Category Archives: religion

The Perpetual Best-Seller

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(I’ve told people from time to time that I never fear an editor, that nobody has ever written a perfect book—-which explains why there are so many different versions of the Bible on the bookstore shelves. We offer these thoughts from Dr. Frank Crane, who wrote them in 1912, although we admit not being sure about their political correctness.  But we think his thoughts are worth consideration because they suggest the Bible comes from a culture and a time different from ours and its teachings might be perceived as being presented differently from the way we understand teachings. Perhaps, he suggests, we can understand those teachings better if we consider—-)

HOW TO READ THE BIBLE

I have no particular creed I want you to swallow, and no particular church I want you to join. I have no intention to convert you, and even aim to “do you good.”

Still a friendly hint on how to read the Bible may interest you.

You may read the Bible from moral motives, or merely as literature. In the one case, you may find it a very puzzling book, and in the other, very antique, unless you remember one thing.

The one thing is that the Bible is an oriental book.

Unless you keep that in mind you’re pretty sure to miss its meaning.

Some of the most absurd vagaries have arisen by forgetting it, and by treating the Bible as a western book.

The oriental mind differs from ours chiefly in this, that it is essentially poetic. Eastern peoples have always thought, spoken, and written poetry…

Poetry does not speak plainly. It hints, symbolizes; touches facts not with a rough, firm grasp but evasively; loves riddles, dark sayings and apparent contradictions.

It functions in parables and paradoxes.

The western mind is prosaic. It plods, builds, and reasons.

To get to the top of the mountain, the occidental cuts logical steps in the rocks, the oriental flies.

In moral subjects and religious the eastern mind is the more skillful, as such matters are better divined that argued.

Forget not, therefore, that there is hardly a line of your Bible that is not poetry.  The nearest to prose is in Paul’s writings; yet they also abound in highly poetical passages.

No one had this poetical turn than the chief figure of the Bible, Jesus.

His parables are pure poetry; his maxims are full of paradox.

It is very unfortunate that our western bent for logic and bald facts led us to use the glowing images of the Great Master’s poetry as bricks and squared stones wherewith to build up our “systems for truth.”

For it is doubtful that truth is a system at all; it is more likely a vision.

Take one illustration: Jesus would teach his disciples the value of humility. Instead of analyzing this virtue, dissecting and explaining it, as a modern professor might do, He removes his coat, girds himself with a towel and washes His pupils’ feet, saying finished:

“If I, your Master, wash your feet, so ought ye to wash one another’s feet.”

The advantage of this method of teaching is that it is striking, easily remembered, visual, and interesting.

Common sense prevented His disciples from taking his command literally. They were forced to seek the idea, the sentiment behind it.

Literalism is not Truth. It is the foe of Truth. “The letter killeth.”

You cannot literally obey a poet; you should spiritually obey him; that is, try to appreciate him, to get his point of view, his atmosphere and feeling.

Logic chopping is fatal to all poetry.

 

A Study of Fear

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The uncertainties of political and economic life are leaving some of us fearful. A litany of the fears we might have would be a long one. Long before President Franklin Roosevelt warned us about fearing fear, Dr. Frank Crane defined it in terms of positive fear and negative far when he wrote about—-)

TWO KINDS OF FEAR

There are two kinds of fear: centripetal and centrifugal. One draws me to you; the other pushes me from you.

The noblest quality of love is accompanied by fear.

No man loves his wife duly unless he fears to do would bring upon him her contempt or aversion.

No woman loves her husband as she should unless there are pits and fear all around her love, things she is afraid to do.

You have noticed how, when a young fellow falls in love, he is full of tremblings and dreads. He is as frightened as a child in the dark. “Will she scorn me for this? And what will she think of me for doing that?”

A proper self-respect is not possible without self-fear. George Washington,  in the cherry tree episode, was afraid to tell a lie; afraid not of punishment, but of himself.

This is Tennyson’s meaning in the lines:

Dowered with the hate of hate; the scorn of scorn,

The love of love.

Many persons fall into grievous error by not understanding this. They think all fear is weakness, and timidity is ignoble. Hence they imagine they should be bold and fearless toward their own conscience, and have no timor of their own modesty.

