Numbered Days

Normandy, Eagle's Nest, Pisa, and Cinque Terre

2011-10-25T09:16:00.009-05:00

No. 14198

Our first free travel period has come and gone, and we’ve since made a brief trip to Lucca, Pisa and the Cinque Terre. Yesterday and today have been devoted to classes, but tomorrow we take the train to Naples, with visits to Pompeii and Montecassino scheduled. With some free time this afternoon, I thought I’d try to update the past several days.Thursday, Oct. 13 — I arrived in Paris, after having taken an evening train from Florence to Milan, and an overnight train from Milan to the French capital. With a bit of time on hand before I had to take my next train, I made my way to the Musee d’Orsay, which has several Van Goghs. Sadly, their most famous Van Gogh — Starry Night Over The Rhone — was on loan to Singapore, so I didn’t get to see it. But it was still time well spent. En route to the museum, I found the Parisian “Cleopatra’s Needle.” There are similar Egyptian obelisks in London, Rome and New York.
I then took the train to Caen, hoping to have enough time to visit the D-Day museum there, but was unable to find it in the relatively short time I had allotted. A bit disappointed, I headed on to Bayeux, where I had stayed for the next three evenings.

Friday, October 14 — My Normandy tour began at about 8:30 Friday morning, with a tour of the British sector, including Pegasus Bridge, and (east to west) Sword, Juno and Gold Beaches. It was interesting, but paled compared to what I would see the next day…
Saturday, October 15 — Day two of the Normandy tour was the best. It covered the American sector. We began by looking at some German gun emplacements located between Omaha and Gold Beaches.After leaving the gun emplacements, we went down to Omaha Beach itself, then up to the achingly beautiful American cemetery overlooking the beach, then back down to a different portion (Green sector) of Omaha, at which the picture above was taken. We also went to Pointe du Hoc, the bridge at La Fiere (which I mention in my dissertation), Ste. Mere Eglise, and, of course, Utah Beach.

My biggest disappointment during my stay at Bayeux is that I did not have the opportunity to visit the famous tapestry there. This was not for want of trying. The tapestry museum technically closed at 6:30 each evening, but unfortunately, quit allowing new visitors at 5:45 each evening. (This, in spite of the fact that the museum advertises a strategy for successfully viewing the tapestry if you only have time for a 30-minute visit.) By the time I got around Thursday evening, the museum was already closed. Then on Friday and Saturday, I had my tours of the WWII sites of Normandy, which ended right at 5:45. Most frustrating of all, on Saturday I rushed from the tour to the museum, and was there a little bit before 5:45 (by my watch), but they were still closed, and the lady would not open the door, in spite of me begging her to do so.

Sunday, October 16 — Sunday was a travel day. Since I wanted to catch the 7:42 train from Caen to Paris, and since there was not a train from Bayeux to Caen that ran early enough for me to do so, I had to take a taxi from Bayeux to Caen instead. That ran me to just shy of 75 Euros, but it allowed me to catch that train to Paris. I even had the opportunity to attend worship services with the church of Christ at 4, rue Déodat de Séverac — though it was, of course, in French. I then returned to the train station and made reservations for the train to Munich later in the afternoon. This was an even worse financial jolt. Even though I have a pass which is supposed to allow me to travel “free” (even still, I sometimes have to pay small reservation fees), they were not letting me use it on the portion of the journey from Paris to Stuttgart, so I had to buy a regular ticket — and a first class one, at that — for 185 Euros. The reservation from Stuttgart into Munich was, thankfully, just 3 additional Euros. With a considerably lighter wallet (actually, a considerably heavier credit card bill), I boarded the train for Munich, and arrived with no problems.

Monday, October 17 — Monday morning I boarded the train from Munich to Berchtesgaden, where I took a fascinating tour of Obersalzberg Mountain, which included a visit to Hiter’s famous “Eagle’s Nest” retreat. Since Hitler was both (A) afraid of heights, and (B) afraid of tight spaces; and since the Eagle’s Nest is (C) really, really high up in the mountains, and (D) accessible only by an elevator, he actually didn’t like going to the little Alpine retreat very much, and seldom used it. He and other high-ranking Nazi officials, including Herman Göring, had residences lower down Obersalzberg Mountain, which were largely destroyed by an Allied bombing raid during the war, and then blown up again after the war for good measure.Tuesday, October 18 — After spending Monday evening in Berchtesgaden, Tuesday was another travel day, this time all the way back to Florence. After wandering around Europe alone, it was really good to see all my students again.

Wednesday, October 19 — Even though there was some sentiment among my students that they should be able to rest up from their six consecutive days of not having classes by also not having class Wednesday morning, tyrannical dictator that I am (perhaps my visit to the Eagle’s Nest had rubbed off on me), I insisted that we start back at it at 8 in the morning, which we did. We had chapel in the afternoon. That evening, Robbie took me to an interesting presentation by a British WWII vet named Frank Unwin who had been imprisoned in Italy during the war, escaped, was recaptured, and brought to Florence. He is still sharp, and it was a joy to hear his story.

Thursday, October 20 — Another day of classes. I also spoke in chapel, using one of Dad’s devotionals (“Dealings With Life’s Second Bests”), drawn from Acts 16.10, and contained in the More Strength for the Journey book.

Friday, October 21 — We headed out on a two-night trip. Our first stop was the walled town of Lucca, followed by a visit to Pisa (including, for many of us, climbing the Leaning Tower; see the picture of “Pisa Team One” below).

We then traveled by train to the Cinque Terre, the five places, a group of five fishing villages along the Lingurian Sea (itself a portion of the larger Mediterranean). We stayed two nights in hotels at Vernazza, one of the five villages. After eating at a wonderful restaurant, we made our way to a pile of rocks in the bay, where we sang hymns in the night.Saturday, October 22 — In the morning, we explored more of the Cinque Terre, through a combination of train rides and walking the trail. It is beautiful country; the little villages cling to the hillsides, and have little roads winding through their houses and shops. The picture below is also of Vernazza.Sunday, October 23 — We made it back to Florence by train, and had worship together in the villa Sunday evening. After spending the previous Lord’s Day in Paris, trying to sing songs I did not much understand, it was a blessing to spend this Lord’s Day (evening) singing in English!

Monday, October 24 — Classes again. Robbie allowed me to guest lecture his humanities class on the subject of Italy during World War II. I informed my eight American History students that this class also counted as an American History lecture, as well.

Tuesday, October 25 — More classes. I tested my American History students, but, by updating my blog, have managed to avoid grading the tests thus far, at least. We have a pizza dinner scheduled in a little bit. Then tomorrow, Lord willing, it will be on to Naples.

Thinking of Normandy

2011-10-12T11:17:00.006-05:00

No. 14185

It is hard to believe that another week has passed since I updated. I’ve got about 40 minutes until I leave the villa for Normandy (via Paris and Caen) and Berchtesgaden on free travel, and I am pretty well packed, so I thought I’d give a quick update.

Thursday, Oct. 6 — We were still in Agrigento, and visited the archaeological museum there Thursday morning. Afterward, most of the group went down to the water, but I returned to the hotel where I worked on free travel and class prep.

Friday, Oct. 7 — We took the bus to Palermo, with a stop at the duomo and cloister at Monreale on the way, and a sobering visit to the Caputian Crypt in Palermo.

Saturday, Oct. 8 — We flew back to Pisa and bused to the villa, where I spent the rest of the day preparing a study guide, as well as Sunday’s lecture, in the Life of Paul class.

Sunday, Oct. 9 — We had worship at the villa, after which I spent most of the day writing a test for the Paul class. We did take time out to drive up the hill to a nice pizza place at which Kyle, Tripp and I had eaten several days ago. The trip back was not without some adventure. I found myself driving a van full of students back down the road to the villa. The Italians apparently save on money by building two-lane roads with only one lane. As I was driving downhill, around a corner, with a resident to my immediate right, in the dark, up came another vehicle from below. It was a standoff. I did not feel like I could back up the road, and the other driver was not much inclined to back down, until I leaned out the window and asked him — in English — what he would like me to do. (At least one witness says I was also waving my hands.) Upon realizing that I was a helpless American, the other driver backed down the road. The aforementioned vanload of students found the whole episode to be hilarious. We had talked in the Paul class about how the Apostle Paul had played his Roman citizenship card during his ministry, and Katie noted that I had just done the same thing with my American citizenship.

Monday, Oct. 10 — We had classes in the morning. Then after a quick but largely fruitless trip into town looking for a video adapter for my laptop — the one I brought over has suddenly gone missing — I returned to the villa and worked. Many of the students, meanwhile, played in a friendly basketball tournament with other American college students as well as Italian ones.
Tuesday, Oct. 11 — We spent the morning at Robbie & Mona’s very nice townhouse out in the country, then drove over to the American World War II cemetery near Florence. It is a beautiful place. Last night, we wrapped up the basketball tournament and cooked hot dogs and hamburgers for everyone as a service project. I was apparently going through hamburger withdrawal, and the burgers tasted really good.

The time draws near for me to invade Normandy. Better go.

Catching up

2011-10-05T14:45:00.008-05:00

No. 14178

A couple of days ago, I received an email from Steve Breezeel, wondering if I had ever been found, or was still wandering the streets of Firenze. I am found — I am, in fact, safely in our hotel lobby in Agrigento, Sicily. Robbie keeps us super busy — his motto is, the students can sleep once they get home — and class prep takes up most of what little time is left. Here is a brief summary of what has transpired since last I blogged:

Wednesday, Sept. 21 — We visited Santa Croce, the “Westminster Abbey of Italy,” where Michelangelo, Galileo, and Machiavelli are buried. We also visited the Bargello, a museum with several famous sculptures, including Donatello’s David (though there is some speculation that he is really a pagan character) and Michelangelo’s Bacchus. That night, we attended a Fiorintino soccer game. Not only did the hometeam win, but their P.R. people interviewed some of our students for the Fiorintino website.

Thursday, Sept. 22 — We attended a special welcome to American students hosted by the city of Florence, in the Palazzo Vecchio. Several dignitaries, including the mayor of Florence and the American consulate, spoke. I was struck how they kept talking about the relationship between Florence/Tuscany and the United States, and not the relationship between Italy and the United States. I sought explanation from Robbie, Mona, and their friend Lisabetta, and learned that this was partly a result of the continued presence of Italian sectionalism, and partly out of a sense of humility on Florence’s part; Lisabette explained that the city does not feel like it has the right to speak for all of Italy.

Friday, Sept. 23 — After morning classes, Robbie and I drove to a 10th century monastery in Scandicci which is for sale (although the attached church of San Salvatore and San Lorenzo is not part of the deal). It can be yours for a mere 3 million Euros, or so; it would probably cost double that to bring it to repair. In spite of the impracticality of it all, I could not help but fantasize about moving HUF into it.

Saturday, Sept. 24 — We drove out into the Tuscan countryside, visiting an old church two castles (Castello di Romena and Castello di Porciano), and an old water mill. We ate lunch at Castello di Porciano (pictured), which is a repaired tower castle with rooms to rent, and supper at the old mill.

Sunday, Sept. 25 — In the morning, we walked in the 5K Corri la Vita; that night, we worshiped with the Avanti Italia people.

