On May 27, 2004 two days before it was dedicated, Victoria and I visited the World War II Memorial. We entered it through the Atlantic arch. On the Normandy inscription someone had left an album of Normandy photographs. Attached to the album was a zip-locked bag that contained three stones from the Normandy beach. On the inscription marking the Battle of the Bulge there was a red rose. And there Victoria and I remembered her father.

Robert Bracken White was born and raised in Detroit and had spent two years in Michigan majoring in aeronautical engineering, but in the fall of 1942 he transferred to Wheaton College in Illinois to study music. There he formed the beginning of a close and life-long friendship with Evan Welsh, later a beloved chaplain of Wheaton College. But the Wheaton idyll was short-lived. When he returned to campus after Christmas vacation, his induction papers were in his CPO box.

He entered the war as a member of the Headquarters Battery 285^th Field Observation Battalion deployed in Holland. His job was to spot the flash of enemy guns and, using instruments, to pinpoint their location. The coordinates would be radioed back to the artillery so that they could target the location and take it out.

On December 14, 1944 the Battle of the Bulge began. When it ended six weeks later, only 14 of the 144 men in his battalion were still alive.

What happened to his unit is a story told in the movie “Saints and Soldiers” (see the previous post). It’s also told in “The Making of a Missionary Doctor” a book about his early years written a few years after his death in 1982. Written by his sister, Frances White, a Professor of English at Wheaton during the war, she writes, “The responsibility of his battalion was to reconnoiter ahead of the infantry. Unfortunately, they sometimes had the experience of getting behind enemy lines before they were aware of their position. This was precisely what happened to your father’s battalion during the Battle of the Bulge, when they ran straight into a line of German tanks.”

Around 1200 (noon) on December 17, 1944, the 285^th FOB having road-marched to the area of Malmédy, Belgium, armed with rifles and machine guns, was surrounded by German tanks and infantry. The clash was brief but violent. The battalion commander surrendered. The American POWs were herded into a field near the Baugnez crossroads, and the tank crew mowed them down. The men of the 285th who survived that day did so despite their wounds or by feigning dead in the snow. History calls it the Malmédy Massacre.

What had spared my father-in-law? On December 12 a courier came up to him and asked if he was Robert Bracken White and handed him orders that he was to return with the courier to England. Officers with his skill were needed to train others for field observation duty in the Pacific Theater.

On January 8, 1945 his family received a letter from him dated December 25, 1944. He wrote:

Dear Mom & Papa & the kids,
Know you are anxiously awaiting word from me—so rest assured I am quite well, but you probably have no idea where I am. I cannot now tell you the reasons why I am where I am or what’s cooking but will shortly be able to make things clear. Am now back from the front in Germany and am in England at the replacement depot. It is truly miraculous that I am here in the light of what’s happened on the front. I just cannot understand God’s love for undeserving me. I really hated to leave my boys in spite of the danger. I had grown so attached to them. I feel quite sure that a great many of my boys were either killed, captured or wounded from bits of news I have been able to gather. How I pray so earnestly for them.

So it happened that later that spring, as Frances White writes, “A handsome young soldier strode into a Wheaton classroom and kissed and embraced his sister, much to the amusement of her class. Unannounced, Rob had come to pay me a visit.” She continues, “The following months were full indeed, for in addition to his ordinary duties, he assumed the responsibilities of visiting the families and sweethearts of his comrades who had laid down their lives on the battlefields of Europe. Although this self-appointed task was a difficult one, Rob wanted to do what he could for the loved ones his men had left behind. And, besides offering the customary words of comfort, he found opportunity to speak of the one who was so moved by the death of his friend that he wept openly at the grave of Lazarus.”

Looking around me in that plaza dedicated to remembering our World War II dead, I could see the living and I wondered at their stories. Veterans were bending down to touch the inscription of the battle they had been in, their children and grandchildren taking photographs. I tried to speak to Victoria but all I could do was begin sentences I couldn’t finish. I had to hold my face in my hands.

I was wearing my clericals. We were about to leave when I heard a voice say, “Father!” I turned. There was an old veteran offering his hand to me which I took. “Father,” he said cheerfully, “I want to thank you. I have the greatest respect for people like you, for what you do,” he said. “To have someone like you with me meant everything once. It still does.”

He thanked God for me but it wasn’t me personally he was grateful for but for a priest — a particular one but all of them whose job in the world is to be a sign of the One who said he’d be with us always — that by my collar I signified. I reached to find words hard to come by and chose two my mother taught me. “Thank you,” I said. I introduced Victoria. I gave him my name. He gave us his. His name is Larry Bush. I’ll never forget him.