It should be remembered that the very finest quality of courage, and the keen edge of true love, is pure fear. The bravest soldier is afraid to run, the noblest lover is afraid to be unworthy.

These two kinds of fear are brought out in the Bible. On the one hand “the fear of the Lord” is spoken of as a most commendable thing, the fountain of morals, “the beginning of wisdom.”  On the other hand, we are told that “perfect love casteth out fear,” and we are not to fear God but to “boldly approach.”

Which is easily understood if we perceive the two qualities of fear. That which is commended is that sensitive, trembling fear which is always the little sister to a great and pure love.

That which is condemned is the craven fear which has no advice for us but to urge us to flee.

Centipetal is the other side of love.

Centrifugal fear is the other side of hate or repugnance.

If I love you I am afraid of you. If I hate you I fear you. But they are two different feelings.

The love-fear is that of the lover toward his beloved, the child toward his mother, the soul toward God; the hate-fear is that of the criminal toward the policeman; of class against class; of feuds and grudges, of the life that loves evil toward the Lord of life.

Patriot

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I am a patriot.  And I do things patriots do.

I stand for the national anthem.

I put my hand over my heart, or somewhere near it, when the flag passes by or when I say the Pledge of Allegiance.

When I say the pledge, I say it as a pledge not as a rote statement poorly delivered:

I pledge allegiance (pause)

To the flag (pause)

Of the United States of American (pause)

And to the Republic for which it stands (pause)

One nation (pause)

Under God (pause)

With Liberty and Justice for All.

After which I sometimes mutter, “Play Ball,” because it just seems like the right thing to do.

But I say the pledge the way it ought to be said:

“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America (comma) and to the republic for which it stands—One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”  I usually finish and drop my hand while other about me are saying “Under God.”

I don’t rush through it. It is my personal pledge, said as one not said as a group rote.  I confess that the phrase “under God” is bothersome because it assumes something we might believe but cannot know. Perhaps someday it will permissible to say, “One nation, hopefully under God….”

That position is heavily influenced by Abraham Lincoln, whose family lived in the town where I was born, and who practiced law as a circuit-riding attorney in the two towns where I was raised. He once supposedly said, “My concern is not whether God is on our side; My greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.”  Scholars have not been able to confirm that Lincoln actually said that and the statement might be distilled from part of the oration given at Lincoln’s funeral in Springfield Illinois on May 4, 1865 by Reverend Matthew Simpson of the Methodist Episcopal Church, who had a “long and intimate friendship” with Lincoln:

“To a minister who said he hoped the Lord was on our side, he replied that it gave him no concern whether the Lord was on our side or not, “For,” he added, “I know the Lord is always on the side of right;” and with deep feeling added, “But God is my witness that it is my constant anxiety and prayer that both myself and this nation should be on the Lord’s side.”  

I stand for the flag, but I respect others who do not see the symbolism in our flag that I see. I have not walked in their shoes or in the shoes of their ancestors. I cannot be confident that I am on God’s side in such circumstances because to do so would be to assume that God is not on the side of others or wished others to be less free than me.  While others might be comfortable in assuming they know the mind of God and are therefore entitled to a definition of patriotism that allows them to judge others from their sacred viewpoint, I cannot reach that level of confidence. I prefer the other approach—hoping that I should be on God’s side rather than assuming that God is on mine.

It is a liberating rather than a confining position for it leaves me free to accept others and to see their possibilities, which I believe is the direction a great nation must go if it is to be even greater.

It enables me to suggest to those who cite early American naval hero Stephen Decatur’s after-dinner toast (“Our  Country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but right or wrong, our country!”) that adhering to such a sentiment requires no consideration of the narrowness of it.

