The Way Home

Ask anyone under the age of fifty to explain why Memorial Day is special and they’re liable to tell you it’s because Memorial Day marks the unofficial start of summer. That may be a good enough reason to celebrate, but it does not have much to do with the holiday.

My parents and grandparents referred to Memorial Day as Decoration Day when I was growing up. In fact, it wasn’t until 1967 that the name was officially changed, and not until 1971 that the holiday was observed on the last Monday in May instead of May 30^th.

Changing the date of the holiday so that it falls on the last day of a long weekend has altered the nation’s sense of what the day is about. Some people do not know that Memorial Day is set aside to honor those who died in America’s wars. And others, who are aware of the day’s association with the departed, think of it as a day to honor anyone who has died.

The holiday’s roots go back to the time of the Civil War, when women gathered to decorate the graves of fallen Confederate soldiers. In the South, formal observances were being held within a year of the end of the war. In the North, a national Decoration Day was proclaimed and celebrated in 1868, and quickly became a state holiday in Michigan and other states.

So many men died in the Civil War (current estimates are over 700,000, more than in all other U.S. wars combined) that the nation could find no escape from the pain of her loss. The total U.S. population at the beginning of the Civil War was less than 32 million, which means that about one of every fifty people living in the U.S. died in the war.

Unable to escape her pain, the nation chose instead to remember. After northerners and southerners died side by side on foreign battlefields in the First World War, the North and the South began to celebrate Decoration Day together. The importance of the day loomed large again following WWII (with over 400,000 deaths) and, only a few years later, the Korean War.

But times have changed. Since Viet Nam, almost all of America’s wars have been unpopular. The nation, unwilling to glorify war, has in some cases failed to honor those who died in war to protect us. And now, after decades of unpopular wars, the nation is served by a professional, all-volunteer army, which has significantly altered the average American’s interest in the armed forces and, as a consequence, in Memorial Day.

Fewer and fewer towns are holding Memorial Day parades. The graves of those who died in battle are frequently unattended. Decoration Day is in danger of becoming Barbecue Day.

Does all this mean that Memorial Day has become passé? Will it, like May Day, slip into oblivion? When those who still remember WWII and Korea are gone, will the meaningful observance of Memorial Day go with them?

One suspects that it will and hopes that, if it does, it will herald the day when “Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore” (Isaiah 2:4).

But in some future day when war has been forgotten (may God haste the day), warriors should still be remembered. Those who gave their lives for a cause bigger than themselves deserve not only to be remembered but to be honored. They represent what is best about America: the willingness to endure hardship and sacrifice for the sake of others. Such willingness to sacrifice is even godlike, for it is reminiscent of the one “who gave himself as a ransom for all men” (1 Timothy 2:6).

We ought to remember those who died for us and pay tribute to their sacrifice, if for no other reason than this: if we forget the cost of war, it won’t be long before we are paying it again.

Published 5/25/2013 in The Coldwater Daily Reporter

I admit it: I sometimes write with a hidden agenda.

When I quote writers and thinkers – poets, like the renaissance poet George Herbert and the contemporary poet Billy Collins; philosophers from Augustine to Alvin Plantinga; apologists, like G. K. Chesterton and C. S. Lewis; and many others – my secret hope is that the reader’s curiosity will be piqued, that he or she will investigate these writers for himself or herself, and will come to cherish them as I have done.

No writer (with the possible exception of C. S. Lewis) has been quoted more often in this column than Dallas Willard. I first came across Dr. Willard – philosopher, U.S.C professor, writer, speaker – in a philosophical debate between theists and atheists. When he came to lecture at Notre Dame and neighboring Bethel College, I went to hear him speak.

Since then I have read everything I could find by Dallas Willard and have gone to hear him speak whenever possible. I found him to be erudite, yet accessible; brilliant, but humble; a knowledgeable guide to the life well lived.

Dallas Willard died on May 8, 2013.

This is my tribute to him.

Dallas Willard had a scholar’s mind and a saint’s heart. He translated works of Edmund Husserl, wrote extensively on phenomenology, and was recognized as an expert in that field. But outside the academy, Willard is known best as a Christian leader who understood both the theory and practice of spiritual formation.

Willard’s friend and colleague, Richard Foster, once told me how he met Dallas. Foster was just out of seminary and called to his first pastorate in a Southern California church. Among the congregants was Dallas Willard, who was sometimes called on to preach. Foster told me with a smile that when he preached, people took notes but when Dallas preached, people brought their tape recorders. They didn’t want to miss a single word.

Willard’s book “The Divine Conspiracy” was Christianity Today’s Book of the Year in 1999. Foster called it “the book I have been searching for all my life.” In it, Willard exposed different versions of what he calls “the gospel of sin management,” as expressed in both liberal and conservative circles, which he differentiated from the good news that Jesus brought.

The Jesus to whom Willard introduced us is “the smartest man in the world.” He pulled back the curtain and gave us a glimpse of the God that Jesus knew, and the God-bathed, God-permeated world that Jesus saw. He explained why we can have confidence in Jesus and why that confidence should lead us to become his “apprentices.”

