Monday Morning Music Ministry

4-4-22

In one of my former lives – not that I believe in reincarnation; I mean I have had several and varied careers – I was a writer of Walt Disney comics. Numerous treatments and scripts for Mickey, Donald, Uncle Scrooge, and the rest of the gang.

When I was hired, I was given a “story bible” – note the small-b – which instructed artists and writers how to handle the characters. My essential requirement was to “write like Carl Barks and Floyd Gottfredson.” These were the men most responsible for the Donald and Mickey, respectively, we knew from comic books and strips. These men were heroes; as a fan and scholar I already knew them personally; and of course it was a dream assignment. (Carl had even created the Uncle Scrooge character.)

I have copped a few awards and plaques through the years, and they are on my office wall, but they are arranged around my framed membership certificate from the Mickey Mouse Club, 1955. Dearer to me. “Ricky Marshall,” printed in red, around which those trivialities orbit.

I was, in childhood years and in grownup-childhood years, Mickey’s pal. Uncle Walt’s pal, really; of course I went to the theme parks and collected toys and went to the Disney movies. To kids in America for almost a century now, Mickey has been part of our DNA, in our blood.

Suddenly we are diagnosed with a blood infection, however.

The dissolution of the Magic Kingdom’s magic, the betrayal of Uncle Walt’s vision and ethos, have not been precipitous, but recently have accelerated with a vengeance. At the parks and in cartoons and movies, the words “Ladies” and “Gentlemen” and “Boys” and Girls” literally will be proscribed. A Princess is an endangered species because girls who might not dream of being princesses must not be offended nor have such awful visions planted in their hearts.

Mickey and Tinkerbell have been dethroned as Disney spokespeople; “Goofy” would be more appropriate; I hereby nominate him. Or Cruella.

Today, I would refuse to work for the transformed Disney, this counterfeit colossus. I knew a delightful lady, Virginia Davis, who as a little girl was a neighbor of the unknown Walter Disney in Kansas City. When the ambitious cartoonist dreamed up a concept of a live-action girl in an animated world, which became the silent cartoon series Alice in Cartoonland, Ginni played the role. And when the series became a success, Disney moved to Hollywood to produce more, and the Davis family followed. Decades later, when I invited her, out of retirement in Boise, Idaho, to comics conventions here and in Europe, she recalled uncountable stories of Walt… who, several years after Alice, created Mickey Mouse!

Ginni Davis remained friends with Walt’s widow Lillian. Even 25 years ago, I was told, Lillian was very unhappy with what the Disney “brand” had become; and she thought Walt would not have recognized, or liked, it either. And that was before the studio’s PC-pledges, this week, to sanitize its vocabulary and to make a corporate commitment (as per the Disney website) to design half of the studio’s characters to “come from underrepresented groups.”

Disney’s President of General Entertainment Content Karey Burke confirmed the policy. Despite her title, she claimed in a Zoom call to employees that she was shocked to realize that there were only a “handful” of “queer” lead characters in Disney productions. Odd, since she proudly said that she has two “queer” children herself. Technically, one “gay” and one “pansexual,” a category whose meaning eludes me (as do a couple of the letters in “LGBTQIA+”).

The spark that ignited this latest bit of lunacy was the Florida legislature’s law to prohibit the discussion of topics like transgenderism – including counseling and invitations to role-play – to students from kindergarten to second grade. The governor signed the bill; the growing “woke” elements of the nation’s “virtuous” elites erupted in protest; and Walt Disney World in Orlando – the sprawling megalopolis that enjoys tax and regulatory privileges from the state – went public with its dissent, and initiated political threats.

“Underrepresented,” for those of you who have not been following the map, navigating this new Fantasyland, does not mean creating characters with disabilities, or are Amish or Orthodox or Pentecostal, or albinos, or kids with developmental challenges, or birth defects, or cerebral palsy or Down Syndrome. No conjoined twins, sightless, nor (literal) dwarfs. No, the vast Disney “universe” will be populated 50 per cent by characters representing the minuscule portion of the population with rare sexual attributes like gender dysphagia. Pandering, that is, to a different audience in a particular demographic pool.

Disney’s declaration of war on traditional culture and America’s spiritual and social heritage is a pop-culture version of Russia’s brutal visit to Ukraine. American childhood is the innocent, unsuspecting landscape. This not only represents a serious matter; it is a serious matter.

Speaking of wars, they can be lost, or won. Any of us can go broke or lose a job, but we get a new job, we recover. Couples split up, and get back together… or don’t, but we find new loves eventually. Friends move away; we make new friends. Someone might betray us, and it hurts; but time heals the wound, or we forgive; usually we forget. In awful situations, we get sick, and recover, or cope. Wounded soldiers manage and, increasingly, are supported by those who love and appreciate them. Pets die; we get new pets. Life is a wheel.