When you’re a priest and you say the word ‘stewardship’ people start edging toward the door. Like a family story told too often, it can elicit groans. Soon after I came to Saint Francis, I remember being at a stewardship committee meeting where themes were considered for the upcoming campaign. I cheekily proposed this one: Either life is holy with meaning or life doesn’t mean a damn thing. You pay your money and you take your choice.

Blank stares and furtive glances. I kept a straight face until a committee member said it seemed a little wordy. We ended up that year with Charting Our Future Together in Christ. This lacked punch, I said, but Carol Tutera and Brenda Bell assured me with a knowing wink that it meant the same thing.

Stewardship asks where we are going and how we plan to get there if we get there at all, and what we are going to find if we finally do. Vestries are responsible for that planning, and the only reason for asking yourself what your role — and your checkbook’s role — will be in the life and mission of Saint Francis is that you want to be part of where we’re going and how we plan to get there. Period.

We pay our money every day, to one thing or another. By the way we use what we earn and what we’re given, we show what really matters to us. If you’re a member of my parish then very soon in your mail you’ll receive an envelope from Saint Francis with a pledge card in it. Hmm. You’ll ask: What to do with this? What numbers to scratch there? How much of what I work so blessedly hard for should I give gladly away? If you believe in what we say and do at Saint Francis — if you believe that God is busy in your life here — then when the pledge card comes do this: say your prayers, take your pen, and surprise yourself.

The struggle we have with money is really with Jesus himself. And the truth about Jesus is that if indeed he is everybody’s friend the way the old Jesus hymns proclaim, he is at the same time everybody’s worst enemy. He is the enemy at least of everything in us that keeps us from giving him what he is really after. And what he is really after is our heart’s blood, our treasure, our selves.

On the twenty-third of June, 1993, Victoria, Evan, Gabriel, Gillian and I took a train from Seekonk, Massachusetts to Boston to visit the New England Aquarium. I remember the sea lions as we call them (it would be interesting to know what they call us) racing around in their tank, leaping through hoops, balancing beach balls on their whiskered snouts and delighting us all.

On the train ride home that night, Gabriel and Evan were sitting in front of us on opposite sides of the aisle. At one stop, I looked up and noticed Gabriel patting people on the arm as they passed by him. Victoria saw it, too. She leaned forward and said to him, “Gabriel. What are you doing?” “I’m petting them, Mom,” he said. “What?” she said. You shouldn’t do that, Gabriel.” “I’m only petting them, Mom.”

At the next stop, I overheard Evan encourage Gabriel to pet a steward whom Gabe must have mistaken for the conductor. Gabriel said, “No.” “Why not?” Evan asked. “Because I don’t pet abductors [sic].”

There’s a steward in this story but that’s not why I tell it. I tell it because I ask myself: Why would a boy barely four pat on the arm people he did not know from Adam? And why do I love him for doing it? It was a crazy thing to do. It was a risky thing to do. It ran counter to all standards of New England practicality and prudence. It was debonair. He did it because he saw the people on that train not as strangers but as compagnons de voyage. It was not a level-headed, play-your-cards-close-to-the-vest thing to do, just as giving away your hard-earned cash is not level-headed, not playing your cards close to the vest. But to live this way is to make visible who we are and where we are going together, you and I. It is to see the world lit up as if by lightning on a dark night.

That physical courage is not at all on the minds of people who think of Francis indicates how little people actually know his life. He’d been a fierce warrior as a young man. He survived fighting in two wars (we would call them battles today), one that saw the slaughter of his town Assisi in a battle so brutal it turned the Tiber River red. There were a total of nine crusades waged by Christians in the west to try to take back land that had been seized by the Saracens, as Muslims were called at the time. Living in the late-twelfth and early-thirteenth centuries, Francis lived in the middle of this period. When Pope Innocent III dispatched the fifth crusade, Francis jumped at the chance.

So off he went with a few of his brothers, setting sail from the shores of Italy across the Mediterranean to Damietta, Egypt near the Nile delta. That’s where the fiercest battle was going on, in that critical port city. The Christians were fighting valorously and were being slaughtered. Francis went to the man leading the Christian forces and asked him permission to go into the Saracen camp to meet the Sultan. The commander summarily denied his request. Francis received that denial and went anyway, his brother Illuminato going with him. They walked straight into the Muslim camp.