Monday, Sept. 26 — After morning classes, we participated in Language Day at a local public school. We handed out peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and sang songs in English, including “The Star-Spangled Banner” and “Amazing Grace.”Tuesday, Sept. 27 — We visited three sites associated with Florence’s Duomo, Santa Marie di Fiore: the San Giovanni baptistery (in front of the Duomo), Santa Marie di Fiore itself, and Duomo museum itself. I enjoyed the sculptures in the Duomo museum more than those in the Bargello: a Pieta (pictured) by Michelangelo (less famous than the one in Rome but in some ways more poignant); a sculpture of Jeremiah and a haunting wooden one of Mary Magdalene, both by Donatello; and a moving crucifix by Vincenzo Danti.

Wednesday, Sept. 28 — We attended a concert in Florence in which the orchestra played pieces by Gershwin and Bernstein.

Thursday, Sept. 29 — We visited the medieval tower town of San Gimignano as well as Siena. The Duomo in Siena was interesting: black and white striped walls and elaborate mosaics on the floor.

Friday, Sept. 30 — After morning classes, the students attended a presentation on falconry while I stayed in the villa and prepped for class.

Saturday, Oct. 1 — We went to the market in the morning, had a picnic lunch, and then I came back and prepped some more.

Sunday, Oct. 2 — After church Sunday morning in Florence, I went back to the villa — and prepped for classes. Notice a pattern developing?

Monday, Oct. 3 — After morning classes, we drove to Pisa and flew to Catania, Sicily. After walking around the town a bit, we met up with the church of Christ in Catania and sang hymns and ate pizza with them. Their singing was gorgeous. Afterward, we drove to Taormina.

Tuesday, Oct. 4 — We had a free day in Taormina. After briefly visiting the Mediterranean Sea in the morning, I made my way up (via cable car) to the old town itself and did some shopping. Then I rode back down to the hotel and caught a bus for a tour of that old volcano, Mt. Etna. It was stark and beautiful. (And cold. I foolishly neglected to bring my jacket with me on the excursion; but after a summer of enduring Arkansas heat, and three weeks of disappointing and unseasonal Tuscan heat, it actually felt nice to be cold. During the trip, I met a really nice couple from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

Wednesday, Oct. 5 — This morning we took the cable car back up to the old town and visited the partially ruined (but still in use) Greco-Roman theater. We then bused to Agrigento, where we visited a bunch of Greek ruins collectively known as the “Valley of Temples.” Now I’m sitting in our hotel lobby, with ESPN on in the background. Life is good.

We are scheduled to leave Sicily on Saturday, then Wednesday is our first day of free travel; Lord willing, I’ll be visiting Normandy toward the end of next week. I don’t know when next I’ll blog.

Lost in Firenze

2011-09-20T15:56:00.013-05:00

No. 14163
It’s quickly become obvious that it is going to be difficult to find time to blog. Robbie does a great job of keeping the days packed. Much has happened since I last tried to fill this space.
On Friday, Robbie took us on a walking tour of Florence, or Firenze, as they call it here. It was interesting, and included a tour of the basilica of San Miniato al Monte. Kyle then took over, and walked us across the Ponte Vecchio and to the Piazza della Republica, before letting us all find our own way home. (Well, I tagged along with Kyle; the students all found their way home.)

On Saturday, I finally began to earn my keep, as we started our classes. In the evening, we went back to the Castello Acciaiolo, where our students chatted with a group of Italian high school students over dinner.
On Sunday, we worshiped with the brethren in Florence. Some of our young men took part in the service and did a very nice job. In the afternoon, we had more classes, followed by a devotional in the evening. That night, we had our first evening tea, during which I was grilled by a roomful of female students on why I was not married. (During Robbie’s tour on Friday, I saw the plaque at Piazza Della Signoria signifying where Savonarola was burned at the stake in 1498; frankly, he got off easy.)
On Monday, we had our third consecutive day of classes, followed by a photo scavenger hunt in Florence in the afternoon. I was in a group with six Harding students and a couple of students from Smith College who are staying in Florence for several months.

We all then rode a very crowded bus to the Stargate Pizzeria, where I accidentally ordered a pizza topped with “lardo,” which is to say, barely cooked pig fat. The taste was pretty good, but it was hard to get past the slippery texture. (Perhaps I should learn the Italian word for “pepperoni.”) The good news is that Abbie and Katie tried the lardo pizza, too.Today, we drove in caravan (I drove the white van again) out into the Tuscan countryside to lend a hand in the grape harvest. After working all morning, the locals treated us to a fabulous bar-b-que, and then we finished up and drove back to the villa.Little did I know that my evening’s adventures had just begun. Kyle asked me to follow him to the airport. We had rented a van to help shuttle all of the students out to the vineyard, and he needed someone to follow him to the car rental at the airport, in order to give him a ride home. I, without either my cell phone or Firenze map, (this is a blogging technique known as “foreshadowing”), agreed to do so.

Sadly, I lost sight of Kyle in the rush-hour Florentine traffic, and found myself driving the aforementioned white van — which is the approximate size of New Jersey — around the streets of Firenze on my own. I looked for signs for the airport, but found none. I also meditated upon the wisdom of keeping one’s cell phone with one at all times, particularly when one is driving by oneself in a foreign city where traffic lanes are apparently negotiable.

Finally, I hit upon the brilliant scheme of ditching the van on the far side of Firenze and striking out for the villa on my own. I parked it on the side of a street — just down the road from the pizza place which served me lardo pizza the night before, in fact, though this was certainly not the result of any deliberate navigation on my part. As far as I know, the van is still there, though by now it could be in a chop shop in Milan.

I tried to make telephone calls from a couple of phone booths, but was unable to get through. I then hopped the bus in Florence, took it to the tram, and took the tram to Scandicci. From there, I walked across the street to the bus stop. We have been told approximately a million times that we want to take Bus 27, so naturally I immediately took Bus 15, which executed a nice little circuit, and deposited me back at the bus stop, at which point I then took Bus 27.

Sadly, it did not deposit me quite as close to the villa as I hoped/expected. I then managed to take the same wrong turn by foot which I took by van Thursday night (and which has been the source of some controversy) before stumbling onto the Scandicci square, where I saw three of our girls — Stephanie, Sara, and Hannah — who were there to sip cappuchinos and study Italian.

Stephanie, who had managed to bring both her cell phone and her map of Scandicci along with her, kindly shared both with me. I called Kyle, he came and picked me up, and finally I was back at the villa. I was safe and sound. I would not have to spend the night on the streets of Scandicci. (Fun exercise: Google “Monster of Florence” sometime.)

Upon arriving, Abbie and Katie presented me with a “Welcome Home” banner, which — in spite of being laden with rather sarcastic editorial comments — was nice.(Reassuring note to my mom: The Monster of Florence hasn’t been active for 26 years. And he never bothered guys walking by themselves.)

Scandicci Walk

2011-09-15T12:58:00.016-05:00

No. 14158

Once upon a time, I blogged as a way of avoiding writing my dissertation. With that “incentive” now thankfully behind me, I don’t have as much impulse to blog. However, Harding University has graciously allowed me to teach at its satellite program in Florence, Italy — and living in Florence for the next several weeks may indeed encourage me to resume, at least for a while.

I’m with a good group of 29 students. We each made our own way to New York, from whence we flew to Pisa on Tuesday night, Sept. 13. It was an exhausting flight for me, as I never sleep very well on crowded airplanes.
We nevertheless arrived all in one piece on Wednesday. Kyle met us at the Pisa airport and rode with us to Harding’s 15th century villa, on the outskirts of Scandicci, a suburb of Florence. We got settled in to our new — well, early renaissance — digs, had a nice Italian lunch, had numerous orientation sessions, and took a trip into Scandicci for gelato (Italian ice cream). The students walked, but Kyle thought it best if I made a practice drive to the hospital, just in case I need to drive a student there in the future. I managed to drive to the hospital — in a strange car, with a strange stick shift, in a foreign country — without actually needing to use the services of the hospital when I was through, so that was good. Kyle and I then joined up with the others for gelato.
Today, we walked to Scandicci, and Robbie gave us a tour of the town. We visited Caffé Mario to order — in Italian — our first cappuccinos. Fortunately, the proprietors of this little establishment are quite used to the linguistic butchery of Harding students, and we managed to get our drinks in spite of our mispronunciations.
After walking around Scandicci some more, we ate supper at Bottega dí Panino. I had chicken and mozzarella on schiacciata bread, with peppers, onions, mushrooms, and diavola (devil) sauce. It was good.
Afterward, I drove a stick-shift van (not the car I tried out Wednesday night!) full of students back to the villa. This was not without some adventure, involving me gently bumping a scooter which was too close behind us, driving part way with the parking brake on — not surprisingly, the van handled much better after one of the students suggested I take it off — and missing the turn back to the villa. I’m officially blaming Katie Lambert for that.

The missed turn was not without its reward, for it enabled us to take a scenic route home — as in, Tuscan scenery. Having deposited that group of students, I drove that van and Robbie the other, back to the restaurant to pick up the remaining students. Robbie, perhaps acting on the theory that discretion is the better part of valor (or at least the better part of directing HUF), kindly offered to drive this particular group of students back. I suggested we take the same scenic route back. We even stopped to take pictures.
Upon returning, we had a party with silly games. I think the thing I enjoyed the most was glancing around and seeing the pure joy on the faces of 29 Harding students. The thing I enjoyed second most was getting to drink Coke Zero afterward, the availability of which doubles my chances of surviving Italy.

Black Oak

2011-03-15T19:51:00.022-05:00

No. 13,974

Today, my father, brother, and I drove down into “the country,” that part of rural Washington County, Ark., which produced several generations of the Dockery and Bradley families. After stopping for a brief visit with my dad’s sister, Aunt Mary Louise, we made our way up the hill to the Black Oak church of Christ and cemetery.

This is special ground to the Dockery family. My great-great-great grandfather, James Jefferson Dockery, donated the land for the church building and the cemetery in the 1800s. He and his wife Rebecca are both buried in the church cemetery, as are my own grandfather and grandmother, George and Zelen Dockery.

The church has been meeting continuously here since 1884, as its sign proudly proclaims. Grandpa George, Dad, and I have all preached there before. My brother, who is the youth minister at the Farmington church of Christ, takes his teenagers there once a month to conduct the worship services.

After visiting Black Oak, we also visited Sunset Cemetery and the Terry Cemetery, where other members of our family are buried.

It was a good day, and a poignant one.

But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.

For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so,through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep.

(1 Thessalonians 4.13-14/ESV)

Name Change

2011-02-23T10:25:00.003-06:00

No. 13,954

I have decided to change the name of this blog to "Numbered Days." See yesterday's entry for an explanation.

Teach Us To Number Our Days

2011-02-22T18:10:00.011-06:00

No. 13,953

The 90th Psalm is unusual, in that it was written by Moses himself. It is a meditation upon how small a thing human time is, compared to the eternity of God.

(1) Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations.
(2) Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
(3) You return man to dust and say, “Return, O children of man!”
(4) For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night.
(5) You sweep them away as with a flood; they are like a dream, like grass that is renewed in the morning:
(6) In the morning it flourishes and is renewed; in the evening it fades and withers.

(10) The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away.

(12) So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.

This final verse from our reading is intriguing. Moses suggests that there is wisdom to be found in numbering our days. Let’s take Moses at his word. Today marks the 13,953rd day of my life. What wisdom is found in this?

1. Numbering my days reminds me of how blessed I have been. Isn’t it interesting that Moses tells us to number our days rather than our years? If I number my years, 38 doesn’t seem like that many. Were I to find out tomorrow that I had a terminal illness, I might be inclined to feel cheated, or short-changed, at such a small number as 38.

