Month: May 2020

Bread and Circuses

‘Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel’ – Samuel Johnson

I’ll admit the Blue Angels are cool .  I remember seeing them as a kid at the Lakehurst Naval Air station.  My Mom and I watched the expert flyers execute their exacting maneuvers in the sky.  It was an awesome day.  I was totally wowed by their stunts and formations. 

So it was kind of cool when they flew overhead a few weeks ago.  It was cool again when the New Jersey Air National Guard performed a similar fly over the following week.    The coolest thing was that the flyovers were intended to honor frontline health care workers.  Having seen these workers caring for my Dad, who recently died of Covid-19, I can only say that we cannot honor these heroes enough. 

So I should probably have been on the streets cheering for the planes as they flew overhead, right?

Unfortunately, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.  Not because I don’t honor our frontline heroes, but because I know this is the kind of distraction that inept governments routinely employ to hide corruption and incompetence. And I can’t help but feel that is precisely why the present administration in Washington D.C. suggested the flyovers in the first place.

The Pandemic has been raging for months.  What has the Administration done?  Well, before it even hit, the President had already eliminated the White House Office for Pandemic Response.  Then, when it hit, he called it a hoax for weeks.  His response since has been a slow train wreck.  No national strategy.  Lackluster testing and tracing.  Political attacks on Blue State Governors (and a couple of Red State Governors for that matter).  A near total disregard for the advice and opinions of the CDC and epidemiologists.  Firing health officials who dare point out the inadequacy of the federal response.  Forcing states to compete for supplies.  Eliminating and ignoring guidelines and pushing to reopen the economy in their absence.  Encouraging protestors, many of whom are armed and/or carrying nooses, swastikas, and confederate flags.  Refusing to wear a mask – and mocking those who do. Refusing to address shortages of PPE and other lifesaving equipment.  Blaming everything on the Chinese (because, after all, wouldn’t all the problems we face have to be the fault of foreign devils?).   Pushing untested drugs (and taking them!). And perhaps most infamously, suggesting cleaning agents such as Lysol or Clorox be used to clean our bodies from the inside out (and no, he wasn’t kidding). 

We are being led, in a time of crisis, by a narcissistic buffoon who cares only for his own political prospects.  If you object to my calling the President a narcissistic buffoon, I can only say, as former Republican campaign consultant Steve Schmidt recently noted while using similar terms, that I do not use them to be insulting; I use them because they are the precise words available in the English language to describe his character. The President has handled this crisis with all the aplomb of a petulant toddler who hasn’t gotten his cookies at snack time. 

But hey, don’t worry!  Look up the sky!  Listen to the sound of the jets!  Get out your American flags and wave them!  It’s the sight and sound of America being made great again!

Or is it rather the sight and sound of a great distraction? 

The Romans had payoffs and gladiatorial contests to distract their people from imperial incompetence and corruption.  It was part of what they called ‘bread and circuses.’ In 2020, we have the Blue Angels. 

I’m not falling for it.  If you want to honor our frontline health workers, and I certainly do, then tell the President and his cronies to come up with a scientifically based national strategy for fighting this pandemic.  Tell him to stop politicizing his response and to give our frontline heroes the supplies and systems they need to fight this thing. 

Until that happens, the flyovers, while cool, are little more than a modern version of bread and circuses. 

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent

The Great Divide

They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. ‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace – Jeremiah 6:14

As I walk through this time of pandemic, as I come to terms with the realities of this season, and as I make decisions about how to protect my family, the church I have been called to pastor, and my community, my mind keeps going back to an episode of Little House on the Prairie. 

It’s Christmas Eve, and Miss Beadle, the schoolteacher of Walnut Grove, decides to give her students an early present.   There is a light snowfall, and she announces that they can all go home early.  What she doesn’t know is that the light snowfall is about to turn into a blizzard.  As the kids make their way home, they are overtaken by the storm.  Many make it safely to their nearby homes.  But those who live farther away from town, like the Ingles girls, wind up caught in the storm with no sense of direction and no hope of finding their way home. 

The town soon pulls together to deal with the crisis.  Doc Baker enlists the women of the town to gather at the schoolhouse (which is also the town church) to get fires going and prepare to treat any of the children who are recovered and in need of care.  The Men of Walnut Grove are organized into search parties and begin to scour the routes that lead out of the town’s center.  It’s hard going.  The wind is fierce, and they are practically snow blind.  One of the men, desperate to find his son, pushes too far.   Not wearing the proper clothing, he is especially vulnerable to the elements, and they eventually take him down.  He falls in the woods.

The search parties eventually come across his dead body.  Because the children are still missing, there is nothing they can do but let his corpse lie in the woods where it is slowly covered with snow.

The search continues long into the night, as children are slowly found and returned to the school/church.  On Christmas morning, the last of the children are finally found, and there is a celebration.  The parents rejoice.  Talk about tidings of comfort and joy!  All the children have been found!  Everyone is safe!   Everyone is so happy. 

But then Charles notices that ‘everyone’ doesn’t mean everyone.  Standing alone on the other side of the building is the widow and son of the man who had fallen in the woods.  The crisis may have ended well for most of Walnut Grove, but for those who lost their loved one, the dawn brought no peace, no comfort, and no joy.   Compassionately, Charles moves to the pulpit and reads words of comfort from the Bible, drawing everyone’s attention to the family’s grief.  This ends the celebration, but it reminds the people of the reality of the crisis they have passed through.  Not everyone is happy.  Some have suffered, and will continue to suffer, profound loss. 

There is a great divide in America right now.  Actually, there are many in these divisive times.  But one of the deepest and cruelest is the one between those who have lost someone they love to the pandemic and those who have not. 

