After the news of the past twenty-four hours I feel an urge to get away from the madness, to a place where I can be silent and reflect on the things that are really important in life. I need to be a place where I feel small, yet known and loved. Fortunately, I have such a place like that, even in the recesses of my imagination. It’s the Kansas Flint Hills.
I became intimately acquainted with them when I worked as a service engineer for FedEx. My wife and I were living in Emporia, Kansas at the time and my daily duties often meant a trip down the Kansas Turnpike and the Kansas Flint Hills to a large FedEx facility in Wichita, Kansas. When I first started making the trip I would tune my radio in to National Public Radio, listening to sultry New Age voices like Lakshmi, Audie, Anastasia, or the occasional male voice Kai.
In those early days I needed those New-Age voices to break up the boredom of the 100 mile journey. I would gaze out the window as I passed through the Flint Hills. There was nothing there, or so it appeared. There few, if any trees. All I could see was a vast sea of grass, and rolling hills. If you open the link above you’ll understand what I’m writing about.
That all changed one morning in 2002. My trip began as it normally did,with Lakshmi and Audie and the crew accom[anying me. The dawn was about to break and my perspective was caught up in what I’ve come to see as a transcendent experience.
I stopped close to Mile Marker 109, which is a bit south of what local ranchers call “the cattle pens.” I didn’t spend a lot of time there, bus it has taken its place in heart as one of the most profound ex[eriences in my life. I’ve never felt so small, yet also so loved. I came away from it feeling that I was truly known.
I penned an essay about the experience after I returned home later that day. That essay follows. I hope it gives you, the reader, some sense of peace we all navigate these stormy seas.
It’s the cusp of dawn. I’m chasing Orion’s Belt and bull-haulers down the Kansas Turnpike. At mile marker 109, about a furlong or two south of the cattle pens, I stop.
The occasional rush of southbound traffic breaks the dawn silence. Like a general poised in his appointed place, I review the early morning parade. Saints and scoundrels, gospel singers and politicians, truckers, ranchers, engineers, doctors, lawyers, accountants, mothers, fathers, children, all pass by. Problems and opportunities wind their way down the highway with them.
I touch the highway sign. Mile marker 109. I feel the bits of rust creeping up on the metal. It’s man-made, temporal, placed on the edge of the eternal. It speaks. “This is where you are.” It speaks of commerce and progress passing by. It speaks of cattle and concept drawings on their journeys past a solitary milepost planted on the edge of eternity.
I turn, take a step, and cast my gaze across the prairie. Like the storied astronaut of my youth, that one small step transports me from one world to another. Thoughts pass by. Some pass quietly, humming like the Toyotas and Fords on the highway. Others I hear in the distance. Their low, grinding hums become roars as they draw near, like the Peterbilts and Kenworths hauling their precious cargoes from Chicago to Dallas or the Twin Cities to San Antonio.
While the darkness has not yet surrendered to the day, there are hints of color along the rim of the eastern sky. I sense that they carry the faint whisper of an announcement of the millennium to come. The ageless ritual proceeds, moment by moment. Light overcomes the darkness. The unbroken sky and the endless sea of grass now join together in a hymn of praise. The morning breeze caresses the tallgrass. The blades of grass, in turn, wave gently to and fro, worshippers caught up in the glory of this moment.
Thoughts glide effortlessly through the air, then stop to gently kiss the earth. The earth gratefully receives the kiss from above and pleads, “Maranatha…..Maranatha.”
A hawk circles above, wings outstretched, reaching for an unseen spire. As he circles, the dawn sun touches him, revealing his priestly robes and eyes of fire.
I sense that I’ve entered a great cathedral. I’m overwhelmed by my own smallness. I fear. The hawk descends slowly, gracefully and speaks. “You are indeed small. But, fear not. You’re known…..You’re known. This is where you are. Mile marker 109. This is the place where the line between now and forever is drawn. Here you own nothing, but are given the grace to be a part of everything. The language of the world you left is ownership. The language here is stewardship. This is the place where moth and rust do not corrupt.”
His appointed ministry complete, he now lays hold of the morning currents and moves effortlessly off to the east.
I feel the warmth of a tear as it drifts slowly down my cheek. My epiphany’s complete. I turn back and take another small step, returning to the world I left moments before. I take my place in line with my fellow travelers, the builders and dreamers, the movers and shakers, the commerce and the concepts. Our daily procession has taken us past this place…..mile marker 109.
“Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.
My soul is downcast within me; therefore I will remember you from the land of the Jordan, the heights of Hermon—from Mount Mizar.”
Psalm 42:5-6 (New International Version)
I originally wrote this essay in April of 2020. In was nostalgic back then, dreaming of the America that once was and hoping for a revival of that America.
It’s now four years later and the America I was dreaming for back then seems even more distant and elusive. Is the dream becoming a pipe dream, I wonder. There are fleeting moments when I find myself thinking we need a reincarnation of Howard Beale to wake us up. But I quickly realize, as tempting as it may seem, that having the “mad prophet of the airwaves” telling us to go to our windows and scream “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore” is no solution.
Things are bad now, worse than they were in 2020. Could it be that the way forward to a more hopeful future for America starts by looking back. That’s what my 2020 essay was all about. From this point on, dear reader, I’m asking you to look back with me.
I’ve been in a nostalgic mood for a few days now. I think it has a lot do with Coronavirus and the state of America right now. Like most people in America I’m not happy with the way things are. We’re divided politically. We’re divided religiously. We’re divided regionally. We’re divided nationally. We’re divided socially.
