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Election Day Blues

Yesterday was election day here in Kansas City. Since there were only three questions on the ballot voting went very quickly. I voted “yes” on one issue, which was requesting a small tax increase to fund more public transit. I’d thought about voting “no” on the issue, but while I don’t feel warm and fuzzy about what our politicians might be thinking about doing with the money, I realize there is, and has been, a desperate need for more public transit here. I voted “no” on another tax issue about taxing internet sales when the sale is with an entity outside the state of Missouri. The third issue concerned 5.339 acres of property a bit north of where Nancy and I live. According to the Parks and Recreation Commissioners, the property is “no longer necessary or appropriate for park, parkway, or boulevard use.” 

It didn’t seem like a difficult vote to me. In fact, if I could have voted “hell no!” I would have. 

I shouldn’t have been surprised with the result, but I was. Actually, I was stunned. A bit over sixty percent of those voting agreed that the property is “no longer necessary or appropriate……” 

So, what’s next? Let me hazard a wild guess. Condos? Strip malls? Casinos? There are a lot of things that could be done with 5.339 acres of land. The ancient Romans built their magnificent Colosseum on six acres of land. I don’t want to feed our city’s leaders’ empty heads with ideas, but why couldn’t we do something like that here in Kansas City? Can you imagine what Saturdays and Sundays might be like if we took advantage of such a golden opportunity. The city could round up some of the most notorious croaks roaming our streets and put them in the arena like the Roman emperors did a couple of thousand years ago. The possibility of men tearing each other apart limb from limb while the crowds in the stands munched on hot dogs, barbeque, nachos and drank beer would be exhilarating. The politicians would almost certainly be thinking of the revenue stream this twenty-first century version of bread and circuses would provide. Like Nero fiddling while Rome burned, they’d be dancing with glee. 

I understand it’s far-fetched, but I’m using the idea as a way of driving home a point.  

Consider this.  Our Parks Department has declared that 5.339 beautiful acres of land is “no longer necessary” and sixty percent of those who voted agree with them.  The very real possibility of strip malls, condos, and casinos looms in the distance. 

I wasn’t born into an environment that would be considered pleasant to the eye. I was born in inner city Boston and spent many of my formative years there. Mine was a world of tenements and broken glass.  Years after I left Boston for good, I described my inner-city experience in Iambic Pentameter: 

The Romantic’s Ghetto 
By 
Phil Dillon 
 
Some say their roots are in the land 
In the strength and dignity of furrowed country rows 
Mine are in the blaze of neon 
Giving light and breath to the tenements lining ghetto streets. 
 
Some say their faith was honed on cathedral glass 
And sharpened by regal priestly robes 
Mine was cut on jagged ghetto glass 
And purified by the clatter of subway steel. 
 
Some say they have an eye for distant landscapes 
Or the refined beauty of a mountain stream. 
Mine is tuned to a ragged ghetto face 
Or the cloistered ghetto masses forgotten by the rush of time. 
 
Where’s the dignity of life to be found? 
In the land? In a stream? 
For some it is for sure…..Where is it then for me? 
It’s the romance of the Ghetto that will always fill my soul. 

Things had to change. It took a couple of experiences from my teen years to stop over-romanticizing that inner-city life. When I was about twelve years old the Episcopal church I attended sent me to a summer camp in Buzzard’s Bay on Cape Cod. There I got to roam around in an environment I’d never been in before. The beauty of the sand dunes, the sound of waves crashing against the shore, and the taste of cranberries picked fresh from the bogs was enchanting.  

When I was fourteen I graduated to summer camps in New Hampshire. The environment was different, but every bit as enchanting. I grew to love the sound of the wind whistling through the pines and gazing at Mount Manadnock early in the morning. 

That sense of enchantment has never left me. Nancy and I lived for years in Emporia, Kansas, which is about 90 miles south of Kansas City. It’s perched on the rim of the Kansas Flint Hills, which is a Tallgrass Prairie that stretches from Oklahoma to Canada. It is one of the cleanest ecosystems on the planet. To some like our enterprising Parks commissioners it must seem like a lot of wasted space that could be better utilized to build condos or casinos. In fact, there have been some who have recommended erecting hundreds of wind turbines out there to produce energy. Fortunately, the locals rejected the idea, which had been supported by Ted Kennedy and other east coast Democrats. The farmers’ and ranchers’ suggestion that the politicians erect the wind turbines on Hyannis or Maryland’s eastern shore put an end to that ill-advised scheme. 

About three or four times a week my duties as a service engineer for FedEx required a trip to Wichita, which meant an early morning drive through the Flint Hills. I’d leave the house right around dawn and pass by the almost treeless environment, catching a glimpse of Orion’s Belt as it surrendered to the daylight and the wonder of taking peeks at the rolling hills that seemed to stretch into eternity itself. After a few trips I decided to stop on the way and reflect on what I was seeing. I wrote about those reflections and they follow: 

Reflections at Mile Marker 109, Kansas Turnpike 
By 
Phil Dillon 
© 2002 Phil Dillon 
 
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. 

I’ve been part of that daily procession many times since that encounter and each one has given me what I believe are some wonderful insights. I’ve learned that, while I’m a very small speck in a very big universe, I am still known. I’ve learned that this world doesn’t revolve around cattle cars and concept drawings, nor does it revolve around the idea that this world needs more condos and casinos. Things really are much bigger than the so-called movers and shakers could possibly imagine. 

I realize that I can’t change the results of the election. I’m disappointed, but I’m not going to mount a “stop the steal” movement here in Kansas City. I’ll just close with a snippet from an old film titled “The Hoodlum Priest.” At the end of the film, a young man who had been befriended by Father Charles Dismas Clark, was on his way to the gas chamber. Outside the chamber there is a protestor bearing anti capital punishment sign. As the man pulls out a cigarette, a guard lights up his letter and tells the man, “You’re not gonna’ change the world carrying that sign around.” The man responds, “I’m not trying to change the world; I’m just trying to keep the world from changing me.” 

And that’s where I am today. Like that lonely protester I’m just “trying to keep the world from changing me.” 

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My Thorn in the Flesh

“Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.  Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me.  But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.  That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” 

II Corinthians 12:7-10 (New International Version) 

Writing to fellow Christians in the city of Corinth in about 55 A.D., the apostle Paul cited “a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment” him. Scholars have occasionally speculated on what that thorn might have been. Was it problems with his vision? He had alluded to a problem like this in his letter to the Galatians. Could it have been a person, perhaps, someone like Alexander the coppersmith who Paul referred to in one of his letters to a young Christian named Timothy? Could it have been the temptations we all face on a daily basis?  

Scholars simply don’t know, but it seemed to be a very real problem. It frustrated him enough to call it a “thorn in the flesh.” 

For several years now I’ve had a “thorn in the flesh.” Mine is Parkinson’s disease. “What is Parkinson’s?” you might be asking. I really couldn’t give you a detailed medical description Parkinson’s disease, but I know it’s been around for a long time. In 175 A.D., for example, the ancient Greek physician Galen described it as “shaking palsy.” 

I first noticed it when I developed a tremor in my left hand. Any time I picked up something like a cup of coffee in a saucer with my left hand it would shake and the cup and saucer rattle around. I found it quite amusing, so much so that I started using the cup and saucer as part of my own little comedy routine when company would come to our house. I loved the telling expressions my routine evoked. No one would say a word about what they were thinking, but I knew. “My God, he’s gonna’ drop them. I hope they’re not Wedgewood or Royal Albert.”  

The routine grew old. The puzzled looks became icy stares that all but shouted, “Stop it Phil!”  

Next, a new symptom came. I’d always prided myself on being able to multitask. I spent a good part of my professional life working for FedEx, where being nimble, quick thinking is absolutely essential. I was really good at it, as both a logistics analyst and a service engineer. 

Nancy was the first to notice the drastic change. I was driving one day, with her in the passenger seat. As was my habit, I talked as I drove, but it ended quite abruptly. In the most emphatic voice I’ve ever heard from her I heard the following – “Pull the car over. Slick. You’re all over the road. You can’t drive and talk at the same time anymore. You just can’t. It’s Parkinson’s.” 

As much as I would have liked to deny it, I couldn’t. This was more than not being able to “chew gum and walk at the same time.” This was serious. I had to accept the truth that there were some things I couldn’t do any more.  

Accepting this truth was hard at first. I value my independence, but things had changed. I was no longer the nimble multi-tasker. It was at this point “grace appeared.” While some things had changed, others hadn’t. Parkinson’s had placed limits on one thing, but grace opened another avenue for me to get from place to place. Nancy started doing all the driving.  

What an arrangement! I could still get around, thanks to Nancy’s willingness act as surrogate Uber driver. She drives; we talk; the car stays between the lines.  

Another byproduct of Parkinson’s is the diminished ability to maintain good balance. I like to do things around the house. We own a second property, a loft in Kansas City’s River market district. It’s a small unit, about 800 square feet. One of the interesting features of the unit is the high ceiling. It’s about 18 feet high, with light fixtures placed strategically at points where the ceiling and walls meet.   When one of the lightbulbs goes it, it means that someone has to replace it.  

Several months ago, one of the bulbs did go out. I went and got a long extension ladder that’s provided by the homeowners’ association. It was a difficult enough chore getting it into the unit, but I managed. Next, I extended the ladder against the wall. With a lightbulb in hand, I began to slowly make my way to the top. Once I got to the top, I took a deep breath and unscrewed the burned-out bulb. Then, it happened. As I reached into the pocket of my hoodie to get the new bulb, I felt my balance giving way. I tried to steady myself, but it didn’t work. It only took a few seconds, but it felt like eight hours. All the way down I kept telling myself, ”Protect your head…protect your head.” I felt and heard the ”thud” as I hit the concreate floor, shoulder first. I laid on the floor for a few minutes, trying to assess how much damage I’d done to myself. Not much, fortunately. My shoulder was sore for a few days and my brain had rattled a bit, but that was the extent of the damage. 

I learned a valuable lesson from that fall. I don’t climb ladders anymore!  

I have to admit it. Parkinsons can be very humbling. While I can never claim to be a superstar or a strongman, I’d like to think I can multitask or climb ladders with ease. The truth is, I can’t. 

I can see my limitations, but like Paul in the New Testament, I am learning a very valuable truth. “My grace is sufficient for you.” 

It also helps to have allies as I contend with my thorn in the flesh. When I was first diagnosed with Parkinsons, my neurologist would end every session with the words, “Engage Mr. Dillon….engage!” It was another way of saying, “Don’t give in to the temptation to quit battling.”  I haven’t and I won’t.  

For several years now I’ve been enrolled in a program called “Rock Steady.” It’s a non-contact boxing/exercise program that’s been designed for people with Parkinsons. It’s  sponsored by North Kansas City Hospital. I attend classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and I’ve grown to love it. I love being able to interact with folks like me who are engaged in their own battles with Parkinsons.  I fumble around with my buddies Doc, Noodles, Dave, Lee, Mike and a host of other wonderful people. We all have an occasional laugh at our own expense as we do our fumbling. I remember once falling and using my dry Irish wit to lighten the atmosphere as folks came to my aid. “He never tagged me, ump. I was safe….I was safe.” That sort of thing happens a lot. We also get to wear boxing gloves and whale away at punching bags with series of jabs, hooks, uppercuts, and so forth.  When it’s my turn I like to pretend that I’m whaling away at some self-absorbed national or local politician. Oh my, that is really fun! 

In addition to Rock Steady, I also volunteer at North Kansas City hospital across the street on Tuesdays from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. In that short span of time love transporting patients to and from appointments, with occasional opportunities to interact with them, trying my best to lift their spirits. Knowing my limitations in terms of multi-tasking I steer clear of the computers at the Pavilion desk.  I like it so much that I now consider myself a “pusher,” with a qualifying addendum to my title. “I’m a pusher without being pushy. 

One of the great benefits of interacting with patients who need help is seeing my own “thorn in the flesh” from a healthier perspective. If/when I want to feel sorry for myself, interacting with patients with far more serious problems than mine changes things. At those times when I feel like lamenting, providing a bit of support for someone far more needy than me is a wakeup call: “Come on Phil, things could be far worse. You do have a thorn in your flesh, but so do many others you interact with on a daily basis.   You need to see that God’s grace is sufficient for you. You need to fumble around. You need to laugh at yourself occasionally. You need to push with whatever strength you have. And, above all, you need to engage….engage…..engage!” 

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Curse of the Bambino

“A man ought to get all he can, a man who knows he’s making money for other people ought to get some of the profit he brings in. Don’t make any difference if it’s baseball or a bank or a vaudeville show. It’s business, I tell you. There ain’t no sentiment to it. Forget that stuff.” 

Babe Ruth’s explanation for holding out for a pay increase after his 1919 season playing for the Boston Red Sox 

Halloween is less than a week away. I’m not a big fan of celebrating creepy-crawly things, monsters, or curses – especially curses.  

You see, I grew up in Boston. I was a Boston Red Sox fan. I know all about curses. I grew up wearing what became known as the “Curse of the Bambino” like the poet Coleridge’s albatross around my neck. 

I loved baseball from the time I started playing stickball in 1953. Like most kids I knew, I dreamed of one day graduating to real baseball and playing left field for the Red Sox when my hero, Ted Williams retired.” 