But there is one thing that cannot be restored, or repaired, and certainly not redeemed when violated or lost. That is the innocence of a child.

“Kids grow up too fast,” we often hear, and that seems true, but I address more than that. As life has become too loud, too rude, too new, too strange, and, yes, too fast for adults… it surely has for children. Do technology and new media rob children of imagination… or maybe encourage imagination? I suspect it will take generations for that judgment.

But I am not inviting us to think about imagination. I am talking about innocence.

Aspects of sex and sexuality ought to be the domain of parents within the family setting. Similarly, matters of morality. Values. Standards. But teachers, teachers’ unions, liberal politicians and judges, the “entertainment” industry, and the talking animals and prancing fairies at Disney theme parks – they mostly agree that parents are the last people who should inculcate knowledge and wisdom to their children.

Maybe, next, they will propose that parents can be the responsible parties for reading, writing, and arithmetic, since those disciplines are no longer the priorities of schools.

Train children in the way they should grow, and when they are old they will not turn from it (Proverbs 22:6).

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Click: Slumber My Darling

5-15-17

One of the pathologies of contemporary life – a sure sign of the culture of death that has subsumed Western civilization – is the assault on motherhood.

Feminism was a harbinger that was perverted; “women’s liberation” was a movement birthed in economic justice that has, currently, extended to a futile but aggressive war on biological imperatives. Now we are awash in euphemisms like “gender identity” that would turn upside-down simple assumptions of all cultures from all lands and all ages.

But we in the 21st-century West know better. If boys somehow wish they were girls, we should yield to their fantasies. If women desire to be fathers, we change laws to re-define families. The prerogatives and standards of parents, and the sensibilities of the children they raise, are denied in order to accommodate statistically infinitesimal numbers of biological or emotional outliers.

Majoritarian traditionalists and Christians are sanctioned and stifled, yet the New Wave of moral nihilists – those who hate the natural and the immemorial – compose lists of proscriptions and Hate items of thought, attitudes, and speech.

These comments are not choleric, but are laments occasioned by Mother’s Day. Our thoughts should go to the institution of Motherhood, as much as to our own mothers. Theodore Roosevelt once said that “Equality of right does not mean equality of function.” He was the first major politician in America to be an advocate of women’s right to vote – even when his wife herself dissented – yet he revered the institution of motherhood: the role of women in the scheme of life. Toward women and mothers he was almost worshipful, regarding their work and responsibilities as more difficult, and perhaps more valuable, than men’s.

“Equality of function” to him did not imply mere functionality, but addressing roles – where life finds us; where we confront life; where we assess God’s will for our lives – and doing our work honorably.

The humorist Jean Shepherd (possibly the first time he will be paired with Theodore Roosevelt in any essay) devoted a lot of his radio monologues in the 1960s when I was a young addict of his wit and wisdom, to what he called the “Great Role Reversal.” He made many observations, frequently inspired by news items. Minor, everyday occurrences seemed, as often the case in the world of Popular Culture, more dispositive than academic papers and scholarly statistics.

Shep milked chuckles from the effluvia of such reports… but mainly he ruminated on the enormous cultural shift underway in the US. Indeed, the trickle became a tsunami. The nuclear family is under attack. Traditional gender roles are ridiculed. Legal reshuffling for cohabitants is insufficient; the dictionary must contort itself to re-define “family” and “mother.” Male predators must be allowed to enter girl’s rooms. New genders, and names for them, are being invented by the dozens.

I never have had the privilege of being a mother. As closely bound as I was to fathering, fatherhood, being present at the births, then nurturing and rearing my children… I am aware it all is a far-distant second. The special relationship of mother and child, among all species, in fact, is a unique and precious blessing.

A birthright, in fact.

For all the good feelings engendered by Mother’s Day, I reserve a portion of contempt for those creatures who denigrate the institution of Motherhood; who deny the privilege – to others, not only for themselves – of sanctifying the foundation of the family; for hating what we love.

I reserve a portion of pity, too. I must. What I call the Culture of Death extends beyond the trashing of motherhood and women’s traditional roles. Biologically, homosexuals cannot naturally procreate (pro-create). Abortion fanatics crusade for death – disguising their advocacy as convenience for the mothers. And so on. They are to be pitied, and prayed for.