And now we are in the midst of a pandemic. It’s so bad enough that governmental authorities at every conceivable level are asking/ordering us to hunker down till we flatten the curve, whenever that comes. The experts are poring over spreadsheets, hoping to find the right course of action we should follow. They’re trying their dead level best, but the projections seem to be changing daily, as is the advice. “Don’t wear a mask.” “Wear a mask.” “Sanitize your mail.” “You don’t need to sanitize your mail.” And so it goes. While the information is sometimes confusing, the overwhelming majority of us are complying, which means we spend most of our time on social media, surfing for news or communicating with friends or other folks who are on our “friends” lists on Facebook. It’s quite an educational experience. A fella’ learns that not everyone who is on his friends list is a friend in the true sense of the word. A true friend is someone who mirrors what Jesus told his disciples before he was crucified – “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.” (John 15:15 – New International Version)
There really is a difference between a true friend and someone who claims friendship, but is in reality an associate rather than a friend. A true friend is the friend who cares about you, who will do everything in his or her power to help and support you. A true friend will confront you when you’re wrong, comfort you when you are down, rejoice in your victories, agonize with you in your defeats. The associate? That’s the person who does not care about you. It’s as simple as that.
Thankfully, I am blessed. I have far more friends than I have associates.
But I digress. Nostalgia is still on my mind.
It all started a few days ago when a Facebook friend, someone I’ve never met, but still meets my criteria for being what I believe to be a true friend, posted a question on Facebook about who we thought were the best entertainers when we were growing up. My first choice was James Brown. It just seemed so natural a choice for me. I defy any living human being to try to stop their feet from moving, body swaying, or dancing as soon as one of his songs starts playing. It cannot be done. Trust me, I know. I’m one of the world’s worst dancers, but the minute I hear “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag” my body just starts twisting and gyrating around.
I left my response at that and then spent the rest of the afternoon reminiscing. The first person that came to mind as I did was an old troubadour with the moniker “Haywire Mac.” His real name was Harry McClintock. He was a man who bridged two centuries, having been born in the 19th century and traveled around for a good part of the 20th. He was a fascinating character. He had no formal education that I’m aware of, but oh what a broad band of interesting experiences he compiled over the years. When he was a boy he ran away to join the circus, then followed that up with railroading in Africa, a stint in the Philippines during an insurrection. He also spent the latter of part of the 19th century in China during the Boxer Rebellion. But, more than anything, Haywire Mac gained his fame as a minstrel. I became acquainted with his work in the mid fifties when I heard one of his songs titled “The Big Rock Candy Mountains.” He first recorded it in 1928. The minute I heard the song I fell in love with it and Haywire Mac. And why not. Who wouldn’t love a song with lyrics like “In the big rock candy mountains all the cops have wooden legs and the bulldogs all have rubber teeth and the hens lay soft-boiled eggs.”
That, I submit to you, is pure genius.
Well, the hours passed and I kept reminiscing. I remembered a old blues singer named Blind Willie McTell. I think he actually did most of his work in the 30’s and 40’s. As it was with Haywire Mac, I first heard him in the mid 50’s.
Oh man, could he sing the blues. My favorite song of his was “You Was Born to Die,” which he recorded in 1933. It was gritty and down to earth. Listen to it, it’s embedded in the link above. Can you hear him strumming away on that old beat up guitar? Can you hear the mournful voice? Of course you can. And, the lyrics. Talk about a perfect way to express the pain that’s percolating in a human soul! That”s the blues as it should be.
And so it went for the afternoon. But, I knew I had to stop and ask myself some questions. Why was I looking back with such fondness? Were things really that good when I was young? Or are they worse now than when I was growing up?
I think I’ve concluded that America was a better place back then than it is now. Now, I realize that I’m rubbing against the prevailing grain, but I have my reasons, which I’m going to share with you.
First, I think there’s been a tremendous loss of creativity in America since the 60’s. I try listening to music that’s circulating around today and while I can’t say that it’s totally lacking in creativity, I can say that there’s very little of it circulating on the current scene. When I was young, creativity was exploding everywhere. It was.
What was so different about America back then? We weren’t materially richer? In fact, life wasn’t easy at all. We had problems at home and dedicated enemies on the international scene. But, there was something very special about America back then. The spark of creativity and exploration was omni-present. It’s not that way today. It’s not that there is no spark of creativity or that there’s no desire to explore these days. It’s that there’s precious little of it.
As I think back on my formative years I now realize I saw an America of unlimited possibilities. Thanks to the Russians and Sputnik we were engaged in a space race, competing with our enemy in a race to get a man to the moon and back safely. I remember the exhilaration millions of us felt when Neil Armstrong took the final step off the ladder at “Tranquility Base.” I still remember the first words Armstrong uttered – “That’s one small step for a man, that’s one giant leap for mankind.”
That first small step came 42 years after Charles Lindbergh made the first trans-Atlantic flight in 1927. Think of it. Lucky Lindy crossed the Atlantic in a flimsy light aircraft with few navigational tools and a cockpit full of grit and determination.
It’s amazing. It took us a bit more than one generation to go from crossing the ocean in a flimsy one engine plane to a landing on the moon.
There was a lot of excitement in 1969 about what was next. A manned landing on Mars, perhaps? Routine passenger travel to the moon?
Where are we today? It’s only been a bit less than 50 years since we landed on the moon. Shouldn’t we have been further along than we are? Of course we should, but we’re not. We’re stalled. But, why are we? I think it’s because we’ve lost our creative urge and the desire to explore. We lost it sometime in the 60’s.