As they drew near the Saracen perimeter, Francis repeatedly called out, Sultan! Sultan! Sultan! and because he was calling specifically for the Sultan the guards didn’t kill him on the spot. They thought the Christian wanted to convert and weren’t willing to deny the Sultan such a conquest.

The Sultan’s name was Melek-el-Kemel, and he received the Christian graciously. Have you come to convert? It was the first thing the Sultan said. No, Francis demurred. I’m not here to become a Muslim. I’ve come to implore you to convert to the Lord Jesus Christ.

This stunned the Sultan. Flabbergasted, he summoned his sages. This is what they told him, “The law forbids giving a hearing to infidel preachers. And if there be someone who wishes to speak or preach against our Law, the Law commands that his head be cut off.”

The Sultan knew the law, knew that it bound him to cut off the heads of these two men. But the Sultan said, “I am deciding to act against my own law, because it would be an even reward for me to bestow on one who conscientiously risked death in order to save my soul for God.”

Disarmed by the physical courage of Francis, Melek-el-Kemel asked Francis to stay for a while. I imagine Melek offering my church’s patron saint some tea. Francis declined. The Sultan said, “At least let me send you back with gold and silver and silks and other treasures.” No, Francis declined again, disappointed. There was only one treasure Francis came there looking for and that was the Sultan’s soul; if he couldn’t offer that to God he’d just as soon return home empty-handed. He was hungry, though. He said that he wouldn’t mind a little food. So the Sultan gave him all the food he could possibly need, and gave him a military escort back to the Christian camp. I’m not making any of this up.

On the tombstone of one of the Sultan’s sages who was present at this meeting of Francis and Melek-el-Kemel there’s this cryptic remark. “The things that befell Melek-el-Kamel owing to the monk are very well known.” Ten years after this meeting between Francis and the Sultan, in 1229 Melek-el-Kamel freely remitted Jerusalem to the Christians. Not a drop of blood was shed in this transfer. Francis didn’t live to see that. He had been dead three years.

From Mitch Albom’s column about Ernie Harwell in the 20 September issue of the Detroit Free-Press:

Now Ernie makes the best of it, with grace, warmth and faith. Above all, faith.

“A church wants you to do the Sunday sermon,” his friend and attorney Gary Spicer said, sitting with stacks of mail and requests. I mentioned that would be a sure way to increase church attendance.

“Oh, I dunno,” Ernie answered, laughing, “They might throw tomatoes.”

It came out “tamay-tahs,” the soft Georgia coda to his words, easy on the ears, like cool tea to the lips. Ernie’s voice has always been soothing — he sounds like baseball would sound if the game could talk — but we forget it’s soothing mostly because Ernie himself is soothing. He is as gentle, open, kind and decent as anyone I have ever met. He was planning for a farewell speech at Comerica Park. Spicer told him there would be a long video and a salute, and then he’d be given the microphone… .

But be careful not to eulogize Ernie, because he’s not only still with us, he is entering a phase where he may be more precious than ever. “Maybe I can help somebody else,” he said, after we’d finished the ice cream.

Harwell has been an example of grace over every game he’s called, genteel, respectful, never in the way, accepting that he is there to paint the picture, but he doesn’t own the brush. He has that same approach to life and now to death. He says he has long believed that his life is in G-d’s hands, and he’s lived it that way.

And he will continue to do so. To the end. I have written a new book about faith, part of which chronicles a broken down church in Detroit led by a poor pastor who fights to keep it going. Ernie read an advanced copy of book a few weeks ago. He told me he liked it.

That was special enough. But do you know that on his way down to his big night at Comerica Park, Ernie first drove by that crumbling church, unannounced, in a rundown section of Detroit, and when he saw the pastor, he rolled down his window and said “Hi, I’m Ernie Harwell, I just wanted to meet you.”

Nobody looking. Nobody taking notes. Just something he wanted to do.

“When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit enabled them.” (Acts 2: 1 – 4)

Curious, I checked. I went to hallmark.com and searched for a Pentecost card. Here’s what popped up: “We’re sorry, no results were found for ‘pentecost’. You may want to broaden your search by using more general terms.”

No Hallmark card. Not bad. But surprising in a day when so many people like to say, “I’m spiritual but not religious.” Pentecost is about Spirit, and it’s one of the major feasts of the Church year, right up there with Christmas, Easter, the Feast of the Ascension, and All Saints.

That Pentecost is inconspicuous is as it should be. The Spirit is unassuming, televangelists notwithstanding (my kids think televangelism works great as comedy). The Spirit doesn’t go in for klieg lights. To hear Jesus talk about it, the Spirit’s primary business is to teach us and remind us of what Jesus said. That’s a big deal, that clarifying and sacred work, and we celebrate it this Sunday.