In the meantime, my Mother’s Day is filled with memories of the Mom I knew. I loved her, and love her. She was an example whose nurture appears stronger through the years: seeds, planted, and growing in my life. A servant’s heart, making silent and willing sacrifices. Was she perfect? Smoking and drinking were regrettable but did not affect her salvation. Big deal. We prayed for Jesus to turn the wine back into water. Of vital importance is that she knew Jesus, was active in churches, and related almost every question I ever had to the gospel.

A preacher in aprons. A saint in curlers. An invariable Forgiver.

I believe God created Woman not only as a helpmeet to Adam, but as an Assistant to Himself. As Mothers, to show unconditional love; to bond in unique ways with their children; to bear the essence of comfort, understanding, acceptance.

I admired my Dad, oh yes; I still finish every project wondering if he would approve; to be a good professional. But Mom? If I can be as good a man as she was a mother, I will die grateful and content.

There are some women who, by circumstance or infirmity, sadly cannot become mothers. Most women whom I have met from those groups have hearts even more tender for families and for children.

However, sorry to tell all of you radical harridans who hate, you have disinvited yourselves from family reunions – not at ballparks on summer afternoons, or Grandma’s house on Winter evenings – but from that mystical, privileged, and sacred Family that truly is a gift of God.

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Does this essay seem to dwell on old-fashioned things? I plead guilty! There are too many old fashions that we are losing. Here is one: a tender lullaby, a mother’s song, written by Stephen Foster 150 years ago. Sung by Alison Kraus.

Click: Slumber, My Darling

8-17-15

Well… actually, that’s a lie. If it really were simple, in America and many places in the world, there would not be hot debates, policy fallouts, family feuds, “litmus tests,” stockpiles of weaponized arguments, court cases, broken churches, broken families. Or, often, broken women, erstwhile moms, bitter regrets. And, not recalled enough: tens of millions of dead babies.

But I hope any pro-abortion, “pro-choice,” readers will stick with me here. I acknowledge the “issue” is not simple… and my thoughts here, which have evolved through my life and I feel have arrived where they should be, might yet be a snapshot in time, evolving still. I think theology is clear, but public policy is difficult. Family management, counseling friends, is challenging.

And my theological point of view – where colleagues might part company – is that I believe the Bible is clear, although without the preponderance of specific references, on the proper spiritual and ethical attitude toward abortion. But I do not think that it is the Unpardonable Sin. It should not be encouraged in or out of the family of God… but mothers who made the euphemistic “choices” to “terminate” should be welcomed, not shunned, by Christians.

Friends know that I once was quite comfortable with the practice (not alone among other issues I have abandoned). Even before Roe vs Wade it was legal in Washington DC, where I went to college, and there was a culture that was very mechanistic – arguments about affordability, family “planning,” the soulless nature of blobs.

In truth, two attitudes fueled that culture, in those days: Washington, with its large black population, was a focus of abortion advocates like Planned Parenthood, whose founder, Margaret Sanger, frankly targeted her work, hoping to minimize or eventually eliminate the black population in society. Ugly, but true. And in the 1960s and ‘70s there was the attitude, if not explicit argument, that abortion simply was after-the-fact contraception.

My views changed through the years, the closer I drew to Jesus; but, also, the more I thought about the “issue,” the implications, the repercussions, the legacies. Abortion says something about the women, and men, involved. It says something about the society that permits – or encourages – it. It says something about dead babies. Not aborted fetuses: shut up. Dead babies.

The “issue,” once thought settled after Roe vs Wade, is more contentious than ever in America. Less settled. Science has made astonishing advances, both in maintaining viability of the pre-born, and in determining what, frankly, is a human – what is life, who is living – after conception. Traditionalists often are labeled “anti-science” about issues like evolution and global warming, but science is on the side, today, of the anti-abortionists. Or pro-life advocates.

The “issue” has invaded politics. Candidates might disagree on war and peace, the economy, government snooping, the threat of Iran, anything and everything… but (to employ the extreme labels) killing babies or a woman’s “right to choose” are defining issues of the age.

The “issue” is such today that almost every day its implications rise before us. At least for me. The news stories, of course, that disclose videos of Planned Parenthood leaders discussing the sale and efficient harvesting of babies and their organs. (Opponents fulminate against the hidden cameras, or the relatively small profits, shamelessly ignoring the horror of it all.) This week is the anniversary of my granddaughter Sarah’s birth. She lived nine days, a fragile preemie, and I look at the photo of my daughter Heather holding the tiny baby; I still cry to see the hope in Heather’s smile – and then I look at tiny Sarah and cannot help, today, picturing “scientists” and abortionists who would have swept in and carved her up at so many cents per pound. I watch an afternoon of Smithsonian documentaries about primitive societies and realize, peripherally, how many practiced infant sacrifice. Primitive. societies.