English philosopher, lay theologian, critic, and writer G. K. Chesterton was more abrupt in dismissing the idea by saying it is equivalent to saying, “My Mother, drunk or sober.” His comment is drawn from his first book of essays, The Defendant, published in 1901.  The sixteenth chapter is “A Defence of Patriotism”

Better, I find, are words from Missouri Senator Carl Schurz, a German immigrant who became a Civil War General, St. Louis newspaper publisher, and later Secretary of the Interior, from the Senate Floor on February 29, 1872:

“The Senator from Wisconsin cannot frighten me by exclaiming, ‘My country, right or wrong.’ In one sense I say so too. My country; and my country is the great American Republic. My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.” 

He elaborated on those thoughts on October 17, 1899 at the Anti-Imperialistic Conference in Chicago:

“I confidently trust that the American people will prove themselves … too wise not to detect the false pride or the dangerous ambitions or the selfish schemes which so often hide themselves under that deceptive cry of mock patriotism: ‘Our country, right or wrong!’ They will not fail to recognize that our dignity, our free institutions and the peace and welfare of this and coming generations of Americans will be secure only as we cling to the watchword of true patriotism: ‘Our country—when right to be kept right; when wrong to be put right.’”

We recently came across an article by Noah Millman in The American Conservative from 2017 about teaching children about patriotism, “if you want them to understand their country’s crimes and failures as well as its achievements.”  Love of country, he suggests, cannot be narrow because love, if true love, cannot ignore differences. He cited Chesterton’s comment as he outlined why patriotism cannot be selfish but must involve responsibility for others, just as love grows from an awareness of, and acceptance of, and a responsibility for another.

People feel an attachment, and a willingness to fight to protect, their homes, and their communities. That can take noble and ignoble forms — sometimes fighting to defend your community means committing injustice (as, for example, if you band together with your neighbors to prevent someone from a disfavored ethnic group from moving to the neighborhood). But the feeling is rooted in a direct experience, not an abstract attachment.

For any political community larger than a city, though, that attachment necessarily becomes abstract. So you need to teach your children why they should care about that larger community, be proud of it, and treat it as constituent of their identity…

Chesterton famously quipped that the sentiment, “my country, right or wrong” is like the sentiment, “my mother, drunk or sober.” But the thing about the latter is that she is your mother whether she’s drunk or sober — it’s just that your obligations change based on her condition. If she’s drunk, you won’t let her drive — instead, you’ll make sure she gets home safely.

The question, then, is how you teach your children to see their country as, in some sense, like a mother when their relationship is necessarily abstract rather than directly felt. A love of country based on the lie that your mother is never drunk will be too brittle to survive any kind of honest encounter with reality. But it seems to me equally problematic to say that you should love your country because it is on-balance a good one. Does anyone say about their mother that they love them because on-balance they are sober?

Filial love is first and foremost rooted in gratitude for existence itself. That applies to adopted children as well; we are not born able to fend for ourselves, but radically dependent on others’ love and care, and however imperfectly it was provided if we survived at all then it was provided in some measure. And that gratitude extends to the larger society. None of us were raised in the wilderness; whoever we are, we are because of the world that shaped us, and we are grateful to be ourselves even if we are not always happy being ourselves.

In this time when the word “patriot” has been abused and has been turned into a term of narrowness, when love of country has been defined as fear or hatred of those who are different and therefore unacceptable, when violence has become a sanctioned way of expressing patriotism, it is time to learn what love is.

Paul defined it for us in one of his letters to the believers at Corinth: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs.”

Sounds like an outstanding definition of what a Patriot is, or should be. This is a time to be a Paulist Patriot. But being a Paulist Patriot will require a stern unwillingness to let Chesterton’s drunk mothers prevail.

I stand with Paul. And Schurz. And Lincoln.

I am a Patriot.

Looking Beyond

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(Looking inward has its value but only for a while.  Better worlds are made by looking outward, looking beyond ourselves, looking to what can be for others.  It is called “vision,” and Dr. Frank Crane returns to this Monday space with a reflection for us and a hope we might offer to others as he gives us—)

A PRAYER FOR VISION

O Lord, open my eyes.

Cure my blindness that I may see past the tall buildings of cities and perceive the souls thereof, past the dark material into the luminous spiritual, past the hard things visible until the fluid, eternal things invisible.

All about me are the barriers that cut off men’s view of the wide vistas. Make my eyes to  have X-ray power to pierce through, and to be like telescopes to see affair.