“Teddy Ballgame,” as his fans came to know him, was one of the greatest hitters in the history of the game. He finished his twenty-year career, which had been interrupted by five years of military service during World War II and the Korean War, hitting 521 home runs with a .344 batting average. Oh, how he could hit! He loved talking with other players about the science of hitting a baseball. I still feel chills when I remember listening to the radio broadcast of “Teddy Ballgame” hitting a pinch-hit home run against Cleveland’s Mike Garcia a few days after he returned home after two years of service in the Korean conflict.  

There were so many great moments “Teddy Ballgame” gave the fans of Boston. He hit .406 in 1941, a feat that has not been equaled for the last eighty-two years, or the dramatic home run he hit in the 1946 all-star game off Rip Sewell’s famous “eephus” pitch. He capped off his marvellous career when he hit a home run in his last at bat at Fenway Park on September 28, 1960. 

I so wanted to be like him. I considered myself the stickball champion of Chatham Street in my younger days. I also occasionally daydreamed of the day my moment in the sun would come. In my mind’s eye I visualized myself at the plate for my beloved Red Sox at a critical moment in the World Series. The Sox were down by three runs in the bottom of the ninth. There were two outs, with the bases loaded. This was my moment. I strode to the plate and dug in like “Teddy Ballgame” always did. I was expecting a slider inside and that’s what I got. I was ready. I swung and as the ball soared over the “Green Monstah” I could hear the crowd erupt in cheers. I had done it. My beloved Sox had won the World Series I was the hero of the hour, just like “Teddy Ballgame” for the Red Sox or Roy Hobbes  from “The Natural.”  

But dreams are dreams and reality is reality. The Red Sox were never going to be in the market for a not hit, no field left fielder.  

While I never got to sign a big-league contract, I remained a loyal Red Sox fan.  

And that now brings me to the “Curse of the Bambino.” Babe Ruth had started his career playing for the Boston Red Sox. According to some, the curse came on the heels of the 1919 season. In 1918 the Bambino batted .300 and hit a league-leading 11 home runs, while also going 13-7 as a pitcher with a stellar 2.22 earned average. The Red Sox won the World Series, the last World Series they would win for many years. Ruth felt that the numbers merited a significant pay increase and he lobbied to have that salary raised from $10,000 per year to $20,000 per year. Red Sox owner Harry Frazee disagreed, and Ruth reluctantly signed a contract for 1919. That year, Ruth responded with an even more impressive performance. He hit 29 home runs and had 113 runs batted in. He also had a 9-5 record as a pitcher. At the end of the season Ruth again lobbied for more money.  Frazee once again dug his heels in. The Bambino now had a big problem. Frazee’s primary interest wasn’t baseball. He produced Broadway plays and he wasn’t doing well, but he had what he believed was a great opportunity to produce a winner. He’d been approached by a few moguls about a play titled “No, No, Nanette.” It seemed that Frazee had found his magic fortune cookie. All he needed was some capital. The fortune cookie turned out to be the sale of Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees.  

This is where the legend of the “curse of the Bambino” actually began. According to that legend, a furious Babe Ruth placed the Red Sox under a curse. They would never win another World Series. 

Years passed and the Red Sox could not win the World Series. Were they cursed? Most observers laughed it off until 1946. The Sox were finally in the World Series after a twenty-eight year drought. They were playing the St, Louis Cardinals for all the marbles. The seventh and deciding game was tied 3-3 in the bottom of the eighth inning. Enos Slaughter began the inning with a single. Two outs later, Harry Walker hit a double and Slaughter scored from first base when, according to legend, Red Sox shortstop Johnny Pesky double clutched his relay throw from shallow left field.  

The “curse of the Bambino” was becoming ever more real. What else could explain Johnny, Pesky’s double clutch or the fact that the great Ted Williams only hit .250 and drove in only one run in that series. The years rolled on the evidence mounted. In 1948 the Sox lost a one game playoff the Cleveland Indians. In 1949 the Sox won 96 games, leaving them one game behind the dreaded New York Yankees for the American League pennant.  

This where I found myself attached to the Red Sox and the “curse. I started playing stickball in 1953. As I wrote earlier, I considered myself the stickball champion of Chatham Street. When it was my turn to hit, I would imitate the stances of my favorite Sox players, especially Ted Williams’ wide stance and perfectly grooved swing. When I wasn’t playing, I took every opportunity to listen to my beloved Sox on the radio. As I did, I couldn’t understand what I was hearing. The Yankees almost always won, but I “knew” my Sox were a better team.  After all, we had “Teddy Ballgame.” All the Yankees could muster were Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra or Moose Skowron. Granted, they were good ballplayers, but they were no match for “Teddy Ballgame.” 

Ted Williams retired in 1960. His left-field replacement was Carl Yastrzemski, who would himself one day become a hall of famer. Me? I joined the Air Force in 1961.  

The years continued to pass. Yastrzemski amassed mountains of great statistics, I hopped around the globe at Uncle Sam’s command, and the “curse of the Bambino” went on. In 1967, Yaz had one of those years. He won the triple crown in 1967 with a .326 batting average, 44 home runs, and 121 runs batted in. The Red Sox made it to the World Series. Would this be the year the curse would be broken? No. True to what had become the form, the Sox teased, but didn’t deliver. St. Louis won the series in seven games. 

I got out of the Air Force in 1969. I went to college, then graduate school. I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about the curse, but it still lingered in the cobwebs of my mind. Things were quiet on that front until 1978. The Red Sox were leading the American League by 12 ½ games in August. Then the Yankees caught fire, By the time the dust settled the Sox were in a one game playoff with the Yankees at Fenway Park. The Red Sox were winning by two runs in the seventh. In the Yankees’ half of the inning, they got two runners on base. Yankees shortstop Bucky Dent strode to the plate. Almost everyone in Boston knew that he couldn’t hit a baseball even if he had a bat the size of a banjo. At least that’s what we thought.  Then the curse reared its ugly head. Light hitting Bucky Dent hit a fly ball that scraped the top of the “Green Monstah” and fell into the net. That home run felt like a dagger to the heart of every Sox fan in the world. 

It now seemed certain that nothing could lift the curse. A few groups of fans hired witches in a vain attempt to end it and there were even a few who suggested that Babe Ruth’s body could be exhumed and brought to Boston so we call all apologize to him for what Harry Frazee had done. Nothing worked. 

I got married to my wife Nancy in 1986. By that time, I had given up and stopped following the Red Sox. Nancy, who was a St. Louis Cardinals fan, couldn’t understand it. When I tried to explain the “curse of the Bambino” to her she would just roll her eyes in disbelief. I tried tuning it out, to no avail. The Red Sox were in the World Series again. Nancy asked me if I was going to watch, and I responded “No. They’ll break my heart. It’s the dreaded curse.” We spent the next week or so avoiding the games. I can’t remember much of what happened early on that fateful Saturday, October 25th,   but I do remember what happened in the evening. Nancy turned on the TV and the World Series was on. It was the sixth game, with the Sox leading three games to two. It was the bottom of the tenth and the Sox were up by two runs. There were two outs with no one on base for the New York Mets. Red Sox reliever Calvin Schiraldi was one strike away from winning the game. Nancy seemed overjoyed. “Oh, Slick, you’ve waited your whole life for this. Your Red Sox are going to win. Sit down and watch.” I told her I couldn’t. “I’m going to the basement. Don’t you understand? Something always happens. It’s the Curse of the Bambino.” With that said, I went downstairs and waited for things to play out. After about a half an hour I came back upstairs. Nancy had a stunned look on her face. “How did you know…how did you know? The ball just went through his legs?” (the now infamous Bill Buckner play). All I could say was “It’s the curse of the Bambino.”  

I’m not sure Nancy believed the curse was real, but I think she did understand how I and millions of others in Boston could come to believe it.  

For the next eighteen years things on the baseball front were once again quiet. Then something happened in 2004. The Sox were in the playoffs. As it so often happens, they were playing the Yankees in a seven-game series, with the winner playing the National League champion for all the marbles. 

With the thought of the “curse” still lingering in my mind, I decided not to watch the series. That changed when the Yankees won the first three games, including a 19 to 8 rout in the third game. I decided to tune in. Something had hit me like a thunderbolt and I started to believe the Sox were going to make a stunning comeback. I was so convinced I called my brother Bill in Massachusetts and told him. “We’re gonna’ sweep the Yankees now. They aren’t going to know what hit them.” Bill laughed in agreement. “Everyone in Boston knows we’re going to win. We just know it.” 

From that point on it was pure joy. There was Dave Roberts’ clutch steal of second base followed by Orlando Cabrera’s that drove him home to tie the game followed by David Ortiz’ (Big Papi) two run homer in the 10th inning to keep the series alive. The drama continued for the next three games. Everyone in Boston now remembers the amazing drama. There were Big Papi’s heroics and Curt Schilling’s bloody sock drama. Journeymen players like Johnny Damon and Kevin Millar made significant contributions. This was a team that refused to lose when it mattered most. They had affectionately nicknamed themselves “the Idiots” before the series started and as the drama played itself out the nickname fit perfectly. After all, who but a team of “idiots” would believe they could beat the mighty Yankees after being done three games to none? 

There was one more hurdle. Nancy was a Cardinals fan. What was the best approach to take now? All I could tell her was that I loved her madly, but I just knew the Sox were also

“A man ought to get all he can, a man who knows he’s making money for other people ought to get some of the profit he brings in. Don’t make any difference if it’s baseball or a bank or a vaudeville show. It’s business, I tell you. There ain’t no sentiment to it. Forget that stuff.” 

Babe Ruth’s explanation for holding out for a pay increase after his 1919 season playing for the Boston Red Sox 

Halloween is less than a week away. I’m not a big fan of celebrating creepy-crawly things, monsters, or curses – especially curses.  

You see, I grew up in Boston. I was a Boston Red Sox fan. I know all about curses. I grew up wearing what became known as the “Curse of the Bambino” like the poet Coleridge’s albatross around my neck. 

I loved baseball from the time I started playing stickball in 1953. Like most kids I knew, I dreamed of one day graduating to real baseball and playing left field for the Red Sox when my hero, Ted Williams retired.” 

“Teddy Ballgame,” as his fans came to know him, was one of the greatest hitters in the history of the game. He finished his twenty-year career, which had been interrupted by five years of military service during World War II and the Korean War, hitting 521 home runs with a .344 batting average. Oh, how he could hit! He loved talking with other players about the science of hitting a baseball. I still feel chills when I remember listening to the radio broadcast of “Teddy Ballgame” hitting a pinch-hit home run against Cleveland’s Mike Garcia a few days after he returned home after two years of service in the Korean conflict.  

There were so many great moments “Teddy Ballgame” gave the fans of Boston. He hit .406 in 1941, a feat that has not been equaled for the last eighty-two years, or the dramatic home run he hit in the 1946 all-star game off Rip Sewell’s famous “eephus” pitch. He capped off his marvellous career when he hit a home run in his last at bat at Fenway Park on September 28, 1960. 

I so wanted to be like him. I considered myself the stickball champion of Chatham Street in my younger days. I also occasionally daydreamed of the day my moment in the sun would come. In my mind’s eye I visualized myself at the plate for my beloved Red Sox at a critical moment in the World Series. The Sox were down by three runs in the bottom of the ninth. There were two outs, with the bases loaded. This was my moment. I strode to the plate and dug in like “Teddy Ballgame” always did. I was expecting a slider inside and that’s what I got. I was ready. I swung and as the ball soared over the “Green Monstah” I could hear the crowd erupt in cheers. I had done it. My beloved Sox had won the World Series I was the hero of the hour, just like “Teddy Ballgame” for the Red Sox or Roy Hobbes  from “The Natural.”  

But dreams are dreams and reality is reality. The Red Sox were never going to be in the market for a not hit, no field left fielder.  

While I never got to sign a big-league contract, I remained a loyal Red Sox fan.  

And that now brings me to the “Curse of the Bambino.” Babe Ruth had started his career playing for the Boston Red Sox. According to some, the curse came on the heels of the 1919 season. In 1918 the Bambino batted .300 and hit a league-leading 11 home runs, while also going 13-7 as a pitcher with a stellar 2.22 earned average. The Red Sox won the World Series, the last World Series they would win for many years. Ruth felt that the numbers merited a significant pay increase and he lobbied to have that salary raised from $10,000 per year to $20,000 per year. Red Sox owner Harry Frazee disagreed, and Ruth reluctantly signed a contract for 1919. That year, Ruth responded with an even more impressive performance. He hit 29 home runs and had 113 runs batted in. He also had a 9-5 record as a pitcher. At the end of the season Ruth again lobbied for more money.  Frazee once again dug his heels in. The Bambino now had a big problem. Frazee’s primary interest wasn’t baseball. He produced Broadway plays and he wasn’t doing well, but he had what he believed was a great opportunity to produce a winner. He’d been approached by a few moguls about a play titled “No, No, Nanette.” It seemed that Frazee had found his magic fortune cookie. All he needed was some capital. The fortune cookie turned out to be the sale of Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees.  

This is where the legend of the “curse of the Bambino” actually began. According to that legend, a furious Babe Ruth placed the Red Sox under a curse. They would never win another World Series. 

Years passed and the Red Sox could not win the World Series. Were they cursed? Most observers laughed it off until 1946. The Sox were finally in the World Series after a twenty-eight year drought. They were playing the St, Louis Cardinals for all the marbles. The seventh and deciding game was tied 3-3 in the bottom of the eighth inning. Enos Slaughter began the inning with a single. Two outs later, Harry Walker hit a double and Slaughter scored from first base when, according to legend, Red Sox shortstop Johnny Pesky double clutched his relay throw from shallow left field.  

