The Youth Replies, I Can

“These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”  Revelation 7:14

The tradition at my high school was that each graduation speaker had to discuss as his or her theme a famous saying of an American hero.  There was a rotating series of texts, and these were assigned by Mr. Snyder, the venerable senior class advisor, who had been at it since my mother was a student.  Even by 1996, this sort of thing was dreadfully old-fashioned, but no one really complained about it—it was just how it was at Clear Spring High School. 

I wasn’t told until two weeks before graduation which text I would have to discuss.  I wanted Daniel Webster’s words from the Dartmouth College case: “she is a small school, but there are those who love her.”  Whoever got that could write the tear-jerker.

But instead, I was assigned a bit of a poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson:

So nigh is grandeur to our dust, 
So near is God to man, 
When Duty whispers low, Thou must, 
The youth replies, I can.

Strip his sleeve and show his scars

“I bear on my body the marks of Jesus.”  Galatians 6:17

Like a number of you, Allison and I have been watching the recent Ken Burns series about the Vietnam War.  Like so many of his other documentaries, it carefully weaves together the story of that troubled era, placing each major leader and event in its proper place.  It also has that human touch that marks Burns’ storytelling, breaking the wide narrative to focus on the experiences of ordinary people who patrolled the jungles, marched in protest and captured it all behind the lens of a camera.  

In his Civil War epic, Burns was restricted to diaries and letters, but for this series, he and his crew interviewed dozens of people, American and Vietnamese, about what they had seen and felt.   It was striking how vividly these men and women could recall the events of a half century ago: the sounds of exploding shells, the feel of boots sloughing through the rice paddies.  Several of them pulled up a pantleg or unbuttoned a shirt to reveal the traces of old wounds.  I can remember that day because I see it every day. I am marked forever.  

My mind goes immediately to King Henry’s words in the English camp before the Battle of Agincourt:
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian:'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day.'

The Consequences Stand

from The Living Church, 19 Apr. 2016

LUSAKA, Zambia — Though the Anglican Communion continues to face deep divisions, the Anglican Consultative Council closed its meeting today with a deep resolve to walk together.

“Our conversations were enriching, not embattling,” said the Rt. Rev. Jane Alexander, an ACC delegate from Canada.

“I genuinely felt there was an outstanding graciousness and generosity shown on all sides,” said the Most Rev. Richard Clarke, Archbishop of the Church of Ireland. “It was a real victory for the spirit of Anglicanism.”

ACC Churns Out Resolutions

from The Living Church, 18 Apr. 2016

LUSAKA, Zambia: In just a few hours, Anglican Consultative Council delegates passed a flurry of 44 resolutions, with an absence of acrimony and division.

Resolution C34, proposed by delegates from South Sudan, called upon the ACC to receive the report of the January Primates’ Meeting, including consequences for the Episcopal Church detailed by the primates’ communiqué. It affirmed “the commitment of the Primates of the Anglican Communion to walk together; and commits to continue to seek appropriate ways for the provinces of the Anglican Communion to walk together with each other and with the Primates and other Instruments of Communion.” As part of the consent agenda, the resolution was received without objection and passed without amendment.