In his 2002 book, “Renovation of the Heart,” Willard described the process by which an individual’s spiritual life is formed. He emphasized the fundamental importance of the mind in spiritual formation and explained the role the Bible plays in it. There is hardly a page in my copy of “Renovation” that is not marked up.

Willard’s 1984 book, “Hearing God” is the most helpful resource I know for living a life guided by God, for “developing a conversational relationship with God.”

It’s true that Dallas Willard had his critics, some of whom accused him of being soft on the doctrine of the atonement. But in an email reply to a question of mine, Willard explained that the atonement “is everything” and that, apart from the atonement, there is no salvation.

Dallas Willard was a great man. But more importantly, he was a good man. We will miss him.

Published in the Coldwater Daily Reporter, 5/21/2013

            Marriage entered into “unadvisedly or lightly” (as the Book of Common Prayer has it), can do more harm than good. Nevertheless, people regularly enter marriage on these dangerous grounds. Perhaps if they understood what they were promising to do, they might exercise more discretion. So what is it that they promise?

            In the traditional ceremony, people promise “to have and to hold” each other. This is not to have in the same way a man has a possession – a car or a boat; it is not even having in the way a collector has a priceless antique. It is having the way a person has an eye or a hand. “To hold” implies intention. You may have something you didn’t intend to have – a cold, or a bad check; but you hold what is precious to you. Those who marry vow to have each other as they “have” no one else; to hold one another so closely that there is no room for anyone to come between.

            “For better, for worse.” Without exception, couples experience both. But if by the grace of God they have each other, and by the intention of love they hold each other, they can make it through anything. Sadly, almost fifty percent of Americans believe that in the worse times they can have better times if they will stop having and stop holding. But this is a delusion. In the end, it is not what the times are like, but what the people are like, that makes a marriage better instead of worse.

            “For richer, for poorer.” Many marriage partners foolishly arrange their entire lives – their children’s nurture, their schedules, and their involvement in a community of faith – around the accumulation of money. But this leads to tragic consequences for where one’s treasure is, there one’s heart will be also (Matthew 6:21). Only those couples who treasure each other more than money will routinely make decisions that enhance and strengthen their relationship, regardless of whether they are richer or poorer.

            In “sickness and in health.” When I served as spiritual care coordinator for a group that cared for the terminally ill, I heard about a woman who abandoned her husband when he could no longer take care of himself. On the day he collapsed, she called 911, packed a few things and left home.

            It is likely that she had once made this vow to her husband, but had not understood at the time what it entailed. But then, who does? And that is the point. These vows mean that we will not allow circumstances to dictate the success of our marriage. And the truth is, circumstances never dictate the success of a marriage. Rather, the kind of character we are developing is what determines the kind of marriage we will have, no matter what our circumstances. This couple’s marriage did not fail because he contracted a terminal illness; it failed because they were not the kind of people who can have and hold in sickness and in health.

            The next line of the vows is: “to love and to cherish.” To love is a choice; to cherish, a delight. While we cannot choose to cherish, we can choose to love, and experience teaches us that what we choose to love over a long period of time we will certainly come to cherish. To love is the responsibility; to cherish is the reward.

            “Until we are parted by death.” So many couples part before death. It is too easy in our culture to find alternatives to marriage that don’t require the hard work of love, that promise better and not worse, richer and not poorer, health and not sickness. Romance, entertainment, and sexual gratification were at one time found in one’s marriage partner, but today can be found in other sources, usually on easier terms.

            Easier, but less rewarding. For marriage is not so much about finding Mr. or Ms. Right as it is about becoming Mr. or Ms. Right. In this lies the promise, as well as the reward, of marriage.

I’ve resisted for a long time.

Writers told me that I ought to blog. My friends told me, repeatedly, that I ought to blog. They told me that my syndicated column should be featured on a blog, and that everybody is blogging. But still I resisted.

For one thing, the word blog has got to be one of the ugliest words to make its way into the English language, with its initial hard consonant, its short vowel and it guttural ending. Had I heard, twenty years ago, that someone had been caught “blogging,” I would have assumed he would be fined and possibly imprisoned – and rightly so!

Besides that, the idea of learning how to publish a blog intimidated me. I was unfamiliar with blogging vocabulary – posts, tags, Akismet stats (still don’t know what that means), and a dashboard – and not at all sure I wanted to learn.

Added to that is the fact that there are millions of blogs out there already. Who needs another one? My little blog is like a sapling in a forest of mighty oaks – will anyone even notice?

But I’ve decided to give it a try. I do so not because I think my voice deserves to be heard, but because the song I sing is worth singing, and singly loudly. The song is about the way home – the way that is also a person.

I hope to make this journey pleasant and stimulating – and a little different. We will walk with scientists and philosophers, religious leaders and politicians; but we will travel most often with Jesus and his friends.

To keep it interesting I will, from time to time, add original music from my friends – and maybe even some of my own – to the site.

I hope you’ll enjoy, and come back often. And let me know what you think.