Remembering the Perished

Remembering the Perished

 

          I am never more conflicted than during the highest holidays of our national calendar. I do not take lightly the freedoms or the basic forms or order enjoyed by many within our Western nations. Western Civilization (with the United States) has carved a place for the dignity of the human being at the very foundation of our understanding of governmental order. This has often been done most imperfectly, but an ideal that government must serve the dignity of the human individual has been placed at the very foundation of Western Civilization’s understanding of a government required to seek the consent of the governed. Because I am aware of the weakness of our humanity even in seeking the best of ideals, I find myself conflicted as we remember and honor the perished on this Memorial Day.

            I am not a pacifist but I do believe in the ideal that war must be an affront to the sensibilities of a God who so loved the world that He gave us his only begotten Son. I find in Dietrich Bonhoeffer, an example for one deeply attracted to the ideals of pacifism and yet he came to a point where he felt he had to actively resist evil with the strongest of means. He said of resisting evil; “We are not simply to bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive spoke into the wheel itself.” We often remember the sacrifices of soldiers whose battles involved their being employed to drive a spoke into the wheels of injustice. In the 1920’s following the debacle of the First World War, Bonhoeffer had been attracted to and viewed himself a pacifist. I suspect that at some level every seeker of good must have an appreciation of pacifism even if he also wonders how it is he might put a spoke into the wheels of injustice. There is a conflict between the good we seek and the presence of evil surrounding us and even finding a place within our very souls. For me such a conflict enters how I think of a holiday like Memorial Day.

            The Christian is taught to pray for his family, neighbor, community, city, nation, and world. With each of these connections we are called to love our neighbors as ourselves. We recognize how we are as much in this world as we are not of it. The tension of seeking good for our neighbor is joined to the necessity of putting a spoke into the wheels of injustice rolling over a neighbor.

            We would like to believe that every American war has been an action of our choosing to put a spoke into the wheels of injustice. I think we likely sense that this has been truer at times than at other times. We think of World War II as the good war, and those who fought it as the greatest generation. We often have our doubts about the wisdom of other war choices. I suspect that there ought to be tension whenever and wherever we see questions in the wisdom of a certain war. It is this tension that often characterizes my attitude towards a holiday like Memorial Day.

            One of the most striking movie scenes impressed upon my conscience appears near the end of the film “Saving Private Ryan.” An older Private Ryan, joined by his family pays respect to the soldier who helped insure the Private’s safe return home. He wonders if he has been worthy of the death of the officer who helped insure his return home. He feels the obligation he has to someone whose death was connected to the life he has enjoyed for the decades since that death. There is a reality that part of the freedoms and lifestyles we enjoy have depended on the sacrifices soldiers made in battle. We are therefore like an older Private Ryan, who kneel at a soldier’s grave and asks “Have I lived a life worthy of your sacrifice for me?”

            I think we often associate that question with our remembrance of the Memorial Day holiday. But an equally poignant question should also flow from remembering those who perished in our many wars. If we are to honor those who have perished, we must also honor those who might perish. For our remembrance of those who perished in our wars, should be aimed to a large degree to reflect upon how we are to live with our lives of freedom. We sense that we have an obligation to those who gave their all. But do we recognize with enough gravity that remembering a soldier’s death should also obligate us to asking the important questions when someone imagines we should commit our young men and women to be participants in a war. Do we take seriously enough that kneeling at a grave of a young soldier who perished long ago also obligates us to seek to make sure that the blood of our young is not wasted on a war with insufficient cause?

            Warfare has a double edged sword for us to contemplate. We might think of Memorial Day and think of how Jesus spoke to the religious of his day. They commemorated the graves of the prophets. Jesus warned them that when they placed wreathes on the prophets’ tombs that they testified against themselves that they were the sons and daughters of those who killed the prophets. He turned the table on the glibness of their memorial festivals. Did they honor the prophets with wreathes or with their lives? Did they do what was in their power to insure that another prophet did not suffer death from their wrongful activities?

            On Memorial Day we do well to remember those who died for our nation. On Memorial Day we do well to ask the questions to make sure that no soldier must die a death caused by a careless or reckless government or an apathetic people. The graves of young soldiers ought not be the wasted blood of covetous old men who seek profits using the blood of young soldiers to build their empires.