The first Pentecost was connected with an event well attested in the earliest history of the Church. The Day of Pentecost c. 33 AD already had a Hebrew festival celebrating the giving of the Law, and so Jerusalem was filled with pilgrims from the diaspora of Jews. The apostles of Jesus — hunted, depressed, confused, uncertain of their future — were together and were overtaken with a wind and what Luke calls “tongues of fire.”

To the sentiment that Jesus would stick around, a wish expressed by the Apostles themselves, Jesus’ gave remonstrance. He told his disciples that they would be better off if he left. “It is for your good that I am going away,” he said. “Unless I go away, the Comforter will not come to you; but if I go I will send him to you… . When he, the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth” (John 16).

And so the Spirit does. The Spirit gives us the language by which we are able to talk to God at all, to pray, to say the Creed or to say “Jesus is Lord.” The Spirit gives us breath to speak these things and, as Billy Shand put it, “apart from that breath we have nothing to say.” Eugene Peterson writes,

Turnips complete a fairly complex and useful life cycle without the use of words. Roses grace the world with extraordinary beauty and fragrance without uttering a word. It is quite impressive really, what goes on around us without words: ocean tides, mountain heights, stormy weather, turning constellations, genetic codes, bird migrations — most, in fact, of what we see and hear around us, a great deal of it incredibly complex, but without language, wordless. And we, we human beings, have words…. This human nature of ours with its mysterious capacity for language is paralleled in the nature of God. God speaks our language. In the term we use to refer to our interest in God, theology, the two words are set along side each other and then combined; theos meaning God and logos meaning word. Theos is capable of logos, logos is characteristic of theos. Then the significance of the parallel hits us: We are capable of speech; God reveals himself in speech. In the complete revelation of God, the Word became flesh.

The Spirit who brooded over chaos made possible roses and the world as we know it. It’s nothing to sneeze at. If you think you could make a better world give it your best shot. Knock yourself out. And remember this. The same Spirit came down upon the Church at Pentecost and forged a ragtag band of individuals into a force invincible against the whole might of the Roman Empire. 

Rejoice now, heavenly hosts and choirs of angels, 
and let your trumpets shout Salvation 
for the victory of our mighty King.

Rejoice and sing now, all the round earth, 
bright with a glorious splendor, 
for darkness has been vanquished by our eternal King.

Rejoice and be glad now, Mother Church, 
and let your holy courts, in radiant light, 
resound with the praises of your people.

It is truly right and good, always and everywhere, with our whole heart and mind and voice, to praise you, the invisible, almighty, and eternal God, and your only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ our Lord; for he is the true Paschal Lamb, who at the feast of the Passover paid for us the debt of Adam’s sin, and by his blood delivered your faithful people.

This is the night, when you brought our fathers, the children of Israel, out of bondage in Egypt, and led them through the Red Sea on dry land.

This is the night, when all who believe in Christ are delivered from the gloom of sin, and are restored to grace and holiness of life.

This is the night, when Christ broke the bonds of death and hell, and rose victorious from the grave.

   How wonderful and beyond our knowing, O God, is your
   mercy and loving-kindness to us, that to redeem a slave, you
   gave a Son.

   How holy is this night, when wickedness is put to flight, and
   sin is washed away. It restores innocence to the fallen, and joy
   to those who mourn. It casts out pride and hatred, and brings
   peace and concord.

   How blessed is this night, when earth and heaven are joined
   and man is reconciled to God.

Holy Father accept our evening sacrifice, the offering of this candle in your honor. May it shine continually to drive away all darkness. May Christ, the Morning Star who knows no setting, find it ever burning—he who gives his light to all creation, and who lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen.

The Lord Bishop of Winchester, arguing in favor of the second reading of *Intoxicating Liquor (Sale to Travellers) Bill, H.L.* in the House of Parliament, 21 March 1901.

