Vanquished, ever since a door, Closed, he thought, for evermore
On the life that was before….

There’s a music yet unheard By the creature of the word,
Though it matters little more Than a wave-wash on the shore –
Till a Demon shuts a door.

So, if he be very still With his Demon, and one will,
Murmurs of it may be blown To my friend who is alone
In a room that I have known.

After that from everywhere, Singing life will find him there;
And my friend, again outside, Will be living, having died.

Before the poem was published in The Children Of the Night Robinson sent the poem to Roosevelt, who replied – mirroring its poetic and metaphysical tone, rare for Roosevelt – “There is not one among us in whom a devil does not dwell; at some time, on some point, that devil masters each of us; he who never failed has not been tempted. But the man who does in the end conquer, who does painfully retrace the steps of his slipping, why, he shows that he has been tried in the fire and not found wanting. It is not having been in the Dark House, but having left it, that counts.”

An undying truth, even if seemingly banal. Whether he was trying convince Robinson to look upward – or convince himself – it is a moral watchword. I memorized those lines as a boy and called upon them often. Roosevelt, for all his ebullience, knew about the Dark House, or at least was not unrealistic about the perils of life and our national destiny. In a remarkably revealing story, we are told that he entertained the writer H G Wells at Sagamore Hill and gloomily surveyed the challenges facing America in the future.

But he grabbed Wells by the lapels and fiercely said (again, probably more to himself): “But, it… is… worth… the… fight!”

Yes, America is worth the fight, not the least because we are trashing our foundational commitments to Biblical principles and Christian values. America has evolved from facing challenges, to learning from failures… to penalizing success.

I also read this week the very provocative essay by Charles Pépin, “The Virtues Of Failure.” Its refreshing combination of realism and honesty make an encouraging case for optimism. Translated, I hope well, from the French:

“As a teacher, I often see pupils mortified by the bad grades I dispense. Apparently nobody has informed them that human beings can fail. But it is a simple concept: we can fail…. Animals cannot fail, because their behavior is dictated by instinct. In order not to be wrong they just have to obey their own nature. Every time the bird builds its own nest it does so perfectly. Birds do not need to learn from their own failures.

“Being wrong, facing failure, we manifest our truth as humans — we are not animals determined by instinct; nor perfectly programmed machines; nor gods. We can fail because we are men and we are free. Free to make mistakes, free to correct them, free to progress.”

And here we diagnose the cancer that afflicts us. “Free” is becoming a dirty word. “Freedom” is being canceled. We have accelerated the slide from “cradle-to-grave” welfare to government answers for everything. Light bulbs to sneezes. Encouraging children to choose their gender – as if they could – before they can spell the word. Killing babies. Paying people not to work. Inviting hordes to invade our land, no health screening, no terrorist checks. Equating the Bible with “hate speech.” Reviving race-based bigotry.

And – from government, to the news media, to mass entertainment, to the healthcare industry, to churches themselves – teaching Americans in uncountable ways to look anywhere other than churches, the Bible, and God Almighty for answers to our dilemmas. (And, oh, do we have ‘em!) “No problem, you religious nuts! We’ve got it all covered!”

The government big enough to give you anything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have. Look around you. While you still can.

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive. I John 1:9

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