Monday Morning Music Ministry

5-26-25

On Memorial Day we think back – or we should, among other impulses – on the words of Abraham Lincoln when he dedicated the military cemetery at Gettysburg:

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.

Dying can be horrible enough – or noble enough – but dying in vain is an awful thing. “Life is real; life is earnest,” in the words of the poet Longfellow in A Psalm of Life. “The grave is not its goal; Dust thou art, to dust returnest, Was not spoken of the soul.”

Another president, Theodore Roosevelt, addressed the subject of battlefield death when he learned that his youngest son was killed in aerial combat during World War I: “Quentin’s mother and I are very glad that he got to the front and had the chance to render some service to his country and to show the stuff there was in him before his fate befell him.”

Can that sound cold? Was a war in faraway France “service to his country,” as many disputed at the time? Did such a death actually advance or delay the cause of either combatant? Was it Lieutenant Roosevelt’s “fate” to die in uniform? Well, in TR’s reference to “stuff that was in him” we find the essence of Memorial Day’s significance.

One of life’s most consequential qualities is standing for something. We should believe in certain things; we must be guided by principles we cherish. Of course matters of family, of faith, of nation, are paramount. We must discern and embrace the noble qualities, but in an abstract sense we are ennobled by ideals we adopt. We are motivated, we share, we are willing to sacrifice.

Beyond the prosaic “life and death” concerns we contemplate on Memorial Day (for it is not Veterans’ Day, honoring those who have served; but those who died during their military service) there is the factor of being motivated by the “stuff there was in” those who died in uniform. That is what we honor. It is my contention that the vast majority of men and women who die in combat are not haters, but lovers. Some soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines hate their enemy counterparts, sure. But I believe that most of them are motivated rather by love: love of their homelands; love of families they desire to protect; love of values they grew up with. There is a big difference, and the gruesome aspects of war do not harden the tender essence within the occasional brutality and the necessity to fight and even kill… or be killed.

In these contemporary times I increasingly wonder about the “stuff” that is in the country of the United States. Once upon a time, those who died in uniform lept to serve. They sometimes lied about their ages in order to enlist. Soldiers at Valley Forge went without pay, and without boots in the snow, in order to establish and protect a country that did not yet exist. Whites from the North, many who never had even seen a Black person, sacrificed and died in order to eliminate slavery. And so forth.

These days, however and despite those who volunteer and sacrifice comforts of home and family and safety and physical harm and their very lives, servicemen still are asked to sacrifice for the “stuff” of the nation, flag, and homes.

Would those men and women of the past, especially, have risen to arms in order to defend a nation that has lost its essential Christian moorings? Would they unhesitatingly defend a flag that now often stands for suppressing free speech, encouraging sexual perversion, allowing rampant drug use? Would they preserve a system where illegal migrants have been invited to distort the society, where sexual abuse, child abuse, and human trafficking are common? Can they be forgiven if they wonder What this flag represents any more???

… because I sometimes wonder about these things myself.

This is a changing country. Yes, all societies and nations evolve. But sometimes they devolve. Eventually they might dissolve. It is one of the prime commissions of men and women in uniform to preserve, protect, and defend their homelands. Whether America, having become an empire and not a republic, is correct to order our military to have footprints in 140 countries, and to require the consequent sacrifices, is almost immaterial on Memorial Day.

Rather we must honor the “stuff” that Theodore Roosevelt talked about; the resistance to “dying in vain” in Lincoln’s phrase. We cannot avoid being awestruck, and therefore must honor, the impulse to serve and to sacrifice that men and women in uniform practice. It is not a human impulse to act this way. Or is it?

Yes, it is – among the finest humans among us, anyway. The heroes we honor on Memorial Day. Take a moment to pray thanks, to remember, to honor, perhaps at a military grave, those who had that “stuff” in them. Maybe at a gravesite of someone you didn’t know.

But they knew you. Probably they never met you. But they knew you just the same. They gave their lives for you.

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends (John 15:13).

This weekend, Mickey and I visited the Great Lakes National Cemetery in our town of Holly MI. We laid flowers at the grave of a friend of hers who died in service; and we found a random gravestone at which to lay flowers in tribute to the Many.

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Click: Gone Home

5-25-15
(Memorial Day)

They are special creatures. And rare. They do jobs not everyone understands, but they do understand. They are willing, and often do, “pay with their bodies for their souls’ desire,” as Theodore Roosevelt, whose son Quentin was killed in an aerial dogfight over German lines, said of fallen servicemen.

The finest tribute we can pay
Unto our hero dead today,
Is not a rose wreath, white and red,
In memory of the blood they shed;
It is to stand beside each mound,
Each couch of consecrated ground,
And pledge ourselves as warriors true
Unto the work they died to do.

— Edgar Guest

Throughout history there have been many military forces stocked of conscripts, sometimes unwilling, even ignorant of their “cause.” But often – and especially in this era of the volunteer military – service people take their oaths, don their uniforms, and support their missions. Victory is their goal, but they all know that death is an option. Other options include the certainty of family separation and changed civilian lives if and when they return; and, increasingly these days, cruel injuries and challenging disabilities.

But they volunteer, these special creatures. Sacrifice and Service are what their loves become. Gen. George S Patton is supposed to have said: “War is not dying for your country. It’s making the other bastard die for his country.” True as far as it goes, even a brilliant distinction; and a great motivational aphorism on a battle’s eve. But discordant on Memorial Day.

Heroes of old! I humbly lay
     The laurel on your graves again;
Whatever men have done, men may,—
     The deeds you wrought are not in vain!

