Author: dowell

“Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d,
As home his footsteps he hath turn’d,
From wandering on a foreign strand!
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no Minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonour’d, and unsung.”
Sir Walter Scott

Over the past week, we have seen peaceful demonstrations that have shined a light on the police state that habitually and systematically deprives elements of our society their rights.  There has been very close to universal support shown for addressing the flawed ideals and structures that created and sustain that police state.  The echoes of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King can be heard in the effectiveness of those who peacefully followed his dream.

We have also seen thuggery and violence that have mostly harmed those same elements of our society oppressed by the police state. 

Care must be taken not to allow the darkness of the latter to defray from acting in response to the light of the former.

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that”
Dr. Martin Luther King

When you step away from the fray and look back, the Left-Right Mythology in this country makes no sense at all and is very dangerous.

Those who the media declare as far-left call themselves socialists, a political structure which involves removal and redistribution of the people’s resources based on the dictates of central planners.  These far-left spokesmen promote “free” resources and yet nothing is actually free, someone’s labor results in its availability.

Those who the media declare as far-right call themselves nationalists, a political structure that promotes the national interests over those of the individual.  Interestingly enough these far-right spokesmen, promote policies which you guested it, removes and redistributes the people’s resources based on the dictates of central planners.

Both sides claim to represent the “working man” while making wild strawman claims about the other side, lining people up within this deceptive spectrum. Given that over half of the labor of the middle class of this country is removed and redistributed by central planners, the ploy has been very effective. And the result is that the two structures mingle together to drive our policies.

This has happened before.

Do an Internet search on National Socialist Workers Party.

“Open your mouth for the mute,
For the rights of all who are destitute
Open your mouth, judge righteously,
Defend the rights of the poor and needy”
Proverbs 31:8-9

You have neighbors whose voices have been muted by an elitist state that sees them as pawns in their quest for power.

Instead of defending the rights of the poor and the needy the elitist state buys them off with money and stuff.
Just enough money to keep them on their side of the tracks and just enough stuff to keep them distracted.

The elitist state has created financial incentives that discourage healthy families so their children will not compete with the elite children for the best of schools.
The elitist state has promoted the use of language that assures their children will not compete with the elite children for the best of jobs.

The elitist state has not defended the rights of the poor and needy it has trampled them.

The elitist state is able to do all of this through the use of division and distraction. While the voters bicker and wrangle over red and blue mythology, the elites plunder the poor and needy.

We have a voice.

To better understand the Lords supper, recounted for us here by Luke, it is helpful to consider the redemption of the children of Israel from the brutal slavery of the Egyptians.

The children of Israel groaned under the oppression of the Egyptians, but they didn’t really ask to be redeemed.  They didn’t really have any context by which to understand redemption.  They even complained at times that Moses should just leave things as they are.

But God is faithful and true and will redeem his people.

The children of Israel were not required to work for their redemption, there really was nothing they could have done.

But God is faithful and true and will redeem his people.

The children of Israel were instructed to have a special feast in their homes and to spread the blood of the feast lamb over their door posts.

Image for a moment that you are a Hebrew father living in the land of Egypt at that time.  You believed the words of Moses and Aaron, you prepared your family’s feast, bloodied the door post of your home and prepared to leave the only world you had ever known.

You spend a sleepless night hoping, praying that you prepared everything just right.  That you spoke the right words, prepared the feast as instructed, painted the door post appropriately.  You are Hoping and praying that as the sun rises in the morning your first-born son will still be alive.

 As the first rays of sun start to turn the eastern sky red you fly to your eldest son with breathless anticipation.

Alive! He is alive!

You take your first-born son into your arms and hold him close, feel his heart beating, his breath filling his lungs with life.

Your immeasurable joy is shattered by the sound you hear from your neighbor’s house.  The anguished cry of a father whose son has perished in the night.  Then another cry, then another, until the morning sun is shining over an unimaginable intensity of pain and sorrow.

Your heart begins to break for the sound of the groans of your neighbors, your colleagues, even for of your slave masters, the anguish is so intense.

There is no record regarding how many of the members of the Hebrew community partook in the Passover and thereby preserving their first-born sons.  Given what we know about people in general, It would not be unreasonable to presume some chose not to participate and some chose to participate in their own way.  And, their first-born sons would have paid the price for their rebellion.  But redemption was still theirs.

Not of works, lest any man should boast –

But what of the anguish and pain of losing their first-born son.  Rebellion has consequences.

We also are instructed to a feast.  A feast that calls to remember blood.  Not that of a lamb but that of our God and Saviors Jesus Christ.  Blood that was shed so that you may be redeemed.

Take the bread, take the cup, in full obedience and submission to the Lord of life.

And, as you take the bread, and take the cup commit yourself anew to living second.

A brief glance at history reveals that those who promote ideologies that are not supported by the majority very often resort to fear and hate to achieve their ends. A more in-depth review of history will reveal that such practices rarely end well, especially for the folks.

The practice involves dividing and judging the people along some set of traits, often a confusing combination.  Origins, religions, affiliations all of these serve the purpose of the Machiavellian.  They spin a web of superiority on the one hand and subhuman inferiority on the other. The members of these inferior sets do not deserve the same dignity or concern for suffering as the fully human set.

So effective is the strategy that neighbors have been convinced to slaughter neighbors, even relatives and friends, in the cruelest ways imaginable.  Inevitably the masterminds of these movements lose control of the beast they create and often become victim to it.

