The Bosque Boys

Farmer had an earlier post devoted to "America's Iron Lady." I would like to call your attention to this tribute by Bob Tyrrell on Jewish World Review. I especially was intrigued by this paragraph.

It was at Jeane Kirkpatrick's funeral this week that I finally heard of some good achieved by the United Nations amidst all its dithering and graft. According to Jeane's pastor, during her momentous tenure as our U.N. ambassador, Jeane was so wobbled by the international body's cynicism and moral emptiness that she forsook years of atheism and became a person of faith. Mind you, she had always had an abundance of secular faith before President Ronald Reagan tapped her for the United Nations. Her faith in the American way of life, its freedom, democracy and equality was as ardent as it was intelligently conceived. But after leaving the house of hustlers on the East River, she became deeply Christian; and religion gently informed all she thought and did thereafter.

I am reminded of others whose journeys of faith were undertaken because of rigorous intellectual honesty. ( Including the surgeon general Everett Koop, who finally agreed to attend a church one of the nurses kept inviting him to, just so she would stop the invitations. Attending this Presbyterian church he sat through the sermon disbelieving everything said. But, he could not figure out why he thought the sermon untrue. So, he went back, and back again, and eventually became a believer.)

Simone Weil, the French existentialist writer of the 1930s, wrote that to find God it is necessary to hold firmly to two disparate truths: the world does not make sense, and, we want the world to make sense. Both are true, but we tend to abandon one or the other. She wrote that by holding to both we create Space for God, into which he will come, if we wait. See her essay Waiting for God.

For more information on Weil, link from an admirer, and Susan Sontag's brilliant essay here.

The latest Peggy Noonan column is terrific. Speaking of George H. W. Bush (41) and his propensity for choking up, Noonan reports and speculates on a recent episode in which he was unable to hold back his tears:

"Barely more than a day after he spoke, the Iraq Study Group's report would be issued. It was chaired by his old friend, the one with whom he'd discussed serious things years ago only after the kids, George and Jeb and the others, left the room.

"Surely Mr. Bush knew--surely he was first on James Baker's call list--that the report would not, could not, offer a way out of a national calamity, but only suggestions, hopes, on ways through it. To know his son George had (with the best of intentions!) been wrong in the great decision of his presidency--stop at Afghanistan or move on to Iraq?--and was now suffering a defeat made clear by the report; to love that son, and love your country, to hold these thoughts, to have them collide and come together--this would bring not only tears, but more than tears."

On the emotional differences between Ronald Reagan and his successor:

"Afterwards I thought about the two presidents I had known. Ronald Reagan was emotionally moved by American history and the Founders, by the long sweep of history. Personal issues and relations left him more dry-eyed. His successor was enormously moved by personal relations, by his love for his children and parents and friends. But to him the sweep of history was more abstract; it didn't capture his imagination in the same way. It left him dry-eyed.

"Different strokes, different folks."

Memory, emotion and growing old:

"Age exposes us, if we're lucky enough to be given it. Some say it makes you softer, some tougher, some a mix of both. Some say it just leaves you more so--whatever you were, you are, only more."

"[G]rowing older can leave you more exposed to the force of whatever it is you're feeling. Defenses erode like a fence worn by time. But what you feel can surprise you.

"You're thinking about what was, and suddenly apprehending for the first time how important it was. You think of your son, age 3, on the lawn when you drove up that time. Once that memory touched you in some way you don't fully understand, but now it makes your throat constrict because you realize that of all the things that ever happened to you, none was as important as how he looked on the lawn when you drove up that time.

"Age reorders. The order is expressed by the mysterious force of a fragment of a moment. And there you are at the podium, mugged by a memory."

An aside: the tag of the piece is much less charitable to the current President Bush. It pains me and alarms me that Peggy Noonan has given up on the President.

Read the piece in full (here).

We are waiting in a world that often appears barren and devoid of light. In the anguish of our emptiness, we hunger for justice and peace. Awash in our imperfection, we cry out for forgiveness and healing. In the depths of our abject loneliness, we await God. Where are you beloved Savior? Emanuel?

We are not alone. We have seen the light, yet darkness and sorrow have not passed away. We are anticipating a more joyous time, but we are no longer expecting only bright glorious days in the Garden. We have been chastened by the black and lifeless night of the Cross. Nevertheless, we are assured that there is “a light that keeps shining in the darkness.” Even as the earth experiences nighttime, we understand that the sun continues to keep us in precise cosmic order and warm our world. God is with us during our long night.

Welcome darkness. In the coldness and darkness of life is truth. The dark of winter is a reminder of our limits and our need. The delicious hunger in our souls during the long night confirms our dependence on God. We are the created. We need not search for God. Even as we wait for God, we know that God is here. God has come already, and He has not abandoned us. God is with us in the midst of our sorrows.

Life is beautiful and rich and multi-layered, but we will not easily and painlessly solve the puzzles of our existence. Spring will come again; we will laugh again—but not tonight. Tonight we wait in the stillness. The promise of victory is real and assuring, but darkness is our present reality.

Welcome darkness. Winter is upon us. But welcome also a candle in the night (and another; and another). In the midst of the darkness, light and meaning are in us even as God was in the Christ. “We are truly blessed. The Lord is with us.”

Note: I originally wrote this meditation last Advent season for an internal publication at my church. My inclusion of Hank Williams's famous praise hymn to God struck many learned readers as a curious coupling with Advent. Undoubtedly, they were right. Blame my curiously organized mind. Here is what I was going for: Hank Williams, I suspect, was articulating a "holiness" theology, a tradition prominent in some denominations of Christianity in the American South. The holiness tradition teaches that Christians may reach a level of righteousness at which they are almost immune to sin or distress. Traditional Advent thinking, obviously, denies such a belief. Instead, the lesson of Advent is "light in the midst of darkness" as opposed to "no more darkness."

Our church had its first Christmas Program rehearsal this morning during the Sunday School time. Squirming kids, hyper kids, talkative kids. (I loved the blurted question part-way through from the 2nd grade girl who asked, if Jesus was born king, who was the queen?) 5th-grade Isaiah the prophet coming down the aisle to declaim his prophecies doing what I can only describe as a pimp-walk. The girl who can do Native American sign language absent. The high school narrator giving a very low-keyed reading of the miracle of the Incarnation. Mary not wanting to stand close enough to Joseph to touch him. The ranks of the heavenly host depleted by a few absences. 7th grade Elizabeth not sure she wanted to wear a costume that simulated a pregnant woman. The special-effects boy pretending to shine a flashlight at one point because the real one must have been elsewhere. In other words, a typical first rehearsal of a Sunday School Christmas program. Controlled chaos that by the end of the hour was beginning to take recognizable shape. I'm confident that on the night of the 17th we'll have a respectable presentation of "Three Gifts for Jesus," written by one of our members. And in the midst of this morning, God's grace. The 2nd-grader with the question giving me a piece of paper after the children's sermon to "give to Jesus:" a marker drawing of Mary and Joseph with the baby Jesus in the manger between them and all surrounded by red hearts. Nevermind that she had squabbled with another girl during the early part of the service over the markers. Somehow the reality of the miracle of God's love for us had touched her, prompting this response.

Paul said that God puts his treasure into earthen vessels, into clay pots. That's the church. That's us Christians, the people of God. Clay pots. Controlled chaos, AWOL Sunday School students, missing flashlights, and strutting prophets. Yet somehow, God's love comes through. Have a blessed Advent.

Guest Blog

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a...war of [significant] severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.

Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle, or the ship; the axe had enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years, with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to...observe...a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

A. Lincoln

Last Sunday afternoon I drove from Waterloo, Iowa, south down US 63 to New Sharon, then west to Pella. Clear fall sky, fields on the rolling hills in the late stages of harvest--soybean fields greyish-brown stubble, most of the cornfields rows of harvested stalks bent to the earth in the direction the combine had passed, a few fields of yellow ears of corn on brown stalks awaiting the move to bins. The sun fairly low in the southern sky (the short dark days approaching) bathing the hills with gentle golden light. It was a Grant Wood fall day.

Grant Wood, the Iowa artist known as a "regionalist," because he painted the landscape at hand; not the south of France but the farms and people of the Midwest. Last Sunday afternoon was his painting "Fall Plowing" in real life (with combine-bent stalks instead of hand-stacked shocks of corn).

Art critics have observed that the hills in Wood's Iowa landscapes resemble the female body. No accident I am sure. Mother Earth in her fecundity, the soil a fertile womb for seed and rain and sunshine to combine into life-giving life.

Last Sunday on the Iowa hills, the fall of maturity and harvest following the summer of growth which followed the spring of fertility. And soon, the apparent death of winter will coat these same hills in ice and snow. Until spring. Then the cycle of planting, growth, and harvest again. As in years past, centuries past, millenia past.

I'm 50 years old. Odds are I've lived over half my life. And that's OK. I've seen the older generations of my family in their fall years, and have lost them to winter. My own children follow after me a season behind. Someday for me it will be winter.

I've stood at two gravesides this week; we committed the bodies into Mother Earth--ashes to ashes, dust to dust. In sure hope of the resurrection of the dead. We confessed the Christian faith in the words of the Apostles' Creed: "I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, God's only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried; he descended to the dead. On the third day he rose again; he ascended into heaven, he is seated at the right hand of the Father, and he will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the dead, the the life everlasting. Amen"

Winter for me is coming, but I believe that afterward, spring; not because of the fertility of Mother Earth, not because of something inherently immortal in me, but because of the miraculous power of God, who promises resurrection and life everlasting to his people through Jesus Christ. An eternal spring and summer in God's glorious golden light.

