Monday Morning Music Ministry

9-16-24

Daylight Savings Time is about to end, and I never have been able to figure out whether to be grateful or regretful – you know, “gaining” or losing an hour of sleep. Just go to sleep, like my mother used to say. It’s like the “glass half-empty vs half-full” discussions. Just drink it, or re-fill it, and be quiet. Well, there are many things I don’t understand.

I do know that Autumn, that imminent change of season, traditionally has been regarded in poetry and art as the gloomiest of the four seasons. It seems odd, but among the testimonies of not regarding cold, dead Winter as gloomy (a host of happy outdoor activities and holidays have already sprung to your mind) is the long narrative poem by John Greenleaf Whittier, Snowbound. A 19th-century family is stuck in the house after a tremendous blizzard, and possible feelings of dread or fear are replaced by bonding, reminiscences, humor. Outside, all is frozen and every living thing looks dead, but warmth and life glow in the family circle. Winter = not so bad.

Autumn is the only season, at least in the English language, that has more than one name. Among its traditional names was Harvest – before urban living made that concept somewhat abstract. Then there is the familiar Fall whose origin philologists have not been able to trace, but there is the obvious association with “fallen leaves.”

As I say, and despite the warm associations we might have with colorful leaves and familiar smells in the air, in literature and art Fall is often the basis of melancholia. Some psychologists say that Fall outpaces Winter as the season of peoples’ dark depression. Perhaps, after sunny and bright summertime, the palpable signs of death surround us. Dying and falling leaves. Bare trees. Wilted flower-beds. Field animals looking for shelter. Earlier dusk and darkness descends. Colder air drives us indoors.

The adagio from Antonio Vivaldi’s “Autumn” in his iconic concerti grossi The Four Seasons is beautiful – but covers us in a sad, melancholy cloak.

If we might feel overshadowed by vague signs of dying and death, however, don’t blame it all on nature. In a larger sense, humankind – the post-Christian West especially – is at a point where we choose Death at almost every opportunity. In many way we live in a Culture of Death.

Yes, there have always been wars and rumors of wars… but today they are deadlier than ever, a fact that encourages rather than deters the war parties running governments. A Culture of Death.

We have developed new scientific means to extend life and confront diseases… but today, Science also aggressively pursues ways to end lives. A vast majority of birth “defects” are “terminated” – that is to say, babies are killed. A majority of unwed mothers arrange for their babies to be killed – something that politicians call “health care.” A Culture of Death.

The various surgical and “psychological” imperatives toward lower birth rates, “transgender” advocacy, homosexual relationships, genital mutilation – even denying parental notifications and obligating taxpayers to support – resist procreation and the furtherance of life. A Culture of Death.

The most obvious contemporary versions of human sacrifice and infanticide – the American spin on practices we condemn in ancient societies and pagan tribes – are “mercy killings” and, of course, abortion. Now I myself once was quite inured to the concept and practice; I viewed abortion as a calendar-skewed version of birth control. I now feel like I have blood on my hands. So you can jump on my “conversion,” but don’t jump ugly; many of us have seen the light. Along my personal Road to Damascus, I scored one of the rare interviews with the lady who was “Roe” of Roe vs Wade… and who became bitterly regretful about her role. Beyond that, I cannot understand those who endlessly bemoan the accounts Jews deemed “inconvenient” by Nazis, yet are quite comfortable with 63.5-million “inconvenient” babies killed since Roe. A Culture of Death.

And people feel depressed by Signs of Death that accompany the return of Autumn? What an insult, if I may say, to Mother Nature and (properly) Father God. Maybe that “glass half-empty or half-full” metaphor has resonance after all. Maybe Harvest-Autumn-Fall is entirely different than many people are wont to perceive.

Rejoice! Leaves die, but before they happily flutter among us, they clothe themselves with brilliant reds and yellows and orange colors that painters can hardly capture. The aromas of Autumn are unique, almost romantic. (I hope your neighborhoods still allow the burning of raked leaves.) Yes… harvests! Vegetables and fruits that were nurtured through the Summer can now be enjoyed – different colors and flavors associated only with Fall. Crisp air? Invigorating; time to huddle and cuddle; and to experience a new aspect of nature… not a dying one.

And if trees go bare, and crops are harvested, and things superficially look bleak… we cannot forget that many things go dormant, but do not die. Seeds will sprout, even through cracks in cement. Flowers will bloom in deserts and other unexpected places. Woodland animals are born, blink, and open their eyes.

Landscapes are resplendent with color. “Dead” wildflowers and Indian corn grace our homes. Seashells and periwinkles, so unique and colorful, are, after all, virtual external skeletons and husks of dead life; but beautiful. The sun, they tell us, is dying… but it gives life and warmth. My go-to source of wise comments (after the Bible), many of you know, is Theodore Roosevelt. On these subjects he once wrote, “Both life and death are part of the Great Adventure,” and it surely is so.

Finally let us remember, always remember, the One who tasted death… yet overcame it. Jesus died, so that our souls escape eternity in hell where there is no life. We, like our Savior, can overcome sin, death, and the grave, and know eternal life.

A Culture of Life!
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Click: I’ll Have A New Life

2-19-24

This essay is published mid-way between the birth day of Abraham Lincoln and the homogenized American consumer-holiday called Presidents Day.

The imports and legacies of great Americans like Lincoln and Washington cannot be ameliorated by the elevation of three-day weekends and used-car commercials with buffoons dressed in stovepipe hats. But the unrelenting trashing of American traditions continues in uncountable ways, from legislation and court decisions, to entertainment and media content, to re-branding the formerly solemn regard once paid to icons of our heritage.

Yet figures like Abraham Lincoln survive.

Lincoln is the closest we have had to a civic saint: certainly a secular saint for his wisdom, words, and actions. I think so partly because he was not exalted, except by ballots, but more as he was the simplest of men; common; honest. Literally, a typical American.

Theodore Roosevelt (whom readers know I also revere) framed his assessment of Lincoln (and George Washington): “There have been other men as great and other men as good; but in all the history of mankind there are no other two great men as good as these.”

More than anything, we are struck by Lincoln’s humanity. He was forever patient. He arrived at policies amid anguish, but he executed them firmly. He knew firsthand the turmoil of broken families, brothers fighting brothers; he suffered all these painful tests and duties. We know he kept his sense of humor. But what I have come to admire as much as any other trait is Lincoln’s faith.

It is a matter of debate how “religious” Lincoln was; whether he accepted Jesus as the Son of God; whether he believed in salvation or the need of personal salvation. It is not a matter of debate that he seldom attended or joined churches. It is a matter of record that he read the Bible his entire life, quoted even obscure verses often, and laced his speeches and writing with Bible quotations, scriptural allusions, King James cadences.

We cannot judge most of these things: some close friends like his longtime Illinois law partner Billy Herndon claimed that Lincoln was a gnarly heathen – but Herndon’s relationship was always rocky, and he wrote a biography of Lincoln after the assassination that sniped at a hundred minor particulars. However, Lincoln’s personal secretary John Hay (another hero of mine, by the way; a neglected figure in history), testified to Lincoln’s spiritual struggles, and his reliance on prayer in the White House. This was a time, generally, of private expressions of faith, when many Christians thought that respecting Christ’s teachings was more important than publicly affirming His divinity (this is not a recent phenomenon!), and when Old Testament lessons were preached more than New Testament parables. And many babies received Hebrew names.

Yet it was also a time, despite these anomalies of private beliefs and public expressions, of latter-day “Great Awakenings” as they are called, when waves of revivals spread throughout America, and when conversions to Christianity led to movements like Abolitionism, against slavery.

There are aspects of Lincoln’s faith in Christ that are beyond doubt. The pressures of holding a country together, and prosecuting a horrendous war, coincided with Lincoln’s growing faith. It is inspiring to read of this evolution (and I have read more than 65 books on Lincoln, including his complete letters and all his speeches), but most inspiring is to read his own words.

Lincoln, during his last years, displayed a steady progression of appeals to God… invocations of Providence… references to Jesus as Savior… seeking the Lord’s guidance… biblical quotations… allusions to Bible history… setting aside national days of prayer, as well as fasting, humiliation, and thanksgiving; a multitude of times; and with increasing clarity and spiritual contexts. By the end of the war, the speeches and proclamations of President Lincoln resembled actual sermons, always beseeching God in humility, never presumption; always inspiring.

It is this Abraham Lincoln we remember today.

Some of his quotations included his reference in the first inaugural address to “a firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favored land.” In the second address, “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.” And of course his reference in the Gettysburg Address that this “nation shall under God have a new birth of freedom.”

A proclamation:
It is fit and becoming in all people, at all times, to acknowledge and revere the Supreme Government of God; to bow in humble submission to His chastisement; to confess and deplore their sins and transgressions in the full conviction that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; and to pray, with all fervency and contrition, for the pardon of their past offenses, and for a blessing upon their present and prospective action. And whereas when our own beloved country, once, by the blessings of God, united, prosperous and happy, is now afflicted with faction and civil war, it is peculiarly fit for us to recognize the hand of God in this terrible visitation, and in sorrowful remembrance of our own faults and crimes as a nation and as individuals, to humble ourselves before Him and to pray for His mercy.

In private communication, 1862:
We are indeed going through a great trial – a fiery trial. In the very responsible position in which I happened to be placed, being a humble instrument in the hands of our Heavenly Father, as I am, and as we all are, to work out His great purposes, I have desired that all my works and acts may be according to His will, and that it might be so, I have sought His aid.

About his “dark” moments when Lee’s army invaded Pennsylvania, Lincoln wrote:
When everyone seemed panic-stricken… I went to my room… and got down on my knees before Almighty God and prayed… Soon a sweet comfort crept into my soul that God Almighty had taken the whole business into His own hands….

During the war, Lincoln responded to someone’s wish that “the Lord was on the Union’s side.” Lincoln responded:
I am not at all concerned about that, for I know that the Lord is always on the side of the right. But it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation should be on the Lord’s side.

Lincoln said about the Bible:
In regard to this Great Book, I have but to say I believe the Bible is the best gift God has given to man. All the good Savior gave to the world was communicated through this Book.

And other reflections:
I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day.

God loves us the way we are, but too much to leave us that way. I have held many things in my hands, and I have lost them all; but whatever I have placed in God’s hands, that I still possess.

Imagine, if you will – and we ought to – an American president who would write or speak, or believe, such things today. Lincoln was reviled then, and often now, as an “agnostic, deist, infidel.” But by their fruits ye shall know them.

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A country-flavored version of a favorite hymn – well, Lincoln WAS from Kentucky – but with a true story of the President’s exercise of Christ-like compassion:

Click: Abraham Lincoln – What a Friend We Have in Jesus

1-1-24

I wonder what the “over / under” is with New Year resolutions that are kept; that is, let’s say, kept by most people beyond the third week of the year. Or third day? Most of mine are history by the third hour. Resolutions are stronger than intentions, and I shudder when reminded that the road to hell is paved with the latter…

Nevertheless, many of us make New Years resolutions… or we intend to. If in the process we make an inventory of our shortcomings and prioritize our goals, we have accomplished something after all.

This has prompted me to speculate on whether God makes Resolutions. Without being presumptuous or blasphemous or outright ignorant (have I headed everyone off at the pass?) I know that everything in the Bible, indeed His workings as revealed in history, from the Commandments to the Incarnation to judgments and miracles, are reflections of His resolutions… but let us wonder for a moment. 

If God would compose a list of resolutions, at least to remind us of how He works, and what He desires, what would they be?

I think God would resolve not to give up on His people. He is swift to judgment, yet long-suffering.

Salvation is free but will continue to be offered at a precious cost; God will ever grieve for those who reject Him.

God, who revealed Himself through Jesus Christ, will continue to act amongst us, and in us, through His Holy Spirit.

The eternal “I am” will resolve as always never to be the “I was.”

Among other resolutions of God, if we might put His will into our words, would be:

He always will be Without end… He will never change… He will keep every promise… He always will be – He only can be – Holy… He will be righteous, compassionate, and just… He will be faithful in His resolutions and promises.

How will He act? God resolves to communicate with His people through prayer… He will be “the God who healeth thee”… He will punish sin but ever remind us that “He chastises those whom He loves”… He will affirm His rules for a satisfied and joy-filled life through Resolutions already shared, from the 10 Commandments to the teachings of Jesus.

God resolves that His character will not change. We may be secure in knowing that He is omniscient, He is omnipresent, He is omnipotent… He does not only love; He is love… He is trustworthy… He is good all the time, and all the time He is good… He extends Grace to those who love Him – while we were yet revels and sinners He provided a way to be reconciled to Him.

You might notice that none of these resolutions are new. I did not have to “stretch” or imagine attributes of our Heavenly Father. He has revealed Himself; He is Unchanging; He is – let us say part of his job description? – “from Everlasting to Everlasting.” 

We make resolutions to correct our mistakes and try to do better.

God has made resolutions, affirming that He cannot make mistakes; when all is said and done, this year and every year, He is the best that we can imagine.

Let us hereby resolve, ourselves, that we praise His Holy Name and dedicate ourselves to serve Him. 

Happy New Year!

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Click: Great Is Thy Faithfulness 

12-25-23

“Wars and rumors of war.”

The Bible foretells of the End Times, and signs of its imminence. God keeps us on our toes, because wars, like the poor, we always have with us. Has there ever been a good war or a bad peace, as many have asked through the ages? I say yes; there may be just wars, and the willingness to do battle is irretrievably part of a nation’s soul.

“If I must choose between peace and righteousness,” Theodore Roosevelt famously said, “I choose righteousness.” Nevertheless, lately I am persuaded to settle for a long wait if people want to find a war to be joined…

Humankind seems not to have “advanced” much through the centuries; neither with children on playgrounds nor adults on battlefields that once were playgrounds. We congratulate each other – that is, fool ourselves – that “progress” is the hallmark of our times. Yet the bloodiest death toll from wars, in any century of the earth’s existence, was in the Twentieth Century, more than in all previous centuries combined. We brag that we – “civilizations” – have finally ended the scourge of slavery; yet there are greater numbers of slaves today than ever in human history. The numbers now are not the faces that flash in our minds: bondservants. But, instead, all manner of children, women, minorities, homeless, voiceless, migrants, the anonymous.

As long as there are power elites; as long as greed outpaces love; as long as hypocrisy can always find a nicer name, humankind will be (in the Bible’s phrase, Proverbs 26:11; II Peter 2:22) like dogs returning to their vomit. Think about what changes have occurred, really, when science develops new ways to save lives… as it also invents new ways to end lives. What a spectacle, when people march to save baby seals and whales, and march for the right to kill babies.

Well, Merry Christmas, anyway. Let the holiday sing.

Some wars are years, or generations, festering; some start on a random morning, or so it seems. But one thing we seldom encounter is peace breaking out. In the midst of a raging war, interrupting a bloody battle. Yet it has happened. Not many people know about the Christmas Truce. It was a virtual miracle during the first Christmas, in 1914, of World War I – the so-called Great War, surely the most useless of history’s many useless wars.

A few months after war was declared in Europe, by almost every big and small nation on the continent, almost a million soldiers already had been slaughtered. Christmastime was come, and soldiers were mired in trenches that were to become so established that for more than two years the battle line never moved more than 30 miles one way or another. In that unlikely hellhole a miracle occurred.

Minor details differ but the dispositive facts are acknowledged: Peace broke out.

Soldiers of Germany, England (Scotland, actually), and France, at night, spontaneously sang Christmas carols… and were joined by their “enemies” who could hear across No Man’s Land… nervous soldiers climbed from trenches to greet their foes, and shake hands… gifts were exchanged, even little trinkets, but also pastries and wine sent from home. They shared pictures of wives and children… more hymn singing… fireworks, intended to illuminate battlefields so to aim the cannons, were now shot skyward in celebration. There were tentative, but successful, attempts to communicate.

Of course they communicated. The languages that night were hymns and Bibles and chocolates and cigars. Handshakes and smiles and tears.

A Merry Christmas. A Holy Christmas. Peace on earth… at least in that narrow 27-mile-long battle line, south of Ypres and east of Armentieres, site of the song about les Mademoiselles, that night.

A British soldier recalled the Christmas Truce almost two decades later: We stuck up a board with a Merry Christmas on it. The enemy had stuck up a similar one. … Two of our men then threw their equipment off and jumped on the parapet with their hands above their heads. Two of the Germans did the same and commenced to walk up the river bank, our two men going to meet them. They met and shook hands and then we all got out of the trench.

We and the Germans met in the middle of No Man’s Land. Their officers were also now out. Our officers exchanged greetings with them.… One of their men, speaking in English, mentioned that he had worked in Brighton for some years and that he was fed up to the neck with this damned war and would be glad when it was all over. We told him that he wasn’t the only one that was fed up with it. (Frank Richards, “Old Soldiers Never Die,” 1933)

Another history records: [The British] Brigadier General G.T. Forrestier-Walker issued a directive forbidding fraternization: “For it discourages initiative in commanders, and destroys offensive spirit in all ranks. … Friendly intercourse with the enemy, unofficial armistices and exchange of tobacco and other comforts, however tempting and occasionally amusing they may be, are absolutely prohibited.” (Stanley Weintraub, “Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce,” 2001)

How much different would the next day have been – how much different would the world be today – if the Truce had held?

Note that chocolates and cigars were only the presents. The GIFTS were hymns and Bible verses – they brought the soldiers out of trenches; not the prospect of snacks or smokes or a soccer game in the snow.

Christmas. God did not intend for Jesus’s Incarnation, the spirit of that Christmas Truce, to be a one-time miracle, but to be everyday life. He intended that we know-and-show that love and fellowship can be normal, not rare. We can be changed by the Holy Day, not be annoyed by yet another holiday.

“You started it!” “No, you did!!!” Wouldn’t it be great if we all exchanged those words happily, about starting love, sharing affection, and living in Heavenly Peace?

Who “started it”? God did.

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If your YouTube video opens in anything besides a man playing a bagpipe, then you need to switch to a desktop to play the video. There is a problem we have not solved yet with the videos on pads and phones.

Click for an excerpt of the motion picture: Joyeaux Noel

9-18-23

There have been a few small denominations that discouraged music in worship, just as there were sects that outlawed sex. For similar reasons those groups seemed to perish, disappear… and are missed by few.

Music is a part of humans’ souls. Mysterious in its way because not everybody has the talent to create tunes… or perform well… yet we all respond to music. Those who “can’t carry a tune” (and some people cannot) still enjoy listening. The most hardened people find their hearts softened when they hear a familiar melody. Songs are composed to win lovers and to send boys to war; to bond and to bind; to remember… and, by diversion, to heal and forget.

I am not aware of a survey, but I figure that 95 per cent of songs are love songs. Tennessee Ernie Ford once was asked why he sang so many Gospel songs and not more love songs, and he answered, “Gospel songs are the greatest love songs of all.”

Instrumental music is, to me, the most mysterious, and profound, of all music… all of all the arts. Abstract, yet specific in intent. And musical notation is a language all its own – a universal language. Composers who begin their work with blank staves… and finish with “sounds” that can move us literally and also move us to tears and smiles… perform a kind of miracle.

Johann Sebastian Bach took those blank pages, and before beginning to compose any work, wrote “Jesus, help me” at the top of the first page. When the composition was finished, he wrote “Thanks be to God” on the last page, acknowledging his source and strength of inspiration.

Quirky denominations aside, all cultures, in their social and religious practices, have relied on musical expression. The Bible overflows with descriptions, and endorsements, of joyful music. In Genesis 4 Jubal is identified as the ancestor of “all those who play the lyre and pipe.” Elsewhere, Elisha commanded, “Get me a musician,” wherewith a blessing was delivered. David, the “Sweet Singer of Israel,” ministered to Saul by playing music at night, much as Bach’s Goldberg Variations were composed to soothe those who sought rest.

Martin Luther, the great reformer and preacher, was also a composer (for instance of A Mighty Fortress Is Our God) and he defended music in church: “The devil does not need all the good tunes to himself!”

Some of the most important American historians are those who have studied and recorded (including literally) the folklore and folk music of the American past. I was privileged to know (and play music with, even past his 100^th birthday!) the legendary Wade Mainer, whose banjo-picking style influenced Earl Scruggs years before the Bluegrass Sound was born. To hear his stories of rural North Carolina, and hear the songs he and his wife Julia (whose stage name back in the day was Hillbilly Lilly) sang together was like walking through history.

A friend recently reminded me of the excellent book and movie Songcatcher, about those who kept those musical traditions alive. One of the characters mused about the “thread” of a favorite song, perhaps “a touchstone with the past – a remembrance of all the singers who had ever kept a story alive on the strength of their music, and that singing the ballad was a chance to join that chain of voices stretching all the way back to across the ocean to the place where the families began.”

Yes, music hath charms. It is the case, of course, with mighty hymns as well as humble folk tunes. May I provide an example?

Here is a video of a performance of the hymn Nearer, My God, to Thee, which was composed in 1841. Its meaningful words were set to music by several people through the years, including Sir Arthur Sullivan (of Gilbert and Sullivan fame). Its words were on the lips of President William McKinley as he died of an assassin’s bullet – imagine an American president today having this as his last thought? – and by legend, as The Titanic sank, Theodore Roosevelt’s former military aide Archie Butt directed the ship’s musicians to play it.

In this video, André Rieu conducts his Johann Strauss Orchestra, plus 400 brass players and a hundred singers in a performance of Nearer, My God, to Thee. The audience of thousands is a mixed, international group in an open square in Maastricht – and the hymn is performed without words, the singers chanting. Does the audience miss the significance? Not counted by the emotions, and tears, on listeners’ faces!

To hear this hymn, even once, impresses the powerful words on one’s mind, carried by the music. And the reverence of this elaborate performance… confirms the Power of Music.

In words written in 1697 in William Congreve’s play The Mourning Bride, “Musick hath Charms to soothe the savage Breast, To soften Rocks, or bend a knotted Oak.” And it can lift souls, and carry us somehow Heavenward too:

Nearer, my God, to thee, nearer to thee! E’en though it be a cross that raiseth me,
Still all my song shall be, Nearer, my God, to thee; Nearer to thee!

Though like the wanderer, the sun gone down, Darkness be over me, my rest a stone;
Yet in my dreams I’d be Nearer, my God, to thee; Nearer to thee!

There let the way appear, steps unto heaven; All that thou sendest me, in mercy given;
Angels to beckon me Nearer, my God, to thee; Nearer to thee!

As Bach, “the Fifth Evangelist,” said, “With devotional music, God is always present in His grace.”

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Click: Nearer My God To Thee

2-12-23

Some people of recent times have torn down statues and monuments of American history’s great figures, including those of presidents. I am not only condemning vandals armed with paint balls and ropes, who were widely videotaped but never so much as arrested or fined. I refer instead to government officials and descendants of those leaders who scurried and hurried to align themselves with PC mobs, and support the desecration.

Those despicable anti-patriots in their suits and from their offices might be the virtual vandals, but they can never subtract from the greatness of many historical figures, including two whose birthdays we observe this month, Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. Theodore Roosevelt said of them, “There have been other men as great and other men as good; but in all the history of mankind there are no other two great men as good as these.”

I want to linger a moment before Lincoln. From his roots in crushing poverty and absence of schooling, he rose to be the savior of the Union, his wisdom equaled only by his humanity. It seems a miracle that that this unlikely person was the perfect leader at a unique time. I believe it was God’s working.

I also want to linger on the misconception that Lincoln was an atheist, or an agnostic. Yes, he was unchurched and seldom attended formal services. But his Bible was well-worn; he quoted Scripture extensively; and indeed by the end of his presidency, his messages and speeches were as much sermons as civic documents.

His humanity? We remember his reading the stack of requests for soldiers’ pardons he considered one day, each with testimonials from influential people… except one plea from a soldier who left his ranks to return home to a sick mother. “Does this man have no ‘friend’?” Lincoln asked. He was told No. The President said, “Well, he does now,” and pardoned him.

His faith? We remember his clear and powerful statement of theology, when he said in effect, “I am not so much concerned that ‘God is on our side,’ but that I and this nation should be on the Lord’s side.”

Lincoln’s personal secretary John Hay testified to Lincoln’s spiritual struggles, and his reliance on prayer in the White House. It is inspiring to read of Lincoln’s steadily increasing faith… the progression of his appeals to God… invocations of Providence… seeking the Lord’s guidance… Biblical quotations… allusions to Bible history… setting aside national days of prayer, fasting, humiliation, and thanksgiving.

Lincoln’s first inaugural address acknowledges his “firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favored land.” In the second address: “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.” And of course his reference in the Gettysburg Address that this “nation shall under God have a new birth of freedom.”

A proclamation:
It is fit and becoming in all people, at all times, to acknowledge and revere the Supreme Government of God; to bow in humble submission to His chastisement; to confess and deplore their sins and transgressions in the full conviction that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; and to pray, with all fervency and contrition, for the pardon of their past offenses, and for a blessing upon their present and prospective action. And whereas when our own beloved country, once, by the blessings of God, united, prosperous and happy, is now afflicted with faction and civil war, it is peculiarly fit for us to recognize the hand of God in this terrible visitation, and in sorrowful remembrance of our own faults and crimes as a nation and as individuals, to humble ourselves before Him and to pray for His mercy.

In private communication, 1862:
We are indeed going through a great trial – a fiery trial. In the very responsible position in which I happened to be placed, being a humble instrument in the Hands of our Heavenly Father, as I am, and as we all are, to work out His great purposes, I have desired that all my works and acts may be according to His will, and that it might be so I have sought His aid.

About his dark moments when Lee’s army invaded Pennsylvania, Lincoln wrote:
When everyone seemed panic-stricken… I went to my room… and got down on my knees before Almighty God and prayed… Soon a sweet comfort crept into my soul that God Almighty had taken the whole business into His own hands….

Lincoln said about the Bible:
In regard to this Great Book, I have but to say I believe the Bible is the best gift God has given to man. All the good Savior gave to the world was communicated through this Book.

And other reflections:
I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day.

God loves us the way we are, but too much to leave us that way. I have held many things in my hands, and I have lost them all; but whatever I have placed in God’s hands, that I still possess.

We do not need to contrast these confessions of a sitting President, whom ignorant secularists like to portray as an unbeliever, with the actions of the current sitting President who recalls his days as a choir boy but supports the murder of babies and other policies in contradiction to his Church’s teachings. But the temptation is strong to draw contrasts.

Yet Abraham Lincoln, as a Christian Patriot, can stand on his own, without human contrasts. And he compares well with standards laid out by God Almighty, His Son Jesus, and the Holy Bible. Let us stand in that manner, too, on this President’s Day; and all days.

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Click: Battle Hymn of the Republic

11-14-22

The history of humankind proceeds not on a straight line but in waves and bursts, progress and regress, prosperity and misery, exploration and stasis, freedom and… the yearning for freedom. It is interesting to trace history through topics and not calendar pages: the effects of history’s many epidemics, for instance. The search for gold, riches, a Fountain of Youth. The extent to which food and agricultural items have shaped the course of nations – the “routes” and wars over sugar, spices, tobacco, cotton, opium.