The “curse of the Bambino” was becoming ever more real. What else could explain Johnny, Pesky’s double clutch or the fact that the great Ted Williams only hit .250 and drove in only one run in that series. The years rolled on the evidence mounted. In 1948 the Sox lost a one game playoff the Cleveland Indians. In 1949 the Sox won 96 games, leaving them one game behind the dreaded New York Yankees for the American League pennant.  

This where I found myself attached to the Red Sox and the “curse. I started playing stickball in 1953. As I wrote earlier, I considered myself the stickball champion of Chatham Street. When it was my turn to hit, I would imitate the stances of my favorite Sox players, especially Ted Williams’ wide stance and perfectly grooved swing. When I wasn’t playing, I took every opportunity to listen to my beloved Sox on the radio. As I did, I couldn’t understand what I was hearing. The Yankees almost always won, but I “knew” my Sox were a better team.  After all, we had “Teddy Ballgame.” All the Yankees could muster were Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra or Moose Skowron. Granted, they were good ballplayers, but they were no match for “Teddy Ballgame.” 

Ted Williams retired in 1960. His left-field replacement was Carl Yastrzemski, who would himself one day become a hall of famer. Me? I joined the Air Force in 1961.  

The years continued to pass. Yastrzemski amassed mountains of great statistics, I hopped around the globe at Uncle Sam’s command, and the “curse of the Bambino” went on. In 1967, Yaz had one of those years. He won the triple crown in 1967 with a .326 batting average, 44 home runs, and 121 runs batted in. The Red Sox made it to the World Series. Would this be the year the curse would be broken? No. True to what had become the form, the Sox teased, but didn’t deliver. St. Louis won the series in seven games. 

I got out of the Air Force in 1969. I went to college, then graduate school. I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about the curse, but it still lingered in the cobwebs of my mind. Things were quiet on that front until 1978. The Red Sox were leading the American League by 12 ½ games in August. Then the Yankees caught fire, By the time the dust settled the Sox were in a one game playoff with the Yankees at Fenway Park. The Red Sox were winning by two runs in the seventh. In the Yankees’ half of the inning, they got two runners on base. Yankees shortstop Bucky Dent strode to the plate. Almost everyone in Boston knew that he couldn’t hit a baseball even if he had a bat the size of a banjo. At least that’s what we thought.  Then the curse reared its ugly head. Light hitting Bucky Dent hit a fly ball that scraped the top of the “Green Monstah” and fell into the net. That home run felt like a dagger to the heart of every Sox fan in the world. 

It now seemed certain that nothing could lift the curse. A few groups of fans hired witches in a vain attempt to end it and there were even a few who suggested that Babe Ruth’s body could be exhumed and brought to Boston so we call all apologize to him for what Harry Frazee had done. Nothing worked. 

I got married to my wife Nancy in 1986. By that time, I had given up and stopped following the Red Sox. Nancy, who was a St. Louis Cardinals fan, couldn’t understand it. When I tried to explain the “curse of the Bambino” to her she would just roll her eyes in disbelief. I tried tuning it out, to no avail. The Red Sox were in the World Series again. Nancy asked me if I was going to watch, and I responded “No. They’ll break my heart. It’s the dreaded curse.” We spent the next week or so avoiding the games. I can’t remember much of what happened early on that fateful Saturday, October 25th,   but I do remember what happened in the evening. Nancy turned on the TV and the World Series was on. It was the sixth game, with the Sox leading three games to two. It was the bottom of the tenth and the Sox were up by two runs. There were two outs with no one on base for the New York Mets. Red Sox reliever Calvin Schiraldi was one strike away from winning the game. Nancy seemed overjoyed. “Oh, Slick, you’ve waited your whole life for this. Your Red Sox are going to win. Sit down and watch.” I told her I couldn’t. “I’m going to the basement. Don’t you understand? Something always happens. It’s the Curse of the Bambino.” With that said, I went downstairs and waited for things to play out. After about a half an hour I came back upstairs. Nancy had a stunned look on her face. “How did you know…how did you know? The ball just went through his legs?” (the now infamous Bill Buckner play). All I could say was “It’s the curse of the Bambino.”  

I’m not sure Nancy believed the curse was real, but I think she did understand how I and millions of others in Boston could come to believe it.  

For the next eighteen years things on the baseball front were once again quiet. Then something happened in 2004. The Sox were in the playoffs. As it so often happens, they were playing the Yankees in a seven-game series, with the winner playing the National League champion for all the marbles. 

With the thought of the “curse” still lingering in my mind, I decided not to watch the series. That changed when the Yankees won the first three games, including a 19 to 8 rout in the third game. I decided to tune in. Something had hit me like a thunderbolt and I started to believe the Sox were going to make a stunning comeback. I was so convinced I called my brother Bill in Massachusetts and told him. “We’re gonna’ sweep the Yankees now. They aren’t going to know what hit them.” Bill laughed in agreement. “Everyone in Boston knows we’re going to win. We just know it.” 

From that point on it was pure joy. There was Dave Roberts’ clutch steal of second base followed by Orlando Cabrera’s that drove him home to tie the game followed by David Ortiz’ (Big Papi) two run homer in the 10th inning to keep the series alive. The drama continued for the next three games. Everyone in Boston now remembers the amazing drama. There were Big Papi’s heroics and Curt Schilling’s bloody sock drama. Journeymen players like Johnny Damon and Kevin Millar made significant contributions. This was a team that refused to lose when it mattered most. They had affectionately nicknamed themselves “the Idiots” before the series started and as the drama played itself out the nickname fit perfectly. After all, who but a team of “idiots” would believe they could beat the mighty Yankees after being done three games to none? 

There was one more hurdle. Nancy was a Cardinals fan. What was the best approach to take now? All I could tell her was that I loved her madly, but I just knew the Sox were also going to sweep the Cardinals. And that’s the way it happened. The Sox swept the Cardinals, winning their first World Series championship since 1918, an eighty-six-year drought. The “curse of the Bambino” was lifted, and life could now go on.  

I don’t follow baseball anymore, any more than I need to follow after Halloween ghosts, goblins, monsters, and curses.  

Kids will come to our door in a few days, and I’ll give them candy, but I won’t feel inclined to say things like “Happy Halloween.” 

I do realize, as Sweeney Todd’s mother once said, “There’s demons lurkin’ about.” While I’m sure there are some, I’m not going to treat them like celebrities.  If anyone cares to ask, I’ll tell them that a far more important curse than the “curse of the Bambino.” has been lifted from humanity in the person of Jesus. 

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Weep No More

“And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming in a loud voice, “Who is worthy to break the seals and open the scroll?”  But   I wept and wept because no one was found who was worthy to open the scroll or look inside.” 

Revelation 5:2-4 (New International Version) 

I read some information this morning that I found quite discouraging. In a recent Substack post titled “The Moral Danger of Yes-Buttery.” author Rod Dreher (“The Benedict Option, “Live Not by Lies”) cited a survey that asked respondents whether they believed the October 7th Hamas terrorist attack against Israel was justified. While I took some comfort in seeing that a significant majority (91%) of respondents in my age group (65 and older) believed the attack was not justified. But as I scrolled through the data it became very unsettling. By the time I got to millennials and those aged 18-24 the numbers had shifted dramatically. Forty-eight percent of millennials and fifty-one percent those aged 18-24 believed the Hamas attack was justified. That’s a stunning turnaround! 

In believing that the attack was justified, respondents were, in essence, saying that decapitating babies, ripping unborn children from their mothers’ wombs, burning innocent men women to death in their homes, raping and dragging women through the streets, and other ghastly acts of terror were justified. While they may try to cloak their antisemitic bigotry in the “Palestinian Cause,” the truth of the matter is, I believe, far more revealing. If one peeks behind the cloak it screams at you. “The Jews had it coming to them. They deserved this.”  

It’s bad enough to see things like this happening in America today. It’s frightening to consider what America might very well be like in the future if these terrible trends continue. The people of Germany, the most literate people on the planet, marched down that totalitarian path in the 1930’s? Could that be the destiny of America?  Could some future America version of Stalin, who starved millions of Ukranian Kulaks to death in the Communist march to Utopia, arise here in America? 

The answer to that question sends shivers down my spine. Yes, it can happen here. In fact, I see the country I love moving rapidly down that path. 

Can this deadly march be stopped? Can we even slow its progress? 

Can our political leaders save us? As one surveys our political landscape the futility of political solutions to our problems is obvious. A Republican majority in our House of Representatives has tremendous difficulty electing a Speaker of the House, much less being capable of drafting and passing good sense legislation. We have a President of our Republic living on the cusp of senility. And, we have corruption running wild in our halls of political power. You have George Santos on one side of the aisle and Robert Menendez on the other. That overpowering stench of corruption is even polluting far too many state and local governments. And it’s been that way for some time. In 1979, Bob Dylan made this astute observation – “You got gangsters in power and lawbreakers making rules.” 

No, a thousand times no. Our political leaders aren’t going to save us. 

Most of America’s churches and schools aren’t faring much better. As Bob Dylan also observed, we’ve got “adulterers in churches and pornography in the schools.” 

Maybe technology will save us.  Israel’s leaders believed their technology would keep them safe from Hamas and the result of that misguided confidence is now evident. Israel really believed they had Hamas hemmed in with a newly constructed twenty-foot-high wall complete with sophisticated technology designed to spot any intruders. The technology was so sophisticated it could send the alarm if an intruder were to be spotted.   

Yet, with all the sophisticated technology arrayed against them, the terrorists simply flew over that wall in paragliders on Israel’s Sabbath day. 

Seeing this all play out makes me want to cry in despair. Sophisticated technology is all too often powerless to prevent terror. Crime is rampant. Political corruption is omnipresent. Jews around the world are hated. It all seems so hopeless. 

I introduced this essay with a part of a passage from the fifth chapter of the book of Revelation. I read the passage this morning when I read Rod Dreher’s essay. As I began to read the passage, I felt the same sense of despair that prompted the following question raised in the heavenly vision: “Who is worthy to break the seals and open the scrolls?” When the multitudes in the vision see that “no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth could open the scroll or even look inside it,” they weep in despair.  

But there is more to that passage. The answer to the question comes swiftly. One of the elders in heaven declares, “Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.” 

That is also the answer for our time. “Do not weep.” One day, hopefully in my lifetime, Jesus, the Lamb of God himself, will break the seals and open the scrolls. He has the answers. He is the answer! I don’t need to bathe myself in constant tears. Knowing that, I see that the task before me is to watch and pray “Maranatha, even so, come Lord Jesus.” 

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The Neighborhood Bully

“Well, the chances are against it, and the odds are slim
That he’ll live by the rules that the world makes for him
‘Cause there’s a noose at his neck and a gun at his back
And a license to kill him is given out to every maniac
He’s the neighborhood bully.” 

Ever since the Sabbath terror attack on October 7th, I’ve had some friends ask why there is so much hate directed at Israel and the Jewish people. While I think it would be fair to say I don’t fully understand why, I also know there are some things that can help explain that hate. I’m going to do my best to outline a few things I believe might shed some light on the issue. 

Last night I read an essay penned by a man named Jacob Siegel about Bob Dylan’s 1983 song “Neighborhood Bully.” I think Siegel’s a pretty good writer, but like a lot of good writers he occasionally makes mistakes. In his 2020 essay titled “Bob Dylan’s “Neighborhood Bully” gets memory holed” he made at least two, possibly more. His first mistake was in claiming that YouTube won’t allow people to hear that song. The claim is simply not true as you can plainly see by clicking on the following link – Bob Dylan – Neighborhood Bully (Official Audio) His second mistake was in assuming that Bob Dylan somehow claimed that the song wasn’t about Israel. Trust me. The song is about Israel. It’s not about Ireland or Afghanistan, nor is it about Afghanistan or Tora Bora. I suppose it might be within the realm of possibility that Dylan claimed that the song wasn’t written as a political statement. That might be within the realm of possibility, but that doesn’t change the fact that the song is about Israel. It’s that simple. 

The truth of what’s going on in the Middle East is, and has been, tragic. There really is a “license to kill him (Israel) given to every maniac.” 

But why? Dylan framed the same question this way – “What has he done to wear so many scars?
Does he change the course of rivers? Does he pollute the moon and stars?” No! In fact, the Jewish people, who comprise two tenths of one percent of the world’s population have won two hundred twelve (twenty two percent) of the nine hundred and fifty-four Nobel prizes awarded since 1901. Jews have won the Nobel prize in chemistry, economics, peace, physics, physiology/medicine, and literature. Among the honorees you’ll find names like Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Milton Friedman, Joseph Stiglitz, Elie Wiesel, Henry Kissinger, Boris Pasternak, and Saul Bellow. . Bob Dylan, the author of “Neighborhood Bully,” also has Jewish roots. In 2016 he won the Nobel Prize in literature.  

Far from polluting the moon and stars, the world’s Jews have contributed more than their fair share to the human family since the dawn of human history.

These facts once again beg the question. Why? 

I believe we need to dig down to the roots of the crisis to find the answers to that question and that’s what I intend to do. Those of you reading this essay may disagree with my point of view. I understand, but all I can do is offer my perspective and that point of view is Christian. 