The malaise that’s fallen on us goes beyond science and music. Our politics is stale and divisive. There’s no talk of “the New Frontier.” Now, I don’t want to be misunderstood. There are people who are doing good things
It’s this sense of loss that has me reminiscing. I want the America I’ve known and loved since I was a boy back. I want the America I was willing to fight for back. I want the America back that I was willing to die for back. I want her back, but I don’t see her.
Yesterday, a Facebook friend posted a folk song that best expresses the way I’m feeling. The song is titled “The Stable Song.” It was written by a young man named Gregory Alan Isakov. If you haven’t watched the YouTube video of it I posted at the beginning of this essay, I highly recommend it. The music and the grainy film clips that accompany the music are quite evocative. One moment you see a backyard aviator furiously flapping a set of wings he’s strapped to his back. Then you see a woman cranking the propeller a of a single engine plane. That’s followed by the sight of a jumbo jet landing, then an astronaut, and finally a rocket bound for outer space. Where is everyone going? To the moon, of course. Did they get there? Yes. As proof, we’re shown a prairie schooner rumbling across the crater filled lunar landscape and a symphony orchestra playing some classical masterpiece. To me, it all speaks of an America that was once imaginative and adventurous. I’ve watched it three times and every time I do I get a sense of longing for what once was, an America that has been lost.
The last verse of the song goes something like “Turn these diamonds back in to coal.” I’m not sure what Isakov was trying to convey with those words, but to me they are saying “Let’s start things all over again. Let’s get back to mining the coal and then find a way to make America the jewel she was intended to be. .
That’s the America I want. I hope it’s the America you want too.
“Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh and say to him, ‘This is what the Lord says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me.” Exodus 8:1 (New International Version)
I wrote the original essay about six years ago. I wrote it at a time when the chaos we’re seeing now was in its early stages. As I watched it all unfold, I gave thought to a sermon preached by Peter Marshall years before. It was about the Exodus of the “children of Israel” from Egypt. God’s representative, Moses, had gone to Pharaoh and spoke the now famous words from the eighth chapter of Exodus – “Let my people go so that they may worship me in the wilderness.” As the contest of wills between Pharaoh and Moses and God proceeded, I could see Pharaoh’s compromises recorded in Exodus 10 clearly – “Don’t go too far.” “The men can go, but the women and children must stay in Egypt.” “The people can all go, but their worldly goods and livestock must stay in Egypt.”
Marshall saw the similarities to the compromises offered by Pharaoh to the compromises offered by modern society to Christians. I was living in Emporia, Kansas, thinking back to my graduate school days in Kansas City, when it hit me. Peter Marshall was right about what he saw back in his time. He was even more right about what I’m seeing in the early twenty-first century.
It’s now 2024 and I’m living in Kansas City, surveying the landscape of a society that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn described as “on the brink.” Young boys and girls are being groomed to become drag queens. Some are even put on stage to bump and grind in seedy nightclubs to “entertain” perverted souls. Even worse, some of our young are being programmed to convince themselves that boys can become girls and girls can become boys with a pronouncement. And, it hasn’t ended there. Greedy medical “practioners,” if they can be called that, are recommending and performing sex change operations on children who are unablle to understand what’s being done to them. It’s obscene!
My original essay now follows for you, fellow Christian to consider
A few weeks ago, I went over to Haag Pharmacy to pick up a prescription for my wife. As I walked toward the entrance, I found myself caught up in the sights and sounds of children playing and laughing in the adjacent playground of Emporia Christian School. If I could have, I’d have lingered a while longer. It just felt so good, for an all too fleeting moment, to be transported away from the insanity of modern life.
When I got inside the pharmacy, I was re-transported back into the realities of adult life in America. That’s the world where about 40 million of us are taking prescribed anti-depressants and psychotropics. It’s a world dominated by Zoloft, Paxil, Prozac, Xanax, Ativan, Ritalin, or some newly concocted chill pill. There are millions more of us taking Demerol, Oxycodone, and Percocet for our pain. Too often, the reward for using these painkillers is addiction. I’ve heard that using them for only five days can turrn a corporate executive, an undertaker, a truck driver, or a college professor into a mumbing, toothless junkie. And, wonder of wonders, it’s all approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
Now, mind you, I don’t fault Amber and her crew. They’ve absolutely delightful people. They’re not the ones responsible for society’s ills. They’re only doing what the doctor ordered and the doctor is only trying to fix problems that he or she didn’t create. But, I digress. I need to move on.
I was greeted by a smiling face as soon as I got to the counter. “How are you, Phil? It’s good to see you. How can I help you?” “I’m good. I’m here for Nancy’s regulars,” I responded.
With my mind still trying to wrap itself around the joy those kids were experiencing in the playground next door, I paid for the prescriptions and made a bit of small talk before I left. “The kids next door are absolutely wonderful. They’re infectious, don’t you think?” The clerk smiled and nodded in agreement. I closed the conversation on a somber note. “The sad thing is, some of these happy kids are going to grow up and become United States Senators some day. I can’t figure it out. How does something like that happen? How does it all go off the rails?”
Realizing it wouldn’t be fair for me to expect an answer to the question, I made my way to the exit.
The questions have been nagging at me ever since. How? How? How? One day these kids are happy and content. Then, gradually, they get pumped full of Ritalin, Prozac, or painkillers and their heads are turned inside-out. The process repeats itself over time and they’re ruined. The only thing they’re good for in the end is the United States Senate.
I’ve been giving this thought since that brief encounter, racking my brain for solutions to the problem. I’ve concluded the only thing that makes much sense to me is for those of us who are Christian to never send our kids to public school at all. Let them learn about life on their own. They seem to do a far better job of learning how life is supposed to work without a lot of adult interference and instruction.