— Austin Dobson

We don’t have to agree with the “cause” of a war or the decision to put a nation’s young men and women into battle in order to admire the fallen. I dissent from many adventures of recent years – or at least their strategies and tactics – but I am in awe of those who serve, sacrifice, sustain wounds, and die. They do not hate, for the most part, as soldiers and sailors and marines and airmen have been taught throughout history. Rather they love.

The motivations of those dead military souls whose we honor this weekend was more love of country than hatred of enemy. Not killing a foreign leader but protecting their families. Not focusing on distant spoils but venerating their spouses, kids, friends, and lives back home. Not against “them” but for “us.” Paying with their souls for their hearts’ desires.

To slightly parse another popular phrase, as I did with Patton’s above, the military man or woman did not bring us our freedom. Only God can do that, and has done that; and such a proper perspective has nurtured America for centuries, in war and peace alike. I am tempted to say that the service members might preserve our freedoms… except for this New Day and Age where civilian politicians and judges erode liberty faster than our military can “defend” it.

All we have of freedom, all we use or know–
This our fathers bought for us long and long ago.

— Rudyard Kipling

It saddens me that in recent American wars – let me say, larger, in recent generations – disputes rage not only over grand causes. But behind the battle lines, at home, wars claiming thousands have been undeclared, by politicians afraid of committing themselves as members of the military do, to the ultimate point. The public is often disunited, and too frequently dismissive of military service per se. Orders are countermanded; war aims abandoned; world and national politics subsume military goals.

Military families are neglected and often live in poverty, on welfare benefits. Veterans organizations and private charities care in innovative and effective ways – but their every success is a blot of shame on a government that should thus care by itself for its valiant. Scandals in military hospitals and veteran’s administrations are many, and continue.

… It is this situation – an America far different than the nation’s previous soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines fought for – this situation for which our uniformed heroes are willing to die. And an America where their chaplains are being denied the freedom to share Christ. Where the values many of them cherished or desired to defend, have changed or been perverted by courts and bureaucrats.

Yet they die, and are willing to die.

Because you passed, and now are not,—
     Because, in some remoter day,
Your sacred dust from doubtful spot
     Was blown of ancient airs away,—
     Because you perished,—must men say
Your deeds were naught, and so profane
     Your lives with that cold burden ? Nay,
The deeds you wrought are not in vain!

— Austin Dobson

Special creatures, these fallen heroes. Let us honor them in our minds and hearts, in ceremonies public and private. A flower, a flag, a prayer. Prayers of thanksgiving for such as these – in all humankind, special men and women admirable for their amazing devotion and sacrifices – and prayers that their kind may not perish from amongst us.

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Music vid: I had the pleasure once to meet the legendary singer/songwriter Bill Carlisle, in the course of writing one of my books on country music. He was part of a “brother act” with Cliff, and famous for leaping high on stage, guitar in hand, during one of his trademark novelty songs. I was not aware at the time that he was the writer of one of the great gospel songs, “Gone Home.” He was reluctant to perform it often because he was identified as a comic singer – so Flatt and Scruggs, GrandPa Jones, Ricky Skaggs, and others made it part of their repertoires. Another singer who revered the song, and sang it often, was Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead, who enjoyed bluegrass and gospel music. Here is his acoustic version – appropriate here because its lyrics have become identified with fallen soldiers, brave family members, and missing friends, on Memorial Day: those who have Gone Home.

Click: Gone Home

8-27-11

Life happens. As they say. So does death, which merely is to repeat oneself: “Both life and death are parts of the same Great Adventure,” Theodore Roosevelt said, after his son Quentin was shot down over France.

How do we respond to death? Or to the mystery of life? Ironically: how to cope with death’s certainty and to life’s fragility? Sometimes we “lose it.” Sometimes we see through a glass darkly. Sometimes those of us left behind proceed headlong into the business of life. Sometimes we pray to discern God’s will. Sometimes we meditate upon His Word.

My idea is that God does not always hand us multiple-choice quizzes. Sometimes we can do all these things together. They are not mutually exclusive responses.

But always we should trust in His mercy. This is HARD sometimes, fighting the tendency to lean to our own understanding. “His wisdom, yes,” we want to cry; “but where is the mercy?”

Almost exactly a year ago our family was saddened by a miscarriage my daughter Emily suffered, and I wrote a message that attempted to collect my thoughts. This week my other daughter, Heather, lost her baby. Emily and Norman’s came early in her pregnancy; Heather and Patrick’s daughter Sarah, however, was born and died after nine days. The challenges of a 24-week-term birth eventually overwhelmed Sarah’s wracked little body. And I am thinking of a friend this week whose nephew drowned, was recovered but was unconscious, and died after several days .

Our natural minds tend to take over when we try to understand the ways of God.

It is a natural idea that, say, God wants the little baby in Heaven more than He wants her down here. But if that were the entire story, we should wonder why a few days of life, which ultimately adds grief to parents’ joy, can be part of His plan. Yet it is. That we cannot understand it all means, basically, that we are not God, and His mysteries are just that: mysteries. There is sin in the world, so there is death in the world. But after our questions and cries and withdrawal, the mysterious ways of God are to be accepted, embraced, and trusted.

One thing is certain. We shall be united with the living God, and re-united with the healed Sarah, in Heaven some day. We will look around for her, and when we see her, we will have to wait one more brief moment to embrace her, because she will be in Jesus’ lap and in His arms, and then He will pass her to us.

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Some of my meditations on these subjects are well reflected in the lyrics of a gospel song from a few years ago. It is not a line-for-line representation of anyone’s actual thoughts over a baby’s death; not anyone I know. But surely many people, from casual Christians to devoted believers, entertain some of these thoughts. Please listen to the moving performance, and watch the tender pictures. And meditate.

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Click: The Mystery Of the Wonders You Perform