Connections of Patriotism

The Connections of Patriotism

 

            I ask one thing of the readers of this blog. Don’t stop reading after the first full paragraph. Give this piece at least two full paragraphs to help you determine if this is something worth your time reading.

            For many years my thoughts about patriotism were either negative or ambiguous. It seemed to me that patriotism often led to one people imagining themselves better than another people. Patriotism led to wars. It led to wars where we imagined our wounded and killed as martyrs for a cause, and those who suffered and died on the other side as either children of a false god, or semi-human barbarians. Patriotism seems often to be in collusion with propaganda, ready to hear good things about ourselves and believe the worst about others. There was even ambiguity about my negative feelings. Those who went to serve in our wars were often among the best young men and women from some of the finest families I knew. If a day came when one lost his or her life on the battlefield or in driving a jeep over a hidden exploding device – I knew I could not voice my opinions in the midst of their suffering. I knew I couldn’t voice my opinions because deep down I knew there was something more about these feelings of patriotism than my negativity could understand.

            I often wished I could talk myself into being a true pacifist. I was as ambivalent about pacifism as I was patriotism. I thought about pacifism and realized that it would be like one who enjoys a relaxing dinner at a nice restaurant on the Sabbath. If I were a pacifist I would be the man who sat enjoying the fragile peace forged by an army of soldiers, policemen, judges, juries, and statesmen. I would sit in the fragile peace served to me while I counted those who served me in this as what was wrong in my world. In my ambiguous thoughts I had to realize that however you, or I, or that other guy feel about patriotism; our thoughts and our sensitivities are aroused by living in a world that in military slang can be described as fubar! We are all caught up in this fubar world, trying to adjust to it and force adjustments upon it. (note: fubar = fouled up beyond all recognition, the polite version) We are all caught up in a fubar world. Today, while not resolving the ambiguities I believe inherent in our understandings of patriotism I have gone beyond having a truce with patriotism. Patriotism and I have signed a peace agreement. That is what I am here sharing with you this Memorial Day.

            I have come to realize that perhaps most everything around us is hidden from us. The iceberg visible above the surface is only a fraction in size compared to what is hidden below the surface. I pick up a bar of steel seeing it as a solid mass, when in reality it is a pool of molecules with electrons swimming in the vast spaces around the molecules. Or perhaps more to the point we once imagined that the difference between man and beasts is that man thought in rational terms and the animal acted on the basis of instinct. But how much do we as human beings act if not instinctively then innately based upon sensitivities to the reality of our human condition that lead us to instinctively sense a relationship to place, persons, and time. The instinctive nature of our perception of these realities are of course then translated probably only partially into the language of reason and thought.

            If what I just said doesn't seem to describing something real or important, let me explain a little bit more. I believe that in our human journey we have had to learn that our lives are connected to place, other persons, and time. These realities are of course not defined by patriotism, but patriotism is interwoven in its expressions with these realities. Patriotism like all other shared human sentiments develops songs and stories, images, celebrations and liturgies. We do this because we instinctively know that relationship to place, persons, and time is essential for our survival. This became part of our collective human instinct long ago. We feel the need in our sharing danger and in our survival to celebrate and to forge symbols. This is what we human beings connected to one another do innately. We create symbols, share stories and songs, contemplate images, create celebrations and feast, and compose liturgies to capture the beautiful, grievous and triumphant; because we sense a shared life in things. We create symbols of our connections whether in national flags, corporate logos, the header on am individual's webpage, or as members of faith reverencing crosses, crescents, or the Star of David. We symbolize and celebrate our connections. In patriotism we wave flags and when we wish to feel the solemnity of an occasion, or the pain of the flow of history where so much cost has been absorbed perhaps in our minds a worn frayed flag symbolizes more than a new fresh one.

 

A worn flag can be a powerful symbol of connections

 

            Patriotism is connected to place. In our patriotic songs we sing of “purple mountain majesties”or “amber waves of grain.” We try then to imagine everything “from California to the New York Island.” As a child, before I doubted patriotism, my first patriotic feelings were felt as I thought of my nation stretching beyond what seemed to me to be an endless prairie horizon. To me this was the world. Lands beyond this perceived horizon of my prairie seemed another World away. Patriotism is connected to place.

Central Illinois – my initial patriotism the bigness of the horizon

               

            I suspect that patriotism is connected to our instinctive needs of survival as human beings. We are connected to place because we sense safety in the environment we know. It may be exciting to explore the world, but there is always relief felt coming home. Our ancestors knew danger. But in their local environment they knew which plants were tasty, or which less tasty varieties could still at least sustain life; and which could heal or kill. They knew where to keep a watch for poisonous snakes, or to spot the signs that a large predatory beast might be near. Home was where one felt confident of in his ability to safely navigate through the potential dangers involved in a place. There were places where we were home and other places where we understood we were out of our element.

            Patriotism is connected to our sense of a community that nourishes and sustains us. We might be rugged individualists in how we view ourselves, but we sense that life is made better because of the butchers, bakers, candlestick makers, teachers, policemen, doctors, farmers, cooks, waitresses, and store owners. We might take exception when someone says it takes a village to raise a child, but a child instinctively looks with eager eyes to learn the lessons of his village. Community is shared in common pursuits, meeting felt needs, speaking a shared language, enjoying stories together of falling in love, of fighting battles, of surviving hardships, of learning to embrace opposites. Patriotism is rooted in our innate understanding that we who are centered in our individualities really do constantly need others. We know from the earliest moments of our shared humanity that there is safety in community and dependence one upon another.

            Patriotism is also rooted in our sense that humanity in its community is a multi-generational endeavor. We are born dependent on parents who feed, clothe, and train us. We grow up fall in love, maybe bring children into the world, and begin to realize that now we must train these little ones because life is important and beautiful but fleeting. We think of what our parents gave to us and hope to give them at least as much for when they grow up and when we depart. This has become instinctive reality impressed upon our sorrowful human souls. We learn to value the existence of heritage; the relationships between fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, parents and children. Our word “patriotism” is taken from the Latin root word “patri” which means fathers. Heritage has become a word describing the outgrowth of the multi-generational connections between fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, parents and children. If in stories we seem to enshrine more often fathers and sons in a historical patriarchy – in our symbols we have also instinctively imagine an idealized mother bearing her light to the world. Instinctively we realize that survival of our humanity depends on connections of heritage.

 

 

            I have made peace with the reality of patriotism. It is part of our human condition. We are connected to place, always yearning for a home in a potentially dangerous environment. We are connected for safety's sake to others in a web of complex relationships. We are children of time in relationships with a heritage of parents born before us and children born to follow us. Patriotism isn’t necessarily the perfect word for describing all of this, but it is assuredly a phenonmenon connected to all of this. It is bigger than us. It is a mystery seen or understood only in part. We can do it better or perhaps even worse, but it is most assuredly a spiritual instinct serving us in our connections to time, persons, and place.