The cycles hold true for ideas, too. Do not dismiss this view. The imposition of mere loyalty to flags and rulers – changing peoples’ minds – has resulted in constantly changing borders and uncountable lost lives. The appetite for Communist hegemony among its police-state borders led Stalin to liquidate – he embraced the term – millions of people, including a virtual depopulation of Ukraine. The “Cultural Revolution” in China annihilated an estimated 60-million people. Pol Pot in Cambodia slaughtered an estimated million peasants, and he was proud of the mountains of skulls he displayed.

The battles for hearts and minds have been as consequential (and often bloodier) to “progress” than wars for riches and treasure.

Thank God, there have been intellectual movements that have proceeded more peacefully. Among these has been the spread of the Gospel. I will save correspondents their ink and electrons by noting that Christianity sometimes engaged in “imperialistic” and fratricidal conflicts. Often, doctrinal disputes morphed into persecution and death. Much of the spilled blood also was in defense of the faith against fierce attacks by such as Islam, Communism, and state-secularism.

But thanking God further, many of the Christian movements affecting world history have been bloodless. Missionaries to minds, bodies, and spirits were beneficial in many lands. During the Reformation, not every reformer was challenged by Catholic Inquisitions. With notable exceptions, the followers of Luther and Calvin, as well as Pietists and Anabaptists were unmolested. With exceptions, again, Methodists and Quakers in England increased their numbers of adherents.

… and when they were persecuted, at vital inflection-points in history, they said farewell to their fractious societies and sailed to the New World. Eventually in the Colonies and the United States, these faith traditions enjoyed for virtually the first time in human history freedom of thought and freedom of conscience. Freedom to worship.

These movements have labels: everything from conquest to imperialism to trade wars to military hegemony. And “the spread of Christianity.” In America, especially as we look forward to Thanksgiving, the unique exercise of religious freedom was not a static thing. Rather than retreating, liberty grew and reaffirmed itself. Some of those growth spurts resulted from revivals, evangelism, and missionary work.

But they often were labelled – and are better understood now because we need another wave today – Awakenings.

“Great Awakenings” were major factors in the establishment of the American nation. The nurture of civic virtue; patriotism in the early days of the Republic; the impetus behind the movement to abolish slavery; the inspiration of social-reform movements in the Industrial Age – all were not populated by leaders who happened to be Christians. They were, rather, by-products of massive waves of evangelism and revival, conversions and commitments to the Gospel — positive movements led by Christians.

In Colonial America a man named William Tennent established The Log College whose graduates spread into the frontier, converting red and white people to Christ. In his history The Winning of the West, Theodore Roosevelt described week-long revivals and camp meetings on the frontier.

The most famous person associated with any of the Great Awakenings was Jonathan Edwards. A powerful preacher (Yale graduate and eventually president of Princeton College), his sermons sometimes lasted four hours, delivered to rapt congregations and large assemblies. His many books influenced the Founders.

George Whitefield was a preacher who toured the Colonies in the years preceding the Revolution. It is arguable there might not have been the Declaration of Independence or a movement to secede from Great Britain without Whitefield’s effect on the population of American towns and cities. From the disparate strains of Christian faith, he wrought unity of fellowship and purpose. His listeners in the streets and parks of Philadelphia numbered as many as thirty thousand at a time. Among them, every time, was an admiring Benjamin Franklin.

The next Great Awakening commenced around 1803, led by Timothy Dwight, grandson of Edwards and president of Yale. He led half the student body to Christ, which inspired transformations at other colleges. Charles G Finney was an attorney who was converted to Christ and thereafter converted thousands of others. He held a revival in 1830 that spread and lasted, uninterrupted, for more than a decade. By many reports, where he preached, bars closed, churches opened, and crimes decreased.

These movements resulted in more than folks being nicer or changing their social customs. America practiced widespread piety and charity. When the Frenchman Alexis deToqueville visited America at this time he was astonished (by more than anything else) at the bedrock Christian faith, the number of churches, and the moral standards throughout American cities, towns, and frontier villages.

“America is great because America is good.”

The life-changing effects were of course manifested in social reforms, the conscience of a population. In 1857 the businessman Jeremiah Lanphier inaugurated weekly lunchtime prayer meetings near Wall Street. The sessions grew in attendance, and soon more than 10,000 people joined daily prayer meetings across New York City. A few years later the Civil War commenced, and it was widely acknowledged that the millions converted during this Great Awakening accelerated the urgency of Abolitionism.

Since then there have other waves of revival, evangelism, street preaching, media ministry, Pentecostal and Charismatic renewals; and popular, effective preachers like D L Moody, Billy Sunday, Aimee Semple McPherson, and Billy Graham. It is tempting, however, to see these latter-day movements as blessings somewhat more modest in scope than earlier Great Awakenings.

At a time when many believers behold a nation fallen far from its spiritual moorings and Biblical foundations, another Great Awakening is essential. Our society has become hostile to Christianity. Its new standards are sexual immorality, a drug culture, crime, abuse of children and women – and not only acceptance but the promotion of such.

The recent elections have exposed the unfortunate fact that many Christians have put disproportionate faith in the political system, and less in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Widespread apostasy in American churches has clouded the vision of well-intentioned Christian patriots.

Set your alarms. America needs less Woke and more Awake – a new Great Awakening. Everything, including politicians and elections, is futile without another such move.

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From a 1995 Promise Keepers event (my son and I were in attendance):

Click Video Clip: Amazing Grace

3-7-22

This aphorism has been attributed to, and claimed by, by many people. Likely first written by the Greek dramatist Aeschylus (550 BC), it strikes a universal chord. Yet for its wisdom, universally acknowledged, it seldom has guided those who could learn from its application, and routinely is shunned until the ashes of wars are sifted.

“Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise at the proper time,” Theodore Roosevelt famously said.

So, in the war raging on our TV and internet screens, and in the hearts and minds of the world, no less, the first and frequent casualties are truth once again. I am not referring to the most blatant examples – phony statistics, videos of carnage from a decade ago being presented as breaking news, the pledges of invaders being violated as the words are spoken.

These “casualties” are too predictable, and might be outright propaganda or the result of well-intentioned confusion. In the “fog of war,” since these factors are common, I suggest – unless we are victims ourselves, in the midst of bombs dropping – that we ought to step back. If the issues and images are compelling (and they are), and if we can somehow influence events (as we must attempt), it is better that we exercise objectivity.

How can we be objective when we see hospitals destroyed and grandmothers – and grandchildren – crying? Choosing objectivity and seeking truth do not obviate concern, passion, sympathy, and grief. There is enough hatred playing out on our screens without choosing to filter every development through hatred of our own; to determine winners, losers, victims, aggressors, the past and the future… before the news report is over; and from 5000 miles away.

My advice hardly will change things on the ground in Ukraine. But it might change things in our midst. Wars rage elsewhere; they do not need to rage in our hearts. If we cannot, by ourselves, immediately affect a war in Ukraine, we surely can, by ourselves indeed, affect wars that might rage in our own hearts. As a beginning, that would be nine-tenths of the proper time.

Perspective.

The brilliant Russian-born soprano Anna Netrebko was removed from the title role in the upcoming Turandot production at the Metropolitan Opera; general manager Peter Gelb announced that it was unlikely that she would ever perform at the Met again. Her crime was failing to sign a statement repudiating her association with Vladimir Putin, despite her public announcement, “I am opposed to this senseless war of aggression and I am calling on Russia to end this war right now, to save all of us. We need peace right now.” Nevertheless she was fired from other engagements, or withdrew from many other opera companies around the world.

I noted this situation, and a friend wrote that Anna was “less than a human being.” She did not raise a bazooka; rather raises her beautiful voice, and millions of dollars for charities, yet American haters can claim a victory.

Remaining in her artistic field, I am reminded that violinist Isaac Stern vowed never to perform in Germany – former Nazi Germany, of course – yet Leonard Bernstein conducted in Munich and Vienna; and violinist Itzhak Perlman has performed in Berlin. Are they naive, insensitive, stupid? (Surely they are not secret Nazis!) What is the expiration-date, or other mitigating aspects, on hatred?

Russia seems to be employing cluster-bombs and other instruments of mass destruction: worthy of war-crime prosecution. TV’s red areas on maps of Ukraine spread every hour, like blood on the carpet from a murdered corpse. The scenes we behold make me wonder if we might see incendiary bombs (those that cause widespread fire, sucking the air from peoples’ lungs over wide sections of a city), possibly killing upwards of a hundred thousand people.

… yet that happened, at least once before in history. Two months before World War II ended, the “art city” of Dresden, without defenses because it was a city of museums and no factories or barracks (in fact having become a city of hospital beds for refugees) was ordered fire-bombed by Winston Churchill. If England had lost the war, he would have been regarded as a war criminal, and even so within two decades some his pilots defied their orders never to discuss that atrocity.

Am I playing “Devil’s Advocate”?

Precisely the opposite. What is missing these days – and many of the days when wars rage – is people who will play “God’s Advocate.” Where are those voices? I don’t mean charitable groups like Samaritan’s Purse: God bless the dangerous and heroic and loving work of Christian organizations.

I refer to the consequential players, and, yes, each of us at a distance, if we can pray and act and influence the policymakers. Can we search for perspective first?

There is right and wrong; there is good and bad. There are monsters among us. Some of them might even call themselves Christians. There are reports (I don’t know, yet reports are numerous and long-standing) that Putin, in his public adherence to the Russian Orthodox Church, shares the vision of the Moscow Patriarch that all of “Mother Russia” be restored. No matter the cost?

I (knowing something of history) have a little hope, a little fantasy. In 1905 the forces of the Czar were suppressing protests all throughout Russia. In the port city of Odessa, Ukraine, sailors finally mutinied against their officers in bloody clashes. It was a spark that eventually led to the overthrow of the Czar. There are reports (can we believe the videos?) that anti-war demonstrations are taking place in a hundred Russian cities; that prominent citizens and celebrities have criticized the invasion; that many companies have refused to do conduct any more business with Russia; that Russians overseas have sacrificed some positions and privileges in protest…

Odessa redux? Can we hope? Can we pray? Can we act?

If we see our enemies not as madmen but, perhaps, horribly delusional and even evil human beings, we can find our way to confront this awful world better. We can pray, and seek God, with clarity. We need His wisdom.

God’s wisdom, after all, is reliable ten-tenths of the time.

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if you are using a portable device (phone or pad) then click:
this link

Click: “Mass in Time of War: Agnus Dei.”

11-8-21

It seems like everywhere we turn these days we meet “virtual” things, “bots” (robots and robotic actions), and automated actions. When I was younger, the prospect of such things were called “labor-saving devices,” and promised a future of… saving labor.

Car washes led to driverless vehicles, in a way. Now we can read newspapers when going to work. Of course, when I lived in California, crazy drivers on the freeways read newspapers instead of paying attention to speeding cars in the dozen other lanes. Now, a few years later, there are no such things as newspapers any more. This is all called Progress.

On our computers, the program will finish our sentences. Algorithms predict, with high degrees of accuracy, what we want to buy and where we would like to travel. No matter, because commercials and subliminal messages mold our desires anyway.

So modern life is telling us what to do. Modern life increasingly also dissuades us from pushing back; prevents us from asserting ourselves.

We are at a precipice in history. These things are not momentary fads, but Brave New modes of living. Candy, of sorts, that will cause cavities in our souls, I fear. The Romans lulled the population into subservience by giving them “bread and circuses.” We remember – we should remember – that Benjamin Franklin wrote, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

I have found myself lately wishing that modern life could provide us with virtual Volume Controls. Can’t we all just get along at a quieter level, a slower pace, normal surroundings?

I think it was Patsy Clairmont who said that in her life these days, “Normal” is nothing but a setting on the clothes dryer. In its own way she rivals Franklin’s profundity. There are many dangers in contemporary life, seriously parlous trends and signs. Some who are not alarmed are welcoming of the tremors and coming disruptions (at their peril, I think). And some people merely are distracted by the shiny toys and sweet candies, so to speak, and media propaganda and guilt trips and…

Combined with wars, inflation, crime, corruption and so much else, we might wish we could turn the clock back. Except for Daylight Standard Time, that is something we cannot do. We are being told that we can do almost anything we set our minds to… except to say “No thanks” to some of these rapidly changing elements of contemporary life.

My essays of late have careened from grim to glib and back again. So will this one, all by itself.

I am much worried about the state of affairs in America and the West, in popular culture, in government, and everything in between. I lament, and blame, the institutional churches in large part. And I try to rally Christians to assert their faith, their freedom, and their fates – that is, our civic duties and prerogatives – as our heritage is being erased and our liberties eroded.

But then I tell myself, and remind you of the fact, that we can peek ahead to the final chapters of the Book. There will be travail; trials; and literal tribulation. What we currently endure might only be a shadow of persecution to come. Yet we know that God reigns, Jesus has defeated the enemy, and the Holy Spirit has been given to strengthen and guide us. “Gospel” means “Good News.” There will be a happy ending to all of this.

I was sarcastic about the concept of “Progress” above. Yet I harken to the book I have read many times, The Pilgrim’s Progress, reportedly the second best-selling book in history after the Bible; and deservedly so. We are pilgrims and strangers in this world, but headed somewhere as we all must. But keep to the Road called Straight, enduring twists and turns, and climb upward to the Celestial City. You like “virtual” things? Bunyan’s book is a virtual picture of reality!

This week I have had moments of crying tears of grief, for friends. Both Christians. A friend whose dear husband died, I believe of Covid or symptoms brought on or exacerbated by the virus. Creative people, united in love of Christ and each other. And a friend whose son committed suicide – as is often the case, sudden, surprising, a mystery. My friend is new to me, a “Ted-Head,” devotee of Theodore Roosevelt; our friendship further informed by a common love of Jesus. The Lord gives my friend the strength to bear up and share a positive witness in these days following. I cannot pretend to think I could be able to do so, as he is doing.

So. What’s important in life?

Yes, these controversies threaten us, and when evils attack us, maybe we turn the other cheek. When they attack our families… or when they attack the Savior… Well, we remember to pray; we ask the Spirit’s wisdom. Sometimes we turn down the volume, if we can. Sometimes we may answer in kind. The Bible does lay out the “whole armor of God.”

But something else came to my mind this week, and it was not an accident to “find” it. It has centered me, and ministered to me. I pray it does for you too.

Another new friend, Daryl Coats, is the grandson of the composer of Gospel songs J B Coats. J B wrote some of the greatest songs of the past couple of generations. You might know “Where Could I Go But To the Lord” and “Winging My Way Back Home.” And many scores of others.

He also wrote one of the most beautiful, sentimental Gospel songs ever – “The Sweetest Gift, a Mother’s Smile.” Do you know it?

One day a mother went to a prison To see an erring but precious son;
She told the warden how much she loved him; It did not matter what he had done.

Her boy had drifted far from the fireside Though she had pleaded with him each night,
Yet not a word did she ever utter And though her heart ached, her smile was bright.

She left a smile, son, you can remember; She’s gone to heaven, from heartaches free.
Those walls around you, could never change her. You were her baby and e’er will be.

She did not bring to him parole or pardon, She brought no silver, no pomp or style;
It was a halo sent down from heaven, The sweetest gift, a mother’s smile.

Can we remind ourselves that amidst the fears and fights and threats and hate and dangers, that we have our heavenly faith, the love of Jesus, the promises of God… and each other?

Cherish your family members, and your dear friends in Christ. This simple song reminds us of, yes, a mother’s smile…  and God’s unconditional love.

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Click either (or both!) versions of this song. One by an elderly mother on a mountain cottage porch; one by the great Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, and Linda Ronstadt.

The Sweetest Gift – Jan Clark

A Mother’s Smile – Dolly, Emmylou, Linda

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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Click: I Know the Master of the Wind

8-2-21

I was talking with a friend this week about canals and rivers and cruises; memories and bucket-list kinds of things; and how different our country would have been if canals had asserted their utility and prominence in the face of railroad and highways. (Cleaner, quieter, more picturesque landscapes, at least…)

I have been blessed to have traveled on the legendary Orient Express train; and to have enjoyed cruises through Europe, those that connect great cities and pass breathtaking scenery on fabled rivers). On my bucket list still is a barge trip through France. On first mention it might not sound romantic, but France is still crisscrossed with old canals; and barge excursions wend their way at slow pace through beautiful countryside. Your “pilot” will stop where you want, and go ashore to acquire local produce, meats, cheeses, and wines so every spontaneous meal he prepares is fresh.

My current research into Theodore Roosevelt’s career taught me about an active movement during his presidency. He was a proponent of something that might have been realized if he had served another term. Basically it would have connected America in imaginative ways – joining rivers, expanding streams, building canals. From the Atlantic Ocean to the foothills of the Rockies, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico; all would have fed into the Mississippi, making it – and all the other watery constituents – vast, interconnected routes for travel and commerce. Flood protection, irrigation, westward expansion, and trade would be beneficiaries. Locks, reservoirs, towpaths, and muleskinners were legacies.

In Roosevelt’s time a nationwide movement – actually scores of local initiatives, called, in one instance, “Fourteen Feet Through the Valley” – advocated an aggressive, coordinated policy. Unfortunately, lobbies of railroads and highway builders and unions were more aggressive and coordinated. There still are many miles of canals in America, and by greater proportion, around the world, but this grand interstate waterway was not to be. It could have been as consequential, a modern miracle, as Roosevelt’s Panama Canal proved to be. I eventually experienced a canal trip, between two Great Lakes at Sault Ste-Marie (where their levels are different, necessitating canals and locks). Not yet have I been to the Panama Canal.

I will open rivers in high places, and fountains in the midst of the valleys: I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water. Isaiah 41:18

Otherwise on such subjects, and many others, I am naïve, and I will confess that I realized how provincial city boys can be (I was born in New York City) then when I visited the source of a river outside Angoulême, in the Charente region of France. There was a little lake from which flowed a little river, but it appeared to have nothing flowing into it. Except from below. There was a swell of water, as of a fountain, that revealed the point of the source.

I felt like a hick to be amazed at this. As a kid in New York, the only similar thing I ever saw was water swelling from broken sewer pipes or fire hydrants. Otherwise, I thought water came from… faucets. Oh, yes, upstate reservoirs. Oh, yes, magazine pictures of melting snows in mountains, and great waterfalls. But obviously there are many natural springs; we read about them. They don’t require drilling. Bottled water companies subsist on them. But I was 30 before I ever saw one of these underground springs.

There is a spiritual message; there always is (in life, not only here with me). In the Bible there are many “types” of the Holy Spirit, like oil and rushing wind. And water; frequently water. We thirst for Him; we need oases in life’s frequent deserts; we know these things.

Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” John 4:13,14

The Lord met a woman at Jacob’s Well and impressed her with knowledge of her sins and shame, and the explanation that the water she drew there was nothing compared to what He provides us. The TV series The Chosen remarkably captured that encounter.

Wells that are dug are smaller versions of springs that are sources of rivers. We can be amazed at such sources of water, but do we realize that unless we channel and direct them, neither the source nor the thirsty themselves know where they will lead?

In the case of water, it will flow somewhere. In spite of Greenies’ hysteria about imminent flooding of Kansas prairies, the earth holds just so much water – always has, always will. It might freeze or steam, become rain or alter its courses, even change locations from oceans to deserts over time, but water is finite in its volume. As springs well up, so do vast underground rivers ebb and flow.

As with water, so it is with all components of God’s world. We cannot double the size of the earth; we cannot invent new elements. I celebrate “creativity” but always try to remember the quotation-marks: only God the Creator can create. At best, even in the arts, humankind merely rearranges.

As with water, and springs of wells and rivers, the Source knows not where it will flow, or end, except in God’s omniscience and providence. With the Holy Spirit, the “springs of living water,” we can be refreshed and sustained… but having it become “a well of eternal life” is our responsibility.

Jesus offers to turn the deserts of our lives into gardens. How will we then live? Too many of us choose to become thirsty again, and again, and again, when we can be free of that; and never again be spiritually thirsty.

“There is a river that flows from deep within.” Come to that water.

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I could not decide which of three relevant video music clips to attach today. The inspiration flooded over me to offer three themed songs, of three different traditions.

Click: In the River
In The River (featuring Kim Walker-Smith)

Click: There Is a River
There Is A River – Heritage Singers

Click: Down In the River
Down in the River – Shenandoah Christian Music Camp

8-3-20

My grandfather used to tell a story about an old man who went alone to church one Sunday morning when his wife was unwell.

When he returned home the wife asked her taciturn husband what the preacher’s message was about.

“Sin,” he answered.

She pressed him: “What about it, exactly?”

“He’s against it,” the husband replied.

I’m afraid that joke represents the extent of theology many Christians acknowledge. Also, I think it is similar to many citizens’ brand of patriotism.

We know what we are against; but do we know – much less fight for – what we believe in?

Most people are in the quiet center, the normal “middle,” of issues, debates, and controversies… but these times are neither quiet nor normal.

We ought to give thanks that every generation does not experience such momentous turmoil as we face today. But every once in awhile societies are surprised how suddenly the viciousness – of people, and of nature – can be unleashed.

Our current angst might have been precipitated by a pandemic, which unfortunately happens in cycles. And a history of racial injustice has precipitated periodic outbursts of resentments. But except for the coincidence of timing, it is unlikely that the current rioting, looting, and destruction directly are related to those phenomena. Or are spontaneous.

People on the nervous outskirts of these battle zones, or sitting in living rooms far away, watching war correspondents on the evenings news, wonder about the Americanized versions of Mogadishu or Kabul. They wish this mayhem to be a bizarre exception that will vanish some Monday morning. “This is awful, but what can I do about it?”

As Theodore Roosevelt said in another context, our choice is not whether to meet these challenges… but whether we meet them well or ill.

If the murderous street thugs perhaps are misguided youths who emerged like larvae from their parents’ basements around the same time… they will have to be chased, one by one, down into the parents’ basements if necessary. Lawbreaking never has been unaccompanied by penalties, whether in the Bible or in civil societies… until now, inexplicably.

Some Christians are very quick to quote Christ’s admonition to turn the other cheek when we are wronged. We may have different reactions, however, when Jesus is wronged.

The Bible tells us always to be ready to mount a good defense… and it may well be for settings beyond polite living-room discussions.

“Be not deceived; God is not mocked.” The Lord knows what is in the hearts of those who curse His name and defile His places of worship. The verse from Galatians concludes that whatever people sow, they also shall reap. That warning applies to enemies of the Cross… but also to those who are too timid to defend their faith and their God.

Luke 11:21 – “When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are undisturbed.”

Luke 22:36 – “If you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one!”

We must remember that defense is different than revenge. The Lord sanctions defense of life and family and the Word; but “vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.”

“Repay no one evil for evil. Respect what is honorable in the sight of all.” People sit in groups, clucking about what they disdain on the evening news. You know what you resent, what you hate. What do you support; what do you love, enough to answer the anarchists and revolutionaries in kind?

Is this too fine a “needle” to thread? Does the Bible contradict itself? Of course not; it is precise, with detailed teachings. “All scripture is given by the inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the people of God may be perfected, thoroughly equipped for every good work.” (II Timothy 3: 16, 17)

And we watch – we watch – as hordes topple statues of Mary and Jesus and saints. And destroy or spray-paint the ruined statues. We see acid, urine, and feces spread over the statues. Likewise are churches defaced, looted, and set afire. Flags are burned, and Bibles too. We hear the vilest curses screeched about Jesus, not to mention George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

We watch.

Like the old man who summarized the pastor’s sermon, “We are against” these things. But… what are we to do?

Be filled with righteous anger. Do not be overwhelmed with frustrated complaints. Pray about the outrages committed against our nation. God will answer us with wisdom.

Be “equipped” – grounded in the Word of God, and in the Declaration, the Constitution, and other foundational documents of our Republic. Affirm what you are for!

“Network” – seek out others who share your feelings. Not to complain, but to plan, to anticipate, to act. Be bold, be willing to go out; consider civil disobedience.

Do these things soon. Get ready. When – not if, but when – this all comes to your neighborhood, know how you will respond. Be ye doers of the Word, and not hearers only. History is threatened. History is watching.

History is now.

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Click: Mahalia Jackson

6-29-20

After many statues have been yanked down, marble figures broken, bronze artwork twisted, heads of memorialized people broken off, bodies and pedestals spray-painted with obscene words and Communist slogans…

And after so many windows broken it looks like memorials to Kristallnacht; after streets and stores and buildings covered with obscenities and slogans; random cars laid waste by clubs and tire irons; mothers and children terrorized; fires set in stores and dumpsters…

And after sections of cities have been occupied, stores looted of TVs and apparel in the name of civil rights for a dead man, after grocery stores and toy stores, many started by black people struggling to make a living…

And after police are told not to counter the anarchy, after police are killed, and after officials from the White House down to local mayors talk tough – or don’t – and the jungle is thereby encouraged to spread its savagery…

WHAT IF –

What if the Theodore Roosevelt statue at the museum is the next to go?

What if the next target is the Lincoln Memorial, slogans spray-painted all around, paint splashed on the Great Emancipator?

What if the Washington Monument is next, obscenities around the base, and then, maybe by drones, the top of the monument felled?

What if Mount Rushmore is defaced from the top, paint and acid dribbling down over the “evil” faces?

What if the House and Senate are shot up, rushing guards; if the Library of Congress is set afire? What is that long-feared attack on Times Square finally happens? What if the Statue of Liberty is the target by planes or drones, and explosions and fires in its base? What if headstones and memorials are defaced at Arlington National Cemetery?

What if… the targets shift to your town, your city hall, your police station, your schools, the car in your driveway, your front windows…

What if the nihilists continue to deface and burn churches, from across the street from the White House to… your neighborhood?

Or…

WHAT IF –

Those in “authority” sweep the “zones” and arrest the vandals? What if they look at news footage and video tapes and know who to prosecute? What if people who destroy public property pay for their destruction? What if the Department of Justice files amicus briefs on behalf of shop owners, business people, small entrepreneurs, and average citizens, against mayors and governors who prevented law enforcement, and aided and abetted the destroyers?

Further, what if police were allowed to be police again? What if police funding were restored and increased? What if deluded citizens stopped defunding and started defending?

What if Christian “leaders” stopped making excuses for savagery in the streets, and in their basements? What if Christian worshipers started to find preachers who started reading the Bible instead of Marx, who would look for lost souls instead of hiding criminals?

What if God would (in effect) apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah, in any event I mean give America one more chance?

WHAT IF –

America doesn’t deserve it?

In fact, we don’t. We have, as God spoke in II Chronicles, turned away and forsaken My statutes and My commandments which I have set before you; and served other gods, and worshiped them… And God would uproot them from My land which I have given them… And as for this house [which we may see as America, once dedicated to Him] which is exalted, everyone who passes by it will be astonished and say, ‘Why has the Lord done thus to this land and this house?’ Then they will answer, ‘Because they forsook the Lord God of their fathers, who… embraced other gods, and worshiped them and served them; therefore He has brought all this calamity on them.