Let me see beyond the quick satisfaction of hate to the long joy of forgiveness.

Let me see beyond appetite to the pleasure of self-control.

Let me see beyond greed to the luxury of giving.

Let me not love the one woman less, but through her the welfare of all women.

All around and about my own children stand innumerable children everywhere; may my vision reach them, that I may strive to live for them also.

Let me see past revenge unto the strength and wisdom of forgiveness.

Let me see past binding price to sunny healthfulness of humility.

Let me see past profit to usefulness.

Past successes to self-approval;

Past passion to poise;

Pas the heat of desire to the light of renunciation;

Past the glare of power to the abiding beauty of service;

Past the rank, poisonous growth of self to the fragrance and flowers of unself.

Take my life out of the narrow pit and set up upon a high mountain.

I want to see, to see, and not forever to be a prisoner of prejudice, a bat of blind custom, a mote of ignorance, a convict in the penitentiary of fear, a frightened rat in the house of superstition.

Let me see beyond the boundaries of my country until all the world;

Past competition to cooperation, past war to world government;

Past party to patriotism,

Past patriotism to humanity.

Let me see past the night to the renewing dawn;

Past gloom to glory, past death to eternal life, past the finite to the infinite;

Past men and things and events to God.

 

What There Is To Christmas

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(Christmas week is much different this year, with many traditional family events cancelled, many gifts and decorations remaining unbought because of their unaffordability in these uncertain economic times, and sorrows because of those who have not survived the pandemic to be part of our celebrations—-we could continue, but all of us recognize this Christmas is different more than it is special.  Dr. Frank Crane reminds us, however, of a universal and unchanging message—-)

CHRISTMAS MEANS THE INDESTRUCTIBILITY OF JOY

Christmas is the protest of the human race against gloom.

The one thing time nor force can suppress is instinct.

In days past religion tried to stamp out earthly gladness, play, fun, the joy of man and maid. As well one might endeavor to dam the waters of the Mississippi.

When we have clamped human nature down with our reasonings and revelations, along comes    instinct, and to use the words of Bennet, blandly remarks :

“Don’t pester Me with Right and Wrong. I am Right and Wrong. I shall suit my own                     convenience, and no one but Nature (with a big, big N) shall talk to me!”

In the fourth century the Christian world was pretty dismal. This world was considered a             dreadful place, to get away from as soon as possible. Consequently, the boys and girls were lured off into heathen sports, for the heathen alone raced and danced and frolicked.

Then the Church established the Christmas festival, which was one of her wisest strokes of policy.

In 342 A. D. the good Bishop Tiberius preached the first Christmas sermon, in Rome.

Into this opening poured the play instinct of the world.

The time of the winter solstice strangely enough had been the jovial period of the year                 everywhere. Then the Swedes of old used to light fires on the hills in honor of Mother Friga,       goddess of Love. Then the Romans indulged in their Satur nalia, the one carnival of democracy  and equality during the twelve months of tyranny and slavery. Then the Greeks lit torches upon Helicon in praise of Dionysius. In Egypt at this period the populace bore palms for the god        Horus; in Persia they celebrated the birth of Mithras, and the Hindus in India sang their songs to Vishnu.

Many of these festivals had become very corrupt. Excess and license darkened the hour of national joy.

The wisest thing Christians ever did was to turn this feast day over to the child.

The child Jesus stands for the childhood of the world, perpetual, evergreen, inexhaustible.

It’s a weary world to those who have lived wrong or too long, but to those who remain healthy in their tastes it’s a wonderful world, full of undying youth, running with sap, recurrent with primal joy.

Christmas means the supreme fact about life, namely: that it is joyful.

In the opinion of many the greatest music ever composed is Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. As a climax for his orchestral composition the master chose a chorus to sing Schiller’s “Hymn to Joy.”

Christmas means that when this world and all its purposes and deeds are wound up, and the last men and women stand at the end of time and contemplate the complete story of humanity, they will not wail nor hang their heads, but they will shout and exult.

The truest, most everlasting element of mankind is play, accompanied with laughter.