But when I number my days, it is a different story entirely. What a big number 13,953 is! And when we stop to think about it, what an extraordinary gift just a single day is! Each day comes with a sunrise and a sunset, and with a span of hours in between to make of what we will. Each day is so chock full of possibilities and excitement, of beauty and grace. Each day provides new opportunities to love and be loved. Rightly did the Psalmist (118.24) declare: "This is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it."

When we number our days, it is impossible not to realize how extravagantly blessed we have been. This much is clear: having bestowed almost 14,000 of these amazing gifts upon me already, God does not owe me even one more day! If the Lord were to end my earthly days today, how could I possibly complain? When I have been blessed 14,000 times already?

2. Numbering my days reminds me that I cannot change the past. Today is the 13,953rd day of my life; that means there are 13,952 days that I cannot do anything about. These are the days gone by. They are full of regrets … full of words I wish I could unsay … full of mistakes I wish I could unmake … full of sins I wish I could un-sin — but of course, I cannot. Not only are there the bad things I have done, there are also the good things I have left undone. One of the most humbling things about numbering my days is the realization of how many of them I have squandered — of how little I have to show for God’s investment of 14,000 days in me. I can do nothing about the days past, except lay them at the feet of Jesus. Can there be any doubt, from numbering our days, that we need a savior?

3. Numbering my days reminds me that I am mortal. The anonymous writer of Hebrews states, in 9.27, that “it is appointed unto man to die once, and after that comes judgment.” When I count up my days, this point is driven home. I am forced to realize that I am getting closer and closer to my appointment with death with each passing day.

In the 90th Psalm, Moses gives us a rule of thumb concerning the human life span, when he says “the years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty.” I find it absolutely fascinating that Moses’s estimate from 3500 years ago corresponds so closely with our average life spans today! To me, this is a proof that Moses was receiving divine inspiration as he penned these words.

But these are averages; they are not promises. We have seen too many people die much younger than 70 to delude ourselves on this point. This is a dangerous world. How many of us in the last month have ridden in a vehicle traveling 55 miles per hour or more? Have you ever realized how inherently dangerous that is? How many of us have ridden with a driver who was on their cellphone? Studies show that drivers who talk and drive are about as impaired as those who drink and drive, and that those who text and drive are actually more impaired! The point is, there is no real safety on this side of the grave. Truly, we can say with David, “there is but a step between me and death.” (1 Samuel 20.3)

Because of that, none of us know how many days we have left. Solomon observed, in Ecclesiastes 9.12, that “man does not know his time.” While it is relatively easy for us to number the days which are past — (especially if you use a computer spreadsheet!) — only God can number the days ahead of us.

4. Numbering my days reminds me that today must be put to good use. I can do nothing about the days past. I cannot depend upon being here tomorrow. This may be my last day. Therefore, if I am wise, I should make the most of today.

The Roman poet Horace coined the phrase, “Carpe Diem” which means “Seize the day!” I love the way that a more recent poet, Rudyard Kipling, expressed the same idea:

If you can fill the unforgiving minute 
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, 
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, 
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Nor am I the only one who likes Kipling’s advice. One of the most aggressive American generals of the Second World War — or of any war, for that matter — was George S. Patton. He once said that this passage from Kipling was the “whole art of war.” (Patton certainly understood the idea of covering distance quickly, as the Germans found out the hard way.)

“Seizing the day” — or “filling the unforgiving minute” — is very much a Biblical thought:

• Jesus said in John 9.4, “We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work.”

• Paul, in 2 Corinthians 6.2, declares, “Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.”

• In Ephesians 5.15-16, Paul adds — in the words of the Old King James: “See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil.” (I particularly like quoting this verse to my students, as I am keeping them to the bell, or just a little bit after, with my lectures; I’m not sure, on those occasions, that my students are as appreciative of the teachings of Paul as they should be!)

One of Satan’s most devastating weapons is his ability to tempt us to procrastinate. We intend on doing so many good things — but we’re going to do them tomorrow, as if, somehow, they will be easier to do tomorrow than they are today. And then tomorrow comes, and we put these good things off ’til another day, and another week, and another month, and they don’t get done — and “the road to hell is paved with good intentions,” as the old saying goes.

As we’ve just seen, in the Bible, the emphasis is always on today, not tomorrow. To borrow a phrase from Martin Luther King, Jr., the Bible speaks of “the fierce urgency of now.”

• Today is the day to start that big school project you have looming over you …

• Today is the day to share a cup of coffee with an old friend, or with a new one …

• Today is the day to tell your loved ones that you love them …

• Today is the day to make amends with those you’ve hurt …

• Today is the day to repent of an ensnaring sin …

• Today is the best possible day to be baptized into Christ …

My late grandfather had, hanging in his study, a meditation written by Dr. Heartsill Wilson, entitled “A New Day.” It is an especially appropriate passage to share with you, as we bring our remarks to a close:

This is the beginning of a new day. God has given me this day to use as I will. I can waste it — or use it for good, but what I do today is important, because I am exchanging a day of my life for it! When tomorrow comes, this day will be gone forever, leaving in its place something that I have traded for it. I want it to be gain, and not loss; good, and not evil; success, and not failure; in order that I shall not regret the price that I have paid for it.

Moses said, “So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.” Of course, he was right; there is wisdom to be gained in numbering our days. Numbering our days reminds us of how blessed we have been; reminds us that we cannot change the past; reminds us of how mortal we are; and reminds us to make good use of today.

Some time ago, I went into a grocery store to pick up an item or two. It was morning. The lady running the cash register was mature in years. As I concluded my business, I offered an banal “have a good day.” I was not expecting a life lesson, but I will never forget what she said. She kindly explained that over the years she had learned that you don’t really have good days; you make good days.

And so, as we take leave this morning, make a good day! You are dismissed.

(Note: I delivered this in chapel the same day.)

Louisiana Maneuvers

2009-06-03T11:10:00.018-05:00

Last week I took a road trip down to Louisiana, taking in some sites pertinent to American military history, a subject I am slated to teach this fall at Harding.

Vicksburg Battlefield. I left Monday morning, stopping at Vicksburg, Miss., en route to New Orleans. I had been to Vicksburg before, back in 1994, on a field trip led by my former teacher, now colleague, Paul Haynie. Vicksburg was a Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River which, after a lengthy siege by U. S. Grant, finally fell on July 4, 1863. The most poignant thing about this particular visit to Vicksburg was that every grave was decorated with a little American flag, because it was Memorial Day (May 25).

Chalmette Battlefield. The next morning I visited the site of the Battle of New Orleans, fought in January 1815. The battle occurred a few days after the Treaty of Ghent had been signed, but news traveled slowly in those days and no one realized it yet. The battle took place on the Chalmette Plantation. (Like Vicksburg, Chalmette is administered by the National Parks service.)

The photo here depicts the American line during the battle. The British attacked this line, rather futilely, and were forced to withdraw. I was especially interested to learn that the carriages of the American cannon were painted light blue during the battle, in accordance with military regulations of the time.

National WWII Museum. My next stop was at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans. The late Stephen Ambrose, noted World War II historian, was the driving force behind this museum. The website says to allocate at least two and a half to three hours for your visit; I spent about five hours, and felt a bit rushed!

Throughout the exhibit, there are oral history kiosks where one can listen to firsthand accounts of the war from survivors. They also play two documentaries throughout the day; one, on the Pacific War, entitled Price For Peace; and D-Day Remembered, about the Normandy invasion. I was particularly impressed with D-Day Remembered, which is narrated by the always-impressive David McCullough.

There weren’t a lot of vehicles at the museum, though there was a Sherman tank (pictured), a German 88-millimeter gun, two landing craft, and four aircraft rather majestically hung from the ceiling: a C-47 Skytrain, a Messerschmidt 109, a British Spitfire, and a Dauntless dive-bomber.

U.S.S. Kidd. My next stop came Wednesday morning, at the U.S.S. Kidd, which is anchored in the Mississippi River at Baton Rouge. The Kidd is a World War II-era destroyer (Fletcher class) which suffered a kamikaze attack off of Okinawa in April 1945. Although the Kidd is the most prominent exhibit, it is not the only one at this museum; there is also a P-40 Warhawk (of “Flying Tigers” fame) and an A-7 Corsair jet fighter.

This was also my second visit to the Kidd; back in my sportswriter days, during an S.E.C. conference track meet at L.S.U., I also toured the old “tin can.”

8th Air Force Museum. My last stop was in Shreveport, at the 8th Air Force Museum, located at Barksdale Air Force Base. I arrived Wednesday afternoon, but was turned away because I got there too late. So I spent the night in Shreveport, which gave me the opportunity to attend midweek Bible study at the University Church of Christ, which I found enjoyable. Thursday morning I went back to Barksdale. I found that the museum building was again closed, this time because of water problems — but the air park was open, and that was the reason I had come, anyway.

There are several notable old warbirds out in the air park, including a B-17 Flying Fortress, a B-24 Liberator, a B-29 Superfortress, a couple of B-52 Stratofortresses, a P-51 Mustang, and an SR-71 Blackbird (pictured). I was particularly impressed with the British B.2 Avro Vulcan they had on display; the Brits sure know how to build a pretty airplane!

There was something a bit sad, though, about walking through the air park, looking at these old warriors slowly deteriorating out in the elements. The B-29 was particularly rough; it was missing its entire tail. In stark contrast to these rusting relics, however, were the B-52s still on active duty, located just a few hundred feet away across the fence. I got to see two of them take off.

The B-52 never ceases to amaze me. It first flew in 1952, some forty-nine years after the Wright brothers made their initial flight in Kittyhawk. Fifty-seven years later, the design is still flying. This means that the design of the B-52 is closer, in time, to the days of the Wright brothers than to our own time — and yet the venerable old bomber is still absolutely relevant.

A Man Called Intrepid

2009-03-18T12:13:00.004-05:00

I just finished reading William Stevenson’s A Man Called Intrepid. Published originally in 1976, this is a gripping account of the World War II service of British spy-master William Stephenson. (In spite of the similarity of their names, the two men are not related.) The Allies clearly out-spied the Germans during the war, and this was in no small part due to Stephenson, whose code name was “Intrepid.” (The Soviets may well have out-spied their own Allies, but that is another story.)

There are a couple of passages which particularly caught my attention, both from Intrepid himself. First, on the necessity of spying:

The weapons of secrecy have no place in an ideal world. But we live in a world of undeclared hostilities in which such weapons are constantly used against us and could, unless countered, leave us unprepared again, this time for an onslaught of magnitude that staggers the imagination. And while it may seem unnecessary to stress so obvious a point, the weapons of secrecy are rendered ineffective if we remove the secrecy. One of the conditions of democracy is freedom of information. It would be infinitely preferable to know exactly how our intelligence agencies function, and why, and where. But this information, once made public, disarms us. (p. xv)

Stephenson made this argument during the Cold War, when the threat of nuclear war seemed ever present — hence the reference to “an onslaught of magnitude that staggers the imagination.” But the end of the Cold War — (it did end, didn’t it?) — has not brought an end to the threat of terrible onslaught, as the events of September 11, 2001 made so very clear. In some ways, the threat is worse. The beautiful thing about the Soviets was that they did not want to die, and thus could be blackmailed into peace. But Islamic terrorists desire death, and want to take you with them.