Many Christians know, and quote, over and over, an earlier passage in II Chronicles: If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

That is a very big if in there. What if God really wanted Solomon to beware – and for us to be warned – what calamity we may bring up ourselves?

How many ways we have strayed from Him!!!

What if He is a God of justice?

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Please view the music video this week. It is the instrumental version of achingly beautiful Erbarme Dich, Mein Gott (“Have mercy Lord, My God, for the sake of my tears”) by Johann Sebastian Bach. The violinist, Lisa Batiashvili, speaks before her performance about the street violence and downed airplanes, everything in between, in her homeland. The audience, Dutch people on their boats in Amsterdam Harbor, share the intensity of the sacred music.

The words in Bach’s full version ask God for mercy and plead for His forgiveness –
Have mercy, my God, for the sake of my tears!
See here, before you, heart and eyes weep bitterly.
Have mercy, my God.

Click: Have Mercy, For the Sake Of My Tears.

This world seems to be getting smaller, at least places we know about. Right in our living rooms, we see problems in Syria, troubles in Europe, summits in Vietnam. Yet for some of us, the most difficult travel is between our homes and the church. 

In the actual world, a churchless community, a community where men have abandoned and scoffed at or ignored their religious needs, is a community on the rapid downgrade.

Church work and church attendance mean the cultivation of the habit of feeling some responsibility for others and the sense of braced moral strength, which prevents a relaxation of one’s own moral fiber.

There are enough holidays for most of us that can quite properly be devoted to pure holiday-making. Sundays differ from other holidays, among other ways, in the fact that there are 52 of them every year.

On Sunday, go to church.

Yes, I know all the excuses. I know that one can worship the Creator and dedicate oneself to good living in a grove of trees, or by a running brook, or in one’s own house, just as well as in church. But I also know as a matter of cold fact the average man does not thus worship or thus dedicate himself. If he strays from church, he does not spend his time in good works or lofty meditation. He looks over the colored supplement of the newspaper.

He may not hear a good sermon at church. But unless he is very unfortunate, he will hear a sermon by a good man who, with his good wife, is engaged all the week long in a series of wearing, humdrum, and important tasks for making hard lives a little easier.

He will listen to and take part in reading some beautiful passages from the Bible. 

And if he is not familiar with the Bible, he has suffered a loss.

He will probably take part in singing some good hymns.

He will meet and nod to, or speak to, good quiet neighbors. He will come away feeling a little more charitably toward all the world, even toward those excessively foolish young men who regard churchgoing as rather a soft performance.

I advocate a man’s joining in church works for the sake of showing his faith by his works.

The man who does not in some way, active or not, connect himself with some active, working church misses many opportunities for helping his neighbors, and therefore, incidentally, for helping himself.

– Theodore Roosevelt, 1917

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  Click: Just Suppose
  

1-7-19

The last words Theodore Roosevelt spoke, before going to sleep on January 6, 1919, a century ago, were to his valet: “James, put out the light.” The next day, Vice President Thomas Marshall said, “Death had to take Theodore Roosevelt in his sleep. If he had been awake, there would have been a fight.”

Famous, as suggested there, for boundless energy, but also for boundless enthusiasm, interests, and accomplishments, TR was an author of dozens of books, a legislator, cowboy and rancher, police commissioner, cabinet officer, soldier, governor, vice president, hunter and explorer, conservationist and naturalist. Loving husband and father of six children, he earned the Medal of Honor on the battlefield, and the Nobel Peace Prize.

Oh, yes, and President of the United States. For all of his success in that position, he might be the only president for whom the presidency is not the greatest item on his resume. The most interesting American.

An important aspect of TR that curiously has been neglected by history is his fervent Christian faith. In some ways, he might be seen as the most Christian and the most religious, at least the most observant, of all the presidents.

A list evaluating presidents by this rubric would be subjective at best, and a difficult one to compute and compile. Putting TR’s name at the top might surprise some people, yet that surprise itself might bear witness to the nature of his faith. It was privately held, but it permeated countless speeches, writings, and acts. His favorite Bible verse was Micah 6:8, “What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?”

Theodore Roosevelt was a member of the Dutch Reformed Church. He participated in missions work around New York City with his father, whether the charity was church-related or “personal,” public or private—it was all God’s work. TR taught weekly Sunday school classes during his four years at Harvard. Throughout his life he wrote for Christian publications. During the White House years, Edith, a strong Episcopalian, invariably attended her denomination’s church across Lafayette Park, the “Church of Presidents.” The president himself usually walked a little farther to worship at a humble German Reformed church, the closest he could find to the faith of his fathers.

Roosevelt called his 1912 bare-the-soul campaign speech announcing his political principles “A Confession of Faith.” Later he closed perhaps the most important speech of his life, the clarion-call acceptance of the Progressive Party nomination, with the words: “We stand at Armageddon and we battle for the Lord!” That convention featured evangelical songs and closed with the hymn, “Onward Christian Soldiers.”

He titled one his books Foes of Our Own Household (after Matthew 10:36) and another Fear God and Take Your Own Part. He once wrote an article for The Ladies’ Home Journal, “Nine Reasons Why Men Should Go To Church.” After TR left the White House, he was offered university presidencies and many other prominent jobs. He chose instead to become contributing Contributing Editor of The Outlook, a small Christian weekly news magazine—tantamount to an extremely popular ex-president today (if we had one) choosing to edit WORLD Magazine. He accepted a salary approximately one-eighth of salaries offered by magazines like Collier’s that hoped to snag TR’s services. His first essay for the magazine, telling the public why he chose to associate himself with the journal cited The Outlook’s “paying heed to the dictates of a stern morality,” and its “inflexible adherence to the elementary virtues of entire truth, entire courage, entire honesty.” No fake news permitted in his space,

Roosevelt was invited to deliver the Earl Lectures at Pacific Theological Seminary in 1911, but declined due to a heavy schedule. Knowing, however, that he would be near Berkeley on a speaking tour, he offered to deliver the lectures if he might be permitted to speak extemporaneously, not having time to prepare written texts of the five lectures, as was the custom. It was agreed, and TR spoke for 90 minutes each evening—from the heart and without notes—on the Christian’s role in modern society.

TR was not perfect, but he knew the One who is. Fond of saying that he would “speak softly and carry a big stick,” it truly can be said also that Theodore Roosevelt hid the Word in his heart and acted boldly. He was a great American because he was a thoroughgoing good man; and he was a good man because he was a humble believer. In a hundred years we have not seen his like again.

Thoughts of Rick Marschall, Roosevelt scholar, author of 74 books; member, Advisory Board, Theodore Roosevelt Association.

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Click: Rick Marschall at Truman Library Institute, Kansas City Public Library

Millions of servicemen in World War I were sent abroad with New Testaments with a spiritual message from Theodore Roosevelt

Can a Christian serve in politics?

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

11-13-17

Curioser and curioser.

Usually I cite the Bible here; often Theodore Roosevelt or Abraham Lincoln. Today it is Alice’s turn, from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. And I am well aware that there are few new things under the sun, yet things surprise us every week.

The revelations of sexual advances and disgusting behavior are new… yet their existence surely is not. Few people are, or should be, shocked that Hollywood producers and powerful executives, politicians, and bosses have acted this way. In fact it is almost a cliché – one could say a stale stereotype from am unimaginative movie script – that women have had to deal with disgusting suggestions, “casting couches,” and threats of blackballed careers. An afternoon’s work for Harvey Weinstein, by reports at least.

We all knew it, not only the women under pressure. Men occasionally felt bizarre pressures, too – not always sexual, but of the “dirty little secret” varieties, for instance the soft pressure of racial bias and class preference. Homosexuals have been pressured negatively and sometimes favored, as have people of political persuasions.

Racial and sexual injustice are at the forefront these days, and the major surprise to me is that people are acting surprised. For years it was common talk – not whispers – that directors like Alfred Hitchcock were perverts who demanded favors; in politics, Bill Clinton; in sports, Jerry Sandusky… and so on.

I have been on the periphery of some of the players in the Clinton scandals. Kathleen Willey (attacked by Bill in the White House the same day her husband committed suicide) bears emotional scars. I know Lucianne Goldberg, who convinced Linda Tripp to convince Monica Lewinsky to record Pres. Clinton’s phone messages and to keep the infamous blue dress. And 21 years ago I interviewed Gennifer Flowers, who related that Bill Clinton, in pillow talk when she was his mistress, laughed about Hillary having more girl friends than he did.

Seemingly overnight, the “establishments” of Hollywood and the media regard it all as taboo, even when charges are unsubstantiated (as are, at this writing., the accusations against a US Senate candidate). The anomaly is that people are suddenly opposed to sexual predation, not that they are surprised by it. Yesterday an accepted joke, today an offense, tomorrow anathema.

If we sniff a bit of inconsistency, I do not demand that society be consistent! Sometimes we awaken to harmful things, to bad behavior, to sin. The unfortunate pattern in social mores is that what offends people one bright day… they are often inured to in days subsequent. God forbid it will be that way with sexual predators and gross insensitively of the kinds in recent headlines.

The human race has changed its attitude toward slavery, for instance – except when it hasn’t. The public attitudes might be different, but the practice around the world is still with us.

The human race has changed its attitude toward wanton slaughter of animals – except human animals. War, oppression, trafficking, ethnic cleansing, euthanasia, and abortion are rampant.

The human race has changed its attitude toward freedom of expression – largely when threatened by governments; but seemingly comfortable when “soft” censorship exists by Big Media, news monopolies, internet moguls, and dictators of Political Correctness.

I can quote Ralph Waldo Emerson and his Law of Compensation – things get better here, and worse there. Healthier in some ways; toxic in others. Maybe that is how life works.

Let us not be cynical, however. We should pray that what recent societies called Puritanical attitudes – courtesy between the sexes; probity; common respect – might not be fads but a moral palliative, a New Normal.

And while we are praying… if the grosser aspects of the Sexual Revolution might become extinct, if predators might become an endangered species, is it too much to add items to our prayer lists?

Human trafficking? The drug culture? Persecution of Christians and minorities? Child abuse, spousal abuse? Divorce?

Readers of the future will look back on this essay and know, as we cannot, whether the New Puritanism, at least as it concerns Hollywood and Celebrity sexual predators, is a tool for the self-righteous to attack others, or is the beginning of a return to civility and respect, manners and solid social standards. As Emerson might observe, while we conquer physical diseases, we are infected by moral blight. Epidemics.

Writers like H L Mencken and Ralph Barton Perry almost a century ago decried the Puritan strain in the American culture, but such manifestations as Prohibition were purged. There were no crippling effects on the onward march of society. When corrections need correction, they are corrected. When things needing correction are ignored or enjoy benign neglect – enabled, really – they fester. And we die.

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The question, ultimately, is a personal question, because we are the building-blocks of society. And it concerns our hearts, not our political affiliations or backgrounds or economic status. Bennie Tripplett of the Church of God wrote a gospel song made famous by the Blackwood Brothers:

Click: How About Your Heart

11-6-17

George Santayana famously said that those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it. A cartoon-meme popping up on the web these days has an old guy reflecting that those who DO know history are doomed to watch other people repeat the mistakes.

That IS a danger. Rather, it is a reality. We see it around us, every day.

Without delving into whether this is unprecedented or one of history’s tragic cycles is open to question, but ultimately the question is silly – in the face of reality. In this world, today, it surely seems that a large portion of humankind has gone mad. We have rejected in many ways the concept of Absolute Truth, the possibility of its existence, and the benefits of seeking to know it. History’s masses, let us say in the West, often suffered as a lot in life. However they usually believed in improvement; in advancement; in better things and better days. They believed in themselves, in leaders they respected… in God.

The world, in turning inward instead of outward, living for today without regard to an afterlife, abandoning standards that nurtured their ancestors, of course will reflect disharmony and chaos. Art imitates life, after all (what Plato called “Mimesis”). This should worry us very, very much about the state of things ‘round about us. This world is not one politician or one new fad or one hangover away from righting ourselves. We fool ourselves when we think so. And meanwhile we are diverted by bread-and-circus movies and sports and TV shows and celebrity orgies…

Never since the Flood has humankind, over the face of the earth and not in isolated pockets, rejected Truth and Purity in such determined ways.

So, we fight. We fight as individuals, we fight as nations – or, we give in as individuals and as nations. This truth reflects a crisis of the age, and the great challenge of our time. It has always been our portion to fight – “Life is real; life is earnest,” Longfellow wrote:

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, Is our destined end or way; But to act, that each tomorrow Find us farther than today.

Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time.

About these fights as individuals and as nations, Theodore Roosevelt reminded us that it is beyond our choosing to participate in our fate. Our only choice is whether we play our parts “well or ill.”

For more than a generation America has had a volunteer military. I cannot imagine American society, our country’s youth, ever returning to a military draft. To have to interrupt (or fulfill) your life’s path by having to serve in one of the military branches? Frankly, I wonder even if America were attacked whether the spirit of service and sacrifice, across the population, would exist again as in the past. I wonder, further, that even if there were universal social-work service for one, two, or four years whether American youth would comply.

We have compartmentalized military service. In an intellectual manner we have come to treat the military as slaves. We “thank them for their service,” yet keep our hands clean of their work; the sacrifices; the threats; the separation, injuries, deaths; the stress and trauma. At the same time, sadly, we also separate ourselves from the glory of service, the thrill of victories and fights well fought, and the pride of wearing those uniforms.

That is a tragedy. Unfair to the servicemen and women; robbing the rest of the population of necessary components of healthy souls.

In these days of “advanced warfare techniques” (a sanitized term for more efficient means of maiming and killing) it is almost beyond comprehension how men and women enlist – and often re-enlist, and volunteer for repeated tours – knowingly assuming the collateral “oncoming” of separated families, variable support from the System, oftentime insufficient medical and psychological care as veterans.

We cannot admire these servants enough. Even if we dissent from foreign policies, overseas involvements, controversial missions and nation-building… we must stand in awe and gratitude to the people who serve.

And. For those of us “at home,” we cannot forget that we serve too. Soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines do our bidding in faraway places. Which makes it easier to be seduced by the feeling that all our battles are being waged by others. But we, all of us, have battles too, every day.

We must fight for our souls, against evil. We fight for our families, against all manners of threats. We fight for our culture, against corruption. We fight for our civilization, against enemies seen and unseen. We fight for our God, against the devil and all his ways, and for the Kingdom that is to come.

Or… we should.

If we don’t fight these battles, we surely will be subsumed.

On Veterans’ Day let us honor those who have served… and let us re-enlist, the rest of us, for the battles of life. Sooner or later, we too will be counted as veterans of those good fights.

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Click: Gone Home

7-24-17

1.
Last summer, learning about Michigan trip by trip, I visited Grand Rapids and the Gerald R Ford Presidential Library. I came away with a new repect for the modest accidental president. This week, returning from my latest European trip, I came home with a new respect for America. It was in an unexpected manner, in unexpected ways.

I have waved the flag in many ways through my life. I support our heritage and our military in traditional, and often fervent, ways. My patriotism – the catch-all word for the bundle of impulses – has an aspect that is somewhat unorthodox these days, but not unique.

I favor a strong military, but I think we have used it far too often in recent years. I am for peace, but not always going to war on its behalf. I endorse democracy, generally, but I do not think it is perfect for every society, especially by our imposition. I have been uneasy about America having bases in something like 140 countries. I think we breed resentment among other nations by interfering in their affairs, their trade – and, yes, their elections – when we wantonly define our own self-interest. I think “nation-building” is noxious and pretentious elsewhere when our own nation is crumbling in many ways – structurally, economically, morally.

My patriotism, then, is not qualified but has standards. Neither is it blind; and not defined by knee-jerkers of the left or right.

It is informed by the eternal wisdom of the Roman military tactician Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus in his book De Re Militari: “Si vis pacem para bellum” — “In times of peace, prepare for war.” Unfortunately, he lived in the Fourth Century when Rome, about to be overrun by by Vandals, most needed the advice. Rome was paying the price of choosing Empire over Republic, however.

My patriotism is informed by George Washington, who warned his countrymen, and posterity, to be free of “entangling alliances.”

And it is informed by Theodore Roosevelt, who combined both outlooks, and, typically, other sober considerations when he said: “To be rich, aggressive, and unarmed, is to invite certain disaster and annihilation.”
2.
I mentioned Gerald Ford because upon my arrival on home shores, the commissioning ceremony of the USS Gerald R Ford, the biggest and most powerful battleship in the world, and world history, took place this weekend.

It was worthwhile for any patriot, indeed any citizen, to watch. It is a ship possessing as many superlatives, perhaps, as weapons systems and lethal innovations. The length of more than three football fields and powered by two nuclear reactors, the floating fortress will be head of a battle group, not even a solo player on the world’s oceans.

I was unexpectedly moved by elements of the ceremony that, to military people, could have been the most mundane. But the uniforms; the protocols; the orders, salutes, and marching; all impressed me. Military life is a way of life from which the American public has largely grown ignorant, even immune, since Volunteer Service created a segregated system almost half a century ago.

Thank God for aspects of that system, that tradition, for instance the discipline that still flows therefrom.

Perhaps my sensibility was tilled by two weeks in Ireland, where I was struck by comments from all manner of people about the current state of things in America. After many overseas trips since the age of 14, I am used to Europeans being curious about the United States. Whether as a tourist peppered by questions about blue jeans and rock ‘n’ roll; or making appearances on behalf of the US Information Service of the State Department about… well, often again, blue jeans and rock ‘n’ roll, I was aware of a fascination with America.

Seriously, I have also parried questions about Pershing Missile deployment under Reagan; the first Gulf War under the first Bush; and, now, about Donald Trump.

Trump largely is despised by the European public, left and right. When he is not despised, he is dismissed or merely dissed. That is a given, at least at present, and was not a surprise.

But what did surprise me, in many (and unscientifically charted) conversations was a common feeling among all types and classes of my encounters. Generally stated, it was not a basic resentment of the United States as a country, even as a power. Rather, many people confessed to a realization, even a conscious reliance, on America’s role in world affairs… European security… even country-by-country’s occasional internal matters.

Not about all details of their lives, surely; but, nowadays, more than blue jeans and rock ‘n’ roll. “We need America.” You ask them about paying their share of NATO, and they will shrug in embarrassed agreement, but there is little “America, Go Home” sentiment in Europe. They cannot understand Trump – as if all Americas can – but they appreciate our presence, including our military shield, in inchoate ways.

3.
Which brings me again to the commissioning of the USS Gerald R Ford, and what the battleship (and the commissioning ceremony) represents.

Ultimately, even if the battleship sees action in some virtual holocaust, it is more of a symbol than an arsenal. The USS Gerald R Ford represents American might. Our entire military complex manifests our strength. American power has been in danger of losing its effectiveness over the past decade because the world came to realize that some presidents and some parties are unwilling to deploy; that bluffs have become seen as substitutes for action; that red lines are empty threats and “resolve” can only be found in the dictionaries, not operations manuals, of the White House and Pentagon.

Americans, and Europeans, can be sure that the current president is not ambiguous on such matters. Significantly, Russians and Chinese, as well as Iranians and North Koreans, can be quite unceratin about how Trump will act – and that is a powerful stealth weapon in and of itself.

However, deflating my swelling breast a bit, I have legitimate worries that America of the 21st century is too much like Rome of the 4th century.

Are we an empire being eaten away at the edges? Are we a society whose spiritual core has rotted? Are our priorities chiefly wealth and it accumulation? pleasure? license? relativism? Do we project power, and not values, any more?

Of course, the questions are rhetorical. II Chronicles 7:14 says, “If my people, who are called by my name, shall humble themselves, pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways….” We read the holy promise, but we can hear the holy warning.

God forbid that the elements of the American arsenal like the USS Gerald R Ford will be just so much metal and wires and tubes and diodes. Things that rust and decay were never what made America great.

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The Naval Hymn, with a photo of Gerald Ford in uniform. He rose to the rank of Lieutenant Commander in the US Navy.

Click: The Naval Hymn / Eternal Father, Strong To Save

5-29-16

July 4 is a pivotal date in American history, not only the date when the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence. Fifty years later, to the day, two of the Framers, erstwhile political opponents, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the second and third presidents of the United States, respectively, died. After the Siege of Vicksburg, U S Grant accepted the surrender of that Confederate stronghold of the Civil War. The battles around San Juan Hill were fought and won by Col Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders in the Spanish-American War.

And, of course, it was on the 4th of July that Southern troops under Gen Robert E Lee withdrew after three bloody days at Gettysburg PA in 1863, and retreated to Virginia.

It was to establish a National Cemetery and commemorate that Battle of Gettysburg during the iconic Fourth, that President Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg address. It was one of the great state papers in America history; and indeed one of the finest orations in the history of humankind.

It is, not at all, to denigrate that speech – how could anyone? – nor to criticize our current President, whom I have grown to admire, if for nothing else, daring to keep his commendable campaign promises, that I offer here the Gettysburg Address as it might be delivered by Donald J Trump (stick with me!):

Four score and seven years ago – that’s eighty-seven years, folks; a long, long time ago, let me tell you – our forefathers brought forth, upon this continent, this great, great continent, believe me, nothing like it anywhere in this country, a new nation; conceived in Liberty – right? Liberty, nothing like it, I tell you – dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Great, great men. And women too, don’t forget the women.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, the greatest – maybe the greatest ever in this country, and I know what I’m talking about, believe me – testing whether that nation, or any nation so concerned, and so dedicated, and so civil, let me tell you, can long endure. Long. Endure. I tell you, long endure, right? We are met here on a great, great battlefield of that war, that great war. The greatest; you know that, right? See, I told ya. We have come to dedicate a portion, a wonderful, wonderful portion of it, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. Resting and living, how great. Rest and live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. Fit – we fit, right? C’mon!

But in a larger sense, a much, much larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hollow this ground. Hollow ground, believe me. I love hollow ground. The brave men, living and dead and many other ways, many wonderful wonderful ways, I tell you, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or subtract. But not poor for long, just wait! The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but can never forget what they did here. Never. Forget. The great state of Gettysburg, which supported us in November. Right? Remember? C’mon – the world WILL remember!

It is for us, the living, rather, you and me, and Corporal James Tanner – where are you, James? Where are you? Stand up! Somebody help him stand – we are dedicated here to the unfinished work which they have, thus far, so nobly carried on, ahead of schedule and under budget! It is rather for us… to be here dedicated… to the great task remaining before us… that from these honored dead, all those dead, those many, many dead, believe me, to take increased devotion to that cause… for which they gave the last full measure of devotion… to which we are devoted… a great, great devotion, let me tell you… that we hear. Highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, I tell you. That this nation shall have a new birth of freedom, great freedom; and that this government will Drain. The. Swamp. I tell you. With all of the people, to all of the people, from the people, shall not perish from the earth. I tell you, you will be tired of not perishing.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Well, I beg forgiveness to those who think I being irreverent to either Lincoln or Trump… or those hallowed dead. In fact, Gettysburg, and Lincoln’s address, are the closest things we have to civic holiness in America. I am tweaking the president’s rhetorical style, as a friend – and as an admirer of his most recent speech to vets and Christians, on July 1, 2017.

There is a larger point, perhaps, that as thinkers and writers and speakers we should be careful about our presentations. Words matter. Lincoln’s genius was in part his pellucid thoughts… and his flawless delivery. Not his voice, which was remembered as high and raspy, but his brilliant arrangement and construction.

This attends whether we argue legal cases, preach the Word of God, teach classes, or instruct our children. Everyone’s business is communication.

End of “lesson”! I am loth to finish, however, without citing the actual Gettysburg Address. It is something I long ago committed to memory; and I think every American should.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Finally, we go from Fake News to Fake History if we believe the books that say that Lincoln was a religious skeptic or agnostic. Year by year through his life he increasingly invoked God and the Bible. In his last years his speeches, writing, proclamations, letters, and conversations were so spiritual that he sometimes sounded like a preacher.

Of the many biblical affirmations he made, to me among the most profound is:

My concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side.

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Click: Battle Hymn Of the Republic

6-19-17

The subject of this essay has been on my mind for some time, and was outlined before the assassination attempts at the Republican baseball practice this week. I will not intone about the “need for civility,” as many are doing and which of course I endorse. But I fear that such hopes are futile, and that was, and is, the sad conclusion I want to discuss.

First, what I substantially had written and still believe:

Donald Trump is likely to be assassinated. Of course I do not urge such I thing. I largely support him, and in fact am happy with his initiatives, and the president he has become. I will take one day – one hour – of his Administration to eight years of his predecessor.

So it is prudent for me to repeat that I do not favor nor encourage his assassination. Neither do I think that raising the topic will inspire any nutcase. To be precise, I am not even prophesying or predicting the heinous act. I am not in that business. I am only reckoning that a personal, physical attack is likely, given the arc of ugliness, violence, threats, and extremism – not infesting politics in general, which is the case, but specifically directed toward President Trump.

Not occasionally; not every day; but virtually every hour since his election. It grows uglier and bloodier. It serves no reason to claim that candidate Trump suggested that thugs at his rallies be given the bum’s rush, or other coarseness; everybody, even leftist protesters, were taught by their mommies that two wrongs don’t make a right. And blue-haired ladies at Tea Party rallies cannot be conflated with Antifas or Bernie and Hillary supporters who set cars on fire and smash store windows.

Ugly words that quickly turned to violence, and “satire” that transformed itself into an ISIS-like depiction of a decapitated President, or his bloody murder on a New York stage, inevitably will inspire weak minds to turn thoughts to deeds.

More, I fully believe that the despicable act can be committed not by an impressionable left-wing nitwit, but by a celebrity. An actor or actress, a “journalist,” a celebrity whose access to a president is easier to achieve than among normal, sane, folks.

John Wilkes Booth was a prominent actor in his day. The moment people heard of Lincoln’s assassination, they immediately recognized Booth’s name. Today, it could be a Baldwin brother, or a Maddow, or a Madonna. I suppose many leftists would be happy to do the deed and be considered martyrs. In a nation virtually free of the death penalty, the perpetrator would a) be considered a hero by half the country; and b) serve less than a life sentence.

Does any reader think this is implausible? Booth thought Lincoln a “baboon” who ruined the South (while the Reconstruction President would have been the defeated South’s best friend). Garfield’s assassin Guiteau was disappointed that he had not received a political appointment; the president represented a faction different than Guiteau’s. That was it.

McKinley’s assassin Czolgosz was an anarchist, plain and simple. Largely forgotten by history is the fact that between the 1880s and World War I there was a worldwide epidemic of bombings and political assassinations. Royalty; elected leaders; prominent businessmen – dozens were killed by anarchists and leftists, down to the “match” that lit the fires of the Great War in 1914: the murder of an Austrian archduke by a Serbian nationalist.