“Why, Phil,” you say. “That’s a bit too radical; it’s insane. Our children need to get an education. After all, how are they ever going to succeed in this world without an education?
That argument might have worked well on me a few years ago, but not these days. If what the world considers success and God considers success could be put side by side into writing, one thing would become abundantly clear. God’s ideas about success are radically different than the “world’s.”
It’s been that way for millennia.
When I was in graduate school, I became acquainted with the work of Peter Marshall, a Presbyterian minister who emigrated from Scotland in the 1920’s and by the 1940’s had become Chaplain of the United States Senate. He died when he was in his forties. While his life was short, his legacy was rich and full. Whatever he was given in life, he used for the glory of God and the good of mankind. That was especially evident in the way he used worldly wealth. He died nearly penniless, with just a few dollars in his accounts to pass on to posterity. Some people thought that this was a terrible thing for him to do to his family, but his wife, Catherine, thought otherwise. She once observed that she was quite proud of the example he’d set in life. She let the critics know that he had used every resource he had been given in life to the best possible end.
I think of a man like Peter Marshall and ask myself what he might have to say about our children and the educational system we plunge them into these days. I believe I know the answer. In fact, I’m sure I know.
Some time during the 1940’s, Peter Marshall preached a sermon that is now best known as “The Third Compromise.”
What, you might ask, was or is “The Third Compromise?” It was Marshall’s commentary on the contest of wills between God and Pharaoh recorded in the book of Exodus. “The Third Compromise” can be found in chapter 10 of that book.
Prior to chapter 10, Moses outlines God’s requirements for his people, under the broad umbrella of the now famous words, “Let my people go that they may worship me.” In response, Pharaoh offers a series of compromises – (1) the people may go, but they must worship in the land of Egypt, (2) the people may go, but they cannot go too far, (3) the men can go, but the children must stay in Egypt, and (4) All can go, but their possessions cannot go with them.
In the end, every compromise is rejected. The first is rejected when Moses tells Pharaoh that the children of Israel are to leave Egypt and go three days into the wilderness to worship God. Pharaoh responds by telling Moses the people can go, but not too far, which was another way of saying, “Don’t get too carried away with your religion business.” It was a very twenty-first century response, but it was also rejected.
This brings me to “The Third Compromise.” Pharaoh’s offer and Moses’ and God’s response are outlined in the 10th chapter of Exodus, which follows
“Then Moses and Aaron were brought back to Pharaoh. “Go, worship the Lord your God,” he said. “But tell me who will be going.” Moses answered, “We will go with our young and our old, witth our sons and our daughters, and with our flocks and herds, because we are to celebrate a festival to the Lord.” Pharaoh said, “The Lord be with you—if I let you go, along with your women and children! Clearly you are bent on evil. No! Have only the men go and worship the Lord, since that’s what you have been asking for.” Then Moses and Aaron were driven out of Pharaoh’s presence.” (Exodus 10:8-10, New International Version)
It is this “Third Compromise” that far too many Christians have been willing to embrace and they have done it to the detriment of the faith they profess in.
In his sermon on the subject, Reverend Marshall puts the peril of the compromise succinctly:
“This was perhaps the most subtle and the most successful of all the compromises, because even the most godly parents today desire worldly prosperity and position for their children. They want their children to stay in Egypt, they want their children to find success and approval in Egypt. One of the greatest problems facing the church today is the fact that so many children and young people are still in Egypt with the approval and the consent of their parents.”
While some Christians opt for Christian schools or homeschooling, most send their children to public schools, which are supposedly neutral on the subject of religious faith, to learn the skills they’ll need in life to become “successful.”
In this regard, Reverend Marshall’s words from the 1940’s are prescient and powerful: “If you give to your children an account of the world from which God is left out, you will teach them to understand the world without reference to God.”
I see 21st America and see the results of the “Third Compromise.” I see it in the ever increasing cohort of young people who want nothing to do with Christianity and even when they do, their belief systems are based on what the “world” believes it should be, not God’s. The current moniker for this cohort is “Nones.” How’s that for a belief system? It might just as well be Bette Midler’s famous “Whatever!”
Does this mean that the parents who have made this compromise don’t care about their children? No, of course not. As Reverend Marshall also observed, these parents give their children the best medical and dental care. They make sure their children’s posture is perfect and their grasp of social graces are outstanding. They pay fortunes for college tuition. But while “their bodies and their minds are carefully nurtured and trained while their souls are starved and neglected.”
I think of young children today and conclude, sadly, that this is how our children become United States Senators or anything else we deem to be important in life. Far too many of them enter the fray without much of an internal rudder to guide them other than ambition and self-interest. They are thrown into a world where that ethic prevails. It’s every man for himself. It’s do whatever ambition and self-interest tell you to do, even if it means destroying your fellow travelers.
Peter Marshall hasn’t been the only one who has seen the peril before the Christian world. About a year ago, I read Rod Dreher’s “The Benedict Option – A Strategy for Christians in a Post Christian Nation.” Dreher has observed what Peter Marshall observed more than a half a century before him. He has seen that “Christians often talk about “reaching the culture” without realizing that, having no distinct Christian culture of their own, they have been co-opted by the secular culture they wish to evangelize.” In other words, they have fallen prey to Pharaoh’s “Third Compromise.”
Dreher sees all to well that “American Christians are going to have to come to terms with the brute fact that we live in a culture, one in which our beliefs make increasingly little sense. We speak a language that the world more and more either cannot hear or finds offensive to its ears.”
But how can we come to our senses? Dreher’s prescription is simple, right to the point:
“If we are going to be for the world as Christ meant for us to be, we are going to have to spend more time away from the world, in deep prayer and substantial spiritual training—just as Jesus retreated to the desert to pray before ministering to the people. We cannot give the world what we do not have.”