(This article is from Dr. Crane’s 1915 book, Christmas and The Year Round, which can be found at https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=loc.ark:/13960/t3vt2h96j&view=plaintext&seq=7)

Refusing to accept the truth

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(Dr. Crane is back in his Monday slot this week.  With so many people doubting or being encouraged to doubt the truth of the November 3 election results, we thought it appropriate to share his thoughts on truth and his answer to a question—)

WHAT TO DO

An interesting letter comes to me from a man who says that he has had enough of my finding fault with this, that, and the other in society, in law, and in customs; that he is aweary of this aimless iconoclasm; and that he wishes that I would come out flat-footed and tell him and the world precisely what to do to remedy the injustice and folly of mankind..

I could comply with his requests. I or any other opinionated man could in a half-hour tell the world just what it ought to do.

“I can call spirits from the vasty deep.

Why, so can I, or so can any man;

But will they come when you do call for them?”

The trouble lies here: that neither the individual man nor mankind in general becomes better by TELLING.

Didactic teaching may do some good, but only in a very roundabout way; by familiarizing the hearer with helpful principles and ideas.

If an angel from God were to appear and tell the world precisely what to do, and if every man and woman believed him, they still would not, and could not, do what he said.

The reason is a psychological one. It is that the net result of any truth you had a man is the product of that truth MIXED WITH THE STUFF ALREADY IN HIS MIND.  Your information is not ADDED to his, it is DILUTED by his.

It all depends on the kind of mind, the whole set of ideas, habits, temperament, and so on with which the imparted truth is compounded.

Hence we see that progress is a matter of growth; it is slow; it moves by waves a generation apart. Old notions and inborn prejudices die hard, and rule us a long while after they are dead.

The human mind today is haunted by a swarm of ghosts of ancient frauds. Think of how many people today still believe in the divine right of kings, in the “natural” right of inheriting property, in the supremacy of Mahomet, and that criminals can be cured by punishment!

Some day, said Victor Hugo, children will be amazed to hear that there were kings in Europe. And some day, we may say, children will look back with incredulity upon our own era, where mothers can be seen content with their happy children and not turn a hand to rescue the myriad other children from stunting toil.

Many a thinker has thought out an elaborate plan for smashing things and composing them all anew. But not so comes the Golden Age.

It is a tree growing, not a house building. Age after age things get better, as the long rising of the tide.

Truth is like a lump of leaven which a woman puts in a measure of meal “until the whole is leavened.”

All we can do is keep on declaring the truth as we see it; putting in the leaven and waiting. We are digging about the truth, watering and cultivating it.  We do not “make’ it; the gardener does not “make” apples.”

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God and the election

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(Since July, 1997, the Reverend Doyle Sager has been the lead pastor of the First Baptist Church, next to my First Christian Church—and across the street from the First Methodist Church—a few blocks from the Missouri Capitol.  Whenever I stop at the cafeteria in the basement of the Capitol, I see if there’s a new edition of Word and Way, a monthly Baptist magazine because I enjoy Doyle’s thoughtful essays.  He wrote one a year ago, in the October, 2019 edition, that is appropriate for these last few days before a major election.  We’re passing it along today instead of our usual meditation from Dr. Frank Crane because it strikes us as eminently appropriate to our times.)

NATIONALISM & THE TRIBAL GOD IT CREATES

More than anytime in our recent history, America is struggling to discern the difference between patriotism and nationalism. This summer I attended the annual gathering of the Baptist World Alliance in Nassau, the Bahamas, interacting with believers from approximately 50 nations. As always, it was a beautiful experience of cultural immersion—all sorts of languages, all shades of skin color, and all kinds of beautiful Caribbean costumes. Back in my room late one evening, I made a journal entry about a Christ who is bigger than our Western culture and sectarian politics.

But instead of worshipping a Cosmic Christ, many have settled for a tribal deity who suits our tribal behavior. The result? A nationalism which places country above God and uses religion to justify any means.