When Theodore Roosevelt was shot point-blank in the chest during the Bull Moose campaign (and, with the bullet in him and blood pouring from the wound, he insisted on delivering his 90-minute speech) it was by an unemployed bartender whose “mind” was inflamed by newspaper editorials calling TR a tyrant.

Given the fever-temperature of our political health these days, an attack on President Trump seems not unlikely.

So. This week an apparently average liberal activist and Bernie backer, after months of stalking, and preparing a written hit-list of Republicans found in his pocket, targeted an enclosed field of GOP politicians warming up for a charity baseball game. That his guns were legal and registered, and he was a liberal, there were few calls for the Second Amendment to be repealed. That nobody died, and only a few people maimed, liberals felt safe, outside the comments and prayers at second base during the game, to blame Trump’s “rhetoric” and other diversions.

The New York Times even wrote, immediately, about Gabby Gifford’s attack six years previous, citing a Sarah Palin campaign sheet with “targeted” Congressional districts. Aside from the canard, “equivalency” is losing its meaning in the United States of Alinsky.

Should we remind ourselves?

During the campaign (thanks for notes to The Daily Caller), anti-Trump protesters attacked, pushed, spit on, and verbally harassed attendees forced to walk a “gauntlet” as they left a Trump fundraiser in Minneapolis, and beat an elderly man. Protesters also attacked Trump’s motorcade;

Protesters in El Cajon CA, chased and beat up a Trump supporter;

A GOP office in North Carolina was firebombed and spray-painted with “Nazi Republicans get out of town or else”;

The president of Cornell University’s College Republicans was assaulted the night after Trump won the election;

Maryland high school students punched a student who was demonstrating in support of Trump, and then kicked him repeatedly while he was on the ground;

California GOP Rep. Tom McClintock had to be escorted to his car after a town hall because of angry protesters. The tires of at least four vehicles were slashed;

Protestors knocked a 71-year-old female staffer for California GOP Rep. Dana Rohrabacher unconscious during a protest outside the representative’s office;

Milo Yiannopoulos’ speech at the University of California-Berkeley was canceled after rioters set the campus on fire and threw rocks through windows. Milo tweeted that one of his supporters wearing a Trump hat was thrown to the ground and kicked. Ann Coulter and other speakers have been prevented from speaking on campuses;

Protesters at Middlebury College rushed the conservative Dr Charles Murray and Prof Allison Stranger, pushing and shoving Murray and grabbing Stranger by her hair and twisting her neck as they were leaving a campus building. Stranger suffered a concussion. Protesters then surrounded the car they got into, rocking it back and forth and jumping on the hood;

Republican Rep. Tom Garrett, his family, and his dog were targeted by a series of repeated death threats deemed credible by authorities;

-FBI agents arrested a person for threatening to shoot Republican Rep. Martha McSally over her support for Trump;

-Police in Tennessee charged a woman for allegedly trying to run Republican Rep. David Kustoff off the road;

After the shooting of Rep Steve Scalise and others, GOP Rep Claudia Tenney received an email threat that read, “One down, 216 to go.”

These were overt acts. Following is a list complied by Breitbart News of threats spoken and threatened by the celebrities I spoke of earlier. It is not unreasonable to foresee one of these people, or simple minds inflamed by them, to follow through:

Kathy Griffin “beheads” Trump in a graphic photo

Madonna – “I’ve thought a lot about blowing up the White House”

Snoop Dogg “shoots” Trump in the head in music video

Robert De Niro: “I’d like to punch him in the face”

Joss Whedon: “I want a rhino to [F—] Paul Ryan to death”

Shakespeare in the Park stabs “Trump” to death in performance of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar

Rapper YG threatens Trump in “[F—] Donald Trump” song

Marilyn Manson kills “Trump” in music video.

A New Jersey “Democratic Strategist” issued a statement the day after Rep Scalise’s shooting that the attack might have been deserved, echoing comments by elected Democrats across the country. Surely, there were many sincere offerings of regret by the political establishment. Nancy Pelosi’s impromptu comments from the House well were eloquent and heartfelt, about Scalise’s recovery, and about political amity.

Will these expressions bear fruit? They did not, after 9-11; the state of our nation grew bitterer.

Winston Churchill said that democracy is the worst form of government, until you consider every other. Democracy gone wild is what we have in America today, and the world, similar but worse than 125 years ago: akin to anarchy. The outrageous has become normal. People’s own agendas are considered not only more valid, but exclusively valid, over opponents… and “opponents” have become “enemies” today.

People throughout history have debated with opponents. But enemies are deemed deserving of being killed. This paradigm is what is unfolding in America today.

Welcome to the End Times. Your road map can be II Timothy 3: 1-5: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God — having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof. Have nothing to do with such people.

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click: Trauermusik (Funeral Music) Marche Funebre by Chopin

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

2-20-17

When James Garfield was elected president, he left his position as an elder in his church and said, “I will resign the highest office in the land to become President of the United States.”

The religious beliefs of presidents and presidential aspirants has become more important to segments of population than ever before, in America. More than “religion,” many citizens look for spiritual commitment and individual testimonies from their political representatives. As the influence of organized religions – that is, denominations – has waned in the United States, peoples’ personal relationships
with God and His incarnate Son has increased.

The intensity has increased, I feel safe to say, in the general population; and therefore as a box to check in the list of criteria that are important to voters.

Despite the widespread suspicions of (and evidence of) corruption among the political class, the percentage of fervent spiritual belief has increased in Washington. Again, I feel safe to say this, but the evidence is elusive. Public expressions of belief were more common, more PC even, in times past. Yet prayer breakfasts, weekly Bible studies, faith fellowships on Capitol Hill thrive now, and were not regular events in earlier times.

Or… maybe they were needed, as the general level of Christian “walks” might have been higher in those earlier days.

We cannot know, but the question makes for useful study. The Supreme Court declared in Holy Trinity v. United States (1892) that America “is a Christian nation.” It has never been overturned. Justice David Brewer, who wrote this finding, wrote a dozen years later (not from the bench) that he considered the fact a cultural, not a legal, proposition.

It generally has been forgotten that the First Amendment is not a tool to attack religious expression, but a preventative against governmental policies that would otherwise pass laws that would restrict the free exercise of people’s religious beliefs. Moreover, the national government is prohibited from passing laws establishing religions – that is, specific denominations, as in Great Britain and many European countries. Nothing to do with “Merry Christmas” or Nativity scenes in community parks; or athletes choosing to pray before or after games; or bakers being free to say “no thank you” to customers requesting cake-decorations they consider offensive.

It also in generally little known that Thomas Jefferson’s phrase “the wall of separation” between church and state, was written to a church group about a narrow issue, and years after the Declaration of Independence and even his presidency. But is has been misappropriated by secular and atheist zealots who seek to drive Christianity, faith in God, even religious traditions, from public life.

David Barton has made a career of documenting the signposts of religious freedom in America. As a collector and archivist of documents and statements he is superb. It will be superseded only by the national Museum Of the Bible, a project of Hobby Lobby’s Green family. (The traveling exhibition of these artifacts, called “Passages,” which I have seen, is astonishing in its breadth and depth. The forthcoming Museum of the Bible, on the National Mall, will be an important site among the District’s many museums.)

But David Barton has written books, advised officeholders, and spoken widely about Christianity and the fabric of American life. I know David slightly, having appeared at some of the same conferences, and assigned him articles in Tim Ewing’s “Rare Jewel” magazine a dozen years ago. As much as I admire his work, and his intentions, I was uneasy about his tendency to over-reach, even before he made some claims that caused a recent book to be withdrawn from stores.

David Barton’s discretion was to impute more Christianity to historical figures than they likely embraced. He grasped straws in – forgive my hyperbole and paraphrases – claiming that Jefferson was a follower of Christ. That many of the Deists among the Founders and Framers were secret Jesus freaks (hey, we can all over-reach). Or he would focus on the early words of patriots like John Quincy Adams and Noah Webster; and not their later comments on faith. Both of these men, and many other New Englanders of the day, became Unitarians.

In truth, the list of Americans is not like a virtual Sunday-School pageant, everyone wearing little pins indicating perfect attendance, so to speak, or adherence to an air-tight orthodox Christian, biblical, Protestant faith. Jefferson certainly was a Deist. The second Adams was indeed a Unitarian; so was Taft. Lincoln was one of several presidents whose church attendance was virtually nil throughout their lives.

But these are not “aha!” facts. The first Adams, susceptible to Transcendentalism, never declared himself “a church-going animal”! Benjamin Franklin (a President’s day message should not exclude him, nor should any essay on any topic) was a professional skeptic, yet made many affirmations of the divinity and pre-eminence of Christ. Lincoln seldom attended church, yet the last year of his life, he was a virtual preacher – invoking Christ, quoting the Bible, confessing to praying often. In conversations and public documents.

There are, it seems to me, at least three pertinent facts to be recognized and respected on President’s Day.

The first is prosaic, only honored in the breach: What we call personal faith, personal beliefs, personal relationships with Jesus… were in the past, “private” as well as “personal.” The most exuberant and transparent of presidents, Theodore Roosevelt was (I have written here and elsewhere) perhaps the most observant Christian of our presidents, nevertheless today would be viewed askance, by some Christians, for not proselytizing.

The second perhaps is hard to reconcile today. But many Christians, not only Christian presidents, assumed the divinity of Christ, but as folded into a greater appreciation of the entire Bible – pointing, as Christ Himself did, to the Father. We cannot assume all these men thought of Jesus as merely a Teacher.

The third is an extremely important distinction. Even if the Framers were not only Episcopalians and Presbyterians but Catholics and Quakers and Deists, they relied upon the Bible as a model for the creation of a government and the maintenance of a just and civil society. This fact is a cornerstone of American Exceptionalism.

A conclusion, on President’s Day? Here: for all the nihilistic tinkering with our heritage and foundational documents by secularists – for all the rats who nibble away at America’s civil/sacred documents, rotting our cultural underpinnings – they play with fire. Their success so far has not been by strength or argument, or logic, it has been the supine surrender of Christians.

But if they press their subversion of religious freedom too far, they will fulfill the prophecy of Hosea 8:7: “They who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind.”

Try removing the Ten Commandments from the Supreme Court. Try outlawing the Senate Chaplain. Try denying the President the choice to affirm his or her oath on a Bible. Try taking “under God” from the Pledge.

Then shall Christians finally rise up – and maybe a few agnostics who realize that Freedom itself would be in death throes. Pitchforks would replace petitions. Again might we see the loosing of the “fateful lightning of His terrible, swift sword.” And President’s day would take on meaning of renewed spiritual clarity again.

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Click: In God We Trust

10-17-16

Once upon a time there was a president named Franklin Delano Roosevelt. No… I will start this story earlier, and in another way.

Once upon a time there was a different America. Different than we know now. Not only different presidents and candidates, but different manners and morals. Different standards. You and I could go back in time and might recognize places and relate to interactions. But it is possible that Americans of earlier times, if they could materialize in our midst today, would be lost and bewildered.

U. S. Grant, the superior general and inferior president, was known to like his cigars and whisky. After a dinner with a group of generals or politicians – those details are lost; but a group of men who enjoyed after-dinner cigars and whisky – one man rose and proposed to tell a story or two. He signaled that the humor would be bawdy (“purple,” in the day’s parlance, meaning naughty) by announcing, “I see there are no ladies present.”

Grant reportedly said, “No, but there are gentlemen present”; and told the man to leave. The good old days. Can you imagine?

Theodore Roosevelt, exuberant hunter and woodsman and cowboy, was sometimes photographed and frequently caricatured in informal attire, however was respectful of the dignity of the presidency. He chose frock coats and top hats. He hated newsreel cameras.

But almost every day the weather allowed, he played tennis on White House courts. Other presidents had “kitchen cabinets” – unofficial advisers and confidants who met in friendship or for policy brainstorming. TR’s was on the tennis court. Yet not one photograph exists of TR playing in his tennis whites.

At the end of his term the Tennis Cabinet met for one last time, and TR was presented with a gift from the assembled friends. Finally they were photographed as a group… in formal attire. Dignity (even if readers from 2016 think it was irrelevant) was important.

Now I will mention TR’s distant cousin, FDR. The nation knew that Franklin Roosevelt suffered from polio; that he was in braces, unable to walk, barely able to stand. He had run – sometimes literally – for vice president in 1920, hale, hearty, handsome. But then polio struck.

Common knowledge it was, but he seldom was photographed struggling with crutches or arm-braces. Occasionally a news photo showed him tightly, and awkwardly, gripping a podium. Or when sitting with Churchill and Stalin at a wartime conference, his leg-braces could be seen peeking between his pants-cuffs and his shoes.

Dignity on his part; respect on the part of photographers and newsreel cameramen.

Fast-forward to 1976. I covered a George Wallace rally in suburban Chicago during the Democrat primaries. “The Fighting Judge” was the victim of an assassin’s bullet four years previous. Paralyzed from the waist down, he was dependent upon wheelchairs and assistants.

In those days the press’s role had changed – on a track toward today’s blatant partisanship. Wallace was viewed with opprobrium by most of the liberal media for his earlier segregationist stands, as was the incumbent president, Nixon, for a variety of excuses and justifications.

At that rally, a few photos were snapped during the speech. And then reporters and news photographers gathered at the hall’s exit, where a car would meet Wallace, who waited in his wheelchair. When the car pulled up and opened its door, Wallace’s aides did what was necessary and routine. Nowadays these maneuvers can be effected differently, but that night, two men joined arms to raise Gov. Wallace like a bundle of bones, from underneath, and awkwardly trundled him into the seat of the car.

It was inelegant. Embarrassing, clearly, to Wallace. Which is why the assembled photographers of the press corps instantly snapped their flash photos for every nano-second of that clumsy scene. I never did see any such photos on front pages… but the reporters seemed intent on making Wallace uncomfortable.

My point is not so much about presidential dignity, itself (remember that Lyndon Johnson surprisingly lifted his shirt to show a gall-bladder scar; and Jimmy Carter chatted about his hemorrhoids), but more about society, that it has changed. Our culture is cheapened; we have lower standards; manners and morals are endangered species.

“F Bombs” are dropped with total-war intensity. Movies are replete with filthy language and filthier behavior. Young girls in malls are heard talking in ways that once would have embarrassed stevedores. Plotlines of TV shows deal in topics once too “delicate” to raise in family or social circles; that is, in private. Athletes who denigrate the flag are stoutly defended; athletes who affix slogans to their shoes, supporting the police, are threatened with suspension. An upside-down world.

In politics, which, traditionally, closely follows and carefully leads the normative values and aspirations of society, cutting-edge outrages now are indulged. Onetime taboos – for instance, allowing men into any public restroom where little girls might be – is suddenly decreed to be a Constitutional Right. And, as with monarchs or tyrants of old, is allowed with a stroke the pen, a punishable crime if violated.

In this year’s politics we have a candidate who is endorsed by “Evangelical” leaders and immediately salts his speeches with hells and damns. Instead of issues, we hear discussions of sex allegations about him, and about a former president. The latter’s wife, a current candidate herself, is cast as an enabler, almost a harridan persecuting the putative victims. Whether true or half-true, these become part of the evening news, press conferences, dinner-table conversations.

That other candidate continues the march toward re-defining customarily deviant behavior. Discovering “rights” in the same manner as the incumbent president, her new discoveries routinely offend traditions, always under fraudulent banners. Inventing “rights” for sexual deviants or criminal aliens is to dishonor those who fought for racial justice, female suffrage, and other civil rights.

So Hillary would enshrine privileges for “women” with male accessories, and pedophiles, into the Constitution. She would continue her predecessor’s crusade to denigrate Christians at home and abroad. She frequently boasts of her early, and continuing, passion for vulnerable children, yet evinces no second thoughts about the killing of viable children sucked from wombs in their ninth months, and murdered by a blade to the bases of their skulls. Suddenly, in Hillaryland, these children are “formerly vulnerable.”

Debates and speeches seem to be ghost-written, now, by headline-writers of supermarket tabloids. What, in 2020? Spitballs and water-balloons at 20 paces?

Our current level of discourse has been cheapened, I believe irretrievably. All these things I have mentioned – and myriad others – are, none of them, splotches of toothpaste that possibly can be put back in their tubes.

Are we on a slippery slope?

Rather, a vortex in the unfortunate toilet-bowl of contemporary life, almost flushed away completely. And deserving of it.

Anyone who teaches something different is arrogant and lacks understanding. Such a person has an unhealthy desire to quibble over the meaning of words. This stirs up arguments ending in jealousy, division, slander, and evil suspicions. These people always cause trouble. Their minds are corrupt, and they have turned their backs on the truth.
I Timothy 6: 4,5a NLT

They prove the truth of this Proverb: “A dog returns to its vomit.” And another says, “A washed pig returns to the mud.”
II Peter 2: 22 NLT

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Click: Sin City

6-6-16

There is a danger in being a historian. Even the amateur historian and those who love to read history benefit from the special aspect of what my lodestar Theodore Roosevelt called “History as literature” – the thrill of past glories, the tragedy of conflicts, sensing the real lives of real people long ago. We gain perspective as we confront our own challenges. Even better, we legitimately feel like a player in the world’s great events – a part of the contending ideas and possibly grand visions; a soldier in conflicts, if not military then intellectual and spiritual.

Well, you can tell I am enthusiastic about history. The study, the pursuit, the lessons. George Santayana famously said that those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it. A cartoon-meme popping up on the web these days has an old guy reflecting that those who DO know history are doomed to watch other people repeat the mistakes.

That IS a danger. But I began by saying that being a historian – having a historical perspective – can have its pitfalls. The broader the view, more seductive is the tendency to believe in cycles… pendulum swings… and what the writer of Ecclesiastes averred: “There is nothing new under the sun.”

Indeed. The awful aspects of human nature are unchanged. So too are the propensities in the human breast to hope. There are elemental virtues and common sins. I believe these are the things referred to in Ecclesiastes. But too many people think – when they think at all about such things – that our challenges and problems can’t be all that bad, because countless civilizations have experienced them before us.

Experienced, yes. Survived? Usually not – and especially not when we talk about moral decline, fiscal irresponsibility, decline in family values, sexual immorality, addictions, loss of patriotic fervor and appreciation of heritage and tradition, lessened charitable impulses, and turning away from God’s Word. Yes: review history. We are not the only culture to experience these things.

But, in your review, notice that few societies, precious few, have redeemed themselves and crawled back into the sunshine. Virtually all have withered and died. Some over long, painful gray periods of dissolution. Some quickly, as by invasions. But the law of civilization and decay is that when societies fall, it is usually from within.

I pivot from the panorama of history, behind us, to the current situation about which I will say as dispassionately as I can: The world has gone mad. To me, the only question is the tense: future-progressive (still occurring) (by the way, I am inclined to capitalize Progressive, but that is another essay…) or present tense. In either case, it is still a tense situation.

I employ benchmarks from history’s record of self-destructive societies. I have considered that the great march of personal freedom, intensifying in the West over the past 500 years, has allowed humankind to let human nature overtake the structure of governments, laws, arts, and science – and resulted in the previous century birthing more slaughter than any other century; and this century, so far, reviving (to take an example) slavery on a grander scale than ever before.

So it is not only a madness of the West, although we madly lead the mad parade to “the dawn of nothing – O make haste,” as Omar Khayyam wrote. Savagery, abuse, hatred: all alive and well around the world. Wars and rumors of wars.

We have rejected in many ways the concept of Absolute Truth, the possibility of its existence, and the benefits of seeking to know it. History’s masses often suffered, but often they believed in improvement; in advancement; in better things and better days. They believed in themselves, in leaders they respected… in God.

The world, in turning inward instead of outward, living for today without regard to an afterlife, abandoning standards that nurtured their ancestors, of course will reflect disharmony and chaos. Art imitates life, after all (what Plato called “Mimesis”). This should worry us very, very much about the state of things ’round about us. This world is not one politician, or one new fad, or one hangover, away from righting ourselves.

We have become lovers of our own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good; traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God.

You might have heard these words before. They were predicted about our times – or, anyway, the End Times. Do they describe this age? If not revealed in our actions, and conflicts, and multiple crises… then in the writing on the walls of our art and culture. Our headlines.

Never since the Flood has humankind, over the face of the earth and not in isolated pockets, rejected Truth in such determined ways. II Timothy 3 continues: “In the last days, perilous times will come,” and names the attributes of our times we listed above.

It concludes: “From such, turn away.”

These were not merely warnings; not simple predictions. They were prophecies – the Bible’s “sure things” if we do not “turn away from such.” Will it be difficult, for each of us, and as a people? About that, the Bible does promise: Yes. Very difficult.

But our world depends on it.

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Click: Whispering Hope

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Real Clear Religion, on whose site many readers have followed Monday Music Ministry, has been for many people an indispensible part of their daily fare. It is going through changes right now after almost seven years.

For those who have followed us on RCR, please be sure to continue receiving our weekly essays by Subscribing to Monday Morning Music Ministry. (See link under “Pages” at right.)

5-9-16

I have been asked many questions these days about the proper attitude and informed decisions to be made by Christians and people of faith about the elections this year. To be more precise, I have been asked the same question by many people: Is Donald Trump someone to be trusted; does he know or understand biblical principles and basic Christian creedal tenets; is he someone who will “make deals” with the devil – so to speak – once in office?

I am asked those questions by a variety of folks, in my putative role as a social critic, political commentator, and Christian writer. I have no special insights, not holy ones I claim, anyway. Among those who ask me these burning questions is… myself.

A crazy political season. A crazy world, crazier and more ominous by the day. If it is not the advent of End Times, we might wish it were. We all should be primarily seeking spiritual, moral, and ethical answers – because our major challenges in America are, and have been caused by, spiritual, moral, and ethical lapses.

I will don another one my hats, my actual training as a historian, and posit some observations. Those who make stark critiques and censure are Jeremiahs. Most of us historians, as Gibbon and Macaulay did, wait millennia to make sense of history, to discern missteps.

There is an aspect of the human spirit that tends to think that contemporary crises are unprecedented, perhaps apocalyptic. It cannot always be true; but someday it will be. Oddly, we occasionally adopt the attitude of Dr Pangloss, that “this is the best of all possible worlds,” and in certain ways it too sometimes is correct.

But has our society, in our days, begun its ultimate dissolution? Is it possible that we are past “sliding down the slippery slope” and, rather, in the maelstrom of the flushing toilet of history, a vortex going “down the tubes”?

I think it is reasonable to think so. Too many of our foundations are crumbling, too many moral traditions are denigrated or ignored. But our political season, as crazy as it is, is not unprecedented.

We can look back at other crises in presidential contests. In 1800 the election was deadlocked – at the time, the House of Representatives, not the general populace, voted for president and vice-president, separate votes for each of two candidates; all later adjusted by a Constitutional amendment. Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr each had more votes than the incumbent president John Adams, but a secret deal withheld some of Burr’s electoral support and resulted in his defeat. The invective, chicanery, and dirty dealing all led to what history calls the “Revolution of 1800.” A few years later, Burr killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel, and eventually fled west where he reportedly attempted to organize an uprising against the United States and/or Mexico.

Let us gloss over the social aspects of Andrew Jackson’s presidency, bereft by scandals, charges of “loose women” in the White House kitchen, and White House events where the president invited the general public, leading to shredding of carpets, destruction of furnishings, and theft of property. Jackson’s presidential campaigns led to the “spoils system” of trading votes for jobs.

In the 1860 election, the Republican Party, then only six years old, gained the White House as beneficiary of four candidates in the field. Abraham Lincoln’s nomination was secured by his manager who forbad Honest Abe from attending or knowing anything about their machinations – such as promising the same federal offices and cabinet positions to more than one person. The campaign was dirty (Secession was imminent) and dangerous (Lincoln reportedly travelled through pro-slavery Baltimore on his way to the inauguration in a plaid cloak and Scottish cap to evade assassins).

In 1896 a virtual unknown, William Jennings Bryan, delivered a speech (the “Cross of Gold”) to the Democrat convention that stampeded the delegates to nominate him in a frenzy. Barely old enough to serve as president, Bryan’s radical, socialist agenda split the party in two and had Americans, those who were not seduced by the firebrand, fearful of blood in the streets.

Theodore Roosevelt, wildly popular on his retirement in 1909, went on an African safari and tour of Europe for a year, partly to grant the spotlight to his hand-picked successor William Howard Taft. But during Taft’s term, there were personal slights of TR; reversal of many Roosevelt policies; serious broken promises; and a calamitous decline in the GOP’s popularity, including the loss of Congress. Severe affronts to Roosevelt, and an irresistible demand from many Republicans, persuaded him to challenge Taft for the nomination.

An ex-president versus a sitting president. Friends became enemies. “Liar” and “Fathead” were among the many epithets. There were mass defections from the GOP after the nomination was wrested from TR, who had won most of the new-fangled primaries. The speakers’ platform at the Republican convention had barbed wire under the bunting, in fear that riots would break out. TR’s bolt of the convention led to the independent Bull Moose party, which soundly trounced the GOP; Taft won only two states. A Socialist, Eugene Debs, polled nearly a million votes. In late October, a bartender who had been persuaded against a Third Term shot Roosevelt point-blank in the chest. TR insisted on continuing to his speech; with blood streaming down his shirt, he spoke for almost 90 minutes. Democrat Woodrow Wilson won the four-way election.

Another year of the gun, 1968: Martin Luther King Jr and Bobby Kennedy, after a primary victory in California, were killed. A sitting president, Lyndon Johnson, was forced from running again when he could not endure widespread protests and a rebellious Democrat Party. Millions in the streets and campuses; a bitter primary; riots outside the convention; the anarchist Yippies; a candidate nominated (VP Humphrey) who had not even run in the primaries; the return of the has-been Richard Nixon; and the amazing grass-roots revolt of third-party candidate George Wallace. The story of 1968.

So… does this year’s election cycle seem tame yet? For all the elements that foreshadowed our current season of discontent, I think the campaign of 1884 has the most parallels. So far. The GOP, in the White House for 24 straight years, was rife with divisions. Factions called “Half-Breeds” and “Stalwarts” hated each other and vied for power. An office-seeker of one faction had assassinated President James Garfield, of another, when he was frustrated in securing a federal job. Bosses continually attempted a comeback for ex-president Ulysses Grant, whom they could control.

Sen. James G Blaine was the favorite for the nomination. A former Speaker of the House, he had been involved numerous. He sold influence; he had solicited bribes. He arrogantly admitted many of these discretions, but he was a magnetic speaker who swayed crowds and inspired devotion. He faced opposition, however, not so much from strong candidates, but a field of lesser names.

The major threat to Blaine instead was from the reform movement in the GOP, a gaggle of veterans and newcomers. Among the former were George William Curtis and Carl Schurz, whose political careers went back to the Civil War. Leaders of the latter group were young Henry Cabot Lodge and 24-year-old Theodore Roosevelt, a major force in the convention. Their efforts to advance reform candidates failed on the floor.