As it was in the time of Moses, I believe it’s time for Christians who truly want to live the Christian life to go into the wilderness, as it were, to worship God without the influence of the “world” to corrupt us. I don’t have a clear idea of what that life looks like. Like most people, I’ve been too caught up in the affairs of this world to see the objective clearly. But, I am convinced that it is time for us to tell the Pharaohs of our time, “Let my people go, that they may worship me.”
Peter Marshall closed that famous sermon with a critical question. It was critical back in the 1940’s. It’s even more critical today.
I’ll close with that question Peter Marshall and leave it with you, the reader, to consider:
“What is the good of your son’s phi-beta-kappa key, or your girl’s successful career in music or art or journalism, if they don’t know God, if they are not saved, if they have not entered into a saving relationship with God through Christ, if they are spiritually illiterate or spiritually dead? That’s the question you will have to answer if your children are left in Egypt.”
“We are approaching the brink; already a universal spiritual demise is upon us; a physical one is about to flare up and engulf us and our children, while we continue to smile sheepishly and babble: “But what can we do to stop it? We haven’t the strength.”…But we can do—everything!—even if we comfort and lie to ourselves that this is not so. It is not “they” who are guilty of everything, but we ourselves, only we!”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn – “Live Not by Lies” (1974)
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote the comments from the seminal essay I cited above not long before he was arrested by Soviet authorities, charged with treason, and stripped of his Soviet citizenship. The arrest came on the heels of the publication of “The Gulag Archipeligo,” which became Solzhenitsyn’s best known work.
The theme Sozhenitsyn outlined in the book was quite simple. While the world has always had its fair share of evildoers pass though human history. Vladimir Lenin was the architect of an ideology that justified the gulags and the brute force, its supporting bureaucracies, and the terror that were to become the building blocks of the “Soviet Utopia.” Those building blocks paved the way for the evildoers to operate freely within the system Lenin had created. Subsequent Soviet leaders, from Stalin to Krushchev, Brezhnev, etc then recruited even more evildoers like Laverntiy Berea do whatever it would take to ensure that the Communist system succeeded.
Solzhenitsyn learned the lesson about the Soviet Union’s security apparatus the hard way. Berea, chief of the NKVD, meant business when he said “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.” Solzhenitsyn had become a target of the the NKVD when he wrote letters to friends highly critical of Stalin and when he wrote books like “Cancer Ward” and “The Red Wheel.” The books prompted a few assassination attempts, but his criticism of Stalin in the letters earned him an eight year sentence at a labor camp for counterrevolutionary activity in 1945. That time in the prison camp, in turn, became Solzehnitsyn’s inspiration for the publication of “The Gulag Archipeligo.” in 1974.
Solzhenitsyn lived the life of an exile in Cavendish, Vermont until 1994, when the treason charges that had prompted the “conviction” were overturned by the U.S.S.R’s Prosecutor General. He was eventually allowed to return to Russia. He spent the rest of hs life there and died on August 3, 2008. He was 89 years old.
Solzhenitsyn never went into exile willingly. He was thoroughly Russian and it showed in his extraordinary literary gifts. Had he lived during the times of Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Tolstoy, or Chekhov, he would have been a valued member of this prestigious fraternity.
During his exile he wrote three books – “Between Two Millstones,” “Sketches of Exile,” and “Exile in America.” In addition to the writing, he also made many compelling speeches, including his memorable 1976 speech to the graduating class of Harvard University, which he titled “A World Split Apart.”
Like most Americans, I knew little about Solzhenitsyn prior to his Harvard address. I’d read “Cancer Ward” and “The Red Wheel,” and his essay “Live Not By Lies.” I admired him as a writer and began to think of him not only as a writer, but also as a prophet in the mold of Hosea, who was told by the Almighty to set “the trumpet to his mouth.”. That admiration grew exponentially after I read the transcript of his Harvard address. While I wasn’t in attendance at the event, I could visualize it, thanks to having lived in Cambridge,Massachusetts during my formative years. I’d strolled through the Harvard campus many times in those years. The sights and sounds of those days have stayed with me. I remember them fondly.
I left Cambridge in 1961 to join the Air Force so that I could “see the world.” By 1978, the year Solzhenitsyn made that famous address, I had just started attending graduate school in Kansas City.
As I read the transcript I was riveted by what Solzhenitsyn had to say. The more I read, the more I saw that it took a prophet’s courage to utter them. A few samples from the speech follow. I think you’ll understand what I’m trying to say once you read them:
“But the blindness of superiority continues in spite of all and upholds the belief that the vast regions everywhere on our planet should develop and mature to the level of present day Western systems, which in theory are the best and in practice the most attractive.”
“However, it is a conception which develops out of Western incomprehension of the essence of other worlds, out of the mistake of measuring them all with a Western yardstick.”
“A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society.“
The world belongs to mankind and all the defects of life are caused by wrong social systems, which must be corrected. Strangely enough, though the best social conditions have been achieved in the West, there still is criminality and there even is considerably more of it than in the pauper and lawless Soviet society.”
“Should one point out that from ancient times declining courage has been considered the beginning of the end?”
You may be asking what Solzehnitsyn said at Harvard has to do with twenty-first century America. I’ll say it plainly – everything. The things Solzhenitsyn wrote about and said during his life should stand as a prophetic warning to us. As he said in his 1974 essay, “we are on the brink.” A person would have to be wilfully blind not to see it. And, the problem is, much of America, including its leaders, has become wilfully blind.