The Bible describes the roots of humanity’s fall from grace in the Old Testament book of Genesis. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, with the earth we now inhabit being His focal point. In a final flourish of creativity, God created Adam, the first man, from the dust of the earth. Next, God planted a garden in Eden, with “all kinds of trees growing from the ground. It was beautiful, with a “tree of life” and another “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” in the middle of the garden. Next, Eve, the “mother of all humanity,” was created from Adam’s rib. There, they were to live together in peace and harmony, dressing, tilling, and keeping the good earth that God had created for them. There was only one prohibition. They were instructed they could not eat from “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” They were further told that if they did eat from that tree they would “surely die.”  

Tragically, it was all too good to be true. First Eve, tempted by the serpent, ate the forbidden fruit and gave some to Adam. With that one act of disobedience sin and death were introduced into the world. In the very next chapter, we read about history’s first murder. Cain killed his brother Abel and when God confronted him with the evil deed, he copped an arrogant plea. “I don’t know where he is. Am I my brother’s keeper.” Two chapters later (chapter 6), a corrupt world is revealed. Further, the world was now filled with violence. Interestingly, the Hebrew word for violence used in the passage (Genesis 6:11) is “hamas.” A harbinger of things to come, perhaps? 

The sequence of events followed at a brisk pace for the next few chapters. There was Noah’s flood, the formation of various people groups like the Egyptians, the Hittites, the Jebusites, the Philistines, the Canaanites, etc. 

This is where the narrative introduces us to a man who was critical to those times and is also critical to the Middle East narrative of today. His name was Abram. He lived about 2,000 years before the birth of Jesus and he lived in Ur, which was part of the ancient Chaldean kingdom.  The Chaldeans were an advanced civilization. They were highly educated. Some scholars have termed them the “librarians of the ancient world.” Religiously, they were, like most ancient cultures, polytheistic. 

We are given our first glimpse of Abram in the twelfth chapter of Genesis with these words: 

“The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. 

“I will make you into a great nation,
    and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
    and you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you,
    and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
    will be blessed through you.” 

Genesis 12:1-3 (New International Version) 

It’s astounding. We are presented with a story of a man who actually heard the voice of God. He was instructed to leave his home, “his people, and his father’s household.” How many of us would be willing to leave a life of wealth and privilege and chart a course into the wilderness? Very few, I think. But Abram did go. He was looking for a “city whose builder and make was God.” (Hebrews 11:10)   

Abram was 75 years old when his incredible pilgrimage of faith began. It continued for many years, with many challenges. When he’s about 86 years old he begins to have doubts about the promise. His wife, Sarai, is barren, and he has no heir. God reassures him. “Your own flesh and blood will be your heir,” (Genesis 15:4) then takes him outside and tells him to count the stars in the sky, once again reassuring him that “So shall your offspring be,” 

When Sarai still fails to bear Abram a son, she concocts a scheme to have her Egyptian slave, Hagar, bear that child. For her. The scheme succeeds and Hagar bears a son and Abram, who is now 86 years old, names him Ishmael. But he is not to be the heir.  

By the time Abrham is a hundred years old, God’s promised heir, Isaac, is born. He is to be the heir, but not until Abrham is tested one more time. The test ends with God declaring, “I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore, and through you all nations on earth will be blessed.” (Genesis 22:17-18).  

Ishmael, who was born years before Isaac, has also been given a promise by God – “I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count.” (Genesis 15:10). Along with the promise comes prophetic insight about Ishmael and his descendants – “He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.” (Genesis 15:12) 

Abraham’s family name moved on through history from that point, from Isaac to Jacob, who after an encounter with God in the wilderness, is given a new name – Israel.  

That’s how it all began. Israel, the nation that is today constantly under threat of annihilation. It is the name of the nation born out of a promised covenant between God and Abraham.  

As author Thomas Cahill put it several years ago in his masterwork “The Gifts of the Jews”: 

“The Jews started it all-and by ‘it’ I mean so many of the things we care about, the underlying values that make all of us, Jew and Gentile, believer and atheist, tick. Without the Jews, we would see the world through different eyes, hear with different ears, even feel with different feelings … we would think with a different mind, interpret all our experience differently, draw different conclusions from the things that befall us. And we would set a different course for our lives.” 

I, for one, am glad Abraham heard the voice of God when he left the Chaldean kingdom. That pilgrimage not only marked the starting point for monotheism and Judaism in the world, but also paved the way for Jesus to come and bring the possibility of redemption and forgiveness to a fallen world. For that I owe Abrham and the Jewish people a great debt of gratitude and love. The man who saved me an eternity of separation from God was/is Jewish. He wasn’t Irish, Polish, Russian, French, British, American, or Palestinian. He was/is Jewish. That man is Jesus. Thanks to his sacrifice I have been grafted into Israel and the family of God (see Romans 9 through 11). Further, there is a day coming when the crucified and risen Jesus will return to the Mount of Olives. When that day comes, He will settle all international disputes and He will separate the “sheep from the goats.” 

This is where we come to the crux of the issue. You would think that the world would be longing for such a day, but that’s not the case. Four thousand years ago Abram left a pagan culture. Our modern world is every bit as pagan as the world Abraham left. In fact, some scholars now consider the world to be neo-pagan. Belief in God is fast becoming the world’s minority report. There was a time, for example, when America was, at least in principle, a “Christian” nation. There have been warnings about what might happen to America if she were to abandon those principles. French philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville wrote a two-volume study of what he observed when he visited nineteenth century America. The following words, from his classic work “Democracy in America” should serve as a warning to us today: 

“I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers—and it was not there. . . . . in her fertile fields and boundless forests—and it was not there. . . . .in her rich mines and her vast world commerce—and it was not there. . . . in her democratic Congress and her matchless Constitution—and it was not there.  Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power.  America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.” 

“That’s America,” you say, “But America isn’t the world.” If you believe that I need to burst your bubble. As America goes, so goes the world. We gave the world blue jeans and the rest of the world wanted blue jeans. We gave them rock and roll and the world followed suit. America is now neo-pagan and the world is following suit. 

And, worst of all, while America is becoming increasingly violent, the rest of the world is following suit. For example, the United Nations’ 2019 “Global study on homicide” revealed that there were 464,000 murders committed in the world during the 2017 calendar year. The statistics varied by region, but however one divides it all up, the fact remains – the world is a violent place and it’s been that way for thousands of years. The words of Genesis 6:11, written about 2,500 years ago, speak to that tragic point. 

The root of the problem is even deeper. Alexsander Solzhenitsyn, the great Russian dissident, once said that the day would come when the people of Russia would ask how something like the terror of Lenin and Stalin could have happened. His answer was short and to the point. “Men have forgotten God,” The existentialist philosopher Jean Paul Sartre also drove home the same point in his “Being and Nothingness:” 

“Dostoevsky once wrote: “If God did not exist, everything would be permitted”; and that, for existentialism, is the starting point. Everything is indeed permitted if God does not exist, and man is in consequence forlorn.” 

While violence is, and has been, humanity’s order of the day, the Jewish people and the nation of Israel are like no other target of hate who have walked upon the hearth. From Haman’s hate of Mordecai, the Jew, in the Old Testament book of Esther to the Jewish diaspora of 70 A.D., from massacres of Jews in fifteenth century Spain to the pogroms of seventeenth century Russia, from Kristallnacht of twentieth century Germany to twenty-first century Gaza, the story is tragically consistent. Jews are the most hated people on the planet. And it’s even more tragic when we realize that the hatred of the Jewish people is being harbored by some of the most literate people on the planet. In his autobiographic masterpiece “All Rivers Run to the Sea.” made the following observation when the Nazis invaded Sighet, the small Romanian village he lived in:  

“No one in Sighet suspected that our fate was already sealed. In Berlin we had been condemned, but we didn’t know it> We didn’t know that a man named Adolph Eichmann was already in Budapest weaving his black web, at the head of an elite, efficient detachment of thirty-five SS men, planning the operation that would crown his career.”   

The Jews of Sighet couldn’t see it coming. They had reasoned that the German people couldn’t do things so monstrous. After all, they were literate. “They were the people who had given the world the great works of poetry of Goethe and the plays of Schiller.” 

And so it is even today. Gaza is white hot with hate and rage. The battle cry has gone forth. “Kill the Jews.” Sadly, many so called enlightened people are joining those ranks of hate. In a recent essay, for example, author Jonah Goldberg made the following observation: 

“For instance, there’s a self-described “tranarchist” named Jemma Decristo who purports to teach at UC-Davis who thinks it would be just dandy to have a domestic campaign of violent terror against “Zionist journalists” here in America. “They have houses [with] addresses, kids in school. They can fear their bosses but they should fear us more.” 

I look at this world and I see the hatred directed at the Jewish people and the nation of Israel and I finding myself concluding that the only solution to this intractable problem is the return of Jesus to this world. We Christians call that hope/event the Parousia. It’s the day when Jesus will come to set everything right. It’s the day when all the hate and rage will finally end. It’s the day that I believe will dawn one day. It’s the day I find myself praying for. While I can’t make that day dawn, I can watch, pray, and hope that it comes in my lifetime. 

I hope and pray that you do too. 

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Remember the Sabbath

And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that “everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.”

  • Milton Mayer – They Thought They Were Free

Like almost everyone else in America, I’ve been watching the news from Israel for a few days and to say that I’m saddened would be an understatement. To say I’m shocked, however, would be a gross overstatement. 

I’m not shocked. I know people on both sides of this intractable issue. My first exposure to the Palestinian side came years ago. I was in the Air Force at the time and had come home to Boston on military leave and learned that my sister had gotten married to a Palestinian man named Said Zawawi.  I called her and invited myself over to her house for dinner so that I could meet him. I met Said the next night. He was handsome, with dark brown penetrating eyes, and curly black hair, punctuated by flecks of silver and gray. He was muscularly built. I found out  a little about him at the dinner table. He worked as a teller in a local bank and that he still had family living in Palestine. To me, he  appeared to be quite charming and I left for home a bit later feeling good about my sister’s fortunes. A second visit seemed to confirm those thoughts. The third visit, which came a day before my leave was up, changed my thinking. I got to my sister’s place a few minutes before the NBC Nightly News and Said suggested we watch to see what was “going on in the world.” Everything seemed alright until the reporting about an Arab blockade of the  Suez coming on the heels of a recent speech from Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser that made Egypt’s geopolitical intentions quite clear – “We intend to open a general assault against Israel. This will be total war. Our basic aim will be to destroy Israel.” 

Israel’s U.N. representative, Abba Eben, responded with a plea on Israel’s behalf about the threats and the subsequent Egyptian blockade of the Suez Canal. Said sat, rigid, while the report continued. Things changed dramatically when the broadcast team offered what they termed insight into the situation. Said stood up and started cursing at the television about what he felt was reporting that was too pro Israel. His rage built to the point that he went and got a hammer and started smashing at the screen, screaming “Filthy Jews must die” as he did. It didn’t take long for the screen to break into pieces and fall on the floor. The only response I could offer was to excuse myself as politely as I could and leave. My sister called me the next day and tried to explain why Said had done what he did. “His father was killed by an Israeli soldier.” She didn’t offer anything else by way of explanation. She ended the conversation by revealing something I had already learned from the incident. “He hates all Jews!

My second experience with the Palestinian people came years later when I was a service engineer at FedEx’s Eastern Region in New Jersey. The district engineering manager, who was a Turkish citizen, called me to his office and asked me if I would consider mentoring a young Palestinian engineer who hadn’t been with  FedEx very long. “I think it would be a good fit, Phil. You’re a devout Christian with an advanced degree in theology and he’s a devout Muslim. I know you’re both competent engineers and I think your respective religious views might be an interesting combination.” I agreed.

Our first few days together were pretty uneventful. We had adjacent offices and I’d occasionally drop by to see if there was anything he needed from me.  On one of those casual visits I noticed a poster he had put on the wall of his office, proclaiming the “100 names of Allah.” When he saw me looking at it he smiled and asked, “What do you think, Bucko?” (he was already being quite casual in his conversations with me)? He asked. I offered a two word response – “Quite impressive.” His smile broadened. “Do you Christians have names like that for God?”

“We do, but there aren’t a hundred. In the Old Testament He’s called “the Lord our Healer, the Lord our Provider, the most high God, the Lord our Banner, and so forth. In the Christian New Testament he’s referred to as “Our Father.” 

He seemed pleased with my responses.

A week or so after that we were sitting in on a conference call outlining to pluses and minuses of the previous day’s operations. Everything seemed to be going quite well until someone mentioned a serious service failure that had occurred. The call coordinator looked stunned and blurted out, “Oh, mother of God, how did that happen?” Walid straightened up in his chair and asked in loud terms, “Who is this mother of God, Barb?’ Her response was immediate. “You know, Walid. It’s Mary. You know who Mary is, don’t you?” Walid’s answer was, in my mind, pitch perfect. “I see, you mean Jesus’s mom.” Barb now seemed befuddled and decided to call on me for help. “Phil, please correct Walid on this. You’re our resident theologian” I gathered my thoughts and responded. “Walid’s right, Barb. He and I might disagree on many points of theology, but he’s right on this one. I think Mary was a wonderful woman, but she was not the mother of God. She was, as Walid said, Jesus’s mom.”

The fallout from the encounter, from Walid’s perspective, almost immediate. Our daily encounters became increasingly pleasant and productive. We were making the district we served a model of professionalism and service. I decided that my best course of action was to not inject the tensions between Israel and Palestine into our conversations. I believed it these conversations were to ever take place, he would have to be the one to initiate the conversation(s). 

That time eventually came.