            On this Memorial Day, let us seek peace with all men. Let us seek to defend those seeking to live in peace. Let us wonder how we might put a spoke in the wheel of injustice. Let us remember those who died and ask if we are worthy of their sacrifice. Let us remember those who die and seek that no soldier is given over to die needlessly.

In search of Beauty

Living as Art in Search of Beauty

By Dan McDonald

 

Field Mouse on a Teasel Plant by @deanmason.wow on Instagram

 

            This photograph spoke to me a few days ago. At least I was impressed with a few quick thoughts upon seeing the photo. First I thought – wow what a neat photograph. Then it awakened my inner environmentalist in me, and finally I wondered if I was giving beauty its due in the way I live.

            My first realization was that this was an amazing photograph capturing the vivid yet muted colors of nature. There is purple, green, white, and brown mingled as if long planned to become a quiet scene in nature’s gallery. It would really disappoint me if I discovered this was photo-shopped. It would not however take away from me the importance of the impressions the photograph left upon me.

            Among our ancient ancestors who pursued an understanding through philosophy and theology, a triad of qualities became pre-eminent in their recognizing what composed the good life. There was goodness, truth, and beauty. We moderns often push beauty to the side as aesthetics, while holding goodness as ethics and morality; and truth as the study of science or revelation as explaining the foundations of our world and universe. In my younger days I thought of beauty as having little importance. I wanted to study theology, history, and understand how the world is and how we ought to respond. I had a strong Stoic flavor to my world view. It was a dragnet perspective, “Just the facts ma’am.” Beauty seems of little use to a strictly pragmatic modern lifestyle.

            This photograph’s beauty impressed upon me the environmental responsibilities of my human life perhaps as much, or in dramatic reinforcement of the statistics of what is happening to our world when the weakness of our environmental conscience fails to bring us to act in relationship with the world. Statistically most of us have heard how plastic is now found in a large portion of the digestive system of the fish in the seas. We know plastic almost never goes away and the animals of our world are at a loss of knowing what to do about it. Statistics seem to be only lukewarm in their ability to motivate. In this photograph seeing the mouse steady itself on a stem and seemingly sniffing the bloom of the plant – I see an image that reminds me that I as a human being share this world as my home with this field mouse and teasel plant. I have no doubt that humankind is the creature capable of managing the earth in search for resources to make human life fruitful. I am reminded by this photograph that our management of the earth should have built into it caring for the species of the earth and the many forms of wildlife. This photograph reminds me of why environmental responsibility in the way we live should be so important to us. It is beauty of the simplicity of a tiny creature enjoying a lush habitat that says to me, if you aren’t willing to protect and encourage the health of nature, what are you willing to protect and encourage? Beauty helps me see the environment as well as the fetus in a womb not as crusades needing to be won, but as part of the web of life needing implicitly to be protected and encouraged.

            We think of beauty as having less value than goodness or truth because we can so much more easily explain goodness and truth. They seem to have more objective substance to discuss, while beauty always bogs down into the subjective cliché of “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” I have seen attempts to lift beauty into rational discussions and to objectify beauty, which usually does to beauty what objectifying women does to the actual women we know. Beauty refuses to be neatly categorized into our rationalistic Enlightenment affected view of the universe.

            Perhaps we have in our attempt to categorize truth and goodness failed to see that beauty is essential to our understanding of life because it is beyond our categories and because it is such a subjective value. Beauty is perhaps more than truth and goodness the sacramental link to a world beyond our own world. Beauty suggests to us that there are things “eye has not seen and ear has not heard.” Beauty reminds us there are in those elements eye has seen and ear has heard which is not so much to be explained as enjoyed. Beauty has a quality eschatology imprinted upon it. I see the field mouse balancing on the teasel stem and innately realize that our world is confused today. It could be so much more beautiful, good, and closer to perfection. That is for those of us with an expectation of good future things, the imprint of eschatology. It is also the call to response in the sacramental world in which we live. If we have seen beauty we have heard a call to express praise, to protect the beautiful, and to live as if we have understood there is yet beauty in this world.