Not all Muslims are terrorists, of course; but a distressing number are, and it does not take many to cause great evil. (Nineteen, I think, was the number.) There are too many today who want to pretend that there is no threat, that claims to the contrary were merely a pretense by an evangelical president to settle old political scores and spy on his own people. Another passage from Intrepid is, I think, applicable to this sort of nonsense:

The easy way out is to pretend there are no crises. That’s the way to win elections. That’s the way we stumbled into war in the first place — there were too many men in power who preferred to see no threat to freedom because to admit to such a threat implies a willingness to accept sacrifice to combat it. There’s a considerable difference between being high-minded and soft-headed. (p. 466)

For all of its political appeal, we cannot afford soft-headedness in the Long War we find ourselves now in.

The Same War

2009-03-12T22:12:00.006-05:00

I’m back in Fayetteville this week on “spring” break, though there is nothing particularly spring-like about the weather of the past couple of days. With a little downtime on my hands, I thought I would update my blog. In part, this is prompted by a remark from my brother today, who said that he was going to be removing dead links from his blog, and threatened to remove mine, since it has been so long since I have posted.

Although it has heretofore gone unremarked on my blog, I am now teaching history at Harding University. This is not entirely unconnected to the fact that I have not been posting; teaching four classes — with a total of about 180 students in them — does keep me pretty busy. But it is a very happy kind of busy.

Several months ago, during a dark time, I complained that youth ministry seemed like an unwinnable battle. As a teacher at a Christian college, I actually feel like I’m in the same war, against the same enemy. But the fight no longer seems unwinnable — perhaps a bit like the difference between being in the Polish cavalry in 1939, and the 1st Polish Armoured Division in 1944.

Garden of Beasts

2008-09-01T10:43:00.006-05:00

I just finished re-reading Jeffery Deaver’s novel, Garden of Beasts, set in 1936 Berlin, as the Germans are preparing to host the Olympic Games. Deaver tells a riveting story, featuring two very compelling characters.

One is Paul Schumann, the main character. Schumann is an American hit man (“button man”), who is arrested and given a chance at redemption. If he will go to Berlin and assassinate Reinhard Ernst, the man in charge of re-arming Germany, then his past will be forgiven. Schumann is a surprisingly moral hit man who adheres to a code; he kills only the guilty. He is good at his job and hard to catch; think Jason Bourne vs. the Nazis.

No less compelling is Willi Kohl, a quick-witted and humane German policeman charged with finding Schumann. (If Schumann is Bourne-like, then Kohl is a German version of Chief Inspective Foyle.) Kohl’s humanity is clearly on display as he and his young assistant, Konrad Janssen, are called upon to investigate a murder. Janssen makes the mistake of complaining about exerting so much “effort for a fat dead man.” This earns a reprimand from his boss. The victim was not just a “fat middle-aged man,” Kohl tells him, he was also “somebody’s son.” Kohl continues:

And perhaps he was somebody's brother. And maybe somebody’s husband or lover. And, if he was lucky, he was a father of sons and daughters. I would hope too that there are past lovers who think of him occasionally. And in his future other lovers might have awaited. And three or four more children he could have brought into the world. So, Janssen, when you look at the incident in this way we don’t have merely a curious mystery about a stocky dead man. We have a tragedy like a spiderweb reaching many different lives and many different places, extending for years and years. How sad that is … Do you see why our job is so important? (pp. 122-123, paperback version)

Kohl is not the only good German in the book. Another, heartsick at what the Nazis were doing to her country, mourns:

I don’t understand what has happened. We ware a people who love music and talk and who rejoice in sewing the perfect stitch in our men’s shirts and scrubbing our alley cobblestones clean and basking in the sun on the beach at Wannsee and buying our children clothing and sweets, we’re moved to tears by the ‘Moonlight’ Sonata, by the words of Goethe and Schiller — yet we are possessed now. Why? (p. 291)

Garden of Beasts is both a gripping page-turner and a brooding meditation on the subject of good versus evil.

Piece of Cake

2008-08-23T08:55:00.004-05:00

I recently watched Piece of Cake again, a British-made miniseries about the Battle of Britain. I originally watched it several years ago while I was in high school, when it played on PBS’s Masterpiece Theater. I enjoyed it then, and enjoyed it again.

The six-part series details the service of the fictional Hornet Squadron during the first year of World War II. The pilots — Churchill’s fabled “few” — find themselves in a near impossible battle for survival.

The series is based on a novel of the same title by Derek Robinson, which I also read — several years after watching the series the first time, but several years before watching it the second time. These gaps of time are sufficient to make it hard to compare the two works, though I do remember there being significant differences between book and movie concerning my favorite character, the American pilot Chris Hart.

Without giving too much away, the title is ironic. Stopping the Luftwaffe was anything but a piece of cake.

The Teammates

2008-08-09T12:10:00.010-05:00

At my brother’s suggestion, I recently read The Teammates by David Halbertstam, a book about the remarkable friendship between four ballplayers, Johnny Pesky, Dominic DiMaggio, Bobby Doerr, and Ted Williams.

Halberstam was not your typical sportswriter. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting during the Vietnam War, and published a famous book about Vietnam entitled The Best and the Brightest, which I probably ought to read. Tragically, Halberstam was killed in a car wreck in April, 2007.

Luke has already blogged about the book, so I won’t cover the ground that he did. But there are a couple or three other things which also stood out to me. One was the fact that Williams — who is one of two finalists for the distinction of Greatest Hitter Of All Time, with Babe Ruth being the other — was a quarter Latino; his mother was half Mexican.

Williams and Joe DiMaggio are the two great icons of 1940s era baseball (though I think I would take the amazingly classy Stan Musial over either of them; but that is another story). Dom DiMaggio had the unique distinction of being the brother of one of these icons and a very close friend of the other. No slouch of a baseball player himself (a .298 career hitter who played a magnificent center field), Dom had a more successful life than either Joe or Ted, according to Halberstam. He quotes Dick Flavin, who observed, “I think both Ted and Joe were aware of it, how well he had dealt with his life, and what a complete life it had been, and Ted to his credit admired him for it, and Joe, I am afraid, resented him for it.” (p. 22)

The Sox met St. Louis in the 1946 World Series. The climactic Game Seven was tied 3-3 going into the eighth inning, the Cardinals’ half of the inning. With two outs, Harry Walker was up, trying to advance his teammate Enos “Country” Slaughter, who was at first. Walker hit a bloop to left-center, which the official scorers recorded as a double, even though Walker himself admitted it was a “dying seagull.” Slaughter, who had broken for second with the pitch, managed to come all the way around to score what would prove to be both the game-winning and series-winning run.

Sportswriters would blame the run upon Pesky, the Sox shortstop, who, they felt, hesitated before throwing an errant relay throw home. More at fault than Pesky, however, was back-up centerfielder Leon Culberson. Culberson was filling in for Dom, who had injured himself earlier in the game, and failed to position himself appropriately for Walker, who had a penchant for punching the ball to left-center. Making matters worse, Culberson approached the ball tentatively and then made a throw to Pesky that was both soft and low. A third Sox player, hurler Bob Klinger, also deserves a measure of blame for the play, because he neglected to hold Country Slaughter at first in the first place.

Perhaps the play was caused not so much by what the Sox did wrong, but by what Slaughter did right. It was Slaughter who had broken with the pitch; it was Slaughter who had blown through the stop sign that his third base coach had thrown up. Marine general Archie Vandegrift, hero of Guadalcanal, once noted, “God favors the bold and the strong of heart.”

But in the hands of sportswriters, all of the blame fell upon Pesky. Rather than giving up Culberson — the most culpable Sox player — Pesky simply shouldered all of the blame himself. “By the time I turned and picked up Slaughter, he was virtually home,” he finally admitted in 2002, fifty-six years after the play, and several years after Culberson’s death. “They decided to make me the goat afterwards, and I decided I could take it — I could live with it. If they want to blame me, they can blame me. Because none of it changes what happened on the field.” (pp. 157-158)

How refreshing to those of us who live in an era where accepting personal responsibility is the exception, not the norm.

Horse Soldiers & Youth Ministers

2008-02-02T10:05:00.000-06:00

On the first day of World War II, September 1, 1939, elements of the Polish 18th Uhlans Cavalry regiment attacked German infantry in a delaying action. In this they succeeded, but they soon encountered German armored cars, which hit the Polish cavalrymen with machine gun fire. About a third of the cavalrymen were killed or wounded before they could retreat. This story was exaggerated in the press to the effect that the cavalrymen had attacked German tanks (not armored cars) with their sabers and lances. This was an exaggeration, but still: Polish cavalrymen were no match for German armor.

Though these cavalrymen have been ridiculed throughout the years, I have nothing but the profoundest respect for them. Two things stand out. First, they realized they were in the presence of vast evil. Second, even though they were unable to turn back that evil tide, they proved for all time — many of them at the cost of their lives — exactly where they stood. This was not true of everyone who lived in lands invaded by the Germans.

This week I completed my career as a youth minister at the Bella Vista church of Christ. For the past seven years, it has been my job to keep teenagers out of alcohol, drugs and sex, and to keep them in the church. It has been a near-hopeless task. I can identify with those Polish cavalrymen.

Though I have largely failed as a youth minister, I am comforted by two thoughts. I realized evil forces were at work trying to destroy the teenagers I love. And, though I was unable to keep these teens from making terrible decisions — they knew exactly where I stood.

Indescribable Gift

2007-12-19T18:22:00.000-06:00

I love the story of the woman in Mark 5 who had a hemorrhage of blood. She had gone to many physicians of her day and spent all of the money she had but the problem had only grown worse. In her desperation she turned to Jesus. She only touched His cloak (vs. 27), but this was enough to instantly heal her.

It seems, from reading the text, that Jesus did not purposefully heal the woman. Think about that! What the human experts of her day could not do no matter how hard they tried, Jesus did without even trying.

It is doubtful that Jesus was born in the month of December, much less on December 25th. In a sense then, the association of his birth with this season is unintentional on his part, much like his healing of this woman’s issue of blood was unintentional.

And yet, just as he brought healing to this desperate woman in Mark 5, so too he brings love and peace and goodwill to this season.

Because we associate this time of year with his birth, this is a time when family ties are strengthened and when gifts of love are given — an imitation of the presents brought by the magi given so long ago.

But the ultimate gift associated with the birth of Christ was not the gold, nor the myrrh, nor the frankincense. It was the child Himself.

I like the way the Amplified Version renders 2 Corinthians 9.15: “Now thanks be to God for His Gift, [precious] beyond telling — His indescribable, inexpressible, free Gift!”

Sixty-Four Thousand Words

2007-11-09T12:36:00.000-06:00

On Wednesday I wrapped up the rough draft of my dissertation, the working title of which is “Quick On His Feet, And Even Quicker In His Brain”: Lightning Joe Collins at War. Collins served as the commander of the 25th Infantry Division in Guadalcanal, before shifting to the European Theater and heading up VII Corps. He was the commander at Utah Beach, captured Cherbourg, and later busted the Allies out of Normandy.

Dr. Sutherland, my advisor at the University of Arkansas, has informed me that major revisions will not be needed. There are a few revisions I want to make, but hopefully it won’t be very long before I am ready to defend.

For what it’s worth, the rough draft was 64,004 words long, and 311,230 characters (not counting spaces).

As of November 7
Written: 196 pages; 10 chapters
To Go: 0 pages; 0 chapters

Unmet Goals

2007-10-31T17:07:00.000-05:00

It was about the spring of 2004 that I began research for my dissertation. But work progressed very slowly, so slowly in fact that by the first of July I had only about 63 pages written. But suddenly I was spurred on and, however, and in the subsequent four months I have almost tripled that total.

Back in early August, after about five weeks of my suddenly frenetic pace, it occurred to me that I had a chance to finish the rough draft by Halloween. That was my goal.