Observe carefully: Most genocides are religion-based. These pogroms christen violence in the name of their god. Conveniently, a tribal god hates what we hate and loves what we love. In contrast, the true Lord God of Hebrew and Christian scripture is larger than our nationalism. Isaiah, Jonah, John the Baptist, and Jesus all bear witness to a God who strides above the nations and will not be domesticated for our parochial purposes.

History offers many warnings. By the mind-1930s Germany’s body politic had been infected with Hitler’s toxic fascism. In protest, Karl Barth and others crafted the Barmen Declaration, a bold witness offered by those who loved their country enough to tell it the truth (an essential ingredient in true patriotism).

For our purposes, two points from the Barmen Declaration are particularly relevant. Number three: “The message and order of the church should not be influenced by the current political convictions.” And number six calls for the rejection of “the subordination of the Church to the state…” In other words, the Church is not the errand boy for any politician or party.

Nationalism loves to delete unpleasant portions of its history, bending and weaponizing its myths to align with its purposes. Patriotism, on the other hand, is willing to face harsh truth in order to be liberated from the past. Karl Barth often marveled at the human capacity for self-deception. It never occurs to us that God might be opposed to us. We always see God as the guarantor of our values, our way of life and our tribe. What if we’re wrong? What if God isn’t pleased?

Here’s a challenge: Read in detail the tragic massacre of Native Americans at Sand Creek and Wounded Knee. Also consider a lesser-known national sin, the Rock Springs massacre.  After the sweat and toil of thousands of immigrant Chinese had made possible the completion of the transcontinental railroad, white Americans decided they had no more use for the foreigners who were taking up space and being hired for jobs that whites needed. Tensions rose and a riot broke out in present-day Rock Springs, Wyoming. Enraged miners killed at least 28 Chinese and injured 15 others. Seventy-eight Chinese homes were burned. One local newspaper defended the killings. A grand jury refused to bring any indictments. No one was ever convicted for the slaughter.

Our church recently hosted a community worship service commemorating the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in America.  The service was a painful time of truth-telling, as blacks and whites together reflected on our country’s nightmare and our dreams. We cannot undo the past, but we can tell ourselves the truth in order to make tomorrow better.

Without fail, history bears witness to an ironic truth: Nationalism always leaves us more enslaved, not more free.  This is true because tribalism always shrinks us—a smaller world, more selfish goals, deeper fears and more distrust of the other. And a small-hearted tribe always needs a very small, angry, god.

Recent brain science research has revealed that we become like the God we worship.  Contemplating a loving God strengthens portions of our brain where sympathy and reason track.  Contemplating a wrathful God empowers the limbic system, which is filled with aggression and fear. Brian McLaren comments, “The God we choose to love changes us into his image, whether [that God] exists or not. (A New Kind of Christianity, p. 279).

Everyday, Americans get to decide; Do we choose a god who is a mascot for our shameless nationalism? Or do we choose the one who is above all rulers and authority and who calls us to healthy, thoughtful patriotism.

(Reverend Sager was diagnosed in mid-August with Stage IV lung cancer. He recently finished a round of chemotherapy and posted on his web page that the results were encouraging. We pray for his recovery.)

 

Rights

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(The public discussion of public rights is all about us, whether in the streets, on the campaign trails, or in the halls of Congress and the chambers of our courts.  Dr. Frank Crane warns that false government turns people against each other as he ponders—)

“THE RIGHTS OF MAN”

A book that ought to be studied by every young American, a book from which extracts ought to be included in every reader used in our public schools, is Thomas Paine’s “Rights of Man.”

Because of his severe criticism of conventional religion, in his “Age of Reason” and other writings, Tom Paine’s name used to be among the bugaboos for children, for long held place in that dreaded and horrific trinity of “Infidels,” Voltaire, Paine, and Ingersoll.

But this was more due to the temper of his time than to the nature of his works; for what was bold and terrible in the age of the beginnings of free inquiry may now be heard from the most orthodox pulpits. I can assure the cautious reader, however, that in the “Rights of Man” religion is scarcely mentioned and not at all attacked. So much for the odium theologicum.

Paine’s “Rights of Man” was composed as a reply to Burke’s attack upon the principles of republicanism as manifested in the French Revolution.

