Memorial Day Reflections

I went to a Memorial Day concert at Christ United Methodist Church this evening. I don't usually go to Memorial Day events. But this morning, I went to Mass at 9 a.m., which was partly about Memorial Day but also a Marian feast day. Still, we honored our military heroes, the fallen ones, and paid our respect. Then a good and persistent friend suggested I should go to this concert, and went out of his way to get tickets for me (which no one ever asked for, so I still have them).

At first, I thought about how a concert with such a huge choir would never happen at my church. But for good reason. We don't mix religion and patriotism. We are a universal church and while we acknowledge national holidays, we do not dwell on being patriotic. We do not mix up God and country. More on that later.

The performance tonight was absolutely the best Memorial Day event I've ever attended. Our troops and our military, all branches, were represented and honored. We were treated to a list of all 50 states, named in the order they joined the union, and the year they joined. That was different. We heard some excellent singing, a few familiar tunes, and some I'd never heard before. Nice video to go along with it.

Then, a little bit of religion was thrown into the mix. Now, don't get me wrong, we were in a church and it was not unexpected that God would be mentioned. But I kind of cringe when patriotic freedom themes are seasoned with religion.

I think that most people, when they hear or think about freedom of religion, they think about how they are free to worship as they please, but they don't think so much about people who worship in ways that are different from them having that same freedom. I don't think folks always consider what it's like for Americans who are not Christians, or perhaps not members of major world religions. We have Jewish Americans, Muslim Americans, wiccan Americans, Native Americans who practice their ancestors' religions. We have atheists and agnostics, Hindu Americans and Buddhist Americans. I'm sure I've missed some, but you get the idea.

Would most proponents of injecting God more into our public life -- government, schools and such -- be so enthusiastic if you substituted one of those in the mix, and tried to make some other religion the mainstream faith in America? I dare say many would not be comfortable with that.

But not to detract from the event tonight. It was a delight.

I also worry that younger Americans are not so dedicated to our country. They are more globally oriented, and that may be a good thing for them, but for our country's future, not so much. I believe many of today's young adults would sooner abandon America than fight to the death for her. I hope that I am wrong, and I hope that if I am wrong, they never have to do that.

Freedom, liberty, all important. And there are ways to steal them from us without firing a gun or declaring war or any of that. Those are subtle things we must be alert for. And somehow, we need to teach our children and grandchildren to love our country, because unless we let it slip away, this is the one place on Earth with the most freedoms, the best lifestyle and highest quality of life. Those things are being stolen from us, and that makes me sad. How? With things like the Patriot Act, which implies that it's patriotic to give up our privacy rights and liberty. With outsourcing of jobs so that corporations can post ever larger profit reports and pay their CEOs millions more each year while middle-class America is dying on the vine, with no good jobs and less hope for a bright future than ever before. By dividing us against each other. Some people are quicker to demonize and denounce their fellow Americans over ideology than to denounce an enemy that's bleeding us dry, quick to demonize those who are not like us, and not very welcoming to immigrants anymore, if they ever were. By sending our young men and women -- our future -- to countries where they are traumatized, wounded, maimed and killed, and for what? Those countries are no military threat to us here in America. We would be better off if those troops were brought home, where they could protect us from within our own borders from the threats here.

We face huge challenges. Can we rise to the occasion and survive? Can we become a united people in charge of our own destiny again? Can we learn to concede that Americans who have different ideas and perceptions still love our country? We will not stand strong if we are constantly trying to discredit each other and arguing over everything under the sun. Bah.

I am fundamentally an optimist, and I love this country. I know conservatives who love America, and I know liberals who love it. I think we need to pool our strengths and purge our weaknesses, and soon, so we can become strong again. We can do this, but not if we are distracted and bickering with each other.

Tornadoes and other things

Wow, it's been a wild week for weather. So many tornadoes. So scary. And floods, earthquakes, tsunamis and a volcano erupting, all this year.

But back to tornadoes. I saw a short video posted by The Weather Channel's Mike Seidel (of Salisbury, I might add) of a wall cloud. Being curious, I googled wall cloud. Found some gorgeous photos of impressive wall clouds and read that these often precede formation of a tornado.

As I was perusing the photos, however, I realized that while I have  not, to my knowledge, seen an actual wall cloud, I have seen during thunderstorms some cloud formations that resemble the wall clouds. I am not sure exactly what defines and separates a wall cloud from other clouds that might look like them, but I've seen swirly looking clouds like the ones in the photos Google so obligingly provided.

Maybe it's a good thing I didn't know what I was looking at.

There was apparently a tornado just north of the town where I was born, Jonesboro Arkansas.

I've always been terrified by tornadoes. Not sure why. Because they're so unpredictable? They appear so fast, wreak so much havoc in such a short time? I wonder if my fear goes back to watching "The Wizard of Oz" as a child.

It's fascinating how you can be in relatively close proximity to a tornado, watch it, and never be in any danger, but other people are caught up and destroyed in them, or their property is demolished.

We tend to be more threatened by hurricanes here on the coast. Hurricanes are scary, too, but as long as we can preduct them, warn people and so on, we can escape. We can prepare by boarding up windows and leaving the area. You cannot stand nearby and watch a hurricane. It's all-encompassing and quite violent, and it doesn't come and go in moments.

These are scary times. The Earth seems to be in turmoil right now. Something's different. Climate change? Coincidence? Time will tell.

I am not nervous or anxious, though, that's the curious thing. I think I was more anxious when I was younger. Now, I feel more at peace with myself and the world. Thank you, God, for that.

Now that the giddiness is behind us

I wrote this as a comment to another blog that was looking at our reactions as Christians to Osama bin Laden's demise:


I think, I hope, 24 hours later, that the rejoicing was a thoughtless expression of release from the underlying fear, shame, embarrassment and anger we felt as a nation toward an enemy so elusive, it took us nearly a decade to find him.
Osama bin Laden had become for us a symbol of our incompetence, of our vulnerability and national weakness. And after several years not only of the suffering bin Laden had directly or indirectly caused, but also of the subsequent financial collapse and lingering recession, we sorely needed something positive.
And while as a Christian I would never thank God for anyone's death, I really think that as much as the man was a symbol of all that was wrong in America and I guess a boogeyman of sorts, the celebrations were more about restoring a sense of strength and competence again to our country. 
It brought out the best and the worst in us, in a sense.
I can't really honestly say I am sorry he died, but I am conflicted about how it came about. I do know, however, that for as long as humans have inhabited the Earth, there have been wars and injustice and fighting. I do not think this is anywhere near the worst thing mankind has done, but that doesn't make it right, either. I am not even sure that I have figured out what Jesus would do in this instance, either, trite as that sounds. 
Jesus would have loved Osama bin Laden as much as he loves any of us, but we have no way of knowing what was in bin Laden's heart, and if he never accepted God's love, then I've never seen any indication that God the father or Jesus force their love on anyone. 
I also do not think that God's love makes it OK to do the kinds of things bin Laden did. Unless bin Laden somehow realized the wrongness of his life's work and experienced true repentance before he died in that firefight, then I have never seen anything in Scripture that says we will be forgiven automatically. 
This conflicting thought process, along with our blindness to what is in the hearts and souls of others, (blindness in the sense of inability to know, not refusal to know), is why I believe we are told not to judge others and why we do not have the power to determine the fate of others.