Today is Halloween, and frankly, I have failed to meet that goal. My rough draft manuscript stands at 180 pages (with roughly 20 to go); eight of the ten chapters are written.

In spite of not meeting my goal, I am anything but depressed. Giddy would be a better description. I should be able to wrap up the rough draft by Thanksgiving. If you would have suggested to me that this was possible back at the beginning of July, I would have thought it was too good to be true.

There is something to be said for almost meeting lofty goals.

As of October 31
Written: 180 pages; 8 chapters
To Go: 20 pages; 2 chapters

Dissertation-o-Meter

2007-10-15T10:23:00.000-05:00

Obviously I have not been blogging for the past few months. During this time I have (finally!) been making progress on writing my dissertation, a biographical study of the World War II career of Lightning Joe Collins, who commanded the 25th Division at Guadalcanal before commanding the VII Corps in Europe.

Though I realize this is a bit irrational, I am not real comfortable blogging while I am trying to wrap up my dissertation manuscript, as if my writing output is a zero-sum gain and blogging will delay completion of the dissertation.

My goal now is to complete the rough draft by Christmas. (Perhaps then I will blog again.) After the rough draft is finished, I will have to make some revisions, of course, but hopefully I will be able to walk and receive my diploma in May.

As of October 14
Written: 157 pages; 7 chapters
To Go: 43 pages; 3 chapters

As of September 25
Written: 144 pages; 7 chapters
To Go: 56 pages; 3 chapters

As of September 10
Written: 140 pages; 6 chapters
To Go: 60 pages; 4 chapters

As of August 21
Written: 124 pages; 5 chapters
To Go: 76 pages; 5 chapters

As of August 5
Written: 103 pages; 4 chapters
To Go: 97 pages; 6 chapters

As of July 20
Written: 82 pages; 4 chapters
To Go: 118 pages; 6 chapters

Superhuman Speed

2007-06-25T09:09:00.001-05:00

One of my former students at the University of Arkansas, Tyson Gay, is currently the fastest man in the world in 2007. He recently ran the 100-meter dash in 9.84 seconds into a headwind.

Not only is this the fastest time in the 100-meter dash by anyone in the world this year, it ranks as the second-fastest time ever run into a headwind. The fastest time ever run into a headwind was by Maurice Green in 2001 when he ran a 9.82 into a headwind of 0.45 mph. Tyson ran his into a wind of 1.12 mph.

Tyson took my Western Civ II class in the spring of 2005. I gave the class the assignment of reading the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, in order to illustrate the Romantic time period. One of the interesting aspects of the novel is the way that Shelley actually portrays her monster, in contrast to the way the monster is perceived in popular culture. In our class discussion we talked about the monster’s characteristics. Tyson raised his hand; the thing which stuck out in his mind, naturally enough, was how fast the monster was:

“As I said this, I suddenly beheld the figure of a man, at some distance, advancing towards me with superhuman speed. He bounded over the crevices in the ice, among which I had walked with caution; …” (Frankenstein, Chapter 10)

Tyson Gay knows a thing or two about speed himself.

If Christians Were Like Christ

2007-06-14T10:00:00.000-05:00

Ronald Sider, in his 2004 book The Scandal Of The Evangelical Conscience, writes that “evangelical” Christians are about as likely as the population at large to view porn, have sex outside of marriage, exhibit racism, get divorced, and abuse their wives. Sadly, Jesus can still say, as he did in the days of old, “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far away from me.” (Mark 7.6)

The word Christian carries the name Christ embedded in it. Peter said that Christ “suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in his steps.” (1 Peter 2.21) How might things be different today, if Christians behaved more like Christ, and less like themselves?

What if Christians actually led lives of moral purity? Peter says in 1 Peter 2.22 that Jesus “committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in His mouth.” What if there were no more public scandals involving famous evangelists?

What if Christians, instead of dealing in gossip and obscenity, actually let their “speech always be with grace, as though seasoned with salt”? (Colossians 4.6) If gracious words fell from our lips, as they did from Christ’s, would not the world also speak well of us, and wonder? (Luke 4.22)

What if Christians actually placed no faith in earthly things? Jesus once told a rich young ruler to sell all that he had and to give to the poor. We try to rationalize away this scripture, forgetting that Christ himself was homeless and owned only the clothes on his back. What if we cared little for material possessions?

What if Christians actually turned the other cheek? This is another commandment we like to soften. But Peter says of Jesus that, “while being reviled, He did not revile in return; while suffering, He uttered no threats.” (1 Peter 2.23)

What if Christians had the same burning sense of urgency that their Lord possessed? “We must work the works of him who sent Me as long as it is day;” Jesus once said; “night is coming when no one can work.” (John 9.4)

What if Christians actually went about doing good? What if they spent the night in prayer? What if they actually told the truth, no matter the personal consequences? What if they were so familiar with scripture they could recall passages to help them fight daily battles? What if they reached out to the desperate?

Mahatma Gandhi once said, “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike Christ.” But what if Christians really were like Christ?

When Freemen Shall Stand

2007-06-06T10:43:00.003-05:00

Sixty three years ago today, some of the finest young men that the democracies of Britain, Canada and the United States have ever produced were hurled against Adolf Hitler’s vaunted Atlantic Wall on the northern coast of France.

They did so at awful cost. On Omaha Beach (one of five landing sites) Americans lost 2,000 casualties that sixth day of June, in 1944. Casualties in the opening wave at Omaha Beach were especially appalling.

Many of the Americans killed that day and on days to come are buried in the American cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer, on a cliff overlooking Omaha Beach. (The French government has turned the cemetery grounds into sovereign American territory, proof that the French are not as ungrateful as we sometimes suppose.)

A bronze statue representing the “Spirit of American Youth” stands guard over the 9,387 dead Americans, whose graves face westward to the country they left to defend but would never see again. In the unfamiliar fourth verse of the Star-Spangled Banner, Francis Scott Key speaks of occasions “when freemen shall stand between their loved home and the war's desolation.” That is what happened that deadly morning.

But it was not just for their own loved homes that these men of D-Day spilled their blood. Europe had fallen into "the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister … by the lights of perverted science," to borrow words from Churchill. That the Nazis had brought about a new Dark Age is undeniable; it is estimated that they murdered as many as 6 million Jews and as many as 5 million non-Jews. Such evil had to be stopped.

One of the most dramatic moments of the invasion came at Ponte du Hoc, when members of the 2nd Ranger Battalion scaled cliffs a hundred feet high to seek and destroy powerful German artillery pieces. Forty years later, President Ronald Reagan commemorated the event with a speech in which he said:

Behind me is a memorial that symbolizes the Ranger daggers that were thrust into the top of these cliffs. And before me are the men who put them there. These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war.

Gentlemen, I look at you and I think of the words of Stephen Spender’s poem. You are men who in your “lives fought for life ... and left the vivid air signed with your honor.”

It is now 23 years since Reagan spoke those words and 63 years since the boys of Pointe du Hoc and their thousands of comrades stormed ashore and delivered a continent. We are left with the reminder that overcoming evil will always require the blood of good men.

Memorial Day

2007-05-28T12:53:00.000-05:00

It is Memorial Day. We have much to remember, and much for which to be grateful. We live in a land of unsurpassed liberties and unparalleled riches. These have come at a heavy price — a price we did not have to pay. We enjoy good lives today because of what our our soldiers and sailors, airmen and Marines were willing to endure. Montgomery Gentry sings a song about a returning Vietnam veteran who asks:

Didn’t I burn? Didn’t I bleed enough for you? I faced your fears, felt pain so you won’t have to.

Not all veterans returned. Many gave what President Lincoln once referred to as the “last full measure of devotion.” A few days ago Paul Greenberg penned these eloquent words about our honored dead:
They are beyond it all now, the dead. They are beyond all the words, even beyond the slow, mournful sound of taps. They are beyond the muck and blood, too, thank God. Beyond the pain and death, the blood and pus, the anguish spoken and unspoken, the horror and, perhaps worse, the horror anticipated. They are beyond it all now, they who went down to the sea in ships and found themselves in peril on the sea. They are beyond the acrid smoke and heart-stopping fear, the calm courage and wild rage, the sweetness of life, the sorrow and pity of its loss. They have passed all that. They have passed.

Kohima, in northeast India, was the site of an important British victory against the Japanese during World War II. Many soldiers from the British Commonwealth, including large numbers of Indian troops, gave their lives in the fighting. Now there is a cemetery at Kohima, situated on a hillside and ringed by pine trees. In the cemetery there is a monument which contains the following inscription:

When you go home tell them of us and say for your tomorrow we gave our today.

How inadequate are the words "thank you." But what else is there to say?

Consequences

2007-05-15T15:21:00.000-05:00

A couple of years ago I was driving my jeep (her name is Gracie) around on some back roads near my parents’ house. It was a beautiful day, I had the top down and was frankly driving faster than I should have been. I was driving on a gravel road and when I attempted to make a left-hand turn instead of turning I skidded pretty hard into a ditch.

Thankfully I was not hurt, though the same could not be same for Gracie. The most immediate problem was that rocks had been lodged between my tire and rim, giving me a flat tire. I had to put on my spare and take the tire in to get it repaired.

A problem of a more long-term time, however, occurred underneath the jeep. I bent a stabilizing arm which was connected to the front passenger-side wheel assembly.

I drove the jeep like this for the past couple of years, until finally the stabilizing arm broke loose several days ago. This necessitated a trip to the mechanic’s shop, and left me with a bill for $315.91.

That was $315.91 that would not have had to be spent on my jeep had I not been driving like an idiot. That amount of money would have purchased:

• 319 songs on iTunes

• 53 upper pavilion tickets at Turner Field for Braves Games

• 39 evening adult tickets at the Pinnacle Hills 12 Theater

• 37 meals at Panera Bread Company

• 23 adult tickets to the D-Day National WWII Museum in New Orleans

• 1 round trip airline ticket from Tulsa to Denver (with $41 to spare)

• all but $15 of a new 80-gig video iPod

Actions have consequences. “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap.” (Galatians 6.7)

Replacements for Jesus

2007-04-24T14:54:00.000-05:00

In the novel Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor, there is a street preacher named Hazel Motes who preaches the “Church Without Christ” and speaks of the need for a “new jesus”:

“What you need is something to take the place of Jesus, something that would speak plain. The Church Without Christ don’t have a Jesus but it needs one! It needs a new jesus! It needs one that’s all man, without blood to waste, and it needs one that don’t look like any other man so you’ll look at him. Give me such a jesus, you people. Give me such a new jesus and you’ll see how far the Church Without Christ can go!” (p. 80)

A follower of Hazel’s named Enoch takes it upon himself to bring a “new jesus” to Hazel. The new messiah? A shrunken, 3-foot-long embalmed corpse, of a “dried yellow color.” (p. 56) Needless to say, the Church Without Christ did not go far.

Oh, but don't we like to try and find replacements for Christ? Don’t we place our trust in stock portfolios and IRAs? Don't we give our time to reality television, or shaving a couple of strokes off our golf games? Don't we seek happiness in buying more knick-knacks and baubles for our already cluttered houses?

And some of the things we try to replace Christ with are even worse, things such as drunkenness and carousing, porn and illicit sex—the very sorts of things which Paul warns in Galatians 6.21 will keep a person from inheriting the kingdom of God.

Whether a thing is wicked in its own right (porn) or merely neutral (shopping), when we turn to it in place of Christ, it becomes just as ugly and dead as the shrunken corpse which Enoch brought to Hazel. God said, of Jesus, “This is my beloved Son… hear ye him.” (Matt. 17.5)

“Go and tell John...”