We were sitting in a coffee shop near Newark Airport after a long night at the Hub. We spent about ten minutes analyzing the operation we had seen, laughing as we did. “Oh, Bucko,” he said. “It was a real mess. It’s gonna take forever to fix things here.” I agreed with him and I was going to respond, but he cut me short.  “Bucko, I’ve got to know something. What do you think it’s gonna’ take to fix things in Palestine?” I responded with all the earnestness and brotherly love I could muster. “Walid, there’s got to be a way for Jews and Muslims to live together in peace. There’s plenty of room in that land for both Jews and Muslims.”  He sat stone faced as he answered. “Never, never. We must drive the Jews to the sea and kill them all.” My mind flashed back to my encounter years earlier with my sister’s Palestinian husband.” I tried to plead with Walid, “There’s got to be a way for Jews and Muslims to learn to live together. “Never, never,” he intoned. He was adamant and I finally saw that there was no possibility the conflict would ever end.

It’s now Saturday. I’ve been giving thought to events this past week in Israel. It’s really difficult for me to come to terms with the fact that there will never be a peaceful resolution to the conflict in the Middle East. “Why not?” I wonder. There have been wars. Nations have fought against other nations, but many times they’ve found ways to end the fighting and reconcile in some fashion or other. Think of America and Japan or America and Germany. Less than a hundred years ago we were enemies at war. Today those guns have gone silent and we’re now allies. If the people of Germany, Japan, and the United States can reconcile, why can’t Jews and Muslims? I keep searching for answers, but the heavens seem like brass.

I’ll take that as a sign that it’s time to turn my focus to things outside my living room window, things closer to home.

It’s quiet here in Kansas City’s Pendleton Heights neighborhood. I’ve just finished putting food out for our outdoor cats, Charro, Mambo, Chocolate, and Blackie. As I sit here typing I occasionally gaze at the Vietnamese Buddhist temple across the street.  I’m really glad to have them as neighbors. While our respective faiths are different, we share the wonderful bonds of peace and good will.  It’s life in a neighborhood as it should be.

It’s been over sixty years since I served a one year tour of duty in Vietnam. I arrived in Saigon early in the conflict. By the time I left, in 1966, Vietnam had become a cauldron of violence, accompanied by the bureaucratic slogans that all too often described the mayhem – “search and destroy,” “rural pacification,” “body count,” “rolling thunder.” It went on till 1975, when Saigon fell to the communists of North Vietnam. 

Today I have some of the painful memories of that conflict- a black granite wall with the names of 58,318 Americans who died in what became a geopolitical tragedy of epic proportions or the searing pain I felt in my gut when I saw the news reports of victorious North Vietnamese tanks rumbling down Saigon’s wide boulevards.

Those painful memories linger, but there are also signs of hope. Vietnam is at peace. The Vietnamese economy is growing and, according to the World Bank, “is one of the most dynamic emerging countries in the East Asia region.” As I gaze out my window here in Pendleton Heights I can also take great comfort in knowing that I have wonderful Vietnamese Buddhist neighbors. 

These  are a few of the signs that demonstrate that conflict, war, and hate don’t have to be the perpetual foundation of relationships between nations and people.

It’s Saturday, the Sabbath in Israel. Here in America Sunday is, traditionally, a day of rest. It’s a tradition that’s rooted firmly in the history of the people of Israel. About 3,500 years ago, Moses ascended Mount Sinai and  received the Ten Commandments from God. The fourth of those commandments reads “Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy.” (Exodus 20:8-11). There was a time in America when we took the need for a sabbath day of rest more seriously than we do now. Early in our national experience “Christian” America changed that day of rest from Saturday to Sunday. There were prohibitions on what we couldn’t do on the sabbath day. “Blue laws” were instituted in many municipalities, prohibitions on the sale of alcohol were common, for example. I grew up in Massachusetts, where even operating an over the highway freight  truck was prohibited on Sundays from sunrise to sunset . Much has changed since my formative years. Today, booze is sold seven days a week, freight rumbles along Massachusetts highways, and the wheels of commerce hum constantly.   

Things in Israel, the home of the Ten Commandments, things are a bit different.  Saturday is the Sabbath day of rest in Israel rather than our traditional Sabbath Sunday. When it comes to labor, the people of Israel, particularly religiously observant Jews, take the commandment quite seriously. Take, for example, the Shabbat elevators. “What’s a Shabbat elevator?” you might be asking. In keeping with the fourth commandment, Shabbat elevators in Israel make stops on every floor of a building. If one happens to be on the seventh floor and wants to go to the hotel lobby, for example, he or she must wait until that elevator has stopped at every floor on the way up to the seventh floor, then stops at every floor on the way back down to the lobby, irrespective of whether or not there is anyone waiting on the floors on the way up or down. 

The American mindset probably sees it all as counter productive. To the Jewish people there is far more at stake. The Sabbath command is over three thousand years old.  The original reminder was to set aside a day to rest and consider, prayerfully, the God who loved and provided for this tiny nation. Given the importance of that rest and quiet contemplation, something like a Shabbat elevator is a very minor inconvenience.

Shabbat has been observed in Israel for over 3,000 years. There have been a few times when observing Shabbat proved costly for Israel. On October 6, 1973, Egyptian and Syrian military forces attacked Israel along the Golan Heights and Gaza. The date chosen was strategic. The Egyptians and Syrians knew that the beginning of Yom Kippur, Israel’s “Day of Atonement,” coincided with Israel’s Shabbat in October of 1973. They had calculated that Israel would be unprepared for such an attack and they were right. Israel was caught flat footed and it cost them dearly. The war lasted for about three weeks and in that time close to 3,000 Israeli soldiers had died. It was a very painful victory.

In the years since that deadly Yom Kippur there have been Palestinian uprisings, or intifadas. In 2007, Hamas, a terrorist organization dedicated to the eradication of Israel and the Jewish people from the face of the earth.  The following citation from Hamas’ 1988 charter will give you a very clear picture of Palestinian intentions:

“The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.” 

I can assure you that the Palestinians mean business. As I wrote earlier, in my assignment as a service engineer at FedEx’s eastern region I was responsible for training a young Palestinian engineer. We spent many days working together and, in that time, I came to admire his work ethic. We even came to the place where we could express our respective faiths. Those interactions were almost always cordial. They changed when the subject of Israel came up. I once expressed my hope for a two-state solution to the conflict and he rejected that idea categorically. “We must drive the Jews to the sea and kill them all!” No matter how I tried I could not persuade him to rethink his position. He once asked me whose side I would be on when that day of reckoning came. My heart was heavy when I responded to him – “I love you like a brother, but if that choice were forced upon me, I would have to take the sword up against you.”

It’s been years since those interactions. I am absolutely certain that neither his feelings nor mine have changed.  I find it all  profoundly discouraging, but it is what it is. There is no two state solution; there is no path to peace that I can see. In order for peace and brotherhood to prevail the two parties must come together and find avenues of compromise that they find agreeable. The Jews are willing. The Palestinians are not. It’s as simple as that.

Events of the past week in Israel make the futility of a peaceful solution to the problems between Israel and the Palestinans crystal clear. Last Saturday, on a Sabbath, Palestinian terrorists from Gaza swooped in from land, sea, and air and slaughtered innocent men, women, children, and even infants without mercy. There’s no need for me to recount the details for you. You already know them. The barbarians have stormed the gates.  

Israel is now at war and for us watching events unfold it’s also a time of choosing. For me that means choosing Israel! I choose Israel because I know the truth. I know the history, the good and the bad of it. I know when Hamas’s apologists in the media or academia are lying to me. And, I know because I’ve been in Israel four or five times. I’ve mingled with the Jewish people on the Golan Heights. Along with fellow pilgrims and our Israeli guide I’ve cleaned up trash left by tourists in the area around the Church of the Multiplication. I’ve walked around the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem. I’ve shed tears at Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial. I’ve sat quietly in one of the traditional sites of the Garden tomb, contemplating what that very first Easter morning must have felt like. I’ve prayed at the Wailing Wall with Jewish men. I’ve been to the Temple Mount and I’ve been inside Antonia Fortress, where a worried Pontius Pilate interrogated Jesus about whether or not he was threat to his rule. He needn’t have worried. Jesus explained that His kingdom “was not of this world.” I’ve been to Masada, the site where all Jewish military officers used to take their commissioning oath, proclaiming “Never again,” which is another way of saying that the Jewish people will never again be passive in the face of evil men bent on their annihilation.

I’ll make this as clear as I possibly can. The Jewish people belong in Israel. It is their homeland, a treasure.  The depth of love for that homeland was expressed beautifully long go in the 137th Psalm, which some scholars attribute to King David and others attribute to the prophet Jeremiah:

“If I forget you, Jerusalem

May my right hand forget its skill.

May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth

If I do not remember you,

If I don’t consider Jerusalem

My highest joy!”

I’ve seen Israel and I’ve seen the thousands of years of Jewish presence in the precious land. It’s palpable. As Charles Krauthammer once observed:

“Israel is the very embodiment of Jewish continuity: It is the only nation on earth that inhabits the same land, bears the same name, speaks the same language, and worships the same God that it did 3,000 years ago. You dig the soil and you find pottery from Davidic times, coins from Bar Kokhba, and 2,000-year-old scrolls written in a script remarkably like the one that today advertises ice cream at the corner candy store.”

I know the Jewish people. The same love they have for their homeland is the same love they want to express for their neighbors, including the Palestinians. They want to live in peace and harmony.

Today I see the tragedy on the ground in Israel. It’s bad enough, but when I see the vitriol being unleashed against the Jewish people in cities all around the world, I feel broken hearted. How can it be that America’s great educational institutions like Harvard University have become hotbeds of support for the indiscriminate murder of innocent Jews? How can it be that thousands gather in New York City waving banners proudly supporting terror and mass murder? How can it be that Australians now gather in the streets shouting, “Gas the Jews”?

I can’t fathom it, but it is happening. Some are trying to convince us there is a context to all of this. There is absolutely none! As Anglican priest/journalist Giles Fraser said a few days ago. “And for today at least, I have no time for those who want to see “both sides” of the situation. This was a massacre, hideously reminiscent of the Shoah. They beheaded children. I do not want to hear those whose first sentence expresses condolences, and whose second sentence begins with a “But”

Men and women of goodwill, especially Christians, must not allow this to happen. We must reject those who would inflict unending pain on the Jewish people. We must speak up and act as their firm supporters. To do otherwise would be tantamount to a surrender to evil and terror.

We must heed the words of of warning Milton Mayer penned following interviews with good German citizens who had failed to act in response to Adolph Hitler’s madness in the 1930’s:

“Many, many times since it all happened I have pondered that pair of great maxims, Principiis obsta and Finem respice—’Resist the beginnings’ and ‘Consider the end.” 

The warning extends to us today. We must resist the beginnings;  We must consider the ends. And, we must act before it becomes too late

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CONVERSION, PART II

Conversion, Part Two

“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

– John 1:14 (New International Version)

I have two essays in process right now, neither of which is completed. So, you’ll have to bear with me while I shamelessly buy time. The original piece about my conversion, part two, to Christianity, with a few edits added, now follows:

Not long after I arrived in Newfoundland I struck up a friendship with a guy named Larry Clyde Jones. He had been in the army and had left under what everyone sensed were mysterious circumstances. No one really knew, but everyone was curious. It wasn’t till months later I found out what the mysterious circumstances were. I’ll fill you in on those details in Part III.

Larry seemed to like having me around and we began to spend a lot of of our off duty time together. Most of our that time was spent in the Airman’s Club, where for the first time Larry laid out that I thought at first were outlandish plans. They came after he’d had a couple of drinks. He grinned, leaned over, and spoke slowly in his North Carolina drawl. “You know, Philip, I’m in real need of a bodyguard, I truly am.” I almost fell on the floor when he said it. “Why on earth do you need a bodyguard? Are the commies coming after you?” “Worse than that,” he responded. “I’ve been loan sharking and I’ve made some enemies around the barracks and the club. I need some protection.” I sat there like a cigar store indian, not knowing how to respond. After a minute or so of silence Larry made what turned out to be very pivota point of decision in my life. “What about you, Philip? I’d pay you.” “You’re not serious,” I responded. “Look at me. “I’m skinny. I’m not good in a fight. This is not for me.” The more I protested, the more he insisted. We went back and forth for about a half an hour and a few more drinks. By that that I felt a bit of a buzz and a surge of alcohol induced courage, which amounted to stupidity of the first order. I agreed to be his bodyguard, whatever that meant.

For the next four months or so I trailed along with Larry wherever he went. Internally, I was in absolute terror, fearing any potential encounter with a reluctant debtor. Thankfully, I masked the terror I felt inside, which I think made me believable. I also bought a straight razor and carried it with me wherever we went, just in case something were to happen. 

The loan sharking went swimmingly well. GI’s are almost always broke, looking for a few bucks to tide them over till payday and Larry was always happy to accommodate. It was five dollars for seven in return, seven for ten, 10 for fifteen, twenty for thirty, and so forth. 

Things just seemed to fall in place. Larry had plenty of money and he was paying me. What could be better? 