The obscene demonstrations on our elite college campuses, including Harvard, speak to this blindness. The rampant crime in America’s cities speaks to this blindness. The insidious “cancel culture” that has developed speaks to this blindness. The insanity of pronouns and gender dysphoria that is destroying far too many of our young people speaks to this blindness.
Even here in Kansas City we’ve been treated to an example of wilful blindness. A week or so ago, Harrison Butker, who is the field goal kicker for the Kansas City Chiefs, set off a national firestorm when he made the annual commencement address at Benedictine College, which is not too far from downtown Kansas City. What did he do to set of the firestorm? He spoke about marriage, family, children, career, and faith from a Catholic/Benedictine point of view and thousands of angry Progressives, “woke” individuals, media superstars, and a sprinkling of politicians took umbrage at what he’d said. While he never said that women couldn’t have fulfilling careers, he did extol the virtues of motherhood, womanhood, faith, and careers. As the rhetorical missiles lobbed across the airwaves it became apparent that he’d been villainized by claiming that family, faith, and children should be praised rather than seen as impediments to a rewarding career.
It’s an all too familiar position today that becomes quite evident when one looks at the statistical data concerning abortion in America. According to the Guttmacher Institute, very few abortions in America are being performed to protect a mother’s health or because of a detected fetal abnormality. Women are choosing abortion for reasons like (1) Having a child would be an impediment to a lucrative, professionally rewarding career or (2) The woman considering the abortion wasn’t “ready” to have children. There were other reasons cited,but those two were the ones most often cited. Lest one think that aborting unborn children is rare in America, it must be said that there were 930,000 abortions performed in America in 2020. The total data for 2023 isn’t complete (two months worth of data is still missing), but when all the data is compiled it will almost certainly reveal that over a million abortions will have been performed.
Some claim that abortion is rarely performed in America nowadays. Really. When one compares the number of abortions performed in 2022 (930,000) to the number of tonsillectomies (504,000), or the number of open heart surgeries (about 400,000), it’s clear that the number of abortions performed and the self-serving justifications given are astounding. In speaking about these things at Benedictine College, Harrison Butker hit a really raw nerve.
I’m sure that Butker’s faith and philosophy of life are now considered the minority report and there are now thousands, if not millions, who are clamoring for him to be “cancelled” or for the Chiefs to terminate his contract.
There’s a part of me that wants to just move on from the vitriol. After all, Harrison Butker is an adult and he can handle all the hate being directed at him and folks like me, who admire Harison Butker, can lay low and just “go along to get along.”
But, can we? Can we Christians just ignore what we see going wherever we turn?
I’ve tried doing that, but it’s clear to me now that we’ve reached the breaking point Aleksandr Solzhenitsin wrote about. We must speak out. We have no choice in the matter. If we don’t, we’ll be as guilty as those who are threatening, mocking, and vilifying Harrison Butker and others like him.
This morning I read an essay penned by Rod Dreher, one of my favorite authors. I first read his book “The Benedict Option” a few years ago. In that book he described the life of Benedict of Nursia, the man who founded the Benedictine monastic order. Dreher recounted how Benedict’s father had sent him to Rome to study law. His arrival in Rome coincided with the collapse of the Empire. Benedict saw the decadence overwhelming the once great Empire and decided he did not want to be part of it. He left Rome and settled in Nursia, a small town of about 1,000 inhabitants, and started the now famous monastic order. It is still operating today and focuses on fellowship with Jesus, prayer, and hospitality.
Dreher was fascinated by what Benedict had accomplished and became convinced that the modern Christian church needed a new approach to the life of faith, hence the name “the Benedict Opton.” He described it this way:
Put succinctly, the Benedict Option is a way to interact as a Christian in a world that has become increasingly hostile to the Christian faith. We must share our love, hospitality, and service without compromising them. We cannot let the “world” determine” how we live our lives. We must be faithful to Jesus, not the world.
In this morning’s essay, Dreher expressed something many of us Christians are feeling:
“It’s not like I’m on the hunt for catastrophe porn, but more like I feel compelled to point out, Hey, look what’s happening! They’re really going to sink this ship! Let’s either storm the bridge or prepare the lifeboats!”
It’s the same sentiment Solzhenitsyn expressed in his famous essay – “already a universal spiritual demise is upon us; a physical one is about to flare up and engulf us and our children, while we continue to smile sheepishly and babble:”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Rod Dreher, and Harrison Butker summoned up the courage to speak courageously to their respective cultures. We must honor them by setting the trumpet to our mouths!
There’s been a post Mother’s dustup that started here in Kansas City and has spread like wildfire to the rest of the nation, if not the world. Harrison Butker, the Kansas City Chiefs’ outstanding placekicker, set off a firestorm not long after he had addressed the 2024 graduating class of Benedictine College in Atchison Kansas, not far from Kansas City. If you’d care to, you can link to the full address here.
What was it that got a noisy portion of Kansas City’s, and America’s, easily offended internet sleuths so lathered up? If one dug long enough there would be enough to offend almost anyone. He tackled subjects like abortion, the Gay Pride movement, transgenderism, and even the assimilation of Christian churches, Catholic and Protestant, by what many Christians see as a decadent, godless culture. But there was one subject Butker spoke about that drew the ire of those who weren’t there and only heard what some other offended person had mentioned on Facebook, Twitter, or some other internet gathering place. That subject was marriage and the role of women in modern America. Once it all got started the mob gained the appearance of the lantern toting mob that hunted Frankenstein down. Taunts of “cancel him” and threats dominated the web.