2007-04-13T12:30:00.000-05:00

In Matthew 11.2-3, we read these words: “Now when John heard in prison about the deeds of the Christ, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?’”

John the Baptist has been put in jail by Herod. The depraved Herod had stolen his brother’s wife and married her, and John—being a man of God—naturally condemned this wickedness. And so he found himself in prison.

It must be especially hard on John being cooped up in jail. He has spent his ministry out of doors, breathing in God’s good air and feeling the warmth of His sunshine. Now he is confined between four walls.

He has had a remarkable career; he has done magnificent things for God; he has prepared the path for Jesus himself; but John’s career, and his life, are almost over. And now he does something which is startling, something which almost disappoints us.

He sends messengers to Jesus to ask if Jesus is really the Messiah after all.

Some find this troubling. Why would John doubt now? Some even think that John wasn’t really doubting himself, but was simply asking on behalf of his own disciples, so they will start following Jesus. Others think John knew that Jesus was the Messiah but was impatient for him to reveal Himself and establish His kingdom.

But probably the best explanation is the most obvious. In the dark of night, in the narrowness of his cell, as he fears for his life, in a small dark corner of his mind, John begins to have doubts. He had gambled everything on Christ. Had he gambled his life for nothing?

There is no indication that Jesus was offended or troubled by John’s question. Though Christ was never shy about pointing out lacking faith when he encountered it, He does not accuse John of a lack of faith. Rather, Jesus soon launches into a discourse praising John, referring to him as something “more than a prophet” and declaring “among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist.” (vss 9, 11) Jesus did not hand out compliments lightly; His admiration for John was real.

The answer which Jesus gave to John’s question is particularly moving. When John’s emissaries asked if Jesus was the Messiah, Jesus replied:

“Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.” (11.4-6)

This was a coded message, containing snatches of Old Testament prophecy, from the book of Isaiah (chapter 35 and 61). This was the job description of the promised Messiah. John would have understood exactly what Jesus meant.

Jesus was affirming that He was indeed the Messiah. So John had chosen right. His gamble had paid off. He had risked his soul on Jesus and, though he was about to lose his life, he was about to gain everything. John’s career, his life, had not been in vain.

And so we are reminded of the trustworthiness of Christ. We too can build our lives upon Him—stake our souls upon Him. Thus Paul, not long before his own appointment with the executioner, could say:

“I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day.” (2 Timothy 1.12/KJV)

Stake everything on Jesus. Peter assures us that “there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4.12)

Used Book Store

2007-04-04T14:23:00.000-05:00

Several months ago I went through a self-righteous anti-materialistic phase, the main feature of which was getting rid of about a third of my books. Most of the books I don’t miss. But one of the books I divested myself of was Clark Emery’s The World of Dylan Thomas, given to me by my kid sister on my 23rd birthday, when she was a precocious 17. I discovered that I missed the book, not so much for its scholarly merit, but because of its sentimental value.

Yesterday I went to the used book store on Dickson Street where I had sold the book, and there it was, with my name still written inside. The price was $7.50, and I bought it back. I don’t know how much credit I was given for the book when I sold it to the store, but I’m sure that I suffered a net loss of three or four dollars.

Would that all mistakes were undone so cheaply.

Sorry and Shabby

2007-03-26T20:17:00.000-05:00

Today Arkansas fired Stan Heath.

Heath took over a depleted and broken Arkansas Razorback basketball program five seasons ago. During his first season (2003) the Hogs went 9-19, then improved their win total each of the next three years: 12-16, 18-12, and 22-10.

This past season, after having to replace a veteran corps of four guards (with 13 years of Razorback experience between them) with four new guards (with 0 years of Razorback experience between them), Heath’s team slipped slightly to 21-14, but still had the best performance in the SEC Tournament of any Razorback five since 2000.

Clearly there has been improvement. Clearly the improvement has come slowly, and I guess it was too slow for too many fans.

I too have had my own doubts as to whether Heath was the man to get the Razorbacks back to the level of national preeminence they enjoyed in the early 1990s (six Sweet 16s, three Final Fours, two championship game appearances, once championship between 1990 and 1996).

While I too was ready to throw Heath under the bus earlier in the season (during a stretch in which the Hogs lost nine of thirteen conference games) I changed my mind late in the season. This was partly because of a five-game winning streak the Hogs went on.

But it also had much to do with the incredible class and graciousness which Heath displayed. Just before his team went on its five-game winning streak—back when there were reports that Heath was as good as fired if he did not make the NCAA tournament—Heath was asked about his job security at a press conference.

“The sun is shining,” he said that day, according to the Associated Press. “It’s a bright and beautiful day. I’ve always been a positive person and had a lot of faith in God. That’s where my strength comes from. I want to coach basketball and have our guys play the right way.”

I became convinced (and remain so) that it would be unfair to fire the über-classy Heath while retaining the disreputable Houston Nutt as the football coach. I argued, here and here, ineffectually, to that effect. It is not just a matter of class; Heath also has a significantly better winning percentage (.629) during the past three years than does Nutt (.528).

If there were any lingering doubts as to Heath’s graciousness, they should be dispelled by checking out the interview he gave today following his firing. Apparently he had been led to believe that he would be retained as the coach, only to learn to the contrary today. Even still, he uttered no bitter words.

Who could have blamed him if he had? He has assembled a team which looks to be (assuming important players don’t begin defecting) the most talented squad Arkansas has had since its 1996 Sweet 16 team. But he will not be allowed to coach it.

The events of today have once again proven the old adage that life is not fair. That is a truth I accept intellectually, but never can quite bring myself to accept emotionally. I hope I never do.

I want to believe in a world where “patience in well-doing” is rewarded, while “self-seeking” will get you nowhere. I am told there is such a world, only it is not here. It will come soon enough.

In the meantime, we must endure sorry and shabby events, such as what transpired today. Nice guys finish last, they say. Stan Heath was the nicest guy of all.

An Inconvenient Verse

2007-02-12T15:03:00.000-06:00

Former vice-president Al Gore has on numerous occasions (here, here and here) referred to his “faith tradition” as he tries to persuade Americans about impending catastrophic climate change.

Someone probably ought to tell Mr. Gore that his “faith tradition” actually teaches:

While the earth remains,
Seedtime and harvest,
And cold and heat,
And summer and winter,
And day and night
Shall not cease.
(Genesis 8.22)

In short, you can believe Al Gore and the doomsday environmentalists ... or you can believe the Bible. You really can’t do both.

God Knows Their Names

2007-02-06T15:16:00.000-06:00

In the 26th chapter of Numbers, God told Moses to take a census of the people. So Moses did, and the passage is filled with many unusual names, such as: Hanoch (vs. 5), Nemuel (vs. 9), Zerah (vs. 13), Ozni (vs. 16), Jashub (vs. 24), Helek (vs. 30), Zelophehad (vs. 33), Hoglah (vs. 33), Shephuapham (vs. 39), and Ishvi (vs. 44).

It is hard for us to read lists like this in the Bible, and yet there are several such lists. Maybe sometimes we wonder why God would bother to include these lists of names in His Bible. Maybe sometimes we wish we weren’t supposed to read them. But such lists remind us of a very important point: God knows their names!

When the Space Shuttle Columbia exploded a few years ago, President Bush gave a speech in which he quoted Isaiah 40.26: "lift your eyes and look to the heavens. Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one and calls them each by name. Because of His great power, and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.”

Then the President said, “The same creator who names the stars also knows the names of the seven souls we mourn today.”

How amazing to think that even though there are billions of people on this planet, God still knows each of us by name. In fact, Jesus says that God even knows the number of hairs on our heads.

This reminds us of how much God is concerned about us. Even though He is vast and mighty, even though we are tiny and so many, God still loves each of us.

And He knows our names.

(Photo source: AP)

TR, on leaving the Dark House

2007-01-09T14:18:00.000-06:00

It is hard not to like Teddy Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States. As a boy he was sickly, but he compensated for this by living a very active life — and advocated that others live a strenuous life as well. Becoming President did not mean that he ceased his athletic exertions.

In fact now, now he was in a position to make others participate in his athletic hobbies. Roosevelt seemed to especially enjoy torturing French ambassador Jules Jusserand. One day, Jusserand came to the White House to play tennis with Roosevelt. They played two sets of tennis, and then Teddy suggested they go jogging. They jogged around the White House lawn for while, and then they had a workout with a medicine ball. When they were through with their medicine ball workout, Roosevelt asked his guest what he would like to do next. The exhausted diplomat sighed, “If it’s just the same with you, Mr. President, I’d like to lie down and die.”

Roosevelt, like Lincoln before him, was an indulgent father while President. One day a friend came to visit him in the White House and while the two of them were speaking Alice, the President’s daughter, kept coming into the office and disrupting them. The friend finally asked if there wasn’t something that TR could do to control Alice. TR replied, “I can do one of two things. I can be President of the United States or I can control Alice. I cannot possibly do both.”

While he may have been a man of action, Roosevelt was by no means shallow. In fact, he had a keen insight into the nature of man. Once, in a letter to the poet Edwin A. Robinson, TR wrote:

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 has 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…

This is good theology. All of us have a past to be ashamed of. Paul wrote to the Corinthians:

Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. (1 Corinthians 6.9-12)

Some of the Corinthian Christians had been caught up in these very sins. But the glorious message of the New Testament is that we do not have to stay in the Dark House of sin. We don’t have to remain sexually immoral, or idolatrous, or drunkards. Jesus came that we might be washed, sanctified and justified. Jesus came to break us out of the Dark House.

(Sources: Paul Boller, Presidential Anecdotes, 194-195, 206; John Morton Blum, The Republican Roosevelt, p. 161; English Standard Version of the Bible.)

Christmas 1914

2006-12-22T11:34:00.000-06:00

The First World War broke out in August of 1914. Many rushed to war almost gleefully, confident in victory for their particular side. Many thought the war would be over by Christmas. But when Christmas came the war was still young. It would last another four years and claim the lives of some 8 million soldiers before it was through.

In the midst of this bloodshed, though, a remarkable thing happened. In many places along the Western Front, particularly where the British and the Germans faced each other, unofficial Christmas truces were made in 1914. And here, for a brief few hours, the killing ceased.

Instead of firing bullets at each other, the mortal enemies sang Christmas carols to one another on Christmas Eve. German soldiers even decorated their trenches with candles and with Christmas Trees — tannebaum, they called them. On Christmas morning, soldiers from both sides met in no man’s land and exchanged what gifts they had: buttons and medals, candy and tobacco and liquor. Soldiers who had once been barbers gave free haircuts. One German soldier who had been a juggler in happier times gave a performance in no man’s land.

Here is how one German officer (Leutenant Johannes Niemann, 133rd Royal Saxon Regiment) described the truce:

“Next morning the mist was slow to clear and suddenly my orderly threw himself into my dugout to say that both the German and Scottish soldiers had come out of their trenches and were fraternising along the front. I grabbed my binoculars and looking cautiously over the parapet saw the incredible sight of our soldiers exchanging cigarettes, schnapps and chocolate with the enemy. Later a Scottish soldier appeared with a football which seemed to come from nowhere and a few minutes later a real football match got underway. The Scots marked their goal mouth with their strange caps and we did the same with ours. It was far from easy to play on the frozen ground, but we continued, keeping rigorously to the rules, despite the fact that it only lasted an hour and that we had no referee. A great many of the passes went wide, but all the amateur footballers, although they must have been very tired, played with huge enthusiasm. … The game finished with a score of three goals to two in favour of Fritz against Tommy.”