Having lost my Dad to this crisis, I have to say that the existence of this divide cuts deep.  I have been blessed by many friends who have understood my grief, and am thankful for the many people who have, like Charles Ingles, chosen to stand on my side of the divide.  But it is hard to watch the reactions of those on the other side.   It is difficult to listen to people claim this ‘plandemic’ is a hoax.  Or selfishly protest reasonable and scientifically grounded policies designed to save vulnerable lives.  Or say that it’s no big deal because, after all, it’s only the vulnerable, weak, old, and unhealthy who die anyway (which isn’t even always the case).  Or that the inconvenience of all this has gone on long enough and they want to just get back to normal so they can get their hair cut, go on vacation, go to church, or sit downtown and sip their double mocha lattes again on Thursday afternoons.  That it’s time to open everything up again without reasonable restriction or caution because, well, the crisis hasn’t affected them and probably won’t, so who the hell cares about anyone else. 

Like the woman and her son, those of us who have lost loved ones to Covid-19 can only stand apart and wonder how people can be so self-absorbed, how they can care so little for the ongoing loss of and risk to vulnerable life. 

I know.  I’m a killjoy.  I’m harshing everyone’s buzz as they prepare for the glorious day when things ‘get back to normal.’   Sorry to be such an inconvenience.  But those of us who have lost loved ones, and there are many of us, know several things the celebrants don’t seem to fully appreciate. 

We know that this virus kills.  Hard and fast.  We know that it steals loved ones away. 

We know that frontline health care workers are risking their lives every day.  Not just because we read about it in the papers, but because we’ve watched them caring for our loved ones. 

We know what’s it’s like to have to say goodbye to someone you love on Face Time.   What it feels like to not be able to hold their hand or embrace them one last time.  And we know what it’s like to grieve their loss without any of the traditional means and methods of mourning. 

We know that it’s both selfish and cruel to act as if all is right with the world in the presence of those who know such things. 

And we know that the storm is still raging. 

So, as we stand off in the corner, on our side of the great divide, all we can do is scratch our heads at the foolishness and selfishness of those who celebrate the end of a blizzard that is, in fact, far from over. 

Under Christ’s Mercy

Brent

A Father’s Love

There are a few stories I could tell today, but this one rises to the forefront of my mind. 

I was in sixth grade, and my basketball team was returning from a father and son outing to see the Nets play the Knicks at the Meadowlands.  I can’t remember who won, but I certainly remember what happened on the way home.  We were cruising back down the Garden State Parkway in a greyhound bus when the driver asked all the rowdy kids to quiet down and remain in their seats.  It wasn’t a simple matter of his being distracted. There was a serious problem. 

The bus’s accelerator was stuck, and the driver couldn’t slow it down.  (No, Keanu Reeves does not enter this story).   

As first, the kids (including myself) thought this was awesome, especially as we zoomed through our first toll booth.  Our dads took it a bit more seriously, and as the adventure continued, their concerned looks convinced us that this was no laughing matter.  I soon realized that unless something happened to slow the bus down, we would eventually run out of highway, and that would not be a good thing. 

Our escapade continued for over an hour, complete with police cars racing ahead to clear the way.  As I sat in my seat, I kept looking at my father, who was sitting next to me.  While he seemed a bit concerned, he kept telling me not to worry, that things would be alright, smiling confidently as he spoke, which went a long way toward putting my mind at ease.  Thankfully, after a while, the bus driver managed to regain control of the bus, and we arrived safely at our destination.  When we did, the whole thing didn’t seem so bad – more like a grand adventure, one that I and the other kids were sure to brag about the next day at school. 

But the most important part of this so-called adventure was what I overheard later that night.  My Dad was talking to my Mom about what happened.  As I said, on the bus, my Dad kept projecting an attitude of calm confidence.  But when he talked to my Mom, all of that shattered.  He had been really shaken up by the whole thing.  He really thought that we were going to crash.  And as I continued to listen (I was a bad little eavesdropper, I suppose), I heard my Dad say something I will never forget.  He said, with his heart rising in his throat, that he had been ready to put me on the floor and wrap himself around me to protect me from being hurt in the crash.  The words sank into my mind with lightning speed –my Dad was saying that if the bus had crashed, he would have been willing to put himself in a position to absorb the full impact of the disaster, giving up his own life in the process, in order to save mine. 

Looking back, I can say this was one of the most impactful moments of my life.  I already knew my Dad loved me.  But to hear him say he was willing to give his life for me – that told me how much he loved me.  And when you know that you are loved to that extent, well, that really changes the way you feel about yourself.  That changes the way you feel about – everything.  Life is never the same again once you know that someone sees you as worth dying for.  It lets you know you are more than a little special in their eyes. 

It was years before I communicated to my Father what that meant to me.  But eventually I did.  In the past few days, I had the opportunity to remind him.  I credit my Dad, in this and other instances I could write about, for teaching me what the love of a father looks like.  And I credit my Dad, in this and other instances I could write about, for teaching me what the love of God looks like.  It looks like Calvary.  It looks like a love willing to wrap itself around the beloved and absorb the full impact of a disaster, giving up its own life in the process in order to save the beloved. 

Yeah, my Dad taught me that.  In the love he showed to me, I saw the love of God. 

Yesterday morning, I lost my Dad to Covid-19.  We had suspected he had it for a week, and when the test came back positive, we knew there was a good chance that this would be it.  As we talked again and again, my Dad remained my Dad.  He never once seemed concerned about himself.  His only concern was that the rest of his family was safe and well.  And if he could have, he would have gladly wrapped himself around each of us, and absorbed the full impact of the disaster, to save even just one of us. 

That was my Dad.  And now, he is face to face with the One who wrapped his arms around him. 

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent