Monday Morning Music Ministry

5-28-18

Memorial Day. It is easy to get caught up, these days – or lost – in the homogeneity of patriotic holidays. Fourth of July? Veterans Day? Memorial Day? The culprits, if we forget the specific origins, are the general diminution of patriotism in America, and also the side-effect, the lack of teaching and remembrance. A disregard, frankly, of the importance of who we are as people… how we got here… and who paid the costs.

The Fourth of July, of course, commemorates our independence, and the spirit behind that independence. Veterans Day generally honors the veterans amongst us. Memorial Day, once “Decoration Day,” honors not so much the veterans who live, but those who died.

I wish we had few such holidays. Not because I want to wish away wars, and certainly not against the spirit of sacrifice. But just as “President’s Day” cheapens the immense honor due to Lincoln and Washington and few others, when officer-holders high and low are commemorated, so would more holidays. Especially when our contemporary age creates or re-fashions national holidays around weekends and possible commercial sales opportunities.

On Memorial Day, “we call to mind the deaths of those who died that the nation
might live, who wagered all that life holds dear for the great prize of death in battle, who poured out their blood like water in order that the mighty national structure raised by the far-seeing genius of Washington, Franklin, Marshall, Hamilton, and the other great leaders of the Revolution, great framers of the Constitution, should not crumble into meaningless ruins,” said Theodore Roosevelt in a Memorial Day address.

Speaking personally, I have opposed many of our wars, especially in my lifetime. I am a man of the Right, in Whittaker Chambers’ phrase, ready to die for the red, white and blue, but not always for the flags of strangers. I revere the American Republic; not necessarily the American Empire. But what I think is statistically irrelevant, and irrelevant in my slight role as an essayist with some followers.

My own ambiguity about foreign policies and priorities that result in shed American blood is put aside – cast aside – on these Memorial days.

I pray that we all share admiration and respect and honor for those Americans, especially in these days where the military draft no longer exists; those who did what they did for the heritage of our past, the reality of our present, for the hope of the future.

What were these men and women made of? They volunteered; they sacrificed; they died. They suffered nightmarish injuries. When able, many of them re-enlisted.

No matter what progressives, especially those of an earlier generation, say, our servicemen and servicewomen did not wear uniforms and train with weapons because they hated.

They loved.

They loved their comrades. They loved their flag. They loved their missions – the people whose situations they liberated, the people they rescued. They loved their families back home, believing that the sacrifices ultimately were worth it. They loved their homes and streets and towns; their way of life.

Even the least-schooled understood the inchoate but essential virtues behind the tattered flag – that America has stood for something. They fought, and were willing to die, for something greater than a village, or bunker that must be cleared. They were conscious of being children of a great tradition (even if they were recent immigrants in uniform)… and were conscious of being fathers and mothers of that continuing tradition.

I put aside the controversies surrounding our wars and rumors of wars. On this Day especially I stand, and salute, and visit graves at random, of men and women who did the unimaginable courageous things, often in dutiful and routine ways.

Because of who they were. Because of what America is. Or was, God help us.

We salute you.

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Click: Thank You

5-30-11

Hey, Soldier. Or Sailor, Airman, Marine. Late servicemen, fallen or passed on.

It’s Memorial Day. Your day.

Back when all the holidays meant something – and meant something different – this began as “Decoration Day.” When people decorated military graves, or commemorative statues, or monuments and plaques.

That’s why I’m addressing you as one group, and anonymously, because Decoration Day was designed to memorialize, to remember and honor, dead servicemen and women. All of you. You know, on the Fourth of July we celebrate our independence; on Veterans’ Day we honor the retired military among us.

That’s the way it was supposed to be. Decoration Day was changed to Memorial Day, maybe because the act of placing flowers and flags was becoming an empty gesture. Or simply wasn’t being done that much anymore. Whatever: most Americans think of it now as “the beginning of summer,” the vacation season. So, backyard barbecues have replaced parades and cemetery services.

Maybe that’s what you fought for, and many of you died for. “The American Way of Life.” My dad didn’t fight in World War II because he hated the Nazis or Japs like the government told him to; he didn’t even believe that Main Streets in the American heartland were about to be invaded. He volunteered and served because it was his duty. That’s another old-fashioned concept.

The dirty little secret about history is that the best fighting forces have met success not because they hated, but because they loved. You American Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines, in your graves through the land – throughout the world, sometimes buried where you fell – loved the flag, loved your people, your homes, your Main Streets; and you loved the concepts of duty and honor.

Most of you guys are probably like my father, and would tell me that you just “did what you had to do,” and most of your kids are probably like me, in awe of dedication and sacrifice. You would tell us to honor the people in uniform right now, and we do.

I am aching to ask you questions, if I could: is it different now? Today we fight enemies so far from our shores, toward a victory that has not been defined. So often fulfilling missions to build roads and schools and deliver classroom computers, when back home here, where many military spouses are on food stamps, there are American communities in need of roads and schools and classroom computers.

I know one thing that’s not different, because I have met some of the returning service people today, and have seen them on TV too. The uniforms still grace good people; people who have a sense of honor and duty; brave people who serve because service is honorable.