It is a clear, masterful, and virtuous statement of the fundamental ideas of democracy; and this is what recommends it to us. Written about the time of the birth of the United States, and dedicate to George Washington, it is now, after a century of experiment, still one of the best compendiums of democracy to be found on the library shelf. It deserves a place among the dozen epoch-making books of the race. Like Kant’s “Pure Reason,” Rousseau’s “Emile,” and Darwin’s “Origin of Species,” it is a mile-stone in human development that marks a point of progress that never can be retraced. There are few volumes that contain so many sentences all men ought to know by heart.

The whole delusion of monarchy is pitilessly exposed; it is shown how militarism is monarchy’s  natural right hand; the fallacy of punishment and governing by terror, and the injustice of inheritance and the established rule of the living by the dead are riddled by his clear reasoning.

Speaking of punishments, he says: “Lay then the axe to the root and teach governments humanity. It is their sanguinary punishments that corrupt mankind. It is over the lowest class of mankind that government by terror, instead of reason, is intended to operate, and it is on them it has its worst effect.  They afflict in turn the examples of terror they have been instructed to practice.”

He thus incisively marks the differences between a monarchy and a republic: “Governments arise either out of or over the people.” The despotic governments of Europe arose in conquest; those of France and America arose from the consent of society itself.

This for heredities: “The idea of hereditary rules or legislators is as inconstant as that of hereditary judges or hereditary juries; and as absurd as a hereditary mathematician; and as ridiculous as a hereditary poet laureate.”

Here are some other pointed sayings: “A man or a body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.”

“When a man in a wrong cause attempts to steer his course by anything else than some polar truth or principle, he is sure to be lost. Neither memory nor invention will supply the want of this. The former fails him, and the latter betrays him.”

“Wrongs cannot have a legal descent.”

Placemen, job-holders, can find for the system or party under which they hold office “as many reasons as their salaries amount to.”

“Every war terminates with the addition of taxes. War therefore is a principal part of the system of autocracies. To establish any mode to abolish war, however advantageous it might be to the nation, would be to take from government the most lucrative of its branches. The frivolous matters upon which war is made show the avidity of governments to uphold the system of war, and betray the motives upon which they act.”

“The animosity which nations reciprocally entertain is nothing more than what the policy of their governments excites to keep up the spirits of their system. Each government accuses the other of perfidy, intrigue, and ambition, as a means of heating the imaginations of their respective nations, and incensing them to hostilities. MAN IS NOT THE ENEMY OF MAN, but through the medium of a false government

Dr. Crane appreciates our imperfections  

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(For the next ninety days or so we will be subjected to hour after hour—in 30-second bites—of attacks and counter-attacks on those seeking our support at the ballot box.  In fact, probably we’ve already had some of that in the primary campaigns. We know it will become intolerable noise until the November elections, though.  Dr. Frank Crane, however, suggests we might find something redeeming in our imperfections as he is—)

IN PRAISE OF FLAWS

The old priest’s pale face lit up with a curious one-sided smile. It was a find face, of a certain marble composure, as if he were a living carven stone rather than flesh and blood; yet there was a glint of humor in his eye, and of wisdom, for the two are akin, though one be the gift of God and the other the harvest of experience.

He spoke to her, a disheveled mass of self-pity and helpless remorse, one of the kind that picks at sin like a child at a hangnail, and said,

“Do not lacerate yourself, lady. Sack-cloth and ashes have virtue when applied to the body, according to tradition, but I know of no warrant for applying irritants to the soul. Your fault is the fault, it is true, and for sin, even the smallest, there is no excuse, but I question if you are the worse for it.

“Far be it from me to say a word that might encourage one to evil, condone heresy in the slightest degree, or justify imperfection. But the smooth polish of angelic sanctity is not for mortals. To be human is not the unpardonable sin.

“So, while I may not say a word for wrongdoing, yet I may speak in praise of flaws. For it is not by their strength but by their weakness that human creatures get their hold on one another.

“No one has a mightier grasp of love than a baby, that holds its mother in a grip of steel and binds strong men to its service; and the secret of this strange influence is but the child’s sheer helplessness….