There was public revulsion against Blaine (“Blaine, Blaine; James G Blaine! The continental liar from the state of Maine!” street crowds chanted) but a lot of GOP voters fell in line. Grover Cleveland, the Democrat candidate, was “ugly honest,” a good reputation for 1884; but midway through the campaign it was revealed that Cleveland had fathered an illegitimate child – remember, this in the staid Victorian era. (“Ma! Ma! Where’s my pa? Gone to the White House, ha ha ha!” rival crowds chanted.) THAT was some campaign.

As in 2016, a large number of Republican politicians and activists faced moral and practical dilemmas. Many of them sincerely believed that Blaine was toxic for the party’s self-esteem and for its future; and they had made threats – or promises – never to vote for Blaine. Excruciating.

There was, collectively, a Solomonic decision. Reformers like Curtis and Schurz and Henry Ward Beecher, America’s most prominent pastor, whose sister had written “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” left the Republican Party, and supported Cleveland. They were dubbed “Mugwumps.”

Reformers like Roosevelt and Lodge, however, reluctantly remained within the party. Never endorsing Blaine, they “supported the ticket,” stating that the only way to influence the party was from within the party. Young TR, whose wife and mother had died a few months earlier (on the same day), left for an understandable “sabbatical” on his cattle ranch in the Dakotas. For two years he was a cowboy, out of the public eye. He made one or two campaign speeches for down-ticket candidates, including Lodge who ran for Congress.

Lodge lost. He and Roosevelt both considered their political futures ruined.

Both were mistaken, of course. Many of the Mugwumps eventually returned to the GOP, which thereafter always had – has had – a reform wing. Cleveland won, but a dozen years later he and many establishment Democrats boycotted the agrarian radical Bryan. Blaine lost the 1884 election, but by a whisker.

The final detail of the final moments of that crazy 1884 campaign might be relevant if not dispositive to troubled Republicans weathering Hurricane Donald this year: a moral, specifically a religious, aspect.

Just before election eve, Blaine attended a dinner of industrialists and monopolists at Delmonico’s in New York. One of the speakers, a nonentity minister, in his speech described the Democrats as the “party of Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion.” Rum was a smear on lowlife aspects of stereotyped Democrat voters; Rebellion was a reminder of the Democrats’ association with Secession.

Romanism, however, was a word that touched social and religious nerves. It was a direct reference to Catholicism, imputing a congenital association between Democrats and the Pope; and was not meant as a compliment. The consequent furor over the insult (which Blaine had ignored) energized New York City’s Irish immigrants. New York City went Democrat; New York State and its electoral votes narrowly went for Cleveland… enough to tip the national outcome away from the GOP.

The scenario is a different animal than whether to endorse a candidate you distrust or despise in 2016 – but it reminds us that religion is never far from the larger debate. Our civic consciences might still roil over whether to Trump, or not to Trump. Life has gone on in America despite, as Kipling wrote, “The tumult and the shouting dies.”

Myself, I greet with dubiety Trump’s assurances that he is familiar with the Bible, understands doctrine, and has a saving knowledge, as we say, of Jesus Christ. But we are not to judge: I question, however. “God judges the man; voters judge the candidate” is, this year, less of a maxim and feels like more of an excuse.

Many of us have the nagging feeling that things are different this time, that past is less than prologue. The Captains and the Kings may depart, yet we seem closer to our destiny, maybe an apocalypse.

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Real Clear Religion, on whose site many readers have followed Monday Music Ministry, has been to many people an indispensible part of their daily fare. It is going through changes right now after almost seven years.

For those who have followed us on RCR, please be sure to continue receiving our weekly essays by Subscribing to Monday Morning Music Ministry. (See link under “Pages” at right.)

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Click: I Am a Pilgrim

4-4-16

My cousin Irene called this week to tell me that her brother Paul died. He had been a longtime victim of Alzheimer’s – technically, frontal-lobe dementia. My late wife showed signs of Lewy-Body Syndrome, another relative of Alzheimer’s. Do you ever get the feeling that we humans are not getting healthier, but merely sustaining more specialized ailments? Anyway, a sad phone call turned less sad – we were able to summon some chuckles as we shared memories. Memories are the best ointments in such circumstances.

This last week I reached out to two friends who are beset by cancer. Old friends from the cartooning world, one of whom I met when I was 13 and encouraged me to follow that profession. He is, happily, in part to blame, because I did. We kept in touch through the years; became near-neighbors; and worked on many projects together. He is now in home-hospice care. Our call went longer than his son thought it would – filled with silly memories, old friends, doing voices, finding humor in his grim prognosis. Laughter is the best ointment in such situations.

My other cartooning friend is battling a rare form of cancer that has taken him to several states for opinions. If you wonder whether his “journey” is fodder for ironic observations, even rim-shot lines, you would be correct; and he continues to write gags and a weekly newspaper column. When I was out East a few months ago, we talked about old friends and new revelations – he always has been a philosopher masquerading as a cartoonist – and his dear wife was surprised at his energy that afternoon. No surprise, really: friendships are the best ointments in such situations.

This all might seem gloomy to some, but that’s only because it IS gloomy. But only partly. Theodore Roosevelt once said, “Both life and death are parts of the same Great Adventure. … Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die; and none are fit to die who have shrunk from the joy of life…” When face-to-face with the illness or death of a loved one or a good friend, it occurs to us how ultimately selfish or sadness and sorrow actually is.

WE grieve; WE miss the person; WE have to face the empty spaces. Of course, that is a skewed definition of selfishness, but we should also be aware of the peace that a sick person yearns for. Of the “life well lived” that should be celebrated. Of the home in Heaven that – if we are Christians – we should rejoice has been prepared.

It was only a couple of decades ago that I became aware, or rather participated in, “home-going” services. In the Black church, in Pentecostal churches, funerals are transformed to celebrations. Joyous laughter, happy songs, encouraging sermons. Our loved ones, our friends, are in Heaven; how can we be sad? This is genuine, and it is proper. Appropriate for the situation, and uplifting for those who remain.

All this is the case, and sweet if we may experience it as something new, only if we are in fact Christians. Otherwise these are empty charades. After all, if Christ had not conquered death Himself, our faith is in vain; there is no Heaven. Many church-goers are not comfortable with “sharing Jesus.” I understand this; I identify with this. But if you had a cure for the cancer or dementia we loathe so, would you not share THAT with those who are afflicted? Why in hell do we go through the motions of being “Christians” if we are so hesitant and ashamed to share Jesus? Excuse me for being literal.

These thoughts have come to me by a coincidence of circumstances this week, and ironic as they closely follow Easter.

But I am grateful to have my heart turned to the Gospel, and to the Resurrection, in a new way. I often have wondered about those 40 days between the Resurrection and the Ascension. We don’t know much about things Jesus did. The Bible says He taught and healed, but with few specifics. Contemporary historians recorded sightings and appearances, but no quotations. The last words of the last Gospel (John 21:25) tells us, “Jesus also did many other things. If they were all written down, I suppose the whole world could not contain the books that would be written.” But we don’t know them all.

I am curious, but not disappointed. At that point, it was the FACT of Jesus, and the truth of the Resurrection, that were important. He had done His teaching. The people had sought Him out. Now it was His time to seek people.

As busy as He must have been those 40 days, I have a picture in my mind of Jesus alone, also, maybe when darkness fell, down lonely paths, maybe through storms and cold silences, walking the dark hills, not responding to the curious crowds, but seeking out the troubled and the hurting individuals. The sick of body and mind. Those who did not yet know Him.

This is a plausible picture, because Jesus still does this today.

He walks the dark hills, looking for us – piercing the gloom with a joyful hope that may be ours. And it is especially the case, I believe, if you are one of those people who is skeptical, or has “heard enough,” or cannot crack the shell of hurt or pain or resentment or rebellion or fear, or all the other hindrances that prevent us from experiencing the love of Christ. He is closer than a shadow, no matter what you think, or what you might prefer to believe.

He shared of Himself. We should share Him with others. With friends, loved ones, strangers. Jesus Christ died for all of us… but He also died for EACH of us.

“God walks the dark hills, To guide our footsteps. He walks everywhere, By night and by day. He walks in the silence, On down the highway; God walks the dark hills, To show us the way.”

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A favorite of gospel music is the haunting “God Walks the Dark Hills,” embodying mystery in its origin. It was written by a lady named Audra Czarnikow, who lived in Liberty, OK. Little is known about her; she apparently wrote no other hymns or songs. Small groups sang her song, and others recorded it; eventually it became a favorite of many people. Here it is sung by the appropriately haunting voice of Iris DeMent; image display by the incomparable beanscot channel.

Click: God Walks the Dark Hills

2-22-16

Some of the most pleasant travel experiences of my life have been atop the ancient wall surrounding the small city of Lucca in Tuscany. I have stayed in the Medieval town a number of times in my life, perhaps a dozen Autumns. High, thick walls once surrounded many Italian city-states. Built for safety, as boundaries, some even encasing apartments; today many are gone or survive as random portions, as relics of previous times and expired functions. But Lucca has Italy’s only complete and intact ancient wall.

On its top, it is wide enough for several lanes of traffic, but it strictly is for pedestrians, who encounter cobblestones and bricks, with many old trees and inviting benches. A favored restaurant is built into the wall at one of its road-portals – La Mura (“The Wall”). On many Autumnal mornings I betake myself to the wall’s long, circumferential boulevard – “Passegiata della Mura” – and jog. More often, stroll. Invariably, see the mists rise from plowed fields as the morning sun kisses them; listen to the city of red-tiled roofs come to life; smell the stoking fireplaces of wood and chestnut shells.

Such thoughts came back to me recently with the latest chapter of the controversy over a possible wall to be built, or not, along America’s southern border. On the endless carousel of debaters, the surprise figure on the horse this week was none other than Pope Francis.

He issued a version of President Reagan’s eloquent defiance of Communism in Berlin (however, before a structure scarcely begun): “Mr Trump, tear down that wall!”

While we are paraphrasing, I will borrow from Gertrude Stein and suggest that “a wall is a wall is wall.” And just as Theodore Roosevelt said that a vote is just like a rifle – that its usefulness depends on the character of the user – we surely can say that walls, throughout history, are functional, of course, but are totally neutral apart from their architectural purpose… which can be transformed anyway, as Lucca’s wall has been.

So, Lucca’s wall, once a standard architectural defense, then a symbol of independence in more political and trade-oriented times, is now a tourist attraction. The Great Wall of China, a Wonder of the Old World and a rare man-made structure that can be seen from outer space, likewise now attracts more photographers than invaders. On the other hand, the Berlin Wall, mentioned above, was a literal city-wide outdoor prison wall, trapping a population in Communist East Berlin. And seldom spoken about in America is Israel’s crude, and effective, cement curtain that cuts through the West Bank.

American objections to porous borders and uncountable illegals incited a papal protest that presumably was metaphorical (walls of separation in our hearts vs. bridges of understanding); presumably. The Pope did not mention Donald Trump by name, but said that “any man” who would propose such walls “is not a Christian.”

Many Christians and conservatives rushed to document the 50-foot high walls that surround the Vatican, which is, though small, a city-state, an independent country. Surrounded by a wall, and with some of the toughest citizenship requirements in the world. And the same folks scurried to Bible concordances and found examples of God sanctioning, even commanding, construction of walls.

Throughout the Bible: walls for defense; walls as parts of temples; walls to interrupt migrations and preserve spaces. Not much different from the sweep of history’s other religions, societies, cultures. So this sudden turn in the immigration debate directs us to far more logical place… and a far more pertinent question than Francis asked.

The Pope declared that people who “build walls and not bridges” are not Christians. No one, least of all Francis, is talking about the essential issue, the real offense. The Jesuit pope should understand, and emphasize, that what makes someone a Christian is belief in Jesus Christ as the Son of God. Since he addressed the theological aspect.

What makes someone “not a Christian” is rejection of Christ’s incarnation, substitutionary death, Resurrection, and Ascension. NOT somebody’s opinions on immigration laws, walls on the US border (or the Vatican’s), or other political issues.

With all due respect, one can be a Christian and have bad ideas, Francis. I believe it is your dogma that having “good” (?) ideas, doing good deeds, yet not professing Christ is yet a pathway to salvation, according to recent press reports. But it is not the Bible’s teaching. The Church, by such statements, is opening itself up to charges of asserting the Works Doctrine. Is approval of a California border fence enough to qualify to “be a Christian”?

Aside from, excuse me, anti- or extra-biblical theology, there are practical questions. If the Pope is concerned about conditions in Mexico, so horrible that millions flee northward in desperation, would not the better act as a Church be to help alleviate poverty and misery in Mexico? There are few Catholic countries with more extreme anti-clerical histories, aside from the excesses of the French Revolution. Insurgents blamed centuries of Church corruption and oppression.

Make things right WITHIN Mexico! So that people will want to stay in places where they were born… and the Church can fulfill its mission… and the US not be threatened and burdened. I have also been to the Vatican many times; the immense wall is about the ONLY thing there that is not opulent, extravagant, even gaudy. There are funds available, I am sure, in the Vatican Bank.

Back, however, to the main point, of pivotal importance: “The man who says such a thing is not a Christian.”

The man who said THAT clearly places his politically correct definition of good deeds ahead of what Jesus and the Disciples and the Holy Bible say about the requirements for salvation. Did the Pope mean, “That’s not how Jesus would act”? or even “That man is a bad Christian”? Very different matters. The Pope usually is aware of his words even when not Ex Cathedra or Infallible. The border towns that suffer violations, the victims of financial burdens and crimes in America – I used to live in San Diego; ask me about them – are they to be defined as “not Christians” when they resist invasions of their neighborhoods and homes?

This Pope did not recognize the metaphorical wall built around the island of Cuba when he hugged its leaders and ignored the Christians in Cuban jails. Or when he was on US soil and was quieter about the issue of the proposed border fence. And he somehow missed the opportunity to scold political leaders he met here about the ongoing horror of abortions, the killing of babies. Mother Teresa had done so… right to the faces of Clinton and Gore, when they were in office and they met her.

Or was Mother Teresa “not a Christian”?

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Click: A Mighty Fortress Is Our God

2-15-16

This crazy political season is notable for several things. First… its craziness. Second, its politics; that is, we have a virtual saturation of political arguments, political bitterness, political warfare. Like never before.

I am a political junkie. Politics is my second-favorite spectator sport after baseball; and, as a sometime cartoonist and columnist, politics is also among my favorite team sports.

Unfortunately, in America today, politics virtually has become a contact sport too; a blood sport.

I was reminded of that fact this week when I listened to two people arguing over issues, using the most abusive and foul language, personal attacks and insults, dirty words and exaggerated claims. And that was just two grandmothers at a local McDonald’s. OK, not really, but nearly the case across the fruity plain.

The problem is that politics permeates every aspect of our lives these days. You cannot think of an issue that has not been politicized, from children’s playground activities to workplace conversations, the size of soda containers to opinions on movie awards. Notice I do not address partisanship – I do not mean Democrat vs Republicans; nor even liberals vs conservatives.

The Political Tendency is a virus that is, rather, an aspect of our busy-body culture, basically a totalitarian impulse. We have been persuaded that it is our duty to persuade. Or cudgel. People must agree with us. Every idea is merely the first half of a debate… that must be won. People who disagree with you are not only wrong or even deluded, but morally reprehensible.

When I maintain that this imperative has infected all of society, I cannot exclude religion. It is within our faith life, as a nation, in fact, where this new ethos runs most rampant. It doesn’t merely run; it sprints; gallops.

One of the distillates of this cultural fermentation is being served up in the current presidential campaign. I have come to the point of gagging every time I hear the term “Evangelical” in the news, in speeches, in analyses.

Are you an Evangelical? There is no denomination simply called Evangelical (in Germany the Lutheran Church, though, is formally called Evangelische) although it survives in a couple adjectives. The word and its root is associated with evangelizing… and only a small percentage of “Evangelical” voters are those who approach strangers or ring neighbors’ doorbells to convert people to belief in Christ.

No, the word “evangelical,” to paraphrase Peter (who referred to love), covers a multitude of sins. That is, under the umbrella can be found Fundamentalists and Pentecostals and Born-Again believers and Orthodox and traditionalists. Uneasy allies like Primitives and Catholics, meeting in anti-abortion battles. Socially conservative Seekers and socially liberal Emergents. Old-school worshipers and Post-Modern innovators. Black, White, Hispanic. Mennonites, Quakers, and the Urban Churches.

We have differences, but common interests. We might not be unified, necessarily, but we are united on many, many issues. We all believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and our hearts bleed for His Kingdom. And, by the way, also among us, according to surveys about attitudes among people of faith, are conservative and Orthodox Jews; Mormons and other traditions; and I am sure certain conservative Muslims who also care about patriotism and safety, morality and security.

Memo, then, to politicians and the media: stop lumping us all as “Evangelicals” and taking us for granted until election day. You display your ignorance, and your contempt. Let me explain it this way – not exactly a verse from scripture, but you will get the gist: Shut up. Stop pretending that you know us (or are one of us!)… learn who we are… share our concerns, or don’t; but get to know us.

This political junkie, offered the distilled spirits from the political still this year, is ready to take the pledge. To “swear off.”

Ever since I was a child in chronological terms, I have heard people claim they were resigned to voting for the “lesser of two evils.” I have said so myself, scarcely acknowledging that the lesser of two evils is still, by definition, evil. I used to say, “I don’t vote for any of the politicians; it only encouragers them.”

This year, for me, there are more candidates than usual who I can tolerate, or even admire. But the campaigns, in both parties, have devolved to infantile food fights. Insults. Petty “gotchas.” Wild claims. Personality clashes. Name-calling. “Did too / did not” spitting matches. And not, this time, old birds in McDonald’s, or even my young grandchildren. But, among them, leaders of the greatest country on earth, ready to sit for portraits to be displayed next to Washington, Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt.

It is demoralizing. The insults really are suffered by us, the voters. I think I will cast my vote for the first candidate who says, “I don’t care what you say about me. I am going to talk about what I propose to do as president.” Even if that is somehow uttered by a candidate’s dog.

But as a Christian, especially, I am sick and tired of being sick and tired of candidates who talk down to me… who take my vote for granted… who stereotype us… who pander to our supposed views, which are precious and basic and essential; views that are not for sale at any price.

Politicians and candidates should learn-and-earn. If they thirst for our votes, let us require them to recognize our standards and values, not our clichéd labels. We are patriotic citizens of faith who care about our nation, its heritage, and our common future. We have shadows of difference, as significant as, yes, the things that unite us as a bloc. Learn what they are! It is not difficult. Then talk to us.

Stop insulting each other; stop insulting us; and, for once in your careers, all of you… remember us between elections.

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Click: How Firm a Foundation

2-8-16

In a season, during this time, in American history, when traditions are being abandoned; myriads of concepts and lifestyles are “new normals”; and basic assumptions are no longer basic nor widely assumed… we had an American president, this week, who spoke at a mosque associated with the murderous Muslim Brotherhood. And the next day he argued before the annual National Prayer Breakfast about the “fundamental contributions” Islam has made to American society.

Obama did not mean current contributions, such as his usual focus on voting blocks, or even the negative effect of violence, terrorism, or such fears: those contributions. No, he maintained that Islam has been here from the start. Typically, few lovers of Christianity – or of history, or of common sense – spoke up in protest, there or afterwards in print or speeches. More astonishing, to me, than his bizarre claims.

It was a peculiar re-spinning of history, as if the Declaration of Independence were drafted by Abu-Ben Franklin, or the Constitution advocated by Al-Exandir Hamilton, or that presidents swore upon the Qu’uran or fought the Civil War to uphold Mohammed-sanctioned slavery.

His speech (not his first such with distortions of history and slights against Christianity) was more like a revision of the classic collection of fairy tales, “The Arabian Nights Entertainment,” rich in lore and imagination. His speech could embellish that book’s alternate title: “A Thousand and Two Nights.” Aladdin, Sinbad, Scheherazade, Ali Baba and The Forty Thieves and… Barack Hussein.

On this Presidents Day, in this month when we ought to discern the actual birthdays of two of America’s great sons, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, I would like to leave the hot burning desert of our national spiritual wandering, and return to the oasis of America’s Golden Age. Whether we can reestablish ourselves in that cultural oasis, or reclaim our unique birthright… or whether our moment as a blessed society in history’s grand sweep was, to continue the nomadic metaphor, ultimately a mere mirage.

Obama’s greatest display of ignorance, or cultural subversion, has been when he has decried claims of “American Exceptionalism,” as if people think they are special by virtue of their pulses or ZIP codes. American Exceptionalism does not refer to people; it refers to the American experiment of biblical foundations, systems of laws, recognitions of rights, devotion to liberty, a brilliant Constitution, and balance of rights and responsibilities. As a result of these unique factors… we have been blessed with gifted leaders; we have succeeded in correcting inevitable flaws; we have been generous-minded in uncountable ways; we have forged a nation out of many peoples. We have been blessed because we bless.

If we (loosely) turn an Arabic word and Islamic concept to English and the American context, the United States never was tempted to be a Caliphate because its foundation was as a democratic republic; citizenship was borne and maintained by loyalty, initiative, and merit; and its “Caliph” was the God of the Bible. We have stumbled, in my opinion, by the seduction of Empire – the deadly prescription of all of history’s great civilizations – but can redeem ourselves of that, and further distance ourselves from a Caliphate’s model.

Returning here to the presidents we should remember specially this month, I recall first something Lincoln said to a group of visiting ministers who advocated for firmer military measures – in effect that we should not be as concerned that “God is on our side,” as, always, that we be on God’s side.

This, from a supposed skeptic and one who rejected the Bible. Nothing is further from the Truth. Progressively and almost constantly during the last 15 months of his life, Abraham Lincoln read the Bible, quoted scripture, and appealed to God as much as, say, any preacher might have. His speeches and letters often were virtual sermons.

We recall Washington’s words:

“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports… And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

Years after Lincoln’s death, his old friend from Kentucky days, Joshua Speed, recalled: “As I entered the room, near night, he was sitting near a window intently reading his Bible. Approaching him, I said: ‘I am glad to see you so profitably engaged.’ ‘Yes,’ said he, “I am profitably engaged.’ ‘Well,’ said I, ‘if you have recovered from your skepticism, I am sorry to say that I have not.’ Looking me earnestly in the face and placing his hand on my shoulder, he said: ‘You are wrong, Speed. Take all of this Book upon reason that you can, and the balance on faith, and you will live and die a happier and better man.’”

To honor these amazing Americans – whose lives and service we must consider as gifts from God, appearing at the right time, in the right places, and doing the right things – I will quote another great American, Theodore Roosevelt:

“As a people, we are indeed beyond measure fortunate in the characters of the two greatest of our public men, Washington and Lincoln. Widely though they differed in externals, the Virginia landed gentleman and the Kentucky backwoodsman, they were alike in essentials; they were alike in the great qualities which made each able to render service to his nation and to all mankind such as no other man of his generation could or did render.

“Widely though the problems of to-day differ from the problems set for solution to Washington when he founded this nation, to Lincoln when he saved it and freed the slave, yet the qualities they showed in meeting these problems are exactly the same as those we should show in doing our work to-day.”

“There have been other men as great and other men as good; but in all the history of mankind there are no other two great men as good as these, no other two good men as great.”

Amen.

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Click: When I Get To the End Of the Way

10-19-15

Later this month we will observe the 157th anniversary of Theodore Roosevelt’s birth. One of the greatest presidents of the United States; the “Most Interesting American”; and, often forgotten, one of the most devout and observant Christians to have served as Chief Executive.

TR frequently quoted Bible verses (and titled two of his approximately 50 books from Biblical passages); he volunteered to teach Sunday School while a student at Harvard; he often delivered impromptu sermons when requested at churches he visited (and seldom missed Sunday worship throughout his life, whether in the wild west or in the White House); and, despite higher-profile and more lucrative offers after he retired from the presidency, he became Contributing Editor of The Outlook, a modest weekly Christian opinion journal.

His faith, of course, was “manly,” in the parlance of an earlier age – bold, unapologetic, encouraging. He once said, in an address to the newly formed Gideon Band: “The Christianity that counts is the kind that is carried into a man’s life. The man who does ordinary work well is working for the Lord. I do not like to see a slack man…. If you do not find in a man any outward manifestations of the Spirit, I am inclined to doubt if it ever has been in him. I like to see fruits…”

In the same manner he also spoke at a church dedication: “In business and in work, if you let Christianity stop as you go out of the church door, there is little righteousness in you. You must behave to your fellowmen as you would have them behave to you. You must have pride in your work if you would succeed. A man should get justice for himself, but he should also do justice to others. Help a man to help himself, but do not expend all your efforts in helping a man who will not help himself.”

Theodore Roosevelt’s favorite Bible verse was Micah 6:8 – “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?”

Imagine this today, but in 1917 Roosevelt wrote an article for the Ladies’ Home Journal magazine, and the subject was “10 Reasons Men Should Go To Church.” Imagine a president of our time writing for magazines as diverse as Ladies’ Home Journal, The Outlook (and National Geographic and the children’s magazine St Nicholas and The American Historical Review and Cosmopolitan and The New York Times and American Museum Journal and…). And imagine a president today exclaiming Christian faith. Frequently. But to TR every venue was a pulpit, and a bully one at that.

Words for then, words for now: here is his article on Why men should attend church.

In the actual world, a churchless community, a community where men have abandoned and scoffed at or ignored their religious needs, is a community on the rapid downgrade.

Church work and church attendance mean the cultivation of the habit of feeling some responsibility for others and the sense of braced moral strength, which prevents a relaxation of one’s own moral fiber.

There are enough holidays for most of us that can quite properly be devoted to pure holiday making. Sundays differ from other holidays, among other ways, in the fact that there are 52 of them every year. On Sunday, go to church.

Yes, I know all the excuses. I know that one can worship the Creator and dedicate oneself to good living in a grove of trees, or by a running brook, or in one’s own house, just as well as in church. But I also know as a matter of cold fact the average man does not thus worship or thus dedicate himself. If he strays from church, he does not spend his time in good works or lofty meditation. He looks over the colored supplement of the newspaper.

He may not hear a good sermon at church. But unless he is very unfortunate, he will hear a sermon by a good man who, with his good wife, is engaged all the week long in a series of wearing, humdrum, and important tasks for making hard lives a little easier.

He will listen to and take part in reading some beautiful passages from the Bible. And if he is not familiar with the Bible, he has suffered a loss.

He will probably take part in singing some good hymns.

He will meet and nod to, or speak to, good quiet neighbors. He will come away feeling a little more charitably toward all the world, even toward those excessively foolish young men who regard churchgoing as rather a soft performance.

I advocate a man’s joining in church works for the sake of showing his faith by his works.

The man who does not in some way, active or not, connect himself with some active, working church misses many opportunities for helping his neighbors, and therefore, incidentally, for helping himself.

Think about Theodore Roosevelt on October 27… and then think about the things one of our greats president thought about!