I believe abortion is current-day infant sacrifice. We appease the gods of convenience, guilty conscience, and callous morals.

History has a term for these primitive, and contemporary, practices writ large: infanticide. China long has practiced selective – and mandatory – abortions and infanticide in order to manage its economy. And the world shrugs.

Again, not an issue easily discussed or dispatched. Does it come down, after all, to women grasping for a legal sanction to resist biological, as well as moral, imperatives? Five Supreme Court justices aside, there still are differences between the sexes, and always will be. We have a generation of women – I know not all, despite the implications and claims of surveys, or, rather, poll-takers – who refuse to be women, at least in the most defining, distinctive, and glorious, way possible: motherhood.

Theodore Roosevelt once said (a propos expanding women’s right to vote), “Equality of rights does not mean equality of functions.” He did not mean cooking and cleaning; he meant to resist the revolutionary and degenerate aims of his contemporary, Margaret Sanger.

Of course there are the assertions, whether sincere or convenient, of those who argue that many children born to disadvantaged families are abused; that one “mistake” of passion should not be “punished by a baby,” as President Obama rationalized; that our planet cannot support more people. With these arguments the “issue” finds itself shifted alongside those of barbarians, Nazis, and ethnic cleaners.

To me, certain responses are increasingly hard to resist:

If death is determined by when a heart stops beating, why is life not measured when a hearts begins beating?

If fetuses are not human, why are their little body parts considered human?

We are told that people have rights to health care, to food, to schools, to hospital care; why not a right to life?

If a single cell were discovered on a distant planet, the world would celebrate life existing elsewhere in the universe. If it were found in a woman’s womb, why is it not considered life?

Women abort – let us say, kill their children – when babies are inconvenient. Under Hitler, Jews were deemed inconvenient; their mistreatment was legal; their slaughter not punished. Are pre-born babies guiltier, more deserving of execution, than Jews?

If these unborn babies can be dismissed as tissue masses and “blobs,” why do we not discuss “blob control,” so nice and antiseptic, instead of “birth control”?

This is not a man/woman perspective. I know as well as any man can, how life-altering an “unwanted” pregnancy can be. Well, there are millions of women who cry for babies, their own and others, who are more militant than I. There are uncountable women who were spared being aborted, sometimes at the last minutes, who thrive today – happy, healthy, and grateful for life. There are women who decided to give their babies up for adoption – maybe the second most wrenching decisions they could make – and those children live amongst us.

Our society is not sensitive to fathers of “unwanted” babies who are bound to support their child until majority; but have no say if their girlfriends kill the baby. I have met women who were consumed with grief for being misled, for killing their babies, and have lived with their “choices,” to use the hallowed word. One I know, have interviewed, is Norma McCorvey – the “Jane Roe” of Roe vs. Wade – remorseful and a pro-life advocate today.

But still, not an easy issue. This is my determination, and a plea to my allies – celebrate life, all life; welcome sinners (as we all are) who repent; wrap them, as we wrap ourselves, in Jesus’s love; and exercise forgiveness. As God offers forgiveness to us.

To those who still wrestle with the morals and ethics of the abortion issue, I close. Like it or not, there is a Heaven and a Hell. And as we understand God’s mystery, in Heaven we will all have “perfected” bodies. More than that we really don’t know. But consistent with what the Bible teaches, one’s aborted babies will be there, too.

Can you imagine looking into the eyes of these? “Why, Mommy? Why, Daddy?”

You might think you would answer, “I was afraid I would fail you. I was afraid you would stumble through life…”

And what if the answer is, “But what if you had not failed but succeeded? And what if I had not stumbled, but blossomed and flown and danced… and lived?”

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The poignant lullaby by Stephen Foster, sung by Alison Kraus:
Click: Slumber, My Darling

5-19-14

A report from Colorado — Estes Park YMCA Conference Center, surrounded by late snows, young deer and elk, hundreds of professional and aspiring writers at the Colorado Christian Writers Conference. I have been on faculty, and critiquing the work of creative people yearning to Write His Answer, in the words of the conference motto.

In keynotes and session speeches, in prayer circles, the topics were many, but — as in other years, and without human direction or agenda — a matter of concern kept asserting itself: children. The crisis with children. Poverty here; AIDS in Africa; child sex trafficking in Asia; schools, orphanages, corruption in Swaziland; forced prostitution of young girls — children — in Thailand.

And when children are not parts of the headlines, they are parts of the story, the subtexts.

To speak about decline in morals and the media… we recognize that children are prime targets.

To speak about human trafficking… children are the victims.