Enjoy spring, and summer, and fall, and don't fear winter.

I went to the Wal-Mart on Friday night. For all of you who do not share my admiration for Wal-Mart as the ultimate place to meet America, we must continue to agree to disagree. It is often a happy place, as it was on this visit. It was approximately eight o'clock in the evening, and it was pay-day, and it was wall-to-wall families of every color with raptured expressions on their faces. The joy was contagious. Although I went in for something simple, I caught the fever (it was pay-day for me too). I walked out with "treats" for the whole family, cheap DVDs, a CD for the kids, a magazine for my wife and something for me: "Merle Haggard: 24 All-Time Greatest Hits."

I own quite a bit of Merle, but this one is special. This offering from "TeeVee Records" showcased "country's greatest singer/songwriter," claiming to feature all the "songs that made him a legend." There he was on the cover, perhaps early-to-mid-1970s Merle, hard-eyed and chiseled, bearded, hairline just beginning to recede--but still jet black.

Hey hey, the working man, the working man like me
I ain't never been on welfare, that's one place I won't be
Cause I'll be working long as my two hands are fit to use
I drink a little beer in a tavern
Sing a little bit of these working man blues

Once this election passes, I intend to consider the American electorate at a crossroads. Who we are. Where we want to go. How the Democratic Party lost us. Can they get us back? Why the GOP seemed to understand us but now seems incapable of sealing the deal. Part of the answer of who we are lies in country music (American music). Why the hicks from the sticks lost faith with the Dixie Chicks. How President Bush missed an opportunity to call the Toby Keith/Martina McBride generation to national service.

Finally, on Sunday afternoon, I had the chance to listen to the Merle CD. Driving along Waco Drive, crossing the Brazos River Bridge into East Waco, I listened to:

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Dear Heavenly Father,

We come to you as a nation at war. We confess the sin of arrogance. In great contests it is common for each party to claim to act in accord with the will of God. In the present war it is altogether likely that your purpose is something entirely different from the purpose of either party – yet, we pray that the human instrumentalities, working as they do, may be working toward your purpose.

We pray humbly but fervently for peace. With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as you give us the vision to see the right, give us the strength to finish the work we are in, to bind up the wounds of the nations, to care for those who have borne the battle and for their widows and their orphans, AND to do all in our power to achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

We ask these things in your holy name.

Amen

A note on sources: Lincoln's "Meditation on the Divine Will" and Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address.

I haven't commented yet on this article in which the Vatican's chief exorcist is reported to have stated that Hitler and Stalin were possessed by the devil (or a demon).

At one point in college, when I thought I knew a lot more than I think I do now, I had decided that angels and demons were superfluous to explain the universe, probably mythic explanations for things such as self-destructive human sinfulness, and the ability of a transcendent God to interact with the universe. Two things changed my mind: first, probably from my background in science, I remembered that we can determine what exists in the universe only by experience and observation, not by a priori decision; second, a passage in the theologian John Macquarrie (no conservative) to the effect that it is rather egotistical of humans to suppose themselves alone with God in the material universe. As C.S. Lewis observed, belief in devils is not required of Christians--it's not in the Creed--but it is the plain reading of Scripture, the belief of the Church through the ages, and indeed the belief of most people of most cultures of human history.

For a time, in college again, I resumed belief in demons (and angels) but refused to believe in demon possession. To me it seemed that human perversity and sinfulness could explain all that needed to be explained regarding sin and sinful behavior. But, alas for my hypothesis, the same reasoning given above that moved me back to belief in demons also applied to demon possession--it is the plain reading of Scripture, the Church through the ages has believed in possession, and indeed most human cultures have beliefs in similar things. And, reality is not known a priori, but by observing what is. Also, though I won't discuss it now, I've observed more. (more below)

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Legendary jazz trumpeter Maynard Ferguson died yesterday. I was privilaged to hear him in person twice with his band. What a talent, what a showman. And a class act. The first time I heard him some friends and I (I think we were still in high school) drove down to the Kansas City area to a concert at a college. We arrived early and were wandering around campus before the show. From across the way we hear the unmistakable sound of Maynard, warming up by playing scales. We followed the notes in the air and found our way to a dressing room in the back of the auditorium. We stood gawking at the open door until one of us found his voice and said "Uh, Mr. Ferguson?", then we asked him for his autograph. He asked how many of us there were, saying he did not have much time to get ready for the show. When told there were only three of us, he most graciously signed an autograph on an album. Nice guy. Most high school and college trumpet players I knew back in the day wanted to play like Maynard: high and bold.

A tribute on Power line is here.