While in Newfoundland I also developed a pretty nasty drinking habit. It was on one of these alcohol induced interludes that I had my first adult encounter with grace. It was during Newfoundland’s very brief summer. A group of us had a few days leave from Ernest Harmon, so we decided to take the time in Corner Brook, which was a few hours north of the base. Most of the guys had girlfriends they visited there. I went just for the amusement. On our first night we found a spot  a few miles outside of town,  high above the water, unloaded the beer and whiskey, and set up a bonfire. The spirits were flowing freely for a couple of hours until we ran out. By this time most of us were too drunk to do the sensible thing, which would have been to stop. I don’t know who made the decision to get more and how Larry Clyde Jones and I got nominated to go to Corner Brook to get more and we agreed to go. That’s when the wheels came off the wagon.

Larry owned a little MG Midget. Larry adored it because, as he often said, “It’ll go like a bat out of hell.” We got ready to go and were interrupted by one of the girls with us whose name was Eloise. She’d made the decision to go with us because she was concerned for our safety and insisted she was going to pray for us as we made our to and from town. She was quite homely and didn’t drink at all.  She was, as I later found out, a “Salvation Army Girl.” But, as I also later found out, she did know how to pray and had the Almighty’s undivided attention.

“I wonder how fast this thing will go with three people in it?” Larry said, as we took off. I was sitting in the passenger seat and Eloise sat between Larry and me, which made us one very compact pile of humanity cramped into a very small place. I couldn’t see how fast Larry was going, but as I looked out the window I saw the water get more distant as we made our way along the treacherous dirt roads. Larry laughed and whooped it up as we careened around the sharp curves,  going faster and faster. Suddenly, on what was apparentlya very sharp sharp turn, Larry lost control of the car and we flew off the road. We started plummeting end over end down the cliff that overlooked the water. As we did I could see the car crumpling around me. I then felt a strange sense of peace. I don’t think it was a sense that every thing was going to be alright; it was a peaceful sense of resignation. We were going to die and that was it. I’m not sure how many times the tiny car turned end over end, but we finally landed on the shore about 200 feet below the cliff that we had launched from. My first thought was curious. I was sure I was dead. But I felt alive. “Well, ain’t this about a hoot,” I said to myself. “You’re dead. You’re alive. It’s all the same thing.” I then felt the warmth of blood running down my nose. It was then I realized that I was still alive. I looked to my left and saw Eloise. She was unhurt. I heard Larry moaning. “I’m all busted up. Oh, God I’m gonna’ die.” I found a hunting knife that Larry kept in the car and cut what was left of the convertible top so that we could extricate ourselves from the car I now feared was going to explode. I got Eloise out and found that she was not hurt at all. Not even a scratch! We then tried to move Larry. But it was impossible. The clutch had somehow come down on his right foot and jammed it into the floor. We couldn’t move him at all. Our only hope was to get help. With our fellow revelers still drunkat the bonfire any hope of having them even think of us was remote at best. Eloise and I decided that our best hope lay in climbing up the cliff to see if we could find help close to us. We left Larry knowing there was a chance that the car could explode, but we figured that there was nothing we could do for him without help. As we climbed the cliff I could hear Eloise praying, “Dear, dear Jesus, help us. Dear, dear Jesus help us. Dear, dear Jesus, help us.”

The first sight I remember when we got close to the top of the cliff was a small house. The lights were on. We scrambled to the top and ran across the road and pounded on the door. “We need help real bad,” I pleaded as an old man who looked somewhat like Fi answered the door. In about a half an hour the RCMP arrived. We took them across the road to show them were the car, and Larry were. I’m not sure how long it took to get Larry out of the car, but fortunately the Mounties did. Larry had suffered two broken legs, a broken foot, collarbone, pelvis, and two ribs. I had a bloody nose and Eloise was unhurt. The Mounties were amazed. The only theory they had was that having Eloise in the car with us had compacted Eloise and me to the point where we couldn’t get buffeted around as the car made its plunge. Their other theory was that “Someone was looking out for you tonight. You should be dead.”

In order to maintain my philosophical stance I claimed the option of chance. “It was just pure luck that things happened the way they did,” I later thought. “It was just pure chance and nothing more.” 

 I’ve either been too long winded or there’s more to the story than I believed. At any rate, I’m going to have to close this part out and leave Vietnam, William Shakespeare, and my encounter with Jesus for parts three and four.

Hopefully you’ll bear with me through this. Part three to follow

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CONVERSION, PART IV

Conversion, Part Four

As with the previous post, this one will make much more sense if you read part one (if you haven’t read it already), and parts two and three.

The rest of my tour in Vietnam was quiet. I never did speak to Sergeant Vartenisian about the incident at the incinerator or tell him what I was thinking. I kept it all to myself. It’s something I now regret. Once I left Vietnam I never saw him again. I guess there are a lot of people like him, who pray for others and never see an answer to the prayers they make. They’re the people of faith who go about their lives quietly, believing that it’s enough for them to intercede, believing that somehow their prayer(s) will be answered.

Sergeant Vartenisian’s were, but it was going to take some time before they were fully realized.

My “deros” (rotation day) was coming up and I put in for anything near home – Hanscom Field, Otis AFB, anything in Massachusetts. When the orders came down about a month and a half before I was due to go home, I found, strangely that I had been assigned to Lockbourne AFB, which was just outside of Columbus, Ohio. It was a shock to my system and I tried to fight the assignment. But my fighting was in vain. I was going to Lockbourne and that was it. It turned out to be providential.

I got in bad with my unit right away, particularly my duty sergeant. I became uncooperative and that made me a marked man. After about eight months at Lockbourne I was assigned to a leadership school. It was the Air Force’s last ditch attempt to retrieve me before I destroyed myself.

I’ll never forget the day I arrived at the school. When I opened the door to the room that was to be mine for eight weeks I saw an eight ball sitting on the desk starting at me. That dreaded eight ball was the squadron’s way of saying, “Straighten up or ship out. This is your last chance.” I sat, somewhat amused, for a while until my assigned roommate came in. “Hey, I’m Vic Edwards.”

“Dillon…Phil Dillon.”

Vic was a round faced man, African-American. He had the proud look of a leader. I wondered if he had been assigned as my roommate to straighten me out.

“You’re the man who’s come to fix me? I asked

“Not me, Bubba. You and I are in the same boat.”

“I’m here because the Air Force is trying to purge a rebel from the flock. How about you? What’s your great sin?”

Vic laughed a bit. “I’m not exactly sure. I think it might be because I married a French woman.”

“So I’m the rebel and you’re the non-conformist. Does that about cover it?”

“That does a pretty good job of it.”

I doubled over laughing on my bunk, pulling the pillow over my head as I did. “Geeze, if this isn’t a real recipe for success.”

My cynical laughter was contagious. Vic fell back on his bunk and began to laugh along with me. “Well, Dillon, if you and I aren’t a marriage made in heaven. We are just one big roaring success waiting to spring ourselves on the U. S. Air Force.”

After about ten minutes our laughter subsided. The room became still as we privately contemplated our fates.

I don’t know why I asked the following question. Maybe it was desperation. I don’t know, but I did. “Do you pray much, Edwards?”

“No, once in a while, but that’s about it. How about you?”

“I can’t really say that I have. I’ve had a couple of strange religious experiences if you could call that praying, but other than that, no.”

Vic had been laying on his bunk until I mentioned the strange religious experiences. When he heard those words he sat up. “Strange? What kind of strange experiences, Dillon?”

I told him about the dreams I had had when I was young and about my experience in Vietnam. He listened intently. “That is strange,” he answered.

“Look, Vic, I don’t wanna’ change the subject but how are we gonna’ get through these eight weeks?”

Vic’s answer was almost in the form of a plea or a prayer. “It’ll take a miracle for sure.”

The word miracle struck a chord with me. I knew that it was going to keep me from getting drummed out of my unit. I was just too far gone. I was at the end of my rope.

My first step of faith was tentative and feeble, but I made it. “Well, then Vic, we’re just gonna’ have to pray our way through this thing. Don’t you think?” 

“I’m not sure I know how to,” Vic answered quizzically.

“I don’t either, but we’re desperate, man; we’ve got to do something or we’re cooked.”

“You’re right, we really don’t have much to lose. I’ll pray for you and you’ll pray for me and we’ll see what happens.”

As roll call for the first day at the leadership school began to ring out through the barracks I looked straight at Vic and said, “Let’s do it!”

For the next eight weeks Vic and I were faithful to our agreement. Where one of us had a weakness, the other prayed and supported in practical ways. When one of us was discouraged the other prayed for strength. And so it went. For my part I wasn’t sure exactly who I was praying to, but it did seem to help. Vic and I seemed to get stronger as the days passed. Vic excelled in drill and leadership. My strength was in classroom activity and public speaking. There was never a time that either of us felt jealous of the other. In fact, we took great pride in supporting one another. What had started as a possible disaster was turning into a life-changing event. 

The real epiphany in my life came when I was selected to as a finalist in a public speaking contest held by the school. Our subject was to be “the greatest leader who has ever lived.” When I first thought about it I thought of Hannibal, who I had considered to be a military genius in spite of his failures. I also gave thought to Alexander the Great, who had conquered the known world as a young man. But the more I thought about it I knew there had to be someone greater than these two men. I spoke to Vic about it and suggested, casually, that I consider Jesus as the greatest leader. “I don’t know anything about him, Vic, I mean not a thing,” I answered

Vic’s answer was right to the point. “Read the Bible. A lot of it is about him.”

Over the next week I read the New Testament gospels twice. I could hardly believe what I was reading. How could this one man, without an alternate plan, take a group of twelve men and change the world forever? How did he hold them together? How could he succeed without an army? The more I read the more fascinated I became. Hannibal and Alexander were great leaders, but as I read I saw that there was truly no one who had ever lived like Jesus. 

Over that same period I called the chaplain several times. “Was Jesus really the Son of God like he claimed to be? I asked over and over. The answer was always the same – Yes!

When the competition came I spoke about Jesus as the greatest leader who had ever lived. I’ve spoken publicly many times since that day, but none have ever compared to that speech. I won the award!

I came during that week to see that it was true and that the Jesus of the gospels was the same Jesus who had been crucified in my young dreams and the same Jesus who had spoken to me in Vietnam. And he was the same Jesus who had prompted Vic and me to join in a compact of prayer for one another for those eight weeks. I came to a place where I knew he was who he said he was. I came to a place where I would be willing to not only live, but also to die for him. It was all very private, real, and intensely personal.

At the end of the eight week school Vic and I won every award that was given at the graduation banquet. There were six in all. The miracle we had needed had come!

Not long after I graduated from the leadership school I began attending a Lincoln Baptist Church in Columbus. I listened for a few weeks and one Sunday, to the surprise of the preacher I came forward to profess faith in Jesus. Most of my friends assumed it was a spur of the moment thing, that this response to the altar call was nothing more than an emotional experience. But I knew better. It was a moment that was twenty five years in the making. In fact, as I look back at it I realize that all those moments in my life that led to that day are really a part of that moment. There are people I know who point to a date and time for their salvation, and I guess they’re right. But there was more to it for me. The dreams of my youth were a part of it. My experience as a young man rejecting faith was part of it. My experiences in Vietnam were part of it. And my experiences at Lockbourne were part of it. In temporal terms it was a long moment. In the scope of eternity it was linked to the beginning of time and to a cross where the man who had revealed himself to me in my youth reconciled my life.

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CONVERSION, PART I

Conversion – Part One

Nancy and I got back from Glorietta Sunday night. We had an absolutely wonderful time.

We each came away with several signifigant requests for proposals, including sample chapters, marketing plans for the proposal, etc. We’ll see where it all goes.

I’m planning to have my first proposal out by the end of the day tomorrow.

Blogging here has been light and will continue to be so for a while till I get all the proposals out.

Until then, I’m going to start re-publishing some of my first posts, beginning with my four part series detailing my conversion to Christianity. Part one follows:

“Within the Christian community there has been a great divide between those who understand salvation in essentially private or essentially public terms. In the privatized version, salvation is essentially a matter of my getting my soul into heaven, while the rest of reality we call history can, quite literally, go to hell. This is the stereotype (my emphasis added) of a certain kind of fundamentalist and revivalistic Protestantism. In this version of the Christian message the world is condemned, and the most urgent question, indeed the only question is, “Are you saved?” Christians outside the fundamentalist camp have been generally critical of this understanding of salvation. They have insisted that the gospel is of public significance, that it provides a context of meaning that illuminates human experience within actual history. Thus it has been thought that fundamentalism, with its focus upon privatized salvation, is indifferent to history, while liberal Christianity takes history seriously but shortchanges the quest for private, or personal, salvation. This way of understanding our differences is, I believe, no longer adequate.”

Richard John Neuhaus – The Naked Public Square (page 15)

No one I’ve read in the last ten years has expressed better than John Neuhaus the tension between these two Christian camps and the political world we live in today.

On one hand you have a group (liberal Christianity) that until the 1980’s had dominated the American social landscape. On the other you have a group (Neuhaus calls them fundamental or revivalistic) who, after a long absence, have re-entered the public debate. That has meant, in turn, that one Christian camp, which was almost unchallenged in the public arena for decades since the 1925 Scopes trial, had to compete with a rival to get its message out to the public, particularly those with political power.

The debate began in earnest in the 1980’s with the ascent of the Moral Majority and other conservative Christian organizations.

Now it must be explained that the rise of the religious right was not only a response to the politics of the time, but also to the theology.