And here is how a British counterpart (Second Lieutenant Cyril Drummond, 135th Battery, Royal Field Artillery) described it:

“In the sunken road I met an officer I knew, and we walked along together so that we could look across to the German front line, which was only about seventy yards away. One of the Germans waved to us and said, ‘Come over here!’ We said, ‘You come over here if you want to talk.’ So he climbed out of his trench and came over towards us. We met and very gravely saluted each other. He was joined by more Germans, and some of the Dublin Fusiliers from our own trenches came over to join us. No German officer came out, it was only the ordinary soldiers. We talked, mainly in French, because my German was not very good and none of the Germans could speak English well. But we managed to get together all right. One of them said, ‘We don’t want to kill you and you don’t want to kill us, so why shoot?’

“They gave me some German tobacco and German cigars - they seemed to have plenty of those, and very good ones too — and they asked whether we had any jam. One of the Dublin Fusiliers got a tin of jam which had been opened, but very little taken out, and he gave it to a German who gave him two cigars for it. I lined them all up and took a photograph.”

The goodwill between enemies was only temporary. In a matter of days they were back to the grim business of trying to blow one another apart. But for a few brief hours, the influence of the Prince of Peace had been felt.

(Drawing by Bruce Bairnsfather, 1914. The above quotations, and others, are available here.)

Democrats and Generals

2006-12-15T12:02:00.000-06:00

During the 1916 presidential campaign, Democratic incumbent Woodrow Wilson campaigned on a slogan of “He kept us out of war”, referring of course to the First World War which had engulfed Europe. Thanks in no small part to this slogan, he won re-election. A month into his second term, Wilson asked Congress to declare war on Germany.

During the 1940 presidential campaign, Democratic incumbent Franklin D. Roosevelt declared, “I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars”, referring of course to the Second World War which had engulfed Europe. Fourteen months later, Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war on Japan.

During the 1964 presidential campaign, Democratic incumbent Lyndon B. Johnson declared, “We are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves”, referring of course to the fighting between North and South Vietnam. In 1965 Johnson increased the number of American troops in Vietnam eight-fold (from 23,300 on December 31, 1964 to 184,300 on the same date a year later).

Promising not to go to war and then breaking that promise seems to be something of a time-honored tradition among Democratic presidents. The criticism here is not so much of the eventual decision to go to war, but rather in the earlier promise not to go to war (or, in Wilson's case, the overwhelming implication not to go to war). Such promises should never have been made, for how can you know that Pearl Harbor will not be bombed? Or that your merchant ships will not be torpedoed? Who were Wilson and Roosevelt and Johnson to try their hands at fortune-telling?

The Lord's brother James touches on this human frailty in chapter four of his epistle, verses 13-15: “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow, we shall go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.’ Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we shall live and also do this or that.’”

So: Beware the Democratic presidential candidate who promises no war! But if we cannot trust Democratic presidents to keep us out of war—and four of the five wars America fought in the 20th century were Democratic wars—is there a class of president who does avoid war?

My father pointed out to me long ago that America has never gone to war while an ex-general has been president. And we have had no shortage of ex-generals reach the White House: George Washington, Andrew Jackson, William H. Harrison, Zachary Taylor, U.S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James Garfield, Chester Arthur, Benjamin Harrison and Dwight Eisenhower.

This is less surprising than it might seem. There is a special hatred of war that only those who have sent men to their deaths can know. Writing to his brother in May 1943, Ike mentioned pacifists back home and observed, “I doubt whether any of these people, with their academic or dogmatic hatred of war, detest it as much as I do. They probably have not seen bodies rotting on the ground and smelled the stench of decaying human flesh. They have not visited a field hospital crowded with the desperately wounded.”

It is wonderfully ironic that old warriors like Eisenhower—with belligerent-sounding policies like massive retaliation and brinksmanship—do more to achieve peace than placard-bearing protesters or ivory-towered intellectuals. Or, apparently, liberal Democrats.

Climbing Out of the Pit

2006-11-04T10:40:00.000-06:00

I just finished re-reading an Ellis Peters novel, Fallen Into The Pit. The novel is set in post-World War II England and concerns three murders which take place in the normally sleepy village of Comerford. The solution to the mystery is mostly worked out by the police sergeant's son Dominic Felse, who, frankly, is unconvincingly omniscient for a 13-year-old boy. What I found more compelling than the mystery itself was the way in which Peters (actually Edith Pargeter was her real name) deals with the tough adjustment that World War II vets must have experienced coming home. A few passages to this effect:

“The war ended, and the young men came home, and tried indignantly to fit themselves into old clothes and old habits which proved, on examination, to be both a little threadbare, and on trial to be both cripplingly small for bodies and minds mysteriously grown in absence.” (p. 3)

“…some came haunted by the things their own hand had done and their own bodies endured, growths from which no manner of amputation could divide them, ghosts for which Comerford had no room. They had been where even those nearest to them could not follow, and daily they withdrew there again from the compression and safety of lathe and field and farm, until the adjustment to sanity took place painfully at last, and the compression ceased to bound them, and was felt to be wider than the mad waste in the memory.” (p. 6)

“In time of war countries fall over themselves to make commandos and guerrillas of their young men, self-reliant killers who can slit a throat and live off a hostile countryside as simply as they once caught the morning bus to their various blameless jobs. But to reconvert these formidable creations afterwards is quite another matter. Nobody ever gave much thought to that, nobody ever does until their recoil hits the very system which made and made use of them. Men who have learned to kill as a solution for otherwise insoluble problems in wartime may the more readily revert to it as a solution for other problems as desperate in other conditions. And logically … who has the least right to judge them for it? Surely the system which taught them the art and ethics of murder to save itself has no right at all. The obvious answer would be: ‘Come on in the dock with us!’”(p. 195)

The most tortured of all of Comerford's returning veterans is Chad Wedderburn, whose service with the Yugoslavian rebels is the stuff of village legend. Chad, who is Dominic's school teacher, is very much in love with Io Hart, the daughter of Comerford's widowed tavern owner; Io “could manage the whole diverse flow of customers year in and year out without disarranging a curl of her warm brown hair, and make her father, into the bargain, do whatever she wanted. When she knew what she wanted, which wasn't always.” (p. 48)

But Chad thinks himself too flawed ever to marry Io; “He had suffered, whether by his own fault or the mismanagement of others, injuries to his nature which unfitted him for loving or being loved by an innocent like Io…” (p. 277) Dominic, (too) wise beyond his years, senses Chad’s self-loathing and wonders, “Was it really possible to feel yourself maimed for life, merely because you had been pushed into killing other people in a war in order to stay alive yourself? In a war, when most people thought themselves absolved for everything? But the fellow who goes the opposite way from everyone else isn't necessarily wrong.” (p. 258)

A moment of emergency forces Chad to ask Io for her counsel, and this clears the mist between them. “She did not stop to argue, but did exactly as he asked her; she had been ready to do exactly as he asked her for quite a long time, and the real trouble had been that he had never asked her.” (p. 285) At the end of the novel, the two make a quiet trip to the registry office to become man and wife. We are left to reflect that, in spite of Chad's past and self doubts, really because of them, he was in the end most fitted for loving and being loved by an innocent like Io.

I have often been drawn to fictional characters like Chad Wedderburn, men who are admired by everybody but themselves. Other examples in this motif are the whisky priest in Power and the Glory, the savage in Brave New World, and, above all, Prince Hamlet. If Peters had been a Graham Greene or an Aldous Huxley or a Will Shakespeare, she would have given Chad Wedderburn no relief short of the grave. But instead she took compassion on Chad—and, I suppose, on her readers—and showed instead how the World War II vets actually dealt with their trauma. Having seen enough of hatred, they found wives to love; having seen enough of death, they brought children into the world.

Battleships and Equality

2006-10-13T16:08:00.000-05:00

In 1922 the United States, Britain, France, Italy and Japan signed the Five-Power Naval Limitation Treaty. The treaty was intended to limit the number of capital ships (battleships and cruisers) and the number of aircraft carriers the signatory nations could build. The treaty failed to avert a naval arms race, but it does demonstrate an interesting American trademark.

The treaty lists the delegates from the various signatory nations, complete with titles, positions and awards. For example, the French delegation is listed as:
Mr. Albert Sarraut, Deputy, Minister of the Colonies;
Mr. Jules J. Jusserand, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the United States of America, Grand Cross of the National Order of the Legion of Honour;

The Italian delgation consisted of:
The Honourable Carlo Schanzer, Senator of the Kingdom;
The Honourable Vittorio Rolandi Ricci, Senator of the Kingdom, His Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary at Washington;
The Honourable Luigi Albertini, Senator of the Kingdom;

The British delegation was especially grandiose:
The Right Honourable Arthur James Balfour, O. M., M. P., Lord President of His Privy Council;
The Right Honourable Baron Lee of Fareham, G. B. E., K. C. B., First Lord of His Admiralty;
The Right Honourable Sir Auckland Campbell Geddes, K. C. B., His Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the United States of America;

And the Japanese delegation was every bit as garish:
Baron Tomosaburo Kato, Minister for the Navy, Junii, a member of the First Class of the Imperial Order of the Grand Cordon of the Rising Sun with the Paulownia Flower;
Baron Kijuro Shidehara, His Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary at Washington, Joshii, a member of the First Class of the Imperial Order of the Rising Sun;
Mr. Masanao Hanihara, Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs, Jushii, a member of the Second Class of the Imperial Order of the Rising Sun;

In contrast to all this pomp and ostentation was the simple, egalitarian way in which the Americans were listed:
Charles Evans Hughes,
Henry Cabot Lodge,
Oscar W. Underwood,
Elihu Root,
citizens of the United States;

These men represented a country in which “all men are created equal”. We sometimes forget how distinctive America is. Thank you again, Mr. Jefferson.

Lost Among The Angels

2006-09-20T16:01:00.000-05:00

Alice Duncan, Lost Among The Angels (2006).

I just finished a perky little detective story by Alice Duncan, entitled Lost Among The Angels. It is set in 1920s Los Angeles and details the adventures of the young Mercedes Louise Allcutt. Mercy (as she would rather be called) is all of 21 and has just come west to live with her sister and brother-in-law, after growing up very rich and even more sheltered in Boston. Mercy finds life in L.A. to be a major adjustment, as for instance when her sister insists that she bobs her hair.

“Mother and Father would disown me if I had my hair bobbed,” I said.

“Mother and Father aren’t here.”

Even as she stated the obvious, my heart soared. I told it to stop doing that. Such behavior on its part was extremely unfilial and in very bad taste.

Mercy decides to find employment, not because she needs money, but because she wants to mingle with people in order that she might find grist for the novels she yearns to write. She goes to work for Ernie Templeton, a detective who is as worldly wise as Mercy is naive. They quickly develop strong feelings for one another, a fact which Mercy is reluctant to admit to herself. At one point in the story, after she has just survived a harrowing moment of danger, Ernie affectionately embraces her. Mercy provides narration:

Personally, I didn’t mind the embrace. It showed proper managerial anxiety over the welfare of a person in his employ.

Mercy’s continual incredulity at the modern world around her, coupled with her surprising effectiveness in spite of her naivete, makes this a very fun book. Hopefully it is just the first installment in a very long series.