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Judy Collins and the Boy’s Choir of Harlem, at the U S Capitol:

Click: Amazing Grace

10-4-15

Faith has been in the news recently. More precisely, news about faith has confronted us, almost daily, of late.

The Pope visited America, and his words were examined, feared, or cheered. He put some current issues in a religious context. He secretly met with a Baptist woman from Kentucky who went to jail rather than certify, as a municipal clerk, marriage licenses for homosexuals; he reportedly encouraged civil disobedience like hers.

The scandal and controversy about selling harvested body parts of aborted babies has, of course, a religious cast, whether the faith in question is biblical or secular-humanist; its battles are fought, however, with religious fervor.

Christian expression, from signs and symbols to prayers and oaths, are being attacked by some citizens and suppressed by some governmental and military agencies.

Very recently there was another school shooting, at an Oregon college, where the murderer asked the victims’ faiths. Those who answered “Christian” he shot in their heads; others were shot in their legs. Echoes of Columbine, and other violent attacks. President Obama, almost immediately, addressed the nation and deplored the guns.

In a familiar pattern, Obama and the media not-so-subtly assign mass shootings and gun violence into one of two categories. If white people commit the crimes, they are deranged radical Christians whose guilt is shared only by an evil society obsessed by weaponry. If the shooters are black or Muslims, they are misunderstood victims of a bigoted society who justifiably retaliate in a form of workplace violence. So goes the analyses and their logical extensions.

This all might look like random bits, issues of war and terrorism and Constitutional rights and women’s rights and free speech and random violence or mental-health… but they are all, as I said above, religious matters at their core. Spiritual crises; spiritual warfare; spiritual solutions that are lacking. In fact I think the problems are deeper than news headlines or society’s fads: I think the many problems facing our neighborhoods and nation and the world are fundamental, not momentary, troubles.

History might be at a turning point. Our Western heritage is on the verge of extinction.

I might be one lonely essayist making these observations, and you might agree or disagree. But I invite you to read the words of someone who might surprise you, because they scarcely have been reported in the press. So I am happy to quote some presidential passages here:

“Many Euro-Atlantic countries have moved away from their roots, including Christian values… Policies are being pursued that place on the same level a multi-child family and a same-sex partnership, a faith in God and a belief in Satan.”

“I did as [my mother] said and then put the cross around my neck. I have never taken it off since.”

“First and foremost we should be governed by common sense. But common sense should be based on moral principles first. And it is not possible today to have morality separated from religious values.”

“The… Church plays an enormous formative role in preserving our rich historical and cultural heritage and in reviving eternal moral values. It works tirelessly to bring unity, to strengthen family ties, and to educate the younger generation in the spirit of patriotism.”

Quiz time is over. Not Washington nor Adams. Not Lincoln nor Theodore Roosevelt. (Not, either – need we say? – Barack Obama) These are quotations from speeches by President Vladimir Putin of Russia.

Russia has reinstated the churches that were outlawed by the Soviets; and encourages religious expression. Putin has been baptized, has testified to faith in Christ, and attends church regularly. Russia’s foreign policy has been victim of radical Islam, and has pursued policies against it at home, in provinces, and abroad.

In Syria, Russia recognizes that ISIS is at heart an anti-Christian movement. President Assad, for all his sins, is of the Alawite minority, as are Syrian Christians; and Christians generally are protected in Syria – and were similarly protected by Saddam Hussein in Iraq. But after the US invasion and withdrawal, Christians have been slaughtered wholesale or driven from their ancient towns – now virtually extinct as a people in Iraq after 2000 years.

Russian law now bans homosexual “propaganda,” abortion advertising, abortions after 12 weeks, and has criminalized the “insulting” of people’s religious sensibilities – a refreshing twist of the American fetish with “hate crimes.” Rev. Franklin Graham has applauded these priorities. President Putin has declared Russia a “Christian country,” not that other religions are outlawed (he recently attended a mosque dedication) but respecting his nation’s heritage and traditions. As once was the case in Christian America.

I, and many friends, are in the odd position of wanting automatically to defend our flag and our country that stands, today, for hedonism, pornography, homosexuality, feminism, same-sex marriage, euthanasia, assisted suicide, sale of baby body parts, Hollywood “values,” easy divorce, easy abortions, easy immigration, easy drugs… And we are in the odd position of seeing an old foe, Russia, suddenly championing Christian values, calling Islamic expansionist radicalism what it is, and acting where the weak-kneed (or treasonous) American leaders will not.

The Administration favors killing babies, but not ISIS murderers, and Islamic terrorists.

Our government forces the entry of illegals across porous borders and from terror states, but initiates lawsuits against nuns who resist being forced to support abortions, and husband-and-wife bakers who decline to decorate cakes for homosexuals.

This week the presidential candidate Dr Ben Carson widely was criticized for saying that he would not vote for a Muslim for president. Lost in the din were details about those Mohammedans who elevate Sharia law above the Constitution; and the fact that Dr Carson does not advocate the banning of Islam or the deportation of Muslims. He would not vote for one, absent the conditions he stated. We still have freedom of conscience and freedom of action in America. Maybe not for long.

Secularists have almost convinced America that Abraham Lincoln was an atheist, but he once said: “I do not think I could myself be brought to support a man for office whom I knew to be an open enemy of, and scoffer at, religion.”

In the year of our Lord 2015, America is making life hell for Christians at home, and acquiescing in Christian persecution abroad. While worship and freedom of thought are still legal, before our liberties slip away, while all these religious and pseudo-religious battles rage, let us recall another admonition of Lincoln. Let us not worry so much whether God is on our side… but whether we are on God’s side.

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Click: The Old Country Church

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

8-3-15

Hard Times. A relative term. Not only within our own situations, but compared to others… America, compared to other nations… our days, compared to the past. Truly, materially at least, we are blessed.

I have been sad, but not in sorrow. I have been in debt, but never destitute. I have had regrets, but never grief. How many of us can share such relatively comfortable testimony? In my case, to whatever extent I rightly judge my “insulation,” it is largely due to my standing as a Christian – receiving joy that passes understanding. But we also have to credit modern life, in America, with its technology, medicine, and general prosperity. Right?

Hard Times happen in America, but somehow many of the crises have the lengths of TV mini-series, and when not, the public grows impatient for the next one. Our culture has a sound-bite mentality. We used to face our challenges; but now we are distracted with the modern equivalents of the Romans’ “bread and circuses” — pop entertainment, push-button gratification. The Bible paints a picture of awful distress in earth in the End Times, and we are not prepared for that.

In many ways this indicates that we are not advancing as a culture. I’m not sure we are “going backwards,” either, because that might actually be beneficial. Giuseppi Verdi (yes, the composer otherwise known as Joe Green) once said, Torniamo all’antico: Sara un progresso — “We turn to the past in order to move forward.”

I got thinking of Hard Times in America when I pulled an elegant old volume off my bookshelf. Folk Songs was published in 1860, before the Civil War. This book is leather-bound, all edges gilt, pages as supple as when it was printed, a joy to hold. The “folk songs” of its title refers not to early-day coffee houses, but to poems and songs of the people, in contradistinction to epic verse or heroic sagas; the way the German word Volk refers to the shared-group spirit of the masses.

Many of the titles are charming: “The Age of Wisdom,” “My Child,” “Baby’s Shoes,” “The Flower of Beauty,” “The First Snow-Fall”… However, such sweet titles mask preoccupations with children dying in snow drifts, lovers deserting, husbands lost at sea, fatal illness, mourning for decades, unfaithful friends. No need to guess the themes other titles from the index:”Tommy’s Dead,” “The Murdered Traveler,” and “Ode To a Dead Body.”

It reminded me that people 150 years ago were not gloomy pessimists: they were not. But Hard Times were a part of life, and therefore part of poetry and song. On the frontier, life could be snuffed out in a moment. In the imminent Civil War, roughly every third household was affected by death, maiming, split families, or hideous disruption; yet anti-war movements never gained traction; life went on. A young Abraham Lincoln had almost lost his mind over an unhappy love affair; his wife likely did lose her mind when her favorite son died in the White House. Theodore Roosevelt’s young wife (in childbirth) and mother (of salmonella) died on the same day in the same house. Hard Times, I’d say.

Also before the Civil War, a composer named Stephen Foster wrote a song called Hard Times. He is barely recalled today, sometimes as a caricature, but he might be America’s greatest composer. He wrote My Old Kentucky Home; I Dream of Jeannie With the Light Brown Hair; Old Black Joe; Carry Me Back to Ol’ Virginia; Way Down Upon the Swanee River / Old Folks At Home; Oh, Susanna; Camptown Races; Beautiful Dreamer… and Hard Times, Come Again No More. This last song has been resurrected lately to a certain repute, or at least utility. In some circles it has become an anthem for charities and lamentation of poverty. Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, even the Squirrel Nut Zippers, have sung it. It has taken on the air of a secular anthem. But in fact, although Stephen Foster did not embed a Gospel message in the lyrics, he had written many hymns in his life. It is clear that the “cabin,” and its door, in the song are metaphors, endowing a spiritual subtext to the song.

If we can turn back our minds to the world of 150 years ago — it is clear that the Hard Times he wrote of were the world’s trials, to be relieved in Heaven. We have a haunting melody, but a clear truth: Hard Times will be endured and become things of the past. We must keep them in perspective. Trust in Him. God provides a joyful relief from life’s disappointments when they come. By and by, they will “come no more.”

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Here is a memorable video to evoke the reality of life’s Hard Times, the promise heaven holds, and the beauty of Stephen Foster’s music to you. The seven singers are from the amazing project of a few years ago, “The Transatlantic Sessions” — singers and musicians from America (US and Canada), Ireland, and Scotland singing old and new “folkish” songs in a living-room setting.

(By the way, they are, left to right, Rod Paterson, Scotland; Karen Matheson, Scotland — hear her incredible soprano harmony on the left channel; Mary Black, Ireland; Emmylou Harris, US; Rufus Wainwright, his mother Kate McGarrigle, and her sister Anna McGarrigle on the button accordian, all Canadians. The other musicians are fiddler Jay Ungar — he wrote the haunting “Ashokan’s Farewell” tune of the PBS “Civil War” series — and his wife Molly Mason on the bass; and the project’s shepherds Shetland fiddler Aly Bain, and American dobro player Jerry Douglas.)

The lyrics are printed out under the link:

Click: Hard Times Come Again No More

Let us pause in life’s pleasures and count its many tears,
While we all sup sorrow with the poor;
There’s a song that will linger forever in our ears;
Oh hard times, come again no more.

Chorus:
‘Tis the song, the sigh, of the weary,
Hard Times, hard times, come again no more
Many days you have lingered around my cabin door;
Oh hard times, come again no more.

While we seek mirth and beauty and music light and gay,
There are frail forms fainting at the door;
Though their voices are silent, their pleading looks will say
Oh hard times, come again no more.

There’s a pale drooping maiden who toils her life away,
With a worn heart whose better days are o’er:
Though her voice would be merry, ’tis sighing all the day,
Oh hard times, come again no more.

5-25-15
(Memorial Day)

They are special creatures. And rare. They do jobs not everyone understands, but they do understand. They are willing, and often do, “pay with their bodies for their souls’ desire,” as Theodore Roosevelt, whose son Quentin was killed in an aerial dogfight over German lines, said of fallen servicemen.

The finest tribute we can pay
Unto our hero dead today,
Is not a rose wreath, white and red,
In memory of the blood they shed;
It is to stand beside each mound,
Each couch of consecrated ground,
And pledge ourselves as warriors true
Unto the work they died to do.

— Edgar Guest

Throughout history there have been many military forces stocked of conscripts, sometimes unwilling, even ignorant of their “cause.” But often – and especially in this era of the volunteer military – service people take their oaths, don their uniforms, and support their missions. Victory is their goal, but they all know that death is an option. Other options include the certainty of family separation and changed civilian lives if and when they return; and, increasingly these days, cruel injuries and challenging disabilities.

But they volunteer, these special creatures. Sacrifice and Service are what their loves become. Gen. George S Patton is supposed to have said: “War is not dying for your country. It’s making the other bastard die for his country.” True as far as it goes, even a brilliant distinction; and a great motivational aphorism on a battle’s eve. But discordant on Memorial Day.

Heroes of old! I humbly lay
     The laurel on your graves again;
Whatever men have done, men may,—
     The deeds you wrought are not in vain!

— Austin Dobson

We don’t have to agree with the “cause” of a war or the decision to put a nation’s young men and women into battle in order to admire the fallen. I dissent from many adventures of recent years – or at least their strategies and tactics – but I am in awe of those who serve, sacrifice, sustain wounds, and die. They do not hate, for the most part, as soldiers and sailors and marines and airmen have been taught throughout history. Rather they love.

The motivations of those dead military souls whose we honor this weekend was more love of country than hatred of enemy. Not killing a foreign leader but protecting their families. Not focusing on distant spoils but venerating their spouses, kids, friends, and lives back home. Not against “them” but for “us.” Paying with their souls for their hearts’ desires.

To slightly parse another popular phrase, as I did with Patton’s above, the military man or woman did not bring us our freedom. Only God can do that, and has done that; and such a proper perspective has nurtured America for centuries, in war and peace alike. I am tempted to say that the service members might preserve our freedoms… except for this New Day and Age where civilian politicians and judges erode liberty faster than our military can “defend” it.

All we have of freedom, all we use or know–
This our fathers bought for us long and long ago.

— Rudyard Kipling

It saddens me that in recent American wars – let me say, larger, in recent generations – disputes rage not only over grand causes. But behind the battle lines, at home, wars claiming thousands have been undeclared, by politicians afraid of committing themselves as members of the military do, to the ultimate point. The public is often disunited, and too frequently dismissive of military service per se. Orders are countermanded; war aims abandoned; world and national politics subsume military goals.

Military families are neglected and often live in poverty, on welfare benefits. Veterans organizations and private charities care in innovative and effective ways – but their every success is a blot of shame on a government that should thus care by itself for its valiant. Scandals in military hospitals and veteran’s administrations are many, and continue.

… It is this situation – an America far different than the nation’s previous soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines fought for – this situation for which our uniformed heroes are willing to die. And an America where their chaplains are being denied the freedom to share Christ. Where the values many of them cherished or desired to defend, have changed or been perverted by courts and bureaucrats.

Yet they die, and are willing to die.

Because you passed, and now are not,—
     Because, in some remoter day,
Your sacred dust from doubtful spot
     Was blown of ancient airs away,—
     Because you perished,—must men say
Your deeds were naught, and so profane
     Your lives with that cold burden ? Nay,
The deeds you wrought are not in vain!

— Austin Dobson

Special creatures, these fallen heroes. Let us honor them in our minds and hearts, in ceremonies public and private. A flower, a flag, a prayer. Prayers of thanksgiving for such as these – in all humankind, special men and women admirable for their amazing devotion and sacrifices – and prayers that their kind may not perish from amongst us.

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Music vid: I had the pleasure once to meet the legendary singer/songwriter Bill Carlisle, in the course of writing one of my books on country music. He was part of a “brother act” with Cliff, and famous for leaping high on stage, guitar in hand, during one of his trademark novelty songs. I was not aware at the time that he was the writer of one of the great gospel songs, “Gone Home.” He was reluctant to perform it often because he was identified as a comic singer – so Flatt and Scruggs, GrandPa Jones, Ricky Skaggs, and others made it part of their repertoires. Another singer who revered the song, and sang it often, was Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead, who enjoyed bluegrass and gospel music. Here is his acoustic version – appropriate here because its lyrics have become identified with fallen soldiers, brave family members, and missing friends, on Memorial Day: those who have Gone Home.

Click: Gone Home

2-16-15

President’s Day, 2015. I’m not sure I could have written this a year ago; certainly five or 10 years ago I would have considered even my pessimistic and alarmist self straining credulity. The events of our time; the lack of leadership from the presidency; the transformed nature of our civic culture… remind me of my warning only months ago, now a reality. America looks for wishbones, when we should be finding backbones.

Never have the men who filled the presidential chair seemed more historical – that is, remote.

Regular readers will expect me to invoke Theodore Roosevelt, and I shall. Not a reflexive habit, but I think this year, more than most, he stands in starkest contrast to the current resident of the White House. Also, of TR’s many wise words that thunder down through the years to guide us, two topics he addressed resonate today.

In some ways Roosevelt was very private about his faith – odd for this most extroverted of men – but he nevertheless quoted scripture, referred to God, cited Bible verses, and lived the life of Christian faith as much, if not more, than any other president. When in college he organized Sunday School classes; when he was a young hunter in Maine he slipped out of his camp on early mornings to read his Bible (that spot is now a designated landmark, Bible Point); when he retired from the presidency he shunned lucrative offers from many quarters to serve as an editor of a weekly Christian opinion magazine; he called his most significant speech in the heat of the Bull Moose campaign “A Confession of Faith” (“We stand at Armageddon and battle for the Lord!”); he titled two of his books from Bible verses.

Even so, he was private about aspects of his faith. Yet to his diary he confided after the death of his father: “Nothing but my faith in the Lord Jesus Christ could have carried me through this.”

TR soft-pedaled theology, and stressed the personal and social benefits, of church attendance in an article for Ladies’ Home Journal. Here is my point: imagine an American president today writing in a high-circulation magazine, urging church attendance. These were his words:

There are enough holidays for most of us that can quite properly be devoted to pure holiday-making. Sundays differ from other holidays, among other ways, in the fact that there are 52 of them every year. On Sunday, go to church.

Yes, I know all the excuses. I know that one can worship the Creator and dedicate oneself to good living in a grove of trees, or by a running brook, or in one’s own house, just as well as in church. But I also know as a matter of cold fact the average man does not thus worship or thus dedicate himself. If he strays away from church, he does not spend his time in good works or lofty meditation. He looks over the colored supplement of the newspaper.

He might not hear a good sermon at church. But unless he is very unfortunate, he will hear a sermon by a good man who, with his good wife, is engaged all the week long in a series of wearing, humdrum, and important tasks for making hard lives a little easier.

He will listen to and take part in reading some beautiful passages from the Bible. And if he is not familiar with the Bible, he has suffered a loss.

He will probably take part in singing some good hymns.

He will meet and nod to, or speak to, good quiet neighbors. He will come away feeling a little more charitably toward all the world, even toward those excessively foolish young men who regard churchgoing as rather a soft performance.

I advocate a man’s joining in church works for the sake of showing his faith by his works.

Church work and church attendance mean the cultivation of the habit of feeling some responsibility for others and the sense of braced moral strength, which prevents a relaxation of one’s own moral fiber.

The man who does not in some way, active or not, connect himself with some active, working church misses many opportunities for helping his neighbors, and therefore, incidentally, for helping himself.

In the actual world, a churchless community, a community where men have abandoned and scoffed at or ignored their religious needs, is a community on the rapid downgrade.

“On Sunday, go to church.” Good advice for TR’s time, our time, all the time.

Another contemporary topic where Roosevelt’s words thunder through the years, grabbing our attention, are from his book – note again the title – “Fear God and Take Your Own Part” (1916):

“Christianity is not the creed of Asia and Africa at this moment solely because the seventh century Christians of Asia and Africa had trained themselves not to fight, whereas the Moslems were trained to fight. Christianity was saved in Europe solely because the peoples of Europe fought. If the peoples of Europe in the seventh and eighth centuries, and on up to and including the seventeenth century, had not possessed a military equality with, and gradually a growing superiority over, the Mohammedans who invaded Europe, Europe would at this moment be Mohammedan, and the Christian religion would be exterminated.

“Wherever the Mohammedans have had complete sway, wherever the Christians have been unable to resist them by the sword, Christianity has ultimately disappeared. From the hammer of Charles Martel to the sword of Jan Sobieski, Christianity owed its safety in Europe to the fact that it was able to show that it could and would fight as well as the Mohammedan aggressor.

“The civilization of Europe, American and Australia exists today at all only because of the victories of civilized man over the enemies of civilization… The Christians of Asia and Africa proved unable to wage successful war with the Moslem conquerors; and in consequence Christianity practically vanished from [those] two continents… During [a] thousand years, the Christians of Europe possessed the warlike power to do what the Christians of Asia and Africa had failed to do – that is, to beat back the Moslem invader.”

The lessons of Roosevelt’s history were hard; the truth often is. Today, evangelists have done what warriors did not: advance the gospel in Africa and Asia, bringing light to millions. But, of course, they sustain persecution, torture, and murder in their defense of Christian faith.

But on President’s Day 2015 we must come face to face with the possibility that Western Civilization – “Christendom” – has lost that pride of heritage and reverence for the traditions of our faith, for the first time in 1500 years. Are we to bear the shame, invite the obloquy, of all those previous brave and faithful generations?

Our precious communities and nations, claimed for the gospel and open to its free exercise, were sometimes established amidst strife, and sometimes were opened freely to believers. All, however, tell inspiring stories. Can this all be slipping away in our lifetimes, so quickly before our eyes? Where is our responsibility? Is this not the Land of Beulah?

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Click: Is Not This the Land of Beulah? / Beulah Land

1-5-15

Life has been likened to a game through the ages by saints and sages, by poets and even pastors. We are warned on one side against a game of “eat, drink, and be merry,” because one day we die. Or sometimes we properly are reminded that like some sports, life can be a very grim game indeed. Me? Sometimes I see life as a grand chessboard. Unfortunately I see myself a checker, not a chess piece. Gulp.

Today we think of our lives as vast jigsaw puzzles, not at all illogical.

See how the pieces fit: babyhood, youth, adolescence, nonage, adulthood, dotage. They usually fit together well, although some of us, putting this puzzle together, really have to search for the piece that depicts maturity. But into each life also come pieces that represent curiosity, hope, disappointment, joy, sadness, grief, happiness, greed, ambition, pride, modesty, temptation, sin, desires, charity, unforgiveness and forgiveness, envy, intellectuality, faith…

Have I left any pieces out? Surely. But I have not only described life’s jigsaw puzzles of me and you, but everyone who has, or has had, a pulse, on this earth. Those pieces, in my analogy, will be of different shapes, some of mine larger than yours; some of yours smaller than his or hers. We all, when complete, form different pictures.

And we know, don’t we, that even the kindly old lady down the street has had bouts with envy or pride. “There is not one amongst us in whom a devil does not dwell,” Theodore Roosevelt once wrote to the poet Edwin Arlington Robinson; and we note he metaphorically used a lower-case “d” in “devil.” He continued, “It is not being in the “dark house,” but having left it, that matters.”

In the same way as the kindly old lady we all know, or TR’s Everyman, there are awful folks and hardened criminals who have tender spots, and are capable of conversions. Think of Ebeneezer Scrooge; of St Paul who, as Saul, persecuted Christians; of John Newton, slave-trader who saw the light and write the words to “Amazing Grace”…

But I want to suggest that no life, no matter how long, or how many pieces make up the picture, is or complete without a piece I did not list above. Did you catch that? Can I give you a hint? – it is shaped like an “L.” Ah! There are a couple holes in the jigsaw puzzle of completed lives.

See the missing piece, shaped like an “L,” for Love.

We have all experienced love, even the most miserable amongst us. We have expressed it and shared it – given it away – some of us more than others. But it is a common and irresistible force. To humans it is mysterious because, as serene as it should be, it can also bring heartache and disappointment. It can be the basis of charity but also frustration of broken dreams.

There is a reason that 95 per cent of songs have love lyrics. Even “You Ain’t Nothin’ But a Hound Dog” is a love song, about dashed dreams. So are the melancholy lieder of Franz Schubert, and the many grief-toned piano sonatas of the perpetually lovelorn and frustrated Beethoven.

OK… that “L” piece fits there. One more hole in life’s jigsaw puzzle. It looks like an L-shape could fit there, but a little differently. Maybe, turned around a little bit, it looks like a “J.” Yes, J for Jesus. Now our life’s jigsaw puzzle is a complete picture.

Those similar-looking pieces, L and J, in fact make any life complete – especially puzzled lives, to reinforce my metaphor! They are the most important of our lives’ components. Indeed, we are not complete without them. We occasionally might flatter ourselves that we are pretty good puzzle-masters; and perhaps so, occasionally. But we are not puzzle-makers, and cannot be. God plays that role.

I sometimes wonder if Love did not exist, could we imagine it? Like a color that might exist but we’ve seen; or a seventh sense: hard to imagine what we cannot imagine. God’s Love, expressed in the Person of Jesus. He loved us so much as to create us and place us on this beautiful earth; loved us so much as to be forbearing as we humans have sinned and rebelled generation after generation; loved us so much as to share the Truth, offer forgiveness, to open Heaven’s gates…

… loved us so much as to lower Himself to the form of a human, His Son, to share our sorrows, show us the Way, and to offer healing and salvation to those who believe on Him; loved us so much as to remain amongst us in the form of the Holy Spirit, to guide, comfort, and empower us. To have His Son take our sins, our deserved punishment, upon Himself – could we imagine such love? And all this, while we were yet sinners?

Surely this love – our puzzle-piece “L” and the similar-shaped “J,” signifying Love and Jesus – can make the puzzles of our lives complete, whole… making sense.

Look at either one, and if you really can’t understand them fully, just accept them and fit them into your life’s picture. Each one is a piece that passes understanding.

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“The Love of God” is a traditional hymn performed here by the three brothers Aaron, Nathan, and Stephen Nasby, The “NCrew,” their band called Eli Eli. It is a hymn that comes as close as any to defining the indefinable, indescribable unspeakable mystery that is God’s love. There is a legend that a madman in an asylum once heard the song through his barred window and wrote the words of the third verse on his wall. Somehow the plausibility of that story reflects the love, the peace, that passes understanding.

Click: The Love of God

11-24-14

The Rosetta, a mother craft that hurtled through space for 10 years, recently dropped a landing craft called Philae on a distant comet called by scientists 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The comet is relatively small, fewer than three miles in diameter, its arcane name bestowed to distinguish it from thousands of other comets and asteroids. Gotta keeps things straight when these objects are a third of a trillion miles from earth, speeding at something like 35,000 miles an hour.

These numbers alone should make us take notice. It is not a bad thing, amidst cruelty, oppression, barbarity across our own planet, to appreciate the potential of the human mind – and the human spirit – by focusing on other planets, other objects in space, fellow residents of the universe.

The saints and sages of ancient Egypt and Athens used to gaze at the stars, and chart them. Before them, primitive grunters around the world would look heavenward and wonder. Most of us still do more than occasionally. What is out there? How long has this all been spinning? Where does it end? – and, then, what is beyond that boundary? What is our place in all this?

Such has been the inspiration for theologians, philosophers, scientists, poets, and lovers since time immemorial. Which is good. It is good to look up. It is good to look away, sometimes, from our own concerns. “Keep your eyes on the stars,” Theodore Roosevelt once said, “but keep your feet on the ground.” The scientists behind Rosetta had a very specific goal: to test the comet for the presence of elements, and water, that might be similar to those found on earth.