For me the debate began back in the late seventies and early eighties when I was attending seminary. I was working toward a masters degree in theology, having decided to avoid the master of divinity program the seminary offered. I did it because, as I used to tell other students, I wanted to avoid becoming smarter than God. I’d read enough theology, particularly Thomas Altizer, to know that there are times and circumstances when one can profess to be wise and actually be a fool. We used to have raging debates about the theology of the times, particularly the “God is dead” theology that was in vogue. A sample of Altizer’s wisdom follows to give you a flavor of what I mean:

“Only when God is dead can Being begin in every Now. Eternal Recurrence is neither a cosmology nor a metaphysical idea: it is Nietzsche’s symbol of the deepest affirmation of existence, of Yes-saying. Accordingly, Eternal Recurrence is a symbolic portrait of the truly contemporary man, the man who dares to live in our time, in our history, in our existence.”

Seminarians used to love to run around quoting Altizer in those days. My question to them was always, “How would explain that to a cab driver or a stevedore or a baker or a butcher or a candlestick maker?” They couldn’t (or wouldn’t) of course, but it didn’t seem to matter to them. Did the “God is dead” theology, and other theologies of the time, build their faith? Read these words from Altizer, put yourself in seminary classroom, and imagine what they would do for you:

“Another and intimately related form of Christianity’s new estrangement was posed by the historical discovery of the eschatological “scandal” of New Testament faith. Modern scholarship unveiled a Jesus who is a “stranger and enigma to our time” (Schweitzer’s words) because his whole message and ministry were grounded in an expectation of the immediate coming of the end of the world. The Jesus whom we “know” is a deluded Jewish fanatic, his message is wholly eschatological, and hence Jesus and his message are totally irrelevant to our time and situation.”

If there are any cab drivers who happen to be Christians reading this post I’ll translate briefly for you. Your faith is useless and you’re on your own in this world. Comforting words, wouldn’t you say?

The divide between the Christian camps I mentioned earlier came into focus in these classes. The long and short of what I learned was that if I wanted to be engaged in the world I’d better act like God didn’t exist at all. So, if I’d come to seminary to learn and then go out into the world and contribute meaningfully to society I had to abandon the very faith that had brought me there. I could go and call it Christianity. I just couldn’t act like it really meant anything.

But I was, as Altizer had said, a man who would “dare to live in our time.” I was a fundamentalist who, I believe, had his feet on the ground.

I hadn’t always been that way. I won’t bore you with the details right now, especially after you’ve had to muddle your way through a couple of snippets of Altizer. Perhaps in some later post I’ll fill you in. I’ll give you just enough to let you know what experiences guided my decisions in life.

It’s safe, I believe, to say that my background truly did inform my pilgrimage. My father had died when I, my brother, and sister, were very young. He died of tuberculosis which had been helped along by alcoholism and the stereotypical Irish gift of melancholy. My mother went into a deep depression and was subsequently hospitalized for years. This left us as wards of the state. We were sent to a preventorium in Mattapan, a suburb of Boston to ensure we were taken care of and to also ensure that we didn’t contract the tuberculosis that had killed my father.

While I can’t say we were treated badly there, I can say that I came to see that kindness does not always translate into caring. The kind of caring I experienced in Mattapan was one that taught me to always be grateful to my benefactors. The kindness seemed to me to have no inner life at all. It had all the outward trappings of kindness, the food, the medicine, etc. But it didn’t have any of the inward signs of caring. I never remember once having anyone ask me how I felt about wanting to go home with my mother. I never heard anyone ask me what I wanted to do.

This, for me, was lesson number one. I was state property.

Lesson number two came later. My mother was released from the hospital after about eight years of therapy, shock treatment, and God knows what else. At that time my brother was sent to a trade school, my sister to some relatives in Maynard (another suburb of Boston), and I got to go home to live with my mother in Cambridge, just across the Charles River from Boston. One of my mother’s first tasks was to get me some religion. She started sending me to Christ Church, which still holds the distinction of being the oldest church in the city (it was established in 1759). I have very little in the way of significant memories of my first few years there. As I grew and became more thoughtful, though, things changed. In the two or three years after my mother and I moved to Cambridge my brother and sister also came back home. We were a family once again after years of separation. They were among the happiest years of my life. While my sister and I didn’t get along especially well, I still loved having her at home. But my greatest joy was being around my brother. We spent our non school time playing stickball. He was four years older than me and used the age advantage he had to the fullest. I don’t remember how many sixteen hit shutouts he pitched against me in those days, but there were a lot. He took great delight in allowing me to load the bases and then turn to his patented “pimple curve” and strike me out to end every threat. As the ball would pass my stick he’d howl with delight, “Yerrrrr ouuuuuttttt.”

I’d have a momentary fit of anger, but I really didn’t mind. Just being around him was enough for me.

It was around this time that I began to develop my own religious thinking. We became acolytes at Christ Church, read from the Book of Common Prayer, took instruction, and observed the mysterious liturgy of the Episcopal Church. I developed a real interest in matters of faith during those days. I attended classes religiously. I even started having dreams about mysterious things. One recurring dream was of me sitting at our apartment window and seeing a man being crucified on the privacy fence that surrounded our complex. After five or six episodes I asked the rector of the church what the dream meant. “I don’t know,” he responded.

“Could it have been God talking to me?”

“Maybe.”

“What would He be saying?”

“Well, I’m not sure He was talking to you so I can’t really answer the question.”

There was really a more burning question for me, a question that had haunted me since I was a little boy. “Does God know when you’re going to die?”

“Why do you want to know that?”

“I just do.”

“You really want to know?”

“Yes.”

“I’m afraid that’s something He doesn’t know. It’s not like He’s got a clock and says, ‘well it’s 6:00 PM, I guess I’d better go and get Phil Dillon.” It just doesn’t work that way. You wouldn’t want it that way.”

“I would.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to know He’s not just out there. I want to know that He’s here too.”

“I wish I could help you but I can’t.”

“Was that Jesus in my dreams?”

“Well Jesus went to sit at the right hand of God.”

“Do you mean He’s not here?”

“Well, He’s here because you’re here.”

“Why can’t He be here and there at the same time?”

I got no answer, only the silence that told me I had asked one too many questions.

The second lesson I learned in my youth was that I, as many theologians say, was on my own.

As I look back at it now I realize that I was having a dialogue with the rector about transcendence and immanence. I wanted both, but I got no answer then. It was to take years until I did.

While I felt on my own after my philosophical discussion with the rector of our church I didn’t feel totally abandoned. I still had my family; I still had my stickball in the summer and my beloved Boston Celtics in the winter. I still attended church, but something was missing. I recall often being caught up in a sense of wonder in mystery on those Sunday mornings. There were times when I just wanted to float away, hoping to find the the man who hung crucified on the privacy fence of my recurring dream. I wanted to find him and ask him who had done this done him. I wanted to find him and ask why they’d done it. But more than anything I wanted to ask why no one would help him. Praying the traditional “collects” and other “prayers and thanksgivings” seemed to heighten the sense of mystery in me. A few prayers, in particular, have stayed with me through the years. One was a prayer we often recited for our “national life:”

Prayers for National Life18.

For our Country”Almighty God, who hast given us this good land for ourheritage: We humbly beseech thee that we may always proveourselves a people mindful of thy favor and glad to do thy will.Bless our land with honorable industry, sound learning, andpure manners. Save us from violence, discord, and confusion;from pride and arrogance, and from every evil way. Defendour liberties, and fashion into one united people the multitudesbrought hither out of many kindreds and tongues. Endue with the spirit of wisdom those to whom in thy Name we entrustthe authority of government, that there may be justice andpeace at home, and that, through obedience to thy law, we may show forth thy praise among the nations of the earth.In the time of prosperity, fill our hearts with thankfulness,and in the day of trouble, suffer not our trust in thee to fail;all which we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

The other was a prayer we prayed on Palm Sunday:

Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday

The Proper Liturgy for this day is on page 270.

“Almighty and everliving God, who, of thy tender love towards mankind, hast sent thy Son our Savior Jesus Christ to take upon him our flesh, and to suffer death upon the cross, that all mankind should follow the example of his great humility: Mercifully grant that we may both follow theexample of his patience, and also be make partakers of hisresurrection; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.”

These prayers, as beautiful and rhythmic as they were, only added to the growing sense of alienation I was experiencing. God was out there, somewhere, and I wanted to find Him. Was He just a part of some recurring dream? Was He so transcendent that I would probably never find him? Was He even there at all or was all that I was going through nothing more than ritual?

My weekdays were filled with school, stickball (in season), hanging around with my brother and other kids in the neighborhood. In time I became the stickball champion of Chatham Street. None of the kids in my age group could beat me. For that I had my brother to thank. Those frustrating episodes of swinging wildly at his “pimple curve” had prepared me for better things. I can’t say that my childhood was unhappy. When I’ve spoken to people over the years, particularly liberal friends, they have a tendency to feel sorry for me. I’ve never felt that way. In fact in 1995 I expressed my feelings about my background this way:

The Romantic’s Ghetto

Some say their roots are in the land

In the strength and dignity of furrowed country rows

Mine are in the blaze of neon

Giving light and breath to the tenements lining ghetto streets.

Some say their faith was honed on cathedral glass

And sharpened by regal priestly robes

Mine was cut on jagged ghetto glass

And purified by the clatter of subway steel.

Some say they have an eye for distant landscapes

Or the refined beauty of a mountain stream.

Mine is tuned to a ragged ghetto face

Or the cloistered ghetto masses forgotten by the rush of time.

Where’s the dignity of life to be found?

In the land? In a stream?

For some it is for sure…..Where is it then for me?

It’s the romance of the Ghetto that will always fill my soul.

© 1995 Phil Dillon

Our family was poor. My mother only had a third grade education followed by a nervous breakdown, and years of hospitalization to support us. In practical terms it meant we had to live as recipients of the welfare state. One of my mother’s failings was her inability to maintain any kind of economic balance. She would shop, see something she liked, and buy it, as she often said, “On the cuff.” That was her slang for credit. The credit would be extended and the bills would mount up. In time there were a long line of creditors coming by looking for their money. Our way of dealing with the problem was to stay on the move. In one three year period we must have moved nine or ten times. In the times I’ve revisited Cambridge over the years I’ve been a great amusement to my wife. We’ve strolled and passed apartment buildings or tenements and I’ve often said as we’ve passed, “I lived there for a couple of months” or “I remember that place too.”

My first sense of anger at my station in life came when my mother would send me to city hall to get our welfare check every month. One visit is still very vividly planted in my memory. It wasn’t the visit that hurt. I’d made enough trips to city hall to swallow my pride and accept the goodness of the state. On this occasion it was a whispered conversation that cut to the quick. While looking for our check he was asked by another counselor, “Who’s this?”

“That’s one of the Dillon kids. This poor kid doesn’t have a chance. His father died a drunk and his mother’s a dolt. He just doesn’t have chance in life.”

His conversation was meant to be out of earshot, but I heard it and it hurt. When he came back to me with the check he saw that I was crying. “What’s wrong?” he asked

I didn’t have the courage to say how I felt. “Nothing,” I responded meekly.

I left, vowing that some day I would be my own man and that I would never again have to be dependent on the goodness of the state for my welfare or dignity.

This incident, along with my growing sense of alienation from God, brought me to my first major adult decision in my life. I made it when I was fifteen. I was at a friend’s apartment watching television on a Sunday night. I don’t recall who was conducting the interview, but the interviewee was J Paul Getty, who was at that time the world’s richest man. The interview was being conducted at his English estate called Sutton Place. I didn’t hear much of what Getty was saying, but I did notice all the trappings of wealth that surrounded him. Something inside of me just snapped. “How can this be?” I thought. “This man has more than he’ll ever need and I have to beg the state of Massachusetts for the little our family gets.” The internal anger hit a crescendo. “There can’t possibly be a God! There is no God! There never was, there isn’t one now, there never will be!”

As I look back on it now, the decision didn’t make sense. But it didn’t have to. Anger and alienation were to be my “guiding principles” for the next ten years.

When I got old enough I decided to leave Massachusetts. I joined the Air Force in 1961, did my boot camp at Lackland AFB, an uneventful tour in California, and some time on temporary duty in Washington D.C., and then got an assignment to Ernest Harmon AFB, Newfoundland. The assignment was, actually, quite providential. My mother was born in Newfoundland, in a little fishing village called McIvers Cove. This gave me the opportunity to meet relatives I would never have been able to if it hadn’t been for the Air Force assignment. During my time in Newfoundland I spent three leaves in McIvers, all of them wonderful. My aunts, uncles, cousins and other assorted relatives were all very kind, gentle people. I grew to love them. One uncle, in particular, captured my heart. His name was Fiander Louis Park. Fi (pronounced fye), as he liked to be called, was a tall man, almost toothless. If you’ve ever read Richard Brautigan’s “Confederate General from Big Sur” you’ll get a small glimpse of what Fi was like. The one tooth in his head seemed to float from place to place. One morning at breakfast it would appear to be in the upper right part of his mouth. The next morning it seemed to be on the bottom left. And, no dear reader, it was not my imagination. When I visited McIvers Fi was my official tour guide. He would glide down McIver’s dirt road to my Aunt Mabel’s to get breakfast each morning and then take me from place to place. Some days we’d just go up to his cabin. On others we’d go out in a dory together. If would row (he insisted on it) and I would sit and view the breathtaking cliffs of McIver’s and the other inlets in the area. On one excursion we saw a couple of whales. Fi whispered to me, “Look my son. Look I think they might’s be a couple of blues. Oh my son, have you ever seen the likes?

“No Fi, I’ve never.”

They’s beautiful, ‘eh?”

“They are.”

“Oh my son, my son.”