“And doubtless it is because we are so blind and helpless, stumble and grope so pitifully, and are altogether so marred with ignorance that the divine hand is reached out to help us.  Thus the Almighty is the servant of the feeble, as it is written, He is servant of all, for it is ever the business of the strong to serve the weak.

“It is not the classic beauty in a face that moves us. Hearts hang upon the little pegs of imperfection. If we were perfect no one would love us; we might be admired but not loved. Let us then be thankful for our tentacular blemishes. They are like the little tendrils of climbing vines; by them we cling and rise.

You recall what the cardinal said, in Ariadne in Mantua.* ‘There is, I notice, even in yoru speaking voice,’ he said to the singer Diego, ‘a certain quality such as folk say melts men’s hearts; a trifle hoarseness, a something of a break, which mars it as mere sound but gives it more power than that of sound.’

“Hate not yourself, dear lady, because you are mortal; but rather study to make use of your limitations, that you may weave all your little failings into a strong web of success. Souls can go forward even by falling. Walking has been called a succession of forward fallings. And more people slip and blunder into happiness than capture happiness by shrewdness.”

Whereupon the lady went her way, a little heartened and much puzzled, while the good priest murmured to himself: “Heaven forgive me if I have said anything she could understand.”

(*Ariadne inMantua, a Romance in Five Acts, was written in 1903 by prolific supernatural fiction British author Violet Paget 1856-1935), who wrote under the pen name of Vernon Lee. Thomas B. Mosher wrote in a foreword to the book:  “As for her vanished world of dear dead women and their lovers who are dust, we may indeed for a brief hour enter that enchanted atmosphere. Then a vapour arises as out of long lost lagoons, and, be it Venice or Mantua, we come to feel ‘how deep an abyss separates us—and how many faint and nameless ghosts crowd round the few enduring things bequeathed to us by the past.’” The work is available to read on the internet.)

Us vs. Us

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A fearful old man sat down at my computer yesterday and began to type.

The son of Kansas Baptist/Methodist Republicans—Landon, anybody-but-Roosevelt, Dewey, Eisenhower, Nixon Republicans—earlier in the year fearful of a spreading plague but now fearful of something more dangerous.

Fearful that he might soon see an American Tiananmen Square, the violent and deadly pro-democracy protests that are remembered because of the image of one man blocking a military tank on its way to put down the demonstrations.

Fearful that a desperate effort to project and protect personal power without limits, unchallenged by timid participants from his own party intimidated by his presence and his loud loyalist legion will leave a legacy of distrust in a system of government created long ago by men whose ideals ultimately far overshadowed their ideology.

Fearful of a force that sees a crisis as a political opportunity rather than as a cause demanding responsibility and as an opportunity for creating a united spirit to reach an inclusive goal.

Fearful of a climate being expanded that encourages citizens to feel they are victims of government rather than responsible participants in it.

The old man at the keyboard remembers other bad times and other missed opportunities to heal the national spirit, other days of burnings and of lootings, other days when the peaceful expression of grief and of hope growing from it was overshadowed by uncaring opportunistic violence that diverted actions and intentions to create a better community and a better nation to overshadowing relief that the burnings and lootings finally were over.

The old man, having seen many things in a long life, is fearful, fearful that the democratic republic that he and his Kansas Republican parents have loved and believed in has been pushed to the edge of its existence by repeated missed opportunities and now by leadership that cares about plagues and public tragedy and disruption only to the degree that it can turn them to perceived personal advantage.

The old man is fearful when those within a leader’s orbit lack the bravery to advocate compassion that transcends perpetuating personal political power and the will to work for reason in unreasonable times. He worries at the loss of common integrity and the lack of diverse voices demanding it from those in the most powerful positions, and the refusal of those in those positions to display it.

His mind is often drawn to a poem called “Talk” by Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko from many years ago that ends:

How sharply our children will be ashamed

Taking at last their vengeance for these horrors

Remembering how in so strange a time

common integrity could look like courage.

Integrity. Courage. The old man seeks them from those reluctant or afraid to display them. And in times like these when integrity and courage are most needed, he is fearful.