Their idea, since current theories identify comets as leftover crumbs from the Big Bang, like rock-solid dust bunnies under the universe’s bed, that if any of them slammed into Earth in primordial times, then perhaps a droplet of water eventually led to… well, you get it, iPads and all the rest. Maybe so. I am not a proponent of a 5-billion-year-old universe, but let them have their fun. Who knows what will be discovered?

Whilst I seriously am in awe of this mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the inspiration it will foster, I am amused by some aspects of the mission and its guiding earthbound crew. As I chuckle I am also grateful for the following:

When the scientists made their first joint comments to the world’s press, they fumbled with microphones that didn’t work, or got tangled between them;

The lander bounced like a tennis ball on the low-gravity comet. This was always a threat, especially if (as turned out) solar panels were turned from, instead of toward, the sun. A shame, but some data was collected and beamed to earth;

One of the scientists wore a wild shirt in a press conference, a colorful silky affair festooned with drawings of sexy women. It was decried by various troops of the Thought Police as sexist and inappropriate, but a) it was hand-made for him by his girlfriend; and b) the fellow, as a scientist, should have a right to assert his Inner Nerdiness;

In a subsequent press conference, the brainiac broke down crying, as he apologized for wearing the shirt. He plants a (virtual) spec on a (virtual) dot almost a trillion miles from home, and he loses his composure when the Shirt hit the fan.

… all are examples, or reminders really, that humankind is not approaching superhuman status, neither our emotions nor even our brains. We still bumble and stumble, sort of walking into trees and puddles while gazing at the stars. We build fancier toys, shinier too, but hardly are closer to understanding Everything about life – hardly Anything. The Big Bang is the latest answer to Why and When questions about creation. But… the more I hear scientists explaining it, the more, it seems to me, that they are just restating the first chapter of Genesis. Merely with less clarity.

Those news stories about chess masters playing against computers? Sometimes the computer wins, and folks start talking about the threat to human beings, if computers become smarter than we are. I would remind the nervous folks that there are always the options of removing batteries or pulling plugs; and at the root of the matter, human beings make computers, human beings program computers, and human beings, at least around here, screw them up on occasion. I think we are safe.

How is this essay a message for Thanksgiving Week? To me, simple; a lot simpler than landing a vacuum cleaner on a comet. The ESA triumph, even with glitches, makes me give thanks for the minds wherewith God has graced us. The renewed inspiration provided by an astonishing space mission makes me give thanks for the spark of creativity God has placed in all of us – we literally cannot create anything, but we can rearrange and discover things, therefore able to appreciate the quality of creativity that He allows us to emulate.

And I am thankful as a child of God that my fellow creatures – all of us – whether through space missions or a sport-shirt selection, may remain humble. Servants knowing our places in the universe. We don’t have to be rocket scientists to be thankful for that.

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Human achievements. Creativity. Mysteries of the universe. Let us give thanks this week, by resting upon sincere prayers of gratitude. Also I nominate on oratorio by Franz Josef Haydn, “The Creation.” An amazing work of profound spirituality. Haydn is remembered for his symphonies, string quartets, and chamber works, but seldom for his choral, religious, and oratorical work. “The Creation” is a masterful account of the Genesis story. This video (Academy of Ancient Music, Christopher Hogwood, dir.; performed in English) is a work of art in itself, with orchestra, chorus, and soloists in a magnificent cathedral… and the camera examining every corner of the cathedral’s design and decorations, and amazing, amazing videos of nature’s glories – God’s glories!

Click: The Creation by Josef Haydn

9-22-14

People sometimes are more attracted to fantasy than reality, which amuses me. When it doesn’t amuse me it disheartens me. I understand real life can be grim; that our souls seek poetic escape; that fiction often codifies the moral tendencies of a culture, and we thereby create comfort zones. Blah, blah, blah, as literary critics say.

But why is this true, when reality can also be sweeter than any fiction? As a former editor of Marvel Comics, and writer for Disney, I spent a lot of time trafficking in the contemporary versions of civilization’s epic confrontations and traditional fairy tales. But I have to report that I wondered, during my Marvel days, why millions of readers were so invested in superheroes, forever asking “what if?” about characters with super powers, invincibility, the ability to defy nature, fighting life-threatening foes and defeating evil, as good as good guys can be… but how so many of those young (and older) readers could be indifferent about Jesus.

Jesus was the greatest superhero of them all, doing all those things quite easily – and we can add attributes like time travel, walking through walls, and rising from death. Everything but the Spandex, right?

Yet many people prefer fantasy to reality. Speculation to truth. Mythological heroes to men and women of history. Of course, I suspect that a major factor is pride: humans have the tendency to monopolize the truth, or persuade themselves that they can do so. Malleable stories are therefore more comforting than stark reality.

For instance, what about angels in this essay’s title? Well, it struck me a few years ago when the Angel Fad was coursing through the bloodstream of America, that many people equated that with a rise in spirituality.

Yet Angelmania was spiritual only if Hallmark stores are churches, only if costume jewelry is sacramental, only if Della Reese (“Touched By an Angel”) is an ordained minister of the gospel. (In fact she does pastor a church – in Los Angeles, where else? – called the Universal Foundation for Better Living, a non-Christian Unity or New Age sort of church whose pope is someone called The Reverend Doctor Johnnie Colemon.) So she and Rev. Dr. Johnnie are ministers, but not of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

But angels did populate the Christian culture for a season. Now they largely populate storage closets and the backs of dresser drawers, along with posters of elves and fairies, garden gnomes, and WWJD bracelets. Odd, no?

I do believe in angels – I mean I believe they exist – just as I believe it is useful to ask myself “What Would Jesus Do?” in daily situations. I am fairly certain He would not have worn angel pins, but that is not my point. These things are not evil, and I might yet seek forgiveness for being spiritually flippant. BUT.

I am quite serious when I regard anything that takes our eyes off the gospel message of salvation can be the essence of sin: missing the mark. Yes, I believe that angels exist, but not the angels of popular culture. The Bible describes them, and that’s enough for me. But we need to understand certain things:

1. There are actually many things we DON’T understand about angels, and cannot understand, because the Bible often is intentionally vague;

2. Their role, as described in the Bible, principally is as messengers and “ministering spirits”;

3. They are not humans in heavenly bodies; they are separate creations; they can appear sometimes as humans (my family had such an encounter), but are spirits;

4. Except for the seraphim, only occasionally are they described as having wings;

5. All angels are not good: Satan attracted one-third of them in his rebellion;

6. They are not omniscient nor can they be omnipresent… or they would be as God;

7. In their perhaps uncountable numbers, they are not anonymous – Michael and Gabriel are two who have central roles in the heavenly realms, and will play mighty parts when prophecies are fulfilled – cherubim, seraphim and others are ministering spirits to us, and comprise worshipful choruses before the throne.

So. No offense to my own guardian angel, if I have one, but I am suspicious of Christianity that lives in jewelry and not necessarily in our hearts. Or expressions that serve as statements of our faith, when our very lives, instead, should show our love – faith in action.

Ultimately, there is, I think, one important thing to remember about angels. And this will prove I am not a spiritual abuser of these mysterious creatures, far from it. Angels, created by God before mankind was created, and not glorified souls of humans, have never known what you and I have experienced.

Never sick? Never feeling loss or betrayal or pain or grief? Never sinning? How can that be a negative? I feel sorry for them precisely for those reasons. No angel knows the shackles of sin, broken by the power of salvation. No angel knows the joy of forgiveness. No angel has experienced bondage and blood-bought redemption. We are more precious in God’s sight even than angels, more than all creation.

All angels can sing “Jesus loves me, this I know.” None can sing, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.”

Jesus came to die for human beings, every one of us who will accept His sacrifice. Sorry, angels, He didn’t die for you. Yet the Bible tells me so, that you will be ministering to us, just the same, as we enter Glory. As we gather around the Throne together, that’s when I really will feel the touch of angels’ wings.

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An old American hymn (ca. 1860) is the comforting “Angel Band,” written by Jefferson Hascall with music by William Batchelder Bradbury. It originally was known by its incipit, “My latest sun is sinking fast, my race is nearly run.” It has painted a true picture of the heavenly orders for generations of Christians.

Click: Angel Band

6-23-14

We approach the Fourth of July again. I am going to suggest we save a little time apart from our backyard barbecues, or town parades if your town still holds them. In addition to ketchup and mustard, add some of these patriotic condiments to your picnic fare; in addition to cheering the flag or the Boy Scout troop in the parade, cheer some of these quotations.

In fact, in addition to prayers, or the Pledge, at your gatherings – even if your family does not already exercise those traditions — draw together and exchange the quotations by our distinguished “guest bloggers” here. (And they are verified quotations, not those manufactured by well-intentioned patriots or challenged by Snopes and Urban Legend watchdogs.)

Long ago, a Frenchman visited the United States, toured the great cities and smallest towns, and came away astonished. Alexis deToqueville reportedly said, “Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”

Our president has denigrated the term of current popularity, “American Exceptionalism.” He has said that he is sure every nation thinks of itself as exceptional. We can worry that his complete misunderstanding of that term reflects his complete misunderstanding of America. Americans are not exceptional by virtue of birth certificates or driver licenses. American farmers or American firefighters are not different, or “more exceptional,” than human beings anywhere doing their jobs honorably. Heroes are heroes. And American villains can be as villainous than any others.

“American Exceptionalism” refers to the American system. What “is” the USA? The first of nations, not to declare independence, but to enshrine Liberty. To acknowledge God in the foundational documents of its Declaration and Constitution. To be a nation of laws, not men. To be a Republic, not a Democracy: elevating individualism, under law, over institutions and governmental whims. To respect religion, and religious freedom, as vital components of our American system. In revolutionary fashion – yes, the first; exceptional in world history – to protect minority rights but guard against majority tyranny.

Here, our guest bloggers may remind Americans of things we might have forgotten, God forbid.

“The propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained.” George Washington, first Inaugural Address.

“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men and Citizens.” George Washington, Farewell Speech, 1796.

“I therefore beg leave to move that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven and its blessing on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning.” Benjamin Franklin, 1787, Constitutional Convention.

“I’ve lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing Proofs I see of this Truth — That God governs in the Affairs of Men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his Notice, is it probable that an Empire can rise without his Aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings, that except the Lord build the House they labor in vain who build it. I firmly believe this…” Benjamin Franklin.

“Our Constitution was made for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.” John Adams.

“I have a tender reliance on the mercy of the Almighty, through the merits of the Lord Jesus Christ. I am a sinner. I look to Him for mercy; pray for me.” Alexander Hamilton.

“Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers.” John Jay, Constitutional framer, First Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

“[The Bible] is the rock on which our Republic rests.” Andrew Jackson.

“It is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon.” Abraham Lincoln, Proclamation Declaring the National Day of Fasting.

“My concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.” Abraham Lincoln.

“Our laws and our institutions must necessarily be based upon and embody the teachings of the Redeemer of mankind. It is impossible that it should be otherwise; and in this sense and to this extent our civilization and our institutions are emphatically Christian.” United State Supreme Court, 1892.

“Ever throughout the ages, at all times and among all peoples, prosperity has been fraught with danger, and it behooves us to beseech the Giver of all things that we may not fall into love of ease and luxury; that we may not lose our sense of moral responsibility; that we may not forget our duty to God, and to our neighbor.… We are not threatened by foes from without. The foes from whom we should pray to be delivered are our own passions, appetites, and follies; and against these there is always need that we should war.” Theodore Roosevelt.

“Can we resolve to reach, learn and try to heed the greatest message ever written, God’s Word, and the Holy Bible? Inside its pages lie all the answers to all the problems that man has ever known.” Ronald Reagan

These are exceptional credos. It would be an exceptional disaster if a free people would forget such an inheritance. Happy Fourth. GO forth.

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Many songs, many hymns, many patriotic airs could be the background music for this essay. “Faith of Our Fathers,” “Battle Hymn of the REPUBLIC,” many would be appropriate. But since I have quoted aphorisms of the past, I offer you a recent song about America a different-yet-similar rallying cry. “America First” by the poet of the common man, Merle Haggard.

Click: America First

6-16-14

The Pledge of Allegiance added the phrase “under God” in 1954, on Flag Day – 60 years ago this week. So Happy Birthday… not to God, but to the phrase. Its inclusion has been a matter of some discussion since it was appended.

Theodore Roosevelt was criticized during his presidency for wanting to take “In God We Trust” off American currency. This seems counterintuitive about the man I have elsewhere called possibly the most observant if not the most intensely Christian of our presidents. One of his missions was to reform and beautify American coinage, and his friend Augustus St-Gaudens in fact designed the most impressive coins in our history, the $20 “Double Eagle” gold piece, and the $10 “Indian Head” gold eagle.

Why did TR want “In God We Trust” off our coinage? In fact, he considered it irreverent, making a cheap slogan of a sacred matter. He said he was witness, in his rancher days in the Bad Lands, to cowboys in saloons citing it coarsely; “In God we trust – all others pay cash,” and so forth. “My own feeling in the matter is due to my very firm conviction that to put such a motto on coins, or to use it in any kindred manner, not only does no good but does positive harm, and is in effect irreverence, which comes dangerously close to sacrilege,” he wrote.

“It is a motto which it is indeed well to have inscribed on our great national monuments, in our temples of justice, in our legislative halls, and in buildings such as those at West Point and Annapolis – in short, wherever it will tend to arouse and inspire a lofty emotion in those who look thereon. But it seems to me eminently unwise to cheapen such a motto by use on coins, just as it would be to cheapen it by use on postage stamps, or in advertisements.”

His view did not prevail; an aroused public and Congress overcame his objection. A similar groundswell of popular support added “under God” to the Pledge 60 years ago. Anent both matters, debates have not merely continued but intensified of late.

I am generally of the Theodore Roosevelt school regarding the nation’s confirmation of belief on public buildings, monuments, courtrooms, and legislative halls. It is a matter as much of tradition as of faith. Commonly, societies tend to codify their basic tenets by such means – dispositive acts like public prayers, and displays of the Decalogue in public squares. I understand TR’s disinclination to have a sacred concept coarsened – but I would take that chance, trusting to peoples’ eventual conviction. And simply asserting universal, foundational, shared beliefs. After all, dumb jokes are occasionally made about “e pluribus unum.”

Further, myself, I would proceed on such matters to avow in every pertinent manner that the United States were settled as Christian communities; that Founders and Framers alike cited biblical principles and reliance on God; that the Supreme Court formally declared the United States of America a “Christian country.” This is no knock on Jews or Muslims or atheists, who are guaranteed every legal right the majority enjoys. But if I moved to Israel, I would never think of agitating, say, to have the Star of David removed the nation’s flag because I would be “offended” as a minority. If I moved to an Islamic society I would be embarrassed to attempt to eliminate Muslim symbols, traditions, and observances, simply because I as a newcomer had a pulse and “feelings.”

But… genii are out of the bottles in America. So debates rage, Christians are on the defensive, and traditions are upended. I believe this is due as much to the moral lassitude of Christians as to the aggressive pursuits of rampaging lawyers. Shame on us.

It has become easier to insist on the retention of slogans on currency, phrases in pledges, and crosses in cemeteries, than to be bloodied in the dusty arena of ideas. Ultimately, the real, burning question for Christians in 2014 is this: what exactly are we defending in these debates? What in hell – I choose my words carefully – are we really supporting in contemporary America?

“In God We Trust.” Oh, yeah? Then why have we allowed a runaway government to be our primary source of security in life? Why not God? Why not each other? Why not ourselves?

“In God We Trust.” Oh, yeah? Then why have we, as a culture, turned from biblical ways of finding comfort in God, and bowed to drugs, drink, decadent entertainment, and false gods of pleasure?

“In God We Trust.” Oh, yeah? Then how has America suddenly transformed itself from a traditionalist society of manners and morals to a country awash in abortions, addictions, physical abuse, divorce, illegitimate births, and myriad sexually transmitted diseases?

“In God We Trust.” Oh, yeah? Then why have traditional expressions of faith been banished in favor of secular concepts and moral relativism? Legislators and judges sit in halls with “In God We Trust” on their walls, and open their sessions with prayer – yet day by day, now, they mock that very pledge. In hypocrisy we trust.

“In God We Trust.” Oh, yeah? As a people? Then why do our movies, TV shows, pop-music lyrics, literature, graphic novels, political discourse, judicial decisions, and bureaucratic rules dedicate themselves to be, not “neutral,” but hostile, toward God and His Revealed Word?

“In God We Trust.” Oh, yeah? America is America – the essence of the misunderstood term “Exceptionalism” – because a diverse group of peoples came here through the centuries, disparate in uncountable ways, but spiritually unified, somehow: United, before the fact, in trusting God, being suspicious of authority, loving liberty, embracing tradition, reliant on selves, and therefore – yes, part of American Exceptionalism too – loving their neighbors.

Is the next chapter of the American story to be entitled, “In God We Once Trusted”?

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Since we are discussing traditions, our musical video for this message is “Nearer, My God, To Thee,” an old hymn sung here in Sacred Harp fashion. This is a purely American musical expression that took root centuries ago in rural areas and the South, where instruments and musical literacy alike were once scarce. The hymns were sung a capella; out of books with “shape notes”; often sung with the musical terms Do, Re Me Fa, So, La, Ti, Do corresponding to the notes; then followed by lyrics of the hymns; singers arranged in a square, with a leader in the “hollow”; forceful vocals (a euphemism for joyously loud!); emphasis on four-part harmony; arm gestures that emphasized the rhythm; often, strong foot-tapping to carry the beat; a large number of standard hymns in the songbooks, often identified by their numbers instead of titles or first lines.

These exuberant, evangelical, exhortations almost died out until recently. Now they are being revived in churches and – God works in mysterious ways – in secular shape-note and Sacred Harp groups in the North, in urban centers, among (not yet) religious singers, singing conventions, and in more than a few European communities too. Here, an amateur video at Mount Pisgah Primitive Baptist Church in Stroud, Alabama, few years ago.

Click: Nearer, My God, To Thee

2-17-14

When searching for a music video for this blog essay, I surfed through YouTube as per usual. More and more there are commercials, at least for first-time clickers of a link, lasting anywhere from 5 seconds to 30 seconds. Some must be endured, some can be clicked off. A fact of internet life. This week, intending to write about Presidents’ Day and the Christian beliefs of our presidents, as I am wont, I was struck by the common theme of the advertising pop ups.

Presidents’ Day – that is, Presidents’ Day mattress sales. The $5-bill face of Abraham Lincoln with moving lips, reminding us of Two-For-One sales. An animated George Washington saying, “I cannot tell a lie. I am CHOPPING prices this Monday!”

It is odious enough that the American culture effectively stopped honoring great men like Lincoln (whose birthday was February 12) and Washington (February 22). It is offensive enough that nonentities and shady characters who held the presidential office for a season are elevated to equal status with Lincoln and Washington by the invention of a vacuum-cleaner holiday like Presidents’ Day. It is depressing that America, at a point when we should be mature as a civic society, has descended to such base materialism.

Patriotic displays largely have withered and died in the public square. Prayers have disappeared from schools and civic events. Politicians seem more grasping than ever. There are exceptions, but these things mostly are true. People wear flags as apparel decorations, and stick them to bumpers, but how many people, even of such patriotic extroversion, can name the presidents of the United States, in order, or the Bill of Rights so frequently invoked?

I have been reading a book, “The Final Secret of Pearl Harbor,” by Rear Adm. Robert A Theobald. It details the impossible diplomatic position the United States put Japan in during the months leading to Pearl Harbor, with the intent of inviting an attack by the Japanese; the purposeful failure to alert US commanders of the imminent attack; the scapegoating of Naval and Army personnel after 3300 lives were lost; the reason for the machinations – an obsession to enter a war against Germany, Japan’s ally, and to save Great Britain. This was at a time when American public opinion was overwhelmingly against participation in any foreign war. Franklin Roosevelt unilaterally skirted Congress and committed arms, bases, ships, and diplomacy to one side of a foreign conflict. Germany didn’t take the bait; Japan did.

It matters little whether FDR was betting on the right side of history. He could have proceeded honestly and openly to persuade the American people. That he did not might cast him as a war criminal. Other presidents have lied, betrayed the trust of their people, and occasionally spent lives and fortunes unwisely.

I state these facts to say that I don’t think US presidents all deserve halos. Even the greatest have clay feet. Not all were well-intentioned.

But many had sterling intentions. In this polyglot nation of immigrants we have produced a class whose ranks are generally above any average group we can assemble. The Framers were a remarkable assembly whose faith, maturity, and foresights was extraordinary. We have been blessed. As Theodore Roosevelt said, in Abraham Lincoln we had a man whose greatness was due to his goodness. Theodore Roosevelt himself was the most accomplished, intelligent, well-prepared, visionary, and… religiously observant of our presidents.

On this last aspect we discover the major difference – perhaps the diving-line – between exceptional and ordinary presidents; between the old America and the new. We are told that Washington’s circle was comprised of Deists; yet his famous prayer, the injunctions to pray by Franklin, the language of the Declaration and Constitution, prove to us that these men knew, and feared, God.

We are told that Lincoln seldom attended church. Yet we can read in the notes of his associates, in his letters, in his speeches, an evolving awareness of God – and a reliance, a summons, a sharing of biblical principles – in the last two years of his life. His last speeches, his Second Inaugural, read like sermons.

And Theodore Roosevelt became an editor of a weekly Christian magazine when he left the White House. He titled two of his books after Bible verses. He made impromptu speeches for five nights at a prominent seminary. He wrote an article for Ladies Home Journal about why men should go to church. This irrepressible personality quietly, but largely, lived his faith.

Are these days past? Do giants still walk amongst us, in American civic life?

Most of the faces on our currency consists of presidents of the past. Since Presidents’ Day has been distorted and perverted to be a glorification of sales and commerce, it might be appropriate that the currency that is King for a Day on the third Monday of February is nicknamed “Dead Presidents.”

+ + +

I have chosen a song that goes ‘way back in the American heritage for the music video with this essay. No message, but, as we have recalled Washington, Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt of an earlier, and greater, time in America, a moment of nostalgia for the time when American held promise. “Oh, Shenandoah” is an old folk tune about the pioneer’s relentless move westward, remembering the Shenandoah Valley, and determining to “cross the wide Missouri” River. This is a remarkable “virtual” duet with the legendary Tennessee Ernie Ford and Sissel Kyrkjebo, the stunning Norwegian soprano. With members of the Chieftans. Click the YouTube button if prompted.

Click: Oh, Shenandoah

2-17-14

When searching for a music video for this blog essay, I surfed through YouTube as per usual. More and more there are commercials, at least for first-time clickers of a link, lasting anywhere from 5 seconds to 30 seconds. Some must be endured, some can be clicked off. A fact of internet life. This week, intending to write about Presidents’ Day and the Christian beliefs of our presidents, as I am wont every year, I was struck by the common theme of the advertising pop ups.

Presidents’ Day – that is, Presidents’ Day mattress sales. The $5-bill face of Abraham Lincoln with moving lips, reminding us of Two-For-One sales. An animated George Washington saying, “I cannot tell a lie. I am CHOPPING prices this Monday!”

It is odious enough that the American culture effectively stopped honoring great men like Lincoln (whose birthday was February 12) and Washington (February 22). It is offensive enough that nonentities and shady characters who held the presidential office for a season are elevated to equal status with Lincoln and Washington by the invention of a vacuum-cleaner holiday like Presidents’ Day. It is depressing that America, at a point when we should be mature as a civic society, has descended to such base materialism.

Patriotic displays largely have withered and died in the public square. Prayers have disappeared from schools and civic events. Politicians seem more grasping than ever. There are exceptions, but these things mostly are true. People wear flags as apparel decorations, and stick them to bumpers, but how many people, even of such patriotic extroversion, can name the presidents of the United States, in order, or the Bill of Rights so frequently invoked?

I have been reading a book, “The Final Secret of Pearl Harbor,” by Rear Adm. Robert A Theobald. It details the impossible diplomatic position the United States put Japan in during the months leading to Pearl Harbor, with the intention to invite an attack by the Japanese; the purposeful failure to alert US commanders of the imminent attack; the scapegoating of Naval and Army personnel after 3300 lives were lost; the reason for the machinations – an obsession to enter a war against Germany, Japan’s ally, and to save Great Britain. This was at a time when American public opinion was overwhelmingly against participation in any foreign war. Franklin Roosevelt unilaterally skirted Congress and committed arms, bases, ships, and diplomacy to one side of a foreign conflict. Germany didn’t take the bait; Japan did.

It matters little whether FDR was betting on the right side of history. He could have proceeded honestly and openly to persuade the American people. That he did not might cast him as a war criminal. Other presidents have lied, betrayed the trust of their people, and occasionally spent lives and fortunes unwisely.

I state these facts to say that I don’t think US presidents all deserve halos. Even the greatest have clay feet. Not all were well-intentioned.

But many had sterling intentions. In this polyglot nation of immigrants we have produced a class of presidents whose ranks are generally above any average group we could gather. The Framers were a remarkable assembly whose faith, maturity, and foresight was extraordinary. We have been blessed. As Theodore Roosevelt said, in Abraham Lincoln we had a man whose greatness was due to his goodness. Theodore Roosevelt himself was the most accomplished, intelligent, well-prepared, visionary, and… religiously observant of our presidents.

On this last aspect we discover the major difference – perhaps the dividing-line – between exceptional and ordinary presidents; between the old America and the new. We are told that Washington’s circle was comprised of Deists; yet his famous prayer, the injunctions to pray by Franklin, the language of the Declaration and Constitution, prove to us that these men knew, and feared, God.

We are told that Lincoln seldom attended church. Yet we can read in the notes of his associates, in his letters, in his speeches, an evolving awareness of God – and a reliance, a summons, a sharing of biblical principles – in the last two years of his life. His last speeches, his Second Inaugural, read like sermons.

And Theodore Roosevelt became an editor of a weekly Christian magazine when he left the White House. He titled two of his books after Bible verses. He made impromptu speeches for five nights at a prominent seminary. He wrote an article for Ladies Home Journal about why men should go to church. This irrepressible personality quietly, but largely, lived his faith.

Are these days past? Do giants still walk amongst us, in American civic life?

Most of the faces on our currency consists of presidents of the past. Since Presidents’ Day has been distorted and perverted to be a glorification of sales and commerce, it might be appropriate that the currency that is King for a Day on the third Monday of February is nicknamed “Dead Presidents.”

+ + +

I have chosen a song that goes ‘way back in the American heritage for the music video with this essay. No message, but, as we have recalled Washington, Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt of an earlier, and greater, time in America, here is a moment of nostalgia for the time when American held promise. “Oh, Shenandoah” is an old folk tune about the pioneer’s relentless move westward, remembering the Shenandoah Valley, and determining to “cross the wide Missouri” River. This is a remarkable “virtual” duet with the legendary Tennessee Ernie Ford and Sissel Kyrkjebo, the stunning Norwegian soprano. With members of the Chieftans. Click the YouTube button if prompted.