So maybe if anything is different now, it’s not the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines; and maybe, when all is said and done, it’s not so much the service they are asked to perform. Maybe the biggest difference is what kind of America they have been fighting for, what Main Streets they return to. I pray they are not much different than those of your day.

… but it was you men and women, now in your graves and represented in those memorials, who brought us to the point where we can even discuss these questions. You didn’t give us Freedom – God did that – but you all defended it. You knew the difference, and you did it well. Often it was brutally difficult, and usually it was far, far away from your homes.

So I’m going to tell you about trips we will take, many of us, this Memorial Day. Not as far away as your places of service and sacrifice. Some of us are not close to our relatives’ military graves, but all of us are close to some military grave or memorial. I am going to suggest that we, the living, pick some flowers or buy some flowers, or get a little flag, and visit a military cemetery. Or any cemetery, and then look for a military emblem on the stone. Or a town’s war memorial. We are going to place a “decoration,” maybe a thank-you letter or a prayer, to brighten your memory and honor you… whoever you are. We are going to pray thanksgiving for your service. For those of us who cannot get out, we are going to make that trip in our minds.

I look forward to visiting the grave of a stranger. I will symbolically shake your hand, and salute you. You represent much that was great about America. You represented us. God bless you.

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Many songs – patriotic, traditional, military – could follow this message. I have chosen this old Johnny Cash recitation that decorates the memories of our late military members with the colors red, white, and blue.

Click: That Ragged Old Flag

A bit of a personal story, prompted by the video to Click, below.

A number of years ago I was working on a book, a three-part biography of rock ‘n’ roll pioneer Jerry Lee Lewis; evangelist Jimmy Swaggart; and country-music superstar Mickey Gilley, all first cousins to each other. A friend offered me his unused condo in Montgomery, Texas to get away for research and writing one summer. Since Lewis lived in Mississippi, Swaggart in Louisiana, and Gilley in nearby Pasadena TX, it made geographical sense.

Once settled, I took out the Yellow Pages to chart the location of Assembly of God churches for all the weeks ahead, intent on visiting as many as I could. East Texas was in every way new to me, and I wanted to experience everything I could.

Well, the first one I visited was in Cut and Shoot, Texas. That’s a town’s name; you can look it up. A small, white frame AG church was my first stop that summer… and I never visited another. For one thing — coincidence? — I learned that a member of the tiny congregation was the widow of a man who had pastored the AG church in Ferriday, Louisiana, the small town FOUR HOURS AWAY where, and when, those three cousins grew up in its pews. She knew them all, and their families, and had great stories. Beyond that, the pastor of the church in Cut and Shoot, Charles Wigley, had gone to Bible College with Jerry Lee Lewis and played in a band with him, until Jerry Lee got kicked out. Some more great stories.

But there was more than that kept me there for that summer. In that white-frame church and that tiny congregation, it was, um, obvious in three minutes that I was not from East Texas. Yet I was treated like family as if they had known me three decades. It was the Sunday before July 4th, and a fellow named Dave Gilbert asked me if I’d like to go to his farm for the Fourth where a bunch of people were just going to get together and “do some visitin’.”

On the Fourth I bought the biggest watermelon I could find as my contribution to the pot-luck. Well, there were dozens and dozens of folks. I couldn’t tell which was family and who were friends, because everybody acted like family. When folks from East Texas ask, “How are you?” they really mean it. There were several monstrous barbecue smokers with chimneys, all slow-cooking beef brisket. (Every region brags about its barbecue traditions, but I’ll still fight anyone who doesn’t claim low-heat, slow-smoked, no sauce, East-Texas BBQ the best) There was visitin,’ after all; there were delicious side dishes; there was softball and volleyball and kids dirt-biking; and breaks for sweet tea and spontaneous singing of patriotic songs.

I sat back in a folding chair, and I thought, “This is America.”

As the sun set, the same food came out again — smoked brisket galore; all the side dishes; and desserts of all sorts. Better than the first time. Then the Gilberts cleared the porch of their house. People brought instruments out of their cars and trucks. Folks tuned their guitars; some microphones and amps were set up; chairs and blankets dotted the lawn. Dave Gilbert and his brothers, I learned, sang gospel music semi-professionally in the area. Pastor Wigley, later in the summer, opened for Gold City Quartet at a local concert, playing gospel music on the saxophone. But everyone else sang, too; of course in some churches, in some parts of America, you’re just expected to sing solo every once in a while. You’re not expected to — you want to. So into the evening, as the sun went down and the moon came up over those farms and fields, everyone at that picnic sang, together or solo or in duets or quartets. Spontaneously, mostly. Far into the night, exuberantly with smiles, or heartfelt with tears, singing unto the Lord.

I sat back in a folding chair, and I thought, “This is Heaven.”

(By the way, not only am I not from East Texas, although it is sort like home now; but I was born in New York City, so you might appreciate just how different, and not merely special, that day was for me.)

Here is a video that very closely captures the music, and the feeling — the fellowship — of that evening. A wooden ranch house, a barbecue picnic just ended, a campfire, and singers spontaneously worshiping, joining in, clapping, and “taking choruses.” There were cameras at this Gaither get-together, but it took this city boy back to that Fourth of JU-lye, finding himself amongst a brand-new family, the greatest barbecue I ever tasted before or since… and the sweetest songs I know.

Click:  The Sweetest Song I Know