Our society is being drawn deeper and deeper into a Machiavellian pit, over skin color, over religion, over ideology.  Divided, we allow the manipulators to ply their lordship over us.  We think of the others as less intelligent, less sophisticated, less human than we.  They are deserving of ridicule, insult and judgement so we partake and applaud those actions.  All along we are being led into the pit where our own liberty and justice erodes.

A few times in history great leaders have emerged who saw the insanity of division for political means and promoted unity through forgiveness and reconciliation.

The Roman empire used the strategy of division to great effect in lording over the people they conquered.  After conquering Israel Rome installed a cruel Machiavellian leader who kept the people of Israel so divided that violent revolts were brutally and quickly addressed by the relatively small minority of interlopers.

Then a teacher arose who led a movement of peace, forgiveness and reconciliation.  Whatever you may think of Jesus theologically, it is a historical fact that in less than 300 years, the movement begun by this teacher would reshape and reform the Roman empire.  The teacher did not fight fire with fire, he fought fire with water, violence with peace.

Where are the followers of the teacher now?  We need you.

People have gone completely bonkers. Well, not all, but very many folks.

Case in point – in order to demonstrate their disdain for people who hate, a large group of our fellows are practicing all-out hatred against those who they decree to be purveyors of hate.

What?

They hate you because they hate haters and your hate is worse than their hate.

That makes sense exactly how?

Has the whole world gone back to kindergarten?

“When you have finished chopping this row, you can come in and have some lunch”

It was grandmother speaking and the row was that of cotton.

Chopping cotton involved moving through the rows with a hoe and chopping down the non-cotton plants that are competing for water, nutrients and sunlight. Experienced workers can chop a row in little time at all, leaving only happy cotton plants in their wake. We children, on the other hand, took a very long time to chop a row.

Removing unwanted plants was not the purpose for having us little ones work in the fields. Working the earth along with the “help” was just something grandmother insisted on, just has her parents insisted of her and their parents insisted of them. The idea was to be reared with an appreciation for work and to learn to lead from the front. Did you ever notice how many of our military heroes hailed from the agrarian element of our society? There may be a good reason for that.

Hearing her words, the little boy looked up the row, the end of which could not be seen from his tiny height. Knowing grandmother to be a woman of her word, he fell into despair, tears mixing with dust and burning his eyes as he thought to himself “this will take all day, I am doomed!”

The hot Texas sun was unrelenting, but the boy pressed on, re-focused on the task, forgetting about lunch, forgetting about the certain starvation that would be his demise. Accepting his fate, he soldiered on. Defending the noble cotton from the enemy plants, he removed one interloper after another. On and on he fought heroically for what seemed to have been the better part of the day.

Then it happened – the end of the row. No more enemy plants, no more row to hoe.

Wiping the sweat from his little forehead, just like the grownups, he took a moment to lean on his hoe and admire his work. Tossing the hoe over his shoulder he marched triumphantly back up the row, between the cotton plants as they waved appreciation to their champion.

Cleaning the hoe and placing it back in the tool shed, he washed up and arrived in the kitchen for lunch.

It was 11:30 am, still morning.

It is likely that your experience growing up was very different in many ways from that of Niyomugaba Jean Labert.

Niyo grew up in the village of Sunzu in the north of Rwanda, born just a few years after that terror which is all too often associated with Rwanda. Since that event, and all during Niyo’s years, Rwandans have been heroically rebuilding their society and country, moving past fear and hate, embracing forgiveness and reconciliation.

Such things were not on the top of the mind of Niyo as a young boy. Growing up on the high bluff between two valleys and overlooking beautiful lake Burera his concerns were fetching clean water for the family, working the fields and school. With a quick wit, agile mind and acumen for English he made friends of visitors from faraway lands. One of those visitors gave him a tee shirt from Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas, and the seed of a dream began to sprout.

Years of diligent effort led to Niyo arrival in Fort Worth, now a student at that very school. His first year he entered the intensive English program and this coming school year is looking forward to being a Freshman. Ever desirous of helping others, Niyo has started a blog site to help those who are traveling from far away countries to study in the United States.

Give his web site https://niyomugaba.com/ a look.  And leave him a message to let him know what you think.

Please dear reader, for just a minute this Memorial Day, wear the boots of another.

You’re a good young man, not perfect, but caring, for your family, your neighbors, your country. You have plans and aspirations, to develop skills, form a career, start a family of your own.

One day, those dreams are put on hold, not entirely against your will, but you don’t really have a choice either. Evil threatens, your country calls. You have friends who have already answered that call and now you join them. Your country needs you, your neighbors, your family. You are fully convinced it is the right thing to do and you commit.

You are trained to inflict harm on others, to destroy and break, but you have always been a fixer of things, a builder of things. No matter, you are committed. So you go forth, harming, destroying, breaking. To protect your family, your neighbors, your country.

Then, one day you are driving down a road in a strange land when all of your senses are overloaded in an instant. Light, sound, smell, pain, all overwhelmed beyond comprehension.
You awake in a strange place, in a strange bed, pain, confusion, lament.

Brothers lost – and with them a part of you.

Some of your injuries will never fully heal but what can be are stitched and you continue, harming, destroying, breaking, for your brothers, your family, your neighbors, your country. You must continue, you must fight.

Evil is a reality of the world we inhabit and, as a result, so is war. You didn’t seek glory or have romanticized images of becoming a hero. You were driven by a desire to do what is right, what is honorable, what is good. But now, you have seen it. You have smelled it, lived it. You know the face of anger, terror, and loss at a level that most of us will, very fortunately, never know. And that is now part of you.

But you did it brother. You kept us safe, your family, your neighbor, your country. You did it.

Thank you.