It was on these journeys that I would occasionally recall the mysteries of Christ Church and the man being crucified on the fence from years before, but I would try to dismiss them as soon as the thoughts came. I had decided that I would enjoy these moments for what they were. Life, as I’d come to believe, had very few of them. One had to enjoy them, endure the rest of life, then die, rot, and be forgotten. That was the sum total of life as I saw it back then.

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CONVERSION – PART III

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2005

Conversion, Part THREE

As with the previous post, this one will make much more sense if you read part one (if you haven’t read it already) and part two.

After the accident near Corner Brook I decided to maintain a low profile. My worldview and my ego were battered and needed a rest. I did maintain my love of the stout, though, and it was that love that was to really get me in trouble.

Larry recovered from his injuries in a few months and we got right back to business, five for seven, seven for ten and so forth. It was working quite well until late January, when I happened by chance to pick up a copy of Look Magazine’s January 26, 1995 issue. I got back to the barracks and began reading, first from the cover. There beneath the cover photo of Julie Andrews was a tantalizing headline – “Four special reports on “Conspiracy USA.” I passed by a couple of the articles and got to page 28. There to my amazement was a photograph of Larry hovering over a desk, with a menacing look on his face. To the left of the photo was the title of the piece – “A Plot That Failed.” I continued reading and the more I did the more my adrenaline went wild. From this point, I’ll splice quotes from the article with my recollection of what was going on with me in Newfoundland.

There was much more to Larry than I could ever have imagined. A few years before I met him in Newfoundland, Larry had been in the Army, stationed in Germany in 1961. While he was there he became part of a right wing group called “CUSA,” which was short for “Conservatism USA.” Larry was their “security chief.”

I was absolutely stunned and it kept getting worse. Larry and his cohorts were funding their schemes and platforms using some of the same tactics he had gotten me involved in – loan sharking. From there, they graduated to “selling three day passes,” and so forth. Their eventual aim was to play a key role in “electing a Conservative president in 1969.” To further that aim, Larry’s cohorts got out of the Army and moved to Dallas. sometime in 1962. Larry “remained in Munich,” still tied to the organization. Larrie Schmidt, the organization’s founding father, spent a great deal of time trying to link up with “Young Americans for Freedom, eventually becoming the organization’s southwestern executive secretary.”

Things did not go well for Schmidt. In fact, the article put in succinctly, with just one word – “fizzle!” What impact did that have on Larry. Again, the article put it succinctly – “Jones vanished.”

As soon as I was done reading the article I went to Larry and confronted him with it. His response was immediate. He got a bunch of money from his foot locker and handed it to me. “Go over to the Base Exchange and buy every copy Look that’s available and hurry. Every last one. Do you hear me?” About twenty minutes later I came back with the magazines and sat down to complete the conversation I’d begun. “Are you in trouble? Tell me. Am I in trouble?” He laughed and reassured me that neither one of us was in trouble. He said that he had left CUSA and the Army when things fizzled, saying he never really wanted to get involved in politics. “It was about money. That’s all it was about for me.”

There were other questions I wanted to task him, questions like “How were you able to leave the Army and then join the Air Force? He never would answer them.

At this point I knew that I had to move on from Larry. I’d gotten myself in way over my head. Alcohol had done some amazing things. It lowered my inhibitions. It turned a normal human body into a poor imitation of a flopping fish. And it caused a normally sensible person to let down his guard. 

That was not my only problem. About a month or so after the accident, while Larry was recuperating, I struck up a friendship with a guy from my unit who I’ll just refer to by his first name, Steve. Steve had been assigned to Ernest Harmon about a year after me, which meant that he was going to be there, I assumed, a year after I was gone. I met him at the airman’s club one night and we struck up a conversation over a couple of beers. One thing led to another over the next couple of weeks until Steve decided to “open up.” It was on one of our almost nightly tours of duty at the airman’s club he confided in me that he wanted to get his wife up to Newfoundland but didn’t have enough money for a down payment on a trailer house he had looked at and decided would be good for him and his wife. I didn’t pay much attention at first, but after three or four drinks I let my guard down. “How much money do you need? I asked. He looked pleadingly as he answered, “About two thousand.”

“That’s some serious money and I don’t have that kind of cash. Have you tried to get a loan?”

He slumped down in his chair. “Yeah, I tried, but they told me I would need a co-signer.”

“Well,” I slurred, “Why dontcha’ just go get one. It couldn’t be that hard.”

Steve grinned back. “How about you? You’d do that for a friend, wouldn’t you?”

“I can’t man.”

“Come on, man, you know I’m good for it. I’d never leave you high and dry.”

“I really can’t.”

“Please, Phil, please. I’m really desperate to see the old woman.”

If I’d been sober that night my life would have been so different. But I wasn’t. I foolishly agreed to co-sign a loan and a couple of weeks later Steve had the cash he needed.

After he got the cash Steve seemed to be less of a friend than he had before. He didn’t come by the airman’s club and any time I saw him while we were on duty he found a way to avoid me. I did corner him once and asked if his wife had gotten to Newfoundland. “Oh yeah,” he assured me. “Things couldn’t be better.”

Something didn’t seem right. Have you ever had that internal railroad crossing go off inside you?” That’s what was happening to me. Any time I’d get around Steve after co-signing the loan that signal would go off. “Ding ding ding ding ding ding ding. Train coming. Don’t cross the tracks.”

I found out shortly after these brief encounters that I was in the middle of the tracks and a train was bearing down on me.

I got to my duty station one night and went to look for Steve to let him know I had some misgivings about having co-signed the loan. When I couldn’t find him I checked with one of the duty section’s NCOs. Where’s Steve?” I asked

“He got an emergency reassignment stateside.”

“You can’t be serious. What about his wife?”

“He ain’t married.”

“Yeah he is. He got me to co-sign a loan so that he could get her up here.”

“Well, if you ain’t the stupidest airman at Ernest Harmon. You’ve been conned.”

“I’m tellin’ you sarge, he’s married. He got the money to get her up here.”

“If you really believe that you’re even stupider than the stupidest airman at Ernest Harmon.”

It wasn’t long till the train hit me broadside. I got a letter, then a call from the finance company. They wanted their money. I told them to get it from Steve, but they told me that they were going to get it from me. I pleaded poverty. “I don’t have two thousand dollars.” That didn’t work either. The relationship with the finance company spiraled downward. They decided the loan was in default and they wanted all their money, immediately. Worse yet, they threatened to get the Air Force involved if I didn’t pay in full. 

Now two thousand dollars may not seem like much these days, but back in 1964 it was a lot. I didn’t have the money. My mother didn’t have the money. No one I knew had the money, other than Larry, and I just knew I couldn’t ask him. In desperation I checked my options within the military. There was one. I had to take what was called a “short discharge” and re-enlist so I could get the re – enlistment bonus, which I hadn’t planned on doing. But I was so desperate that I was willing to do anything. I signed over another four years of my life and got the two thousand dollars I needed.

Toward the end of my eighteen month tour someone showed me a picture he had found in a magazine of a Montagnard tribesman. It looked to me like the pictures I had seen in geography classes when I was in school or like something out of National Geographic. “Where’s this guy live?” I asked out of curiosity. 

“Vietnam.”

“You mean Indo-China?”

“No, Vietnam.”

“We’ve got advisors over there, don’t we.”

“More than advisors. They’re lookin’ for volunteers.”

I didn’t know then what possessed me to do it, but as soon as I was finished with that conversation I went over to the orderly room and volunteered to go to Vietnam. Within a week I had shipping orders to report to the 1964th Communications Squadron at Tan son Nhut AFB, Vietnam.

A couple of months later found me on a Continental Airlines flight from Travis AFB to Saigon. I’ll never forget our approach into the airport. The flight crew played the 1944 tune “I’ll Be Seeing You”, then wished us well. As I looked out the window I thought it was ironic that someone like me would be serenaded with words like:

I’ll be seeing you in all the old familiar places

That this heart of mine embraces all day through

In that small café, the park across the way

The children’s carousel, the chestnut trees, the wishing well

I’ll be seeing you in every lovely summer’s day

In everything that’s light and gay

I’ll always think of you that way

I’ll find you in the mornin’ sunAnd when the night is new

I’ll be looking at the moon

But I’ll be seeing you

I had few familiar places, it seemed, to go back home to. There was very little that my heart embraced. No chestnut trees. No wishing wells. All that fueled me was anger and alienation.

My first on-ground recollection at Tan son Nhut was the smell. There was something ominous that just hung in the air. It reminded me of the odor of embalming fluid that lingers in the air of funeral homes. 

My tour wasn’t especially dangerous, compared to what the Marines and Army were going through. About two or three times a month there would be a brief mortar attack. They’d usually last about thirty minutes or so and every thing would get back to normal.

It didn’t take me long to settle in. There was an on base beer hall adjacent to my barracks and I spent most of my off duty time there. Once I found it my life consisted of work, rotten chow, and about four hours a day of drinking.

Some of the other troops picked up on my surly attitude and tried to befriend me. The especially vulnerable of them, the Christians I met, got it full bore. They would usually start with the obligatory, “How you doin?”

“Alright, I guess, but I’d really prefer it if you’d leave me alone.”

“Why. I’m just askin’ because I care.”

“Sure.”

“People should care about each other. I mean, God cares.”

“Let’s not go there, alright.”

“What’s wrong with you, guy, don’t you believe in God?”

“No!”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Trust me, it’s true.”

“I don’t understand. I mean, look at all the beauty in this world. Where do you think it came from?”

“About the same place as all these mangled bodies we see every day.”

“I don’t understand how you can’t believe in God.”

“Well I don’t understand how you can, so we’re even. Now leave me alone.”

The conversations with Christians would almost all end that way. There was one exception, Paul Vartenisian. Paul was an NCO assigned to my duty section. He took an interest in me about six months into my tour. He seemed like a nice man to me and it seemed he really cared about me. The casual friendship went well until he came by the barracks one day. The conversation started innocently enough, then it got religious. “Phil,” he said. You’ve got to know God loves you. You really do.”

“Come on Sarge. Leave me alone.”

“He cares, Phil. He cares.”

“Sure.”

“You’ve got to know He loves you. He died on the cross for you.”

Those words – “died on the cross” – hit home, although I wouldn’t admit it. They brought me back to my childhood and the man who was being crucified on the fence outside my apartment window. “Just leave me alone. I want nothing to do with this.”

“I can’t, Phil, I can’t. Your life is worth everything to Him.”

“Get the hell outta’ here and leave me alone.”

Fred turned to go. “I’ll go, Phil, but I won’t leave you alone. I’ll be praying for you.”

“You just go right ahead for all the good it’ll do.” I said. “Your prayers mean nothing to me.”

In the six months or so I’d been in Vietnam I’d gotten used to sleeping with helicopters constantly flying over our barracks or the sound of bombs exploding in the distance. But, after the conversation with Sergeant Vartenisian things changed. I began to toss and turn throughout the night, replaying the conversation with him over and over in my head. It really bothered me but I couldn’t make sense of it. I would lay awake at night and wonder, “What are you so worried about. He isn’t praying to anyone or anything. Just go to sleep.” But, I couldn’t. The next time I saw Fred I took him aside and told him that while I respected his rank, I would kill him if he didn’t stop what he was doing. He never flinched. “Don’t you understand, Phil, God is trying to talk to you.” He said no more.

A week after that conversation I was assigned to take care of burning our section’s classified trash. It was very unpleasant duty. I took the five or six bags we had, grabbed an M-16, and went out to the incinerator, which was about a couple of hundred feet from our building. It was a very private spot on the top of a hill covered with tropical growth. I unlocked the gate, went in, and started to work. A couple of minutes into my ordeal I heard something rustling down the hill from me. I picked up the weapon and looked into the trees. Near the bottom of the hill I saw what appeared to be an old man. He was squatting down, defecating. “Something” seemed to possess me. A thought struck me. “Why don’t you shoot him? He’s just an old man. His life is probably miserable anyway. You’ll just be putting him out of his misery. Go ahead man. Do it!”

I raised the weapon and aimed down the hill. I was about ready to squeeze on the trigger when I heard these words, “The quality of mercy is not strained, it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven.” I stopped and wiped my face, which by now was sweating profusely. I raised the weapon again. And once more I heard the words, “The quality of mercy is not strained, it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven.” I knew the second time I heard them where they came from. These words that pleaded with me to stay my hand came from William Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. They were Portia’s words to Shylock, pleading against exacting a pound of flesh, pleading for mercy:

“The quality of mercy is not strain’d,It droppeth as the gentle rain from heavenUpon the place beneath: it is twice blest;It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:’Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomesThe throned monarch better than his crown;His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,The attribute to awe and majesty,Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;But mercy is above this sceptred sway;It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,It is an attribute to God himself;And earthly power doth then show likest God’sWhen mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,Though justice be thy plea, consider this,That, in the course of justice, none of usShould see salvation: we do pray for mercy;And that same prayer doth teach us all to renderThe deeds of mercy.”

I dropped the weapon and fell on my face, sobbing. “I don’t even know if You’re real”, I cried. “But if you are please show me. Please, please, show me.”

I look back at that day now in wonder. There was nothing else in my frame of reference that would have prevented me from killing that old Vietnamese man that day than the words I heard. I was soon to learn that they did not come by chance, but that they had been spoken to me by the man in my dreams who was being crucified on the fence outside my window years before. 

That incident, which could have been a tragedy, became the starting place in a journey of reconciliation I had walked away from in my youth.