A Little Bit of Americana

It was a little bit of Americana in Minocqua, Wisconsin on July 4--at the annual Indepemdence Day parade down main street. Groups of dancers, muaicians, and mechants--both local and state-wide-- entertained us as they strode or rode by for nearly and hour and a half, with young attendants throwing out candy all over the street for children nearby. Alyce and I thoroughly enjoyed it with our son Paul, daughter-in-law Kristin, and their children Annika, Colin, and Kajsa.

Thought you might like to see how a small town in mid-America celebrates Independence Day, with people from all over the surrounding area joined in the festivities. Children were everywhere, and who knows what lasting impressions the flag waving and cheering might have in their lives?

Several impressions remain in my mind: one, that it was good to see so many together having a good time, a change from the relative isolation of home owners and vacationers in their own normal and limited circles; then too it was renewing to feel a grateful and peaceful patriotism abounding, in a crowd well ordered and uncynical; and finally it was refreshing to get away from the pressure so many are under in daily life to perform for their living--just to enjoy each other as persons, whether old or young, rich or poor, sophisticated or not. It was as if we all were freed up by what was going on to meet, greet, and engage whoever happened to be standing or sitting by.

America is beautiful. And it can be even more so when small towns and their surrounding communities as well as mega-cities gather to celebrate their common ancestry as "one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

Blessed to Be a Blessing

Independence. Liberty. Freedom. For the most part we Americans take them for granted. Save in times of crisis when someone threatens to take them away, we pay little attention not only to the realities themselves but to all the struggles and sacrifices so many have made to secure them for us.

"Isn’t it alright to be patriotic?” my son Peter once asked me on coming away from Mt. Rushmore on a wistful summer evening. He was but a boy then, but something in the wonder of that sight awakened in him a sense of both awe and thanksgiving. And for him the awe remains to this day as he pursues the reading of U.S. history from Revolutionary and Civil war days to the present. To go with him on a tour to Gettysburg is to be awakened yourself to the dramatic battles there that turned the tides of war to the side of those who gave "their last full measure of devotion” to preserve the Union.

Lest we forget those times and battles, not to mention World Wars I and II, Korea, Vietnam, and our current engagements in the Middle East, we need days and celebrations like the Fourth of July and Veterans Day. And we need also to sensitize ourselves to lesser heralded but equally important sacrifices of people like teachers, lawyers, doctors, farmers, ministers, and yes, politicians, each of whom built America up from the ruins of war to a culture both distinct and admired around the world.

In our time and place, however, we need also to use days like these to return ourselves in mind and heart to the true Source of our good fortune. If in a world of tremendous squalor and need we trivialize our own stewardship of God's blessing by careless and self-centered living, what then shall we leave our children and theirs? (See the prophetic statement by my brother Zenos on the May, 2009 RootedWings Home Page now archived at the bottom of this month's Home Page.)

God has clearly blessed America and each of us as Americans. But he has just as clearly done so, as he did the ancient Israelites, to be a blessing in the larger world he created and loves. God help us to further that blessing going forward. And God help us if we don’t.

Wholeness Is More Than Wellness

It has been an extraordinary day with family at our cabin in Wisconsin. Good food, varied activities, an evening watching baseball and "The Wizard of Oz," mostly I think just hanging out.

Arden Almquist, the late missionary doctor in Africa who was to become the leader of our world mission program in the Covenant, once wrote in "Debtor Unashamed" that he learned far more from the Africans that they did from him. Among the many of those things was that "presence is more important than talk." At the end of this remarkable day I am reminded how true that is.

Wholeness in family relations, as in each of our individual lives, is far more important than wellness, desirable as it is to be well. And the sense of wholeness we all need comes of being with others--not least our own family members--and allowing them the space and time in our lives it takes to build relationships and foster life-long memories.

Annika, Colin, and Kajsa, Paul and Kristin's children, have been just delightful this day, from morning till night. And we have been unhurried enough to enjoy their playful spirits. The mutual love they and their parents have over years for Hembygden, the family cabin where we now find ourselves again--not to mention all the stories that have accrued to it over 60 years since my parents first ventured to build it--are themselves part of the fabric that has made and is still making us whole human beings.

It is all to easy, not least when health questions for ourselves and one another vie for our attention, to isolate ourselves in fear and anxiety. What I have been blessed by this day is the way in which just being together in the richness of family experience and memory heals the soul, even if not entirely the body.

One is reminded of that occasion when after healing a certain person in New Testament times Jesus asked, "Do you want to be made whole?" "Yes, Lord," I find myself responding tonight.

Jesus' question is surely worth pondering again and again. You can be well, you know, without ever being whole. And life has taught me over and over again that even believers who are not well physically can be and often are surprisingly whole people.

If given a choice, I would rather be whole than well. And on a day like this, when wholeness moved in on me like waves from the sea, I found myself praying with thanksgiving, "Do it again, Lord. Free me from all lesser concerns in my life that I may yearn more and more for the wholeness you are ever ready to supply.

On Making Music for God

Samuel Miller of Harvard has been much on my mind over the last two years since I rediscovered his book on The Life of the Soul in my library. Using images from that book in two recent Salem Adult Sunday School Seminars on “Practicing Our Christian Faith” and “Covenant Affirmations,” I have since sought out more of his books on the Internet.

A giant in thinking, writing, and reflecting on our faith as Christians, with deep insight and poetic imagination--both of which are in short supply these days and even less sought after by the average believer--he though dead yet speaks in remarkably powerful ways. Consider, for example, the following from his book on Man the Believer in an Age of Unbelief:

As often as I listen to a symphony orchestra I am stirred by the mystery of the event. Think of it: here are a hundred musicians each of whom has spent a lifetime in a passionate and consuming effort to learn their particular instrument. From early childhood, through youth to adulthood, through all the anguish of our mortal dust, in loneliness, heartache, and ecstasy, despite great sorrows and minor distractions and world catastrophes-- each one pouring their very life into skillful fingertips, or sensitive lips, with sure hearing, until every nuance, every subtlety, every insubstantial quaver can be communicated by … violin or horn, flute, or harp, or saxophone.

Then they assemble, not to hear each other’s solos, but to play together what they cannot play apart—a symphony. The souls of a hundred individual people, drawn into mortal life with all its color and drama, its faith and fears—all flowing together into the symphony. And it hangs for a moment in the air, laving our spirits with its transfiguring beauty. It redeems us, lifts us beyond ourselves; it glorifies our common humanity.

Is there no way in a world so magnificently empowered as our own, so magically interrelated, so burgeoning in its startling surprises, its human concern, its lively arts, to redeem us from our littleness and to life us into the symphony of God’s new creation? (p. 49, alt.).

Last night we heard the New York Philharmonic with accompanying choirs perform Gustav Mahler’s “Symphony for a Thousand” (his 8th). It was a farewell concert led by Loren Maezel, honoring his seven years as principal there and over 60 as a conductor. What we heard could clearly not have been heard without either the individual and communal devotion—not to mention discipline over time --of musicians and conductor alike, all serving the music.

We as God’s people and members of Christ’s body are the recipients of the most glorious symphony of good news ever heard. Oh that more and more we might find our way—individually and communally--into the rigors of rehearsing and proclaiming that good news. Make music for your God to hear. Join with his people under his baton and be lifted yourself while lifting others into his eternal presence.