The offending portion of his remarks about marriage and the role of women follows for your edification:
“For the ladies present today, congratulations on an amazing accomplishment. You should be proud of all that you have achieved to this point in your young lives. I want to speak directly to you briefly because I think it is you, the women, who have had the most diabolical lies told to you. How many of you are sitting here now about to cross this stage and are thinking about all the promotions and titles you are going to get in your career? Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world, but I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world.”
“I can tell you that my beautiful wife, Isabelle, would be the first to say that her life truly started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother. I’m on the stage today and able to be the man I am because I have a wife who leans into her vocation. I’m beyond blessed with the many talents God has given me, but it cannot be overstated that all of my success is made possible because a girl I met in band class back in middle school would convert to the faith, become my wife, and embrace one of the most important titles of all: homemaker.”
Our neighborhood here in Pendleton Heights has a Facebook page that lit up like the Kansas City Plaza’s annual Christmas light display not long after news of Butker’s remarks hit the airwaves. After reading about half of the comments I saw that I would be in the minority if I had said something kind or favorably disposed to Mister Butker and realized discretion is the better part of valor. “Lay low, Phil,” I told myself as fleeting thoughts of going into hiding danced in my imagination. “These are your neighbors, Phil, don’t offend them.” “You don’t want to be cancelled, do you?” “If you say something you’ll become the neighborhood pariah.” “Just lay low and memories of the dustup will fade and you can get back to just nodding your head as you pass your neighbors on the street.”
I really don’t want to be at odds with my neighbors. I really don’t. But, I don’t fit too well in America’s 21st century culture. I grew up in the 1940’s and 50’s. America’s radar then was focused on fighting a world war, followed by another “police action” in Korea. Issues like abortion or the way a child could become an obstacle to a woman’s professional career weren’t on anyone’s radar back in those days.
I’d wager that many modern women think of the women of those days as victims of patriarchy, but that’s far from true. Our generation learned about “Rosie the riveter,” women who nurtured their families at home and did their part in defense plants, assembling warships and fitting out American bombers with their necessary components. My wife’s mother, for example, did work on the wiring in the nose cones of B-25 bombers at a Kansas City defense plant. More than once I heard her talk about praying for “the boys who would be flying those bombers” as she was working on the wiring. She did all this while also caring for her family at home. That grit and determination stayed with her in the post-war years. She gave birth to a total of four children, one of whom eventually became my wife and love of my life and three sons, one who was developmentally disabled. She took loving care of that son, my bother-in-law James, until she was about ninety years old. In all the years I knew her I never heard her ever say or think that James was a stumbling block to a more rewarding career. I never heard her complain about her lot in life. She never had her name plastered on Broadway billboards, nor did she ever become the Chief Executive Officer of a Fortune 500 corporation. She never attained high political office. But all those years she held a title that at first blush probably seems insignificant to many modern minds but was actually far more rewarding and fulfilling. She was a loving mother!
The story of the family I grew up in has some of those same important elements. I was born in Boston. I’m the son of a man who worked as a “chipper.” He cut blocks of ice into smaller segments and delivered them to homes where they were used in ice boxes. It was backbreaking labor. My mother was an immigrant from Newfoundland in the Canadian Maritimes. She was born in the early twentieth century in a small village on the west-central coast of Newfoundland called McIver’s or McIver’s Cove.
I know very little about my father, even now. He died when I was six years old. The story that’s been passed on to me is that when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, he went to join the Marine Corps. The pre-enlistment physical revealed that he had Tuberculosis and he was devastated. The Marines told him to get treated. “Mr. Dillon, it’s going to be a long war. Get treated and you’ll get your chance to defend freedom.” He was apparently too despondent to listen and decided to crawl into a bottle as his cure. The combination of the booze and TB killed him.
That left my mother as an uneducated immigrant alone in the world to care for her three children. She fought her way through the trials as best she could and eventually had a complete nervous breakdown requiring about three years of hospitalization, including barbaric shock treatments. During that time my brother, sister and I became wards of the state and were placed at a facility called the Prendergast Preventorium. Like so much that our elites tout as compassionate care these days, life at the Preventorium was pure misery for me. I recall crying myself to sleep night after night, begging to go home to be with my family.
My mother was eventually released from the hospital, and we were once again a family of sorts. She weighed less than ninety pounds and some described her as looking like “death warmed over.” The authorities decided it would be best to find suitable places for my brother and sister to stay and found an apartment for me and my mother. The purpose, as I understand it, was to use me as an anchor to promote her healing.
While the approach seemed reasonable to the authorities, it was exceptionally difficult for me. My mother’s neuroses drove me “up the wall.” I took up reading as an escape and it worked well. I was able to tune her out for the most part.
I didn’t understand my mother in those days and it took years of experience for me to grasp how much love, courage and determination it took for her to bring her family back together.
That understanding came in small increments at first. I remember a snowy night when I was walking home to our second story apartment. I was about twelve. The snow was falling at a good clip and as I passed by a streetlight my mother saw me bathed in the light. I walked upstairs and saw her with tears coming down her cheeks. “Are you alright, Ma?” I asked, “I’m okay,” she replied. I just saw you walking in the light, and you looked like my Joe.” That term, “my Joe,” was a term of endearment she used to describe my father. I was amazed. After all she’d been through when my father gave up on life, she still loved him and could think fondly of him.