I now pass to the Bill before your Lordships. Perhaps for a moment I may remind the House of what the existing law is on this matter. Throughout England and Wales there is virtually a large measure of Sunday closing obligatory upon licensed houses…. When Parliament enacted that public-houses should be closed to that extent, it was quite obvious that some provision had to be made to meet what might be the legitimate needs of persons traveling, either by road or by rail, or otherwise. Therefore, in the Acts of 1872 and 1874 it is provided specifically, not that a traveler, but—mark the phrase—a bona fide traveler, shall be provided with refreshment if he is more than three miles from home and applies for it, or if he applies for it at a railway station when starting by train or arriving. It is of some importance to notice the actual words. The Act of 1874 provides that its provisions “shall not preclude a licensee from selling liquor at any time to bona fide travelers”—who are defined as having lodged three miles from the place of sale—nor shall they “preclude the sale at any time at a railway station of intoxicating liquors to persons arriving at or departing from such station by railroad.” …

The law is meant to provide for the necessities of those who, from business or pleasure, are traveling on Sundays, but, as a fact, instead of people getting drink because they are traveling, they travel, if you can use the word, to get drink; in other words, they travel in order to evade the law which would otherwise press upon them. That seems to me a travesty and a mockery of the provisions which were laid down by Parliament for the comfort and convenience of those who might be traveling on Sundays…. A solicitor in Brighton, who has acted for the county police for ten years … said—”I think I should abolish the bona fide traveler. I think the law at present operates most undesirably. A great many of those persons who are served as bona fide travelers are in no sense of the term bona fide travelers, but merely loafing about for the purpose of getting Sunday drinks.”

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At the end of the 19th and the turn of the 20th century in England, in railway stations across the United Kingdom, signs were posted at the entry of a place that served liquor: “These rooms are open on Sundays only for the use of bona fide travelers.” By order of His Majesty’s government, I could enjoy a beer on Sundays at King’s Cross Station so long as I wanted to be somewhere else.

While in Harbor Springs this summer, Victoria and I, with Evan and Kristin, were guests of Kris’s parents Andy and Robin Torok, who took us down to Tapawingo in Ellsworth, Michigan. (The New York Times has called Tapawingo America’s finest French Country Inn.) Andy ordered for the table bottles of 1989 Château Margaux Premier Grand Cru Classé and 1989 Château Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande Grand Cru Classé, Pauillac.

“The wine and the food in my life aren’t ever going to get much better than this,” I thought. But it wasn’t merely what we were drinking and eating. It was the mise en scènes in which we enjoyed them. I don’t mean just the décor, the garden and the lake. It’s that Andy and Robin aren’t loafing about for drinks. They are bona fide travelers. Whether we’re in the District at Ristorante i Ricchi, in Los Angeles at the Jonathan Club, in Harbor Springs at the New York, or in Ellsworth at Tapawingo—whether we’re consuming a ‘Big C’ at Clyde’s in St. Ignace—they enjoy pleasures as casual accommodations on our homeward journey. As much as they love America, they desire a better country, too. So do I.

Life is not what the Roman poet Juvenal lamented as bread and circuses. So when we raise the wine glass to our lips, let it be a toast to that day when we shall drink with Jesus the fruit of the vine new in our Father’s house. Let us remember our heavenly country.

Almighty God! Look down with mercy on thy servants here assembled and accept the petitions now offered up unto thee. Pardon oh! God the offences of the past day. We are conscious of many frailties; we remember with shame and contrition, many evil thoughts and neglected duties; and we have perhaps sinned against thee and against our fellow-creatures in many instances of which we have no remembrance. Pardon oh God! whatever thou has seen amiss in us, and give us a stronger desire of resisting every evil inclination and weakening every habit of sin. Thou knowest the infirmity of our nature, and the temptations which surround us. Be thou merciful, oh heavenly Father! to creatures so formed and situated. We bless thee for every comfort of our past and present existence, for our health of body and of mind and for every other source of happiness which thou hast bountifully bestowed on us and with which we close this day, imploring their continuance from thy fatherly goodness, with a more grateful sense of them, than they have hitherto excited. May the comforts of every day, be thankfully felt by us, may they prompt a willing obedience of thy commandments and a benevolent spirit toward every fellow-creature.

Have mercy oh gracious Father! upon all that are now suffering from whatsoever cause, that are in any circumstance of danger or distress. Give them patience under every affliction, strengthen, comfort and relieve them.

To thy goodness we commend ourselves this night beseeching thy protection of us through its darkness and dangers. We are helpless and dependent; graciously preserve us. For all whom we love and value, for every friend and connection, we equally pray; however divided and far asunder, we know that we are alike before thee, and under thine eye. May we be equally united in thy faith and fear, in fervent devotion towards thee, and in thy merciful protection this night. Pardon oh Lord! the imperfections of these our prayers, and accept them through the mediation of our blessed saviour, in whose holy words, we further address thee.

Our Father which are in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

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This prayer is one of three known to have been written by Jane. She intended that it be said in the evening by one person in the company of family or friends, who then recited together the “Our Father”. See The Works of Jane Austen: Volume VI: Minor Works.