To speak about the AIDs crisis in Africa… children suffer as the infected AND as orphans.

To speak about the persecuted church worldwide… children are the battleground of cultures suppressing Christianity.

In America – drugs: children. Education: children. Pornography: children. Poverty: children. Homelessness: children. Broken homes: children. Abortion: children.

It is a cliché to say that children are our future. But clichés are clichés because they are, first of all, true. However, children do not HAVE to be the first-in-line victims of a culture in decline. But they are. They cannot defend themselves; they believe what the culture tells them; they are the most vulnerable.

When I talk about headlines, it is literally the case. Recently 300-500 girls were kidnapped by a radical Islamist group in Nigeria. The kidnapper’s leader has gone public, blatantly threatening horrific fates, hinting of swaps of the innocent children for his fellow monsters in local jails.

Almost lost in the media coverage, and clearly a subordinate concern of the US government, is the little detail: the children are Christians.

If it is not becoming acceptable in the eyes of our media and government, it is at least a reflection of the frequency — almost to the point of boring triviality — that children, and Christians, and Christian children, are persecuted, brutalized, raped, jailed, and driven from their homelands.

In 1904 an American citizen was kidnapped in Africa. The businessman, Ion Pedecaris, was a pawn in the factional rivalries of the Pasha Raisuli and his Arabian government. A little history lesson: the First Lady of the United States did NOT pose for a photograph with a sign (as Michelle Obama did this week with the handwritten Twitter hashtag and “Bring Back the Children”). No, her husband, President Theodore Roosevelt, sent a message to that African government: “Pedecaris alive or Raisuli dead.”

The man was freed.

I know it is a fantasy, but I got to thinking, this week in Colorado, if Mrs Obama — I would settle for a cartoon of Uncle Sam — could hold a sign that said: #Bring back our sense of proportion… or justice… or honor… or respect for children… or defense of Christianity. As I said, I am afraid this is a fantasy.

Let us remember the children – care for them, protect them, cleanse their environment. If our generation has messed up, maybe the best thing we can do – not the only thing, but surely the FIRST thing – is to beg their forgiveness. And God’s.

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Here is a tender lullaby Slumber My Darling, written more than 150 years ago by a man I am increasingly persuaded was America’s greatest composer, Stephen Foster. It is performed by Alison Kraus, (amazing) vocals; and YoYo Ma; Mark O’Connor; Joshua Bell; and Edgar Meyer. The images are by the amazing Beanscot Channel.

Slumber, My Darling

5-16-11

I am rounding out the week at the Colorado Christian Writer’s Conference in Estes Park. One of the two such annual events chaired by Marlene Bagnull (the other is in Philadelphia in August), this conference is a magnet for veteran writers, aspiring writers, editors, and publishers. It overflows with practical training and teaching, but not the least of its offerings –- and blessings -– is the spiritual uplift.

Despite this economy, registration was higher this year then last year. Creative people are more passionate about telling God’s story (“Writing His Message,” from Habakkuk 2:2) than ever! And there is a message to tell.

The theme of this year’s conference, for the morning and evening sessions and keynotes, was the crisis in the culture, writers being engaged to save our nation.

It struck me that over the course of the week, no matter what the focus, there was a unifying theme. Of course the decaying culture, and other obvious headlines, connected the dots of all the talks and presentations. But an underlying subtext –- one that should grieve us all -– became evident in spite of ourselves.

To speak about decline in morals and the media… we recognize that children are prime targets.

To speak about human trafficking… children are the victims.

To speak about the AIDs crisis in Africa… children suffer as the infected AND as orphans.

To speak about the persecuted church worldwide… children are the battleground of cultures suppressing Christianity.

In America – drugs: children. Education: children. Pornography: children. Poverty: children. Homelessness: children. Broken homes: children. Abortion: children.

It is a cliché to say that children are our future. But clichés are clichés because they are, first of all, true. However, children do not HAVE to be the first-in-line victims of a culture in decline. But they are. They cannot defend themselves; they believe what the culture tells them; they are the most vulnerable.

Let us remember the children -– care for them, protect them, cleanse their environment. If one generation messed up, maybe the best thing we can do –- not the only thing, but surely the BEST thing –- is beg forgiveness and leave them a better world.

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Here is a tender lullaby Slumber My Darling, written more than 150 years ago by a man I am increasingly persuaded was America’s greatest composer, Stephen Foster. It is performed by Alison Kraus, (amazing) vocals; and YoYo Ma; Mark O’Connor; Joshua Bell; and Edgar Meyer. The images are by the amazing Beanscot Channel.

Click on: Slumber, My Darling