            Dostoyevsky wrote that beauty will save the world. This field mouse on a teasel plant seems to beckon me to see and be beauty. How are we to be beauty in the world? How much beauty does my neighbor see in me? Not just do I take care of my yard, but does my presence make the world seem kinder to my neighbors? The same is true for our work places, for our family members, for our houses of worship, for our places in political discussions, and community decision making. It took a field mouse to say to me, “Would you consider living life as an art in search of beauty?”

Writing without a subject

Writing without a Subject

By Dan McDonald

 

            I am writing without a subject because I have reached a point where I want to write, but haven’t a subject ready in mind. I am still recovering from a season of long work hours. I am looking over what I haven’t accomplished and the list is so much greater than what I have.  I suppose I often write to flee the responsibilities I feel I so completely fail. Writing sometimes is the escape from responsibility. At other times it is the beginning of a recovery from a season of failure.

            I have thought of great subjects for which I need to do more research. What does it mean for us as Christians to live a common life? How do we best run a nation which builds a shared life while encouraging each and every individual life so that we rise in freedom and not march in monolithic compulsion? How does a corporation composed of investors become that which drives an economy, while a union of workers threatens that economy? Does possession of money enlighten the one, while the very act of seeking a more equitable distribution make the one offering sweat and skills thugs? How should a Christian view money? Is what is ours, ours so no one else will have a say? Or have we nothing but what God has given to us as stewards to do in accord with his will? I know however I answer, all the more questions will abound. I think about these things but I cannot wisely address them.

            As a writer I sometimes think that the things I write are part of who I am. But mostly I write of shadowy forms imagining who I would like to be. Who I am is different. I try to express grand, glorious, beautiful, and exciting things. Mostly my life inhabits the mundane. Perhaps your life does also. Perhaps that is part of what St. Paul understood about Jesus’ life. We speak of the majestic terms that were and are surely great truths. We say that he is “Fully God and fully man.” St. Paul thought of this truth and spoke of how while it was not robbery for him to contemplate himself equal to God, yet He emptied himself into the weakness of our humanity, even to the point of death.” There were miracles. There were moments when he beheld surprising responses of faith that led him to marvel. But how much of his each and every day, in his years upon this earth, were filled with the mundane and the unremarkable? Remember him wondering at the twelves’ inability to understand some of his foundational teachings? He knows our frames that we are but dust, but sometimes he felt the depth of the contradiction of him, the holy one being surrounded by the sinners for whom he came. Yet we speak of such things without understanding of either the fullness of such a contradiction or the greatness of such a love which sought to span the gap of such a contradiction. There are times when a faithful life is given no new exciting truth to recite, no new breakthroughs to pursue, no excitement - we are instead given a plow and told to look ahead and not back. We are given the mundane and perhaps it is the greatest work we will be given.

            Tomorrow is Ascension Day in the Church Calendar. His forty days of lingering came to an end. He told his disciples to wait in Jerusalem. He disappeared into the heavens. Ten days later, the disciples huddling in the Upper Room were moved by as the Holy Spirit appeared as wind in tongues of fire. Had the Spirit come to make even the mundane exciting, or did He more come to fill the mundane, the grievous, and the exciting that in each we might be given the strength to be faithful whether much or little?

            A child died this week from a tumor. One day the little girl was playing and excited to be going to be able to partake of communion. Illness kept her from the Communion. Soon the family was saying to her their good-byes. A family, a church, a community that knew her are saddened and filled with grief. Believers, as well as those without faith, feel the heart breaking loss. The Spirit who has come into our lives does not make everything excitement and pleasure. Still He comforts. He fills the emptiness of grief, and the boredom of the mundane as He fills the wonderful, the exciting, and the triumphant victory. The plowman looks forward. He is tempted to look back. His plowing isn't fun or exciting. By sheer grace, He asks for constancy to be faithful in his assigned task. On the great day when the men and women who have done great things receive their reward, they will then celebrate with the awe of opened eyes, as they behold how our Lord blesses that one unnoticed soul whose only accomplishment was to do that little thing.

            Perhaps now I go to bed. Perhaps in my sleep the Lord will give me something to write.