Click: Oh, Shenandoah

10-28-13

Deeds of faith are mightier – more consequential, more lasting, more essential to our living – than physical deeds are. To paraphrase Theodore Roosevelt, our souls and spirits must always squarely be in the Arena of Life, where a person’s “face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

And so with faith as well as deeds. I cannot imagine never being curious about new ideas, discovering new things, reading new (and old) books, attempting new projects, and (not to sound sappy) dreaming new dreams. I have said, and I hope we would all have this attitude, that I want my retirement party and my funeral to be on the same day. Life is more than about accumulating baubles.

But these sentiments are a cruel joke, worse than empty clichés, if not accompanied by the spiritual component. We can be “secure in our faith,” but that never means we should stop learning the Ways of God, or seeking after the Things of God, or obeying the Will of God. Just as other things in life attract us… except that the essentials of faith are more important. We can be, yes, secure in our faith, but it will be tested; in fact, over and over again. The tests are not what matters. What matters is our response to the tests.

To those people who continually seek the Truth, which I hope means all of us, there are many pitfalls and detours on the way to the destination. Read the classic book, second only to the Bible in terms of copies printed, but regrettably neglected today, “The Pilgrim’s Progress.” And to continue the metaphor of a pathway to Truth, there is an enormous gap between Belief and the next station, Faith.

It would seem a small step, but it is not. My wife used to say that all the possible “head knowledge” was nothing compared to even a portion of “heart knowledge”; that is, faith. Even Solomon, in all his wisdom, writing three books of the Bible, building the Temple, lord of a wealthy, united Israelite kingdom, ultimately displayed belief but not as much faith. He wrote well, but acted little as a man of faith… and then he failed. He became apostate, married hundreds of wives and was seduced by their diverse pagan religions, and earned the enmity of God. He died broken in spirit, and his kingdom was split irrevocably, broken into contending provinces.

“Faith without works is dead,” but works without faith is like “building a house on shifting sand.” God forbid that any of us are like Solomon, writing and speaking and appearing to be wiser than we really are.

Faith is something we can have, and we must regard it is a living thing, not a relic or prize: it must be nurtured and fed. But it is also something we can DO – in philological terms, a verb as well as a noun – in that we must exercise it. Share it. Live it. And not an abstract faith that the world has kidnapped as a term – a synonym for optimism or self-assurance or goodwill. “Have faith,” “keep the faith,” can be empty terms, baby-steps, or maybe backward-steps. Romans 10:17 says that real faith “comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.” This journey of ours is sometimes hard. Where could we be without the gift of Faith?

There is an even more precise definition of that Faith which we seek across the chasm. The Bible tells us, and wants us to learn through contemplation and experience: “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1).

This is not a riddle for intellectuals. It is not a postulate for scientific measurements. It can be difficult to understand. But it is easy to accept. It is the wisdom of God.

+ + +

We can find biblical wisdom mirrored in secular works of art. The tragic tale of Dido and Aeneas, from Virgil’s epic poem, was written for the operatic stage; libretto by Nahum Tate, author of many hymns, music by Henry Purcell (1659-1695), the greatest of all English composers. Its excruciatingly sad ending is “Dido’s Lament,” sung as the Queen of Carthage commits suicide because she thinks her lover, the Trojan hero, has abandoned her:

“Thy hand, Belinda. Darkness shades me, On thy bosom let me rest,
More I would, but Death invades me; Death is now a welcome guest.

“When I am laid, am laid in earth, May my wrongs create No trouble, no trouble in thy breast. Remember me, remember me, but ah! forget my fate. Remember me, but ah! forget my fate.”

As with the unrelated story of Romeo and Juliet, the death was useless – tragic – because of misunderstanding. In fact Aeneas was rushing to her side even as she sang her dying words of love. But the lesson of great art, indeed the lesson of life, is not how we scheme to avoid the hard choices facing us, but how we exercise faith, and faithfulness, even to what the world calls “tragic” ends, as overcomers who will never dwell with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

Please do not cheat yourself: Watch this brief vid, sung by the incomparable Norwegian soprano Sissel Kyrkjebo; graphics by animation student Ryan Woodwart. Goodnight, Nance.

Click: Dido’s Lament

9-23-13

A theme song of cynics – there are many; many cynics and many are their themes – is the famous sentiment written by Shakespeare: “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones” (Julius Caesar, Act 3, i). But the hopeful among us must see that this is honored in the breach, that the exception proves the rule. We must not merely be convinced that fights for righteousness and honor and creative expression are worth the fight in this difficult life… but that the fight ITSELF, not only the goal, is worthy.

Cynicism is challenged by uncountable examples of service and sacrifice by kind souls, by acts of charity, a word whose original meaning is “love.” Challenged in the over-arching sense by the work of weary toilers in the fields who sometimes are bent but never broken. And in the very personal examples of artists who die without ever knowing the effect their work eventually has on other people. There are stories we all know from history.

We think of van Gogh; of Poe; of the composer Schubert and the novelist John Kennedy Toole… and of Eva Cassidy.

Some serious critics have called Eva the greatest American vocalist. Do you ask, “Who?” Her relatively sparse playlist has swept record charts around the world. Some of the era’s greatest singers and producers have attested to her uniqueness. The acclaim and sales have all come years after she died. Eva was born in Washington DC in 1963. Self- (and dad-) taught on several instruments, she listened to the great performers of several genres she rapidly mastered herself: blues, jazz, gospel, country, pop standards.

Eva played in several clubs in the Washington area. A college town, DC is replete with jazz clubs, music venues, performance clubs. As a student there myself in ancient times, I was privileged to enjoy, in places like the Cellar Door, Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt, and Randy Scruggs before they were nationally famous. Later, Eva Cassidy attracted a local following and made a few CDs, but her fame was fairly restricted to the District. Pros and record execs who heard her music were astonished, but many of them simply did not know in which category to place her. All of them later regretted their short-sightedness. Her voice was angelic (if angels were to sing the blues); her interpretations were miraculously emotional; her guitar style was unique.

When she was 30 she had a malignant tumor removed from her neck. Three years later she was dead, the melanoma having survived within her body, spread to bones and lungs. After her diagnosis (three to five months to live, no hope of survival) she returned once more to her stage of choice, DC’s Blues Alley, and sang “What a Wonderful World.” That choice, as much as hearing her music, confirms what a wonderful person, not merely a musical talent, Eva Cassidy was.

But it was five full years after her death before the world really heard about her, and heard her. A stray CD made its way the BBC Radio studios in London. Airplay on a morning show lit up the proverbial switchboard. Fast-forward this story to Number One on British record charts; five CDs in the Top 150; continuing presence in England and Ireland, especially, but also Germany, Scandinavia, Switzerland, and Australia… and, finally, America; and sales exceeding 10-million CDs.

It is easy to lapse (thusly) into numbers and statistics. But it was Eva Cassidy’s astonishing talent, and her effect on listeners, that is the story. She had a gift for making mundane lyrics special, for discovering spiritual nuances in standard love songs, for making happy tunes blues-y and turning sad ballads hopeful.

That her “success” is posthumous is ironic at least. Yet once we take account of life’s vicissitudes, we should take heart. The good that we may do DOES live on “after our bones are interred.” When we do the Lord’s work, sharing hope and sunshine, we are eager to see the “seeds” we plant take root and bloom. But we don’t always know if, or when, it will happen. Mostly, we cannot know. As servants of the Word, it really is the Holy Spirit’s job to “close the deals,” and we should resist the temptation of pride if we are too concerned with the seeds we plant. We can plant those seeds; we can even cultivate; but only God can make life grow.

In fact there is a legitimate spiritual satisfaction in not knowing these details. When writers, artists, singers, songwriters, poets, and all people graced with God’s creativity set their works out (as it were) like baby Moses in a basket, among the reeds and into unknown waters, we don’t know who will discover them. But, trusting the God whom we serve by serving our fellow men and women, untold numbers of people, and their families after them, may be profoundly touched. Even if one person’s spirit responds, we have done our jobs.

If we, any of us, exercise the talents wherewith we have been graced, if we see our lives as parts of the cultural continuum of civilization, just as we are woven with the scarlet threads of redemption, then some of us might be the next van Goghs, Poes, Schuberts, Tooles, and Eva Cassidys. And be content that the value is in the working and the works, not the accolades of the world. And the rest of us? We can feel blessed that we are witnesses of these great talents.

Remember the Yogi Berra quotation, “It ain’t over till it’s over”? Memo to Yogi: sometimes it only BEGINS when it’s “over.” The theme song of THAT truth is sung by Eva Cassidy.

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One of the only videos of Eva Cassidy singing is an amateur camcorder capture of her and her guitar at Blues Alley. It often brings tears to viewers’ eyes for the unique interpretation and commonly untapped meanings from a pop standard previously considered without spiritual depth. “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” was recorded the year of Eva’s death, 1996. I commend this performance to you, and its compelling whisper to your soul: “Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue, and the dreams that you dare to dream, really do come true. … If happy little bluebirds fly above the rainbow, why, oh why, can’t I?” When Eva sang, she made it a spiritually rhetorical question: We can.

Click: Somewhere Over the Rainbow

8-26-13

It is a familiar scene this time of year. Children go off to school, some walking up the steps of the yellow school bus, some into the front doors of the school where you drop them off, some into the car, off to college. Familiar scenes; also familiar feelings, at least for parents.

Separation anxiety, of sorts. Landmarks. Turning points. All very emotional. For me, as a father, these scenes were especially emotional, because my children appeared to seldom notice anything special at all about them. Tra la la, they couldn’t wait to board the buses or run for the schoolyard. The most sentiment ever displayed was my son Ted’s annoyance at my insistence to photograph him on the porch, each first day of school year after year (because, um, I KNEW that some day he would cherish the memories) (that day might yet arrive).

It all threatened to get really slobbery when they went off to college. At those points I was ready to grab each of my three kids around their ankles, unwilling to let them go. They reflected no such emotion. I have chalked this all up, by the way, to their active sense of curiosity and adventure, nothing to do with me being the Weirdest Dad On the Street, proven by such episodes.

OK, I exaggerate a little (I tend to exaggerate at least a million times a day). But we need to remember – which means, when I write it, that I often forget – that the “saddest” things in life really are sometimes the sweetest.

When we sign up to be parents, part of the contract is to let go some day. Actually day by day. It is not a mixed blessing, even if we get, in the immortal words of Maynard G. Krebs, misty in those moments. In a recent essay I quoted Theodore Roosevelt, when he said that both life and death are parts of the same Great Adventure. Likewise, no less, are dirty diapers, silly tantrums, going off to school, asking for help with homework, the first date, the second broken heart, going off to college or the military, and watching them get married.

“Time and Chance happeneth to all,” we are reminded – and we do need reminders – in Ecclesiastes. If God sees sparrows falling to the ground, He also sees them when they leave the nest… and fly. If Mama Sparrow is not sad about that (which is my guess), neither should we regard our tears as anything but droplets of joy.

Our first born, Heather, I assumed to be exceptional from her first breath, so when she was three months old or so, I festooned the house with large signs labeling everything, just to help her to read a day or two sooner than otherwise. My son Ted entered a more sensible world. Our youngest, Emily, we knew would be our last child. My subliminal response to this, I now realize, was to keep her a baby forever, to preserve her like amber in childhood (hers, not mine). I tried to hide from her the knowledge of things like bicycles and solid food.

I kid again, a little, but rearing children, after all, is more about your values at the time than their “molded” personalities afterward. It is unavoidable, and not to be regretted but rather celebrated. Savor it all, parents, even the separation of day care, summer camp, or college in some state you cannot locate on a map.

Part of God’s sweet plan of life is that when you have children, and nurture them, and train them, and endure (and share) all the dramas of childhood, the hours drag by slowly.

… but when the kids have left home, for whatever the myriad reasons, the years then go by quickly. Remember that, while you still have the gift of remembering.

One of Emily’s friends is Amy Duke Sanchez, whom we would not know except for having “let go” of Emily when she left for a faraway college right about this time of year. Recently AmyDuke forwarded to me a very wise saying – “Don’t ask God for anything until you’ve thanked Him for everything.” That is not merely a template for constructing your prayers.

It is a reminder to stop and think about the implications of “everything.” We know that all things can work for good, and we need to see that our momentary regrets, especially in this, the Season of Empty Nests, can really be puzzle-pieces in God’s eternal and joyful plan.

+ + +

Even after mxplf years (gee, how strange: a typo) since my youngest went off to college, I still get as misty as Maynard G. Krebs when I listen to Suzy Bogguss’s bittersweet classic about a child’s Rite of Passage, “Letting Go.” The lyrics about the empty nest, and turning the page on memories, are wonderfully captured in the video with the song. Please treat yourself.

Click: Letting Go

6-31-13 / 4th of July, 2013

The Fourth of July is as close as the United States has to a secular holy day. Considering that actual holy days rapidly are becoming secularized, July 4th deserves our attention, more than mere celebrations. The days around July 4th are when the rebellious representatives of the American colonies put their names (“and fortunes, and sacred honor”) to a revolutionary declaration that continues to stir hearts around the world. The days around July 4th are when the ragtag Rough Riders, on the heights above Santiago, Cuba, fought through withering gunfire on open ground and captured Kettle Hill and San Juan Hill, effectively sealing the land operations of the enemy in the Spanish-American War.

And the days preceding July 4th – three long, bloody, momentous days – are when the Army of Virginia’s invasion of the North was repulsed in the streets, wooded hills, and fields of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. There, and in faraway Vicksburg, Mississippi, which surrendered to the US Army’s forces of Gen. Grant on the 4th itself, the outcome of the Civil War largely was sealed. Hundreds of thousands of deaths still lay ahead, but the dreamers and the fearful in the North and South alike generally apprehended the outcome.

The coincidence of significant national events around July 4th is just that, a coincidence. But modern holidays are observed too often as artificial consolidations for vacationers and retailers. The Declaration of Independence, the impromptu heroism and success represented by the Spanish-American War, and the salvation of the Union – and the hundreds of noble impulses and human dramas that hover, as benign angels, over Gettysburg’s fields – are well worthy of our contemplation today.

“Revisionist” history has become a cottage industry of late. Napoleon defined history as “lies agreed upon” by succeeding generations. To challenge conventional wisdom is seldom a bad thing, even when Revisionists have points of view to advance. But the exercise – that is, a society’s discussions and considerations of new viewpoints – is beneficial only so far as solid facts underlay. People are entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts.

So it becomes a disgrace when bad history, or, worse, “no” history replaces the proper sense of heritage in a culture. We read polls today that large percentages of American youth do not know why the colonies sought independence; who major presidents were; why important wars were fought. I am afraid (in the context of a pop-culture society, which we are) that more teenagers know Lincoln as a vampire slayer than as the central character of another movie, “Lincoln.”

Recent events persuade me that we might be engaged in another civil war, or its opening stages. And it is hard to answer, or resist, or overcome, when you have no sense of self, in a civic context. How can we know who we are and where we are when we don’t know how we arrived here?

But among the things we do know – or should know – is that a nation was founded on a set of noble ideals, dedicated over and over again to God, and was established in various places and by people of different backgrounds with a common, burning devotion to liberty. Or, to be precise, an UNcommon devotion… unique in human history. Among the anomalies the founders knew would have to be solved, never assuming it would be easy, was the institution of slavery. When the time came, men – and their wives and children – took a collective breath and prosecuted a grinding, nightmarish, burdensome conflict. A somewhat bloodier reflection, Lincoln was wont to wonder, of slavery itself: perhaps national penance for its sin.

Past the fratricide and carnage, a century and a half later, we still are astonished by the bravery and nobility and sacrifice and endurance and faith of those soldiers.

Theodore Roosevelt said, when he visited Gettysburg: “As long as this Republic endures or its history is known, so long shall the memory of the Battle of Gettysburg likewise endure and be known; and as long as the English tongue is understood, so long shall Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg speech thrill the hearts of mankind.”

Every American should know this by heart:

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

“It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

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Julia Ward Howe, a poetess, met President Lincoln in the White House in November, 1861. That night, as a guest at the nearby Willard Hotel, she responded to requests to write new words to the popular song “John Brown’s Body Lies A-Moldering in the Grave.” It was an incitement to fight the Confederacy, but Mrs Howe took it a step further, writing the immortal Battle Hymn of the Republic to its tune. Ironically, Mrs Howe’s life-long crusades included abolitionism, women’s suffrage… and pacifism. But she knew that some battles were proper to fight. This amazing video clip is of Judy Collins performing before tens of thousands of citizens on the National Mall 30 years ago, with the US Army Band Soldiers’ Chorus, and the Harlem Boys Choir. Significantly, Judy sings some little-known verses – reminding us that this is a Christian hymn, not just a battle song.

Click: Battle Hymn Of the Republic

2-18-13

It seems like sometimes half of America wants to prove that the Founding Fathers were Deists, agnostics, skeptics, and dismissive of churches and organized religion. It is not the case. However, it might be closer to the truth than what many Christians, well-meaning as they must be, believe – that, virtually to a man, the Founders were fervent Christians of today’s evangelical stripe.

In their zeal these Christians do an injustice to history, and to the integrity of Christian scholarship. I am specifically referring to those people, some famously, who tattoo contemporary styles of worship and expressions of faith onto their profiles and descriptions of America’s Founding Fathers. Now, this is a blog post – at its most ambitious, an essay – not a PhD thesis. But my training, and most of the 70+ books I have written, is as a historian. As a Christian as well, I am quite comfortable to concede that many of the Founding Fathers, and more than a few presidents, have not been Christians in today’s born-again, evangelical, missions-minded, revivalist mode.

Does this mean we have been lied to… that America is NOT a Christian nation? The Supreme Court declared us so in 1892, specifically recognizing foundations, social contracts, and traditions. Of course, the Court’s opinion did not exclude other religions or deny their freedom to worship. No: Let us be honest on this Presidents Day, in all ways.

The vast majority of the Founders were Bible believers. And the New Testament was part of their Bibles. In an age when religious profession was rather private, public figures did not speak so often of their personal faiths. Jesus frequently was quoted, and honest readings of the Founders’ words leave the impression that it was taken for granted that Jesus was the Son of God, and that His words were those of the One True God.

It is a fact that the virgin birth, and miracles, were among the spiritual topics little talked about; but that largely was the case with clergy as well. Christianity was practiced somewhat differently then. Mysteries were regarded as mysteries, rather than take-offs for parsing and exegesis.

The Bible was not a mystery, in its sum, however. Children were named for biblical figures; biblical allusions were frequently framed; and – most important as we think of the Founders, and honor presidents at this time – the Bible was universally acknowledged as the best roadmap and blueprint for men building and governing a society.

Secularists among us cite that, say, Washington seldom attended church, or that Jefferson invented the phrase “separation of church and state,” and then build a doctrine on such things. This is worse than nit-picking. At best it is a foolish means of discussing history (worse than schismatics who build theological doctrine on one out-of-context Bible verse). But at worst – and this is what goes on these days – it distorts history in order to further the evil, destructive goals of self-loathing Americans. There dwell among us people who loathe our heritage also, and would be quite happy to see the American temple brought down to rubble.

“Foes of our own household,” the Bible calls such people. Naïve Christians and patriots are too quick to give these cancerous domestic enemies the benefit of every doubt.

The Lord knows, we don’t, why Washington seldom went to a church. But he prayed, and he invoked God’s blessing, and he publicly sought God’s guidance. Jefferson (after he was president and in a private letter) described the Constitutional safeguard against a state-funded denomination as “the wall of separation.” Among frank references to God through the years, Jefferson bestowed the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, not from hostility to God, but in respect to His worshipers and their consciences. So few Founders were hostile to Christianity, or even neutral, that Theodore Roosevelt (also a professional historian) singled out Thomas Paine as a “filthy little atheist.” That is, no signer of the Declaration or the Constitution could be similarly characterized, even politely. Yet John Quincy Adams was an early Unitarian, as was William Howard Taft almost a century later. Not everyone in America’s pantheon regarded Christ as God.

One of the few shortcomings of the movie “Lincoln,” to me, was that the portrayal of the final months of the president’s life did not fully reflect his increasing, almost daily, references to God, speeches about God’s will, conversational mentions of God’s role in life; and his growing reliance on God. But this spiritual evolution is a fact, in his hand and in the memoirs of his intimates. This supposed church-rejecting agnostic could have been our most devout believer among presidents.

But let us not forget that the Founders, whether they went to church often or seldom, or how they expressed their creeds, were, almost to a man, zealous about following the spirit of Holy scripture, and honoring biblical injunctions about governments and societies. About this they were clear and firm.

And let the presidents of our time not forget that the vast majority of pilgrims, pioneers, settlers, preachers, revolutionaries, civic leaders, and, yes, their predecessors, no matter the details of their religious exercise, looked to the Bible and to the words of Jesus Christ as they built a nation.

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I just experienced – there is no better word – a concert by Phil Keaggy. Many people consider him the greatest guitarist in the world; and if he is not… no, he is. His career has been one sharing his talent, performing and writing songs of tender love, of confronting life’s challenges, and of the overcoming power of God’s love. A song of collateral relation to today’s topic, although not a direct reference to presidents per se, is “True Believers.” We need True Believers, we should savor them, we should be them. (And we should elect them!)

Click: The True Believers

10-15-2012

Reprinted by request during the presidential election run-up.

Election Day is upcoming. Which of our presidents was the most religious — anyway, the most observant — is a topic that has relevance, perhaps more so when “social issues” inhabit headlines. Lest we judge, lest we be judged, we should acknowledge that it is an open question with no definitive answer, yet a fit topic for discussion. It is interesting to view the historical evidence and consider verifiable records.

I addressed the topic last President’s Day, and it proved to be the most popular –- or at least the recipient of the most “hits” and reactions -– in the several years I have been blogging and writing devotional essays. Are people hungry for intellectual “parlor games”… or wanting to connect the dots between political leaders and Christian faith?

In my case I hold Theodore Roosevelt in particular regard. A year ago my biography of him, BULLY! (Regnery History, 440 pages, illustrated entirely by vintage political cartoons), was published, and I devoted a chapter to TR’s faith. (Indeed, I am working on a full book on the theme.) One thing I have come to appreciate about TR is something that largely has been neglected by history books. That is, the aspect of his fervent Christian faith. In some ways, he might be seen as the most Christian and the most religious of all presidents; and by “religious” I mean most observant.

This is (admittedly) subjective; it is difficult to compute and compile lists of factors. TR’s name at the top of the list of religiously observant presidents might surprise some people, yet that surprise would itself bear witness to the nature of his faith: privately held, but permeating countless speeches, writings, and acts. (A step out of character for this man who otherwise exhibited most of multi-faceted personality to the world!) His favorite verse was Micah 6:8 -– “What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?”

He was of the Dutch Reformed Church. He participated in missions work with his father, a noted philanthropist. He taught weekly Sunday School classes during his four years at Harvard. He wrote for Christian publications.

He called his bare-the-soul speech announcing his principles when running in 1912, “A Confession of Faith.” Later he closed perhaps the most important speech of his life, the clarion-call acceptance of the Progressive Party nomination that year, with the words, “We stand at Armageddon and we battle for the Lord!” That convention featured evangelical hymns and closed with “Onward Christian Soldiers.”

He titled one his books Foes of Our Own Household (after Matthew 10:36) and another, Fear God and Take Your Own Part. He once wrote an article for The Ladies’ Home Journal, “Nine Reasons Why Men Should Go To Church.” After TR left the White House, he was offered university presidencies and many other prominent jobs. He chose instead to become Contributing Editor of The Outlook, a relatively small Christian weekly magazine.

He was invited to deliver the Earl Lectures at Pacific Theological Seminary in 1911, but declined due to a heavy schedule. Knowing he would be near Berkeley on a speaking tour, however, he offered to deliver the lectures if he might be permitted to speak extemporaneously, not having time to prepare written texts of the five lectures, as was the school’s customary requirement. It was agreed, and TR spoke for 90 minutes each evening -– from the heart and without notes -– on the Christian’s role in modern society.

… and so on. TR was not perfect, but he knew the One who is. Fond of saying that he would “speak softly and carry a big stick,” it truly can be said, also, that Theodore Roosevelt hid the Word in his heart, and acted boldly. He was a great American because he was thoroughgoing good man; and he was a good man because he was a humble believer.

Remember Theodore Roosevelt on his birthday, Oct 27, days before the election. Remember him every day -– we are not seeing his kind any more.

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A clip from a memorable movie of the 1970s, starring Sean Connery and Candice Bergen, depicting Theodore Roosevelt handling a terrorist situation in north Africa during his presidency. Brian Keith as TR.
Click: The Wind and the Lion

8-27-11

Life happens. As they say. So does death, which merely is to repeat oneself: “Both life and death are parts of the same Great Adventure,” Theodore Roosevelt said, after his son Quentin was shot down over France.

How do we respond to death? Or to the mystery of life? Ironically: how to cope with death’s certainty and to life’s fragility? Sometimes we “lose it.” Sometimes we see through a glass darkly. Sometimes those of us left behind proceed headlong into the business of life. Sometimes we pray to discern God’s will. Sometimes we meditate upon His Word.

My idea is that God does not always hand us multiple-choice quizzes. Sometimes we can do all these things together. They are not mutually exclusive responses.

But always we should trust in His mercy. This is HARD sometimes, fighting the tendency to lean to our own understanding. “His wisdom, yes,” we want to cry; “but where is the mercy?”

Almost exactly a year ago our family was saddened by a miscarriage my daughter Emily suffered, and I wrote a message that attempted to collect my thoughts. This week my other daughter, Heather, lost her baby. Emily and Norman’s came early in her pregnancy; Heather and Patrick’s daughter Sarah, however, was born and died after nine days. The challenges of a 24-week-term birth eventually overwhelmed Sarah’s wracked little body. And I am thinking of a friend this week whose nephew drowned, was recovered but was unconscious, and died after several days .

Our natural minds tend to take over when we try to understand the ways of God.

It is a natural idea that, say, God wants the little baby in Heaven more than He wants her down here. But if that were the entire story, we should wonder why a few days of life, which ultimately adds grief to parents’ joy, can be part of His plan. Yet it is. That we cannot understand it all means, basically, that we are not God, and His mysteries are just that: mysteries. There is sin in the world, so there is death in the world. But after our questions and cries and withdrawal, the mysterious ways of God are to be accepted, embraced, and trusted.

One thing is certain. We shall be united with the living God, and re-united with the healed Sarah, in Heaven some day. We will look around for her, and when we see her, we will have to wait one more brief moment to embrace her, because she will be in Jesus’ lap and in His arms, and then He will pass her to us.

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Some of my meditations on these subjects are well reflected in the lyrics of a gospel song from a few years ago. It is not a line-for-line representation of anyone’s actual thoughts over a baby’s death; not anyone I know. But surely many people, from casual Christians to devoted believers, entertain some of these thoughts. Please listen to the moving performance, and watch the tender pictures. And meditate.

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Click: The Mystery Of the Wonders You Perform