We lived on state welfare, but my mother always told us that we would climb out of the pit of dependency and poverty someday. She told us that our name was Dillon and that if we worked hard and studied hard we would do well in life. She hated the welfare system and wasn’t above cheating a bit on that system. When I was about twelve or thirteen, she managed to get me a Saturday job with a fruit/vegetable merchant I knew as Mr. Sahady. Like my mother, he was an immigrant. He was Lebanese. He drove around our neighborhood in a small truck full of produce with his loudspeaker blaring, “Raspberries, strawberries, thirty-five cents a quart.” Neighborhood folks would open their tenement windows and shout out their orders. Mr. Sahady would stop his van and fill orders, then gave the baskets to me to deliver to the tenements. At the end of those Saturdays I felt happy and rewarded. I’d collected a pocketful of small tips and Mr. Shaday’s thanks. Before he dropped me off he’d always give me I a small envelope with I learned in time was money. He knew my mother and cared deeply for her. He’d place the envelope in my hand and pat it. “Give this to your Muddah, Butch. You tell her we gonna’ get through this. We gonna’ be okay.”
Oh, how I loved those days. My brother, sister and I learned that we weren’t destined for a life of dependency on government bureaucrats. We were Dillons and we could navigate society’s waters without having to genuflect to our government enablers.
One of the most valuable lessons my mother ever taught me came at a time when I believed there was nothing else she could teach me. I was about twenty-one. I’d competed U.S. Air Force boot camp and was home on leave. I told her I was going to go out with my cousin Edgar and a few buddies to let off a bit of steam. She told me in no uncertain terms as I left. “If you get drunk, don’t bother coming home. I won’t let you in this house drunk. Do you understand me?” “Sure thing, Ma,” I said as I brushed her motherly ultimatum away. Several hours later I approached our apartment door. I was three sheets to the wind and fumbled around trying to get the key into the lock. Before I could finish the process, the door swung open. My mother was standing there. She was a short woman, about five feet-one. Even through the alcohol induced fog I could see that she was really angry. “Didn’t I tell you not to come home like this?’ “Come on, Ma, get out of my way.” The next thing I saw was her right fist heading for my left side of my nose. I saw blood spurt from my nose and heard the door slam. I then stumbled over to the stairs going up to the second floor and sat down. A few minutes later our neighbor from across the hall opened his door. He was an African-American man who was about forty years old. “I heard the commotion, Butch. I’d really like to help you, but if I do I think she’d do the same thing to me that she did to you. You need to go and get that nose checked out on your own. It looks it it’s broken.”
He apparently knew my mother better than I did.
I did go to a local hospital and got my nose patched up. And, I also learned a very valuable lesson. Don’t tangle with Mom when she has a just cause to pursue.
She did come from truly hardy stock. I got the opportunity to visit her family in Newfoundland when I was assigned to Ernest Harmon Air Force Base near Stephenville Newfoundland. In the eighteen months I was there I got to meet many of her brothers and cousins. They all loved her from the depth of their hearts. She was known to them as “The Flower of McIver’s.” She was full of joy and lived life energetically.
My mother really was special. I wish I’d known better earlier in life, but many of those realizatio came later in life. Toward end of her life she had Alzheimer’s. One of of our visits to the nursing home my wife and I sat silently. I didn’t know what to say. She seemed like she was suspended in another world. Nancy encouraged me to say something, but I didn’t know what to say. “There’s no one home, Coach. She doesn’t know who I am anymore.” Nancy leaned over the bed and whispered in her ear, “You’re upset with him, aren’t you Susie? He didn’t visit you last week.” As I sat there I could see her eyes flash. She still knew me, even in what appeared to be a void space. She was still Ms. She was still my mother and she still loved me.
Some might think I was engaging in a flight of fancy, but they didn’t know my mother as I did or know now. She was still there. There’s no doubt in my mind about that.
She was courageous. It took a long time for me to see that and, thanks to Nancy, I finally saw it. We had a long discussion about her once. She was wondering why I spent so much time trying to find my father, who was never really there for me. “Why do you spend so much time chasing him? Can’t you see that your mother was the courageous one. She’s the one who fought through the loss of a man she loved. She’s the one who took care of you, your brother and sister. She’s the one who fought her way through the terror of electroshock therapy so that she could come home to care for you and love you. She was the one had the courage to persevere.”
That truth became even more evident to me a few years later as Nancy and I were watching an episode of “Call the Midwife.” In one part of the episode there was a pretty graphic scene where a woman was undergoing electroshock therapy. I looked excruciating enough viewing it on a television screen, I could only imagine how painful the real-life treatments had been for my mother. All I could do in response was to weep like a child.
Yes, my mother was an educated immigrant. She never did see her name in lights. But she has left a legacy that has stretched far beyond her life and the quiet Newfound village where she was born. One of her sons became a chemical engineer and he and his wife have three children. One studied law and has become a respected attorney. One of his daughters is a highly respected author and public speaker. Their other daughter pursued a professional career in the field of information technology. And, they all are all happily married, which is another way of saying that nurturing a family isn’t a hindrance to a fulfilling life and career
The same holds true for me. I’m blessed to have been able to earn undergraduate and graduate degrees. While my life has had its ups and downs (I’ve been though one failed marriage). But I have three wonderful children and I’m now married to a remarkable woman who has held prestigious professional positions in large corporations. While she is not the birth mother of my children, they love and respect the way she applies the motherly skills she has learned in life.
As I think back at the lives of my mother, my wife, and others from our generation I feel a deep sense of gratitude for the contributions they have made over the years. They have accomplished the things in life that many dream of and did those things without sacrificing the most precious things in life. They pursued their dreams without mocking motherhood and marriage.
Those, I submit to you, are relationships and ideals well worth celebrating, not mocking.
As to where this current generation is heading, I cannot say, but I do admit that I’m concerned about the course they are taking. Like author Charles Caput I often feel like a “stranger in a strange land.” and I find myself praying for the Parousia, the Second Coming of Christ to this world.