Zarqawi and the U.S. Senate

2006-09-15T13:09:00.000-05:00

Much has been made of a recent report by the U.S. Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence which claims there was no link between Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq and the terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

The Senate report quotes an October 2005 CIA assessment which claims that before the war “the regime did not have a relationship, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi and his associates.” (Reported on page 92 of the Senate report.)

President Bush’s critics have seized upon this as evidence that the President deliberately misled the American people back in 2003 concerning the threat that Iraq posed to the United States.

The problem with this criticism, however, is that it glosses over an inconvenient truth which is spelled out in the same Senate Report: The CIA was singing a different tune in 2002.

Back in September 2002, the CIA reported: “The presence of al-Qa’ida militants on Iraqi soil poses many questions. We are uncertain to what extent Baghdad is actively complicit in this use of its territory by al-Qa’ida operatives for safehaven and transit. Given the pervasive presence of Iraq’s security apparatus , it would be difficult for al-Qa’ida to maintain an active, long-term presence in Iraq without alerting the authorities or without at least their acquiescence.” (Emphasis added.)

This too is reported in the Senate report (on page 89) and clearly indicates that before the war the CIA did think that at the very least Saddam was “turning a blind eye” to Zarqawi.

The significance of this September 2002 CIA assessment is that it exonerates Mr. Bush from the charge that he deliberately misled the American people in 2003 about the relationship between Zarqawi and Hussein. Not surprisingly, the President’s critics have failed to admit this.

Something else which is getting very little play in the national media is the possibility that the Senate committee might very well be mistaken in its assessment that there was no relationship between the two thugs. According to a recent editorial from Investor’s Business Daily, the Senate report “suggests that, at least for the Democrats, Senate intelligence is an oxymoron.”

And on Thursday, the New York Sun reported that Barham Salih, a former Iraqi deputy prime minister, contradicted the Senate report with his assertion that “Some of my friends were murdered by jihadists, by Al Qaeda-affiliated operatives who had been sheltered and assisted by Saddam’s regime.”

The Last Days of Summer

2006-08-08T09:47:00.000-05:00

Steve Kluger, Last Days of Summer (1998)

This touching novel is set in New York in the early 1940s and tells of the friendship between Joey, a brilliant Jewish kid who is picked on because of his religion, and Charlie, the not-so-dumb third baseman for the New York Giants. I found the ending to be predictable, even inevitable, but it still brought tears to my eyes.

One interesting feature of the novel is that Kluger does not rely upon normal narrative to tell his story, but instead relates it using letters, telegrams and newspaper articles. The book reads very quickly; I devoured its 353 pages in one sitting.

Of these 353, I particularly liked page seven, because it contained the following cool words:

rotogravure - a type of printing system using a rotary press, or something printed with such a system

hartebeest - a type of large antelope native to Africa

hop-o’-my-thumb - the name of a little boy in a folk tale

The language is rough at times, but still the story is beautiful. I recommend it to anyone who believes in baseball, or heroes.

Arbeit macht frei

2006-08-03T12:53:00.000-05:00

Elie Wiesel, Night (new translation, 2006)

Perhaps Elie Wiesel is the poet laureate of holocaust survivors. Night is, by his own admission, his most important work. To say the book is powerful is understatement.

The book is Wiesel's memoir of the holocaust, during which he was just a teenage boy. He wrote this book in Yiddish. His wife Marian — “who knows my voice and how to transmit it better than anyone else” (p. xiii) —has recently retranslated it. He uses a very simple and eloquent writing style; the beauty of his prose and the ugliness of his story are perfectly juxtaposed.

Wiesel means to haunt you, and he succeeds. He writes of a tramp in town, dismissed as a madman, who accurately warned of what was to come; of a hysterical lady in the cattle car, dismissed as a madwoman, who had premonitions of all-consuming flames; of his last glimpse of his mother and sister, as they were herded to their deaths at Birkenau the first night; of the sign over the gate at Auschwitz, Arbeit macht frei (“Work makes you free”); of his silence, even relief, the night his father was beaten to death in Buchenwald.

Wiesel felt called to write this memoir in order to make people remember what happened. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. The volume closes with his acceptance speech, in which he spoke of the sinfulness of remaining aloof:

“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must — at that moment — become the center of the universe.” (p. 118-119)

“As long as one dissident is in prison, our freedom will not be true. As long as one child is hungry, our life will be filled with anguish and shame. What all these victims need above all is to know when their voices are stifled we shall lend them ours, that while their freedom depends on ours, the quality of our freedom depends on theirs.” (p. 120)

In one sense, work did make Wiesel free. Because he was given work as a laborer, the Germans never got around to murdering him. The day came when an American tank rattled its way to the gates of Buchenwald, and he was finally free.

But not really free. Not free from the memories. Not free from the sorrow. Not free from the duty of making the world remember.

Something To Eat

2006-07-29T11:42:00.001-05:00

Mark 5.39-43 (ESV)
And when he had entered, he said to them, “Why are you making a commotion and weeping? The child is not dead but sleeping.”

And they laughed at him. But he put them all outside and took the child's father and mother and those who were with him and went in where the child was.

Taking her by the hand he said to her, “Talitha cumi,” which means, “Little girl, I say to you, arise.”

And immediately the girl got up and began walking (for she was twelve years of age), and they were immediately overcome with amazement.

And he strictly charged them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat.

* * *

There are many things we can learn from this beautiful story. Jesus went to the house of Jairus (Luke gives us the man’s name) during a time of mourning. Lesson: “weep with those who weep” (Romans 12.15).

The crowd laughed at Jesus — the crowd still laughs at him — but this did not, does not deter him from the business of turning death into life. Lesson: Do not be deterred from doing good by the scorn of others.

Christ immediately raised the girl from the dead. Lesson: We can comfort in knowing that Jesus is stronger than death, that in fact he raised himself from the grave as he promised when he said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2.19).

Notice, however, the understated closing to the story: he “told them to give her something to eat.” Jesus had already gone further than anyone else could have — he performed a miracle — but now he goes even further, a third mile. His concern for this little girl existed not only at the great life-or-death level, but also at a more mundane and very human level: Is she hungry?

Food was an integral part of Christ’s ministry and I believe this is a neglected theme of the gospels. He fed five thousand famished men on one occasion, four thousand on another (“I do not want to send them away hungry,” he had said in Matthew 15.32, “for they might faint on the way”). He once allowed his hungry disciples to pick grain to eat on a Sabbath and defended them from the accusations of the Pharisees afterward. After his resurrection, he even cooked breakfast for Peter and some of the other disciples.

Moreover, he was always accepting invitations to eat — and using such occasions as opportunities to teach. It is almost startling to note just how often Jesus was found eating with people: at the home of Simon the Pharisee (Luke 7); at the home of Mary and Martha (Luke 10); at the home of a prominent Pharisee (Luke 14); at the home of Simon the Leper (Mark 14); with his disciples the night of his betrayal (Luke 22); with two disciples he met on the Emmaus Road (Luke 24). In fact, food was such a central feature of his ministry that he was unfairly accused of being a glutton. (Luke 7.34)

Sometimes we seem to think that we can win people to the Lord simply by overwhelming them with doctrinal soundness. But this was not Christ’s method: He supplied them with loaves and fishes, in addition to doctrinal soundness. It has been said that people don’t care how much we know until they know how much we care. There are few better places to show how much we care than around a dinner table.

(Painting by Dinah Roe Kendall)

Justice is a terrible thing...

2006-07-27T15:43:00.002-05:00

Dorothy Sayers and Jill Paton Walsh, Thrones, Dominations (1998)

I have lately been in a reading mood. After reading three novels I was less than impressed with — The Company of Strangers by Robert Wilson, And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie, The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown — I turned to this book. Sayers is one of my favorite authors (her Nine Tailors is marvelous) and I was not disappointed with Thrones, Dominations.

One interesting aspect to this novel is that Sayers left the work unfinished; Jill Paton Walsh completed it, and quite recently too (1998 was the publishing date). I could not tell where Sayers’ prose ended and Walsh’s began.

The novel concerns two deaths, the first an accidental killing because of a misunderstanding, the second a deliberate murder. The hero of the novel is the amateur detective Lord Peter Wimsey, who has recently married Harriet Vane. (The fact that Harriet is herself a mystery writer allows Sayers and Walsh to have some fun discussing the art of writing detective fiction.)

The best parts of the novel are the conversations between the two highly intelligent newlyweds. Sometimes the banter back and forth strains credibility, especially when Harriet mentions that away from Peter she is “just sitting in the centre, like the fixed foot of the compasses, and doing a little sublunary leaning and hearkening” — which (Peter realizes instantly) is an allusion to John Donne’s “Valediction Forbidding Mourning”. He replies with his own allusion to the same poem. (p. 168)

But even though the conversations between Peter and Harriet may be full of obscure references to John Donne and other esoteric allusions, the discussions are often touching. At one point, Harriet asks Peter if it is right to bring a child into the world. The times are perilous; Hitler has just remilitarized the Rhineland. Peter’s reply contains hope and vulnerability. “There’s what we can do for any child of ours,” he says, “and there's what no one can do for any child at all.” (p. 302)

At another point in the book Harriet and Peter discuss Peter’s detective work. Harriet assures him that she thinks it is a very “serious” and important undertaking. She also expects that it is tied to his war-time service (during the First World War) but can’t quite see the connection. “When you have seen people die,” he replies, “when you have seen at what abominable and appalling cost the peace and safety of England was secured, and then you see the peace squalidly broken, you see killing that has been perpetrated for vile and selfish motives...” Now she sees the connection and he adds: “Justice is a terrible thing, but injustice is worse.” (p. 131)

In a day when Al Qaeda terrorists crash people-laden planes into crowded buildings and Hezbollah terrorists fire rocket into Israel, this is something to remember. I enjoyed reading Thrones, Dominions.

Fridays with Red

2006-07-17T12:05:00.000-05:00

Bob Edwards, Fridays with Red: A Radio Friendship (1993)

Every Friday morning for 12 years (from 1981 to 1992) National Public Radio’s Bob Edwards would speak with former Dodgers’ announcer Red Barber in a four-minute segment which quickly became the most popular segment of NPR’s Morning Edition. Not only would Barber talk about sports headlines of the day, he would also reminisce about his days as the announcer for the Reds, Dodgers (with whom he gained national prominence) and Yankees, and discuss just about anything that popped into his head — he was particularly fond of discussing his garden, his cats and the Psalms. After Barber's death in 1992, Edwards wrote this little book, memorializing their friendship.

For a brief taste of Barber’s perspective on life, consider this exchange in November 1991 after Florida State lost to Miami in football...

Bob: Are hearts still heavy in Tallahassee this week?
Red: Well, I’ll tell you something. I was around the Ohio State-Notre Dame game in 1935, and the Bobby Thomson home run, and the Mickey Owen dropped third strike and the Chicago Bears’ 73-0 win over the Redskins. And I saw the FSU-Miami one-point game, and you know what happened the next morning?
Bob: What?
Red: The sun rose right on time. (p. 131)

Though Edwards admits that Barber was not always easy to work with, the younger man (nicknamed “Colonel Bob” by Red) clearly idolized his elder. In a eulogy which Edwards prepared for NPR, he noted that Barber “taught us respect for the listener, respect for the language and respect for the truth.” (p. 219)

The book is a must-read for anyone interested in sports journalism. Edwards’ prose is fun to read (especially the humorous little digs he takes at fellow NPR announcers), but near the end it reaches a height of poignant eloquence. “Red Barber’s ashes now are part of the Florida soil,” he writes. “His body couldn't last, but there's not another thing about him that has to die.” (p. 231)