Choosing Ebenezer

I don’t have much to say today because I’m in the midst of reading a book–an actual, physical novel with characters and settings and a plot.  I absolutely love reading books, but I’m surprised at how much effort it takes for me to read one.  This is partly because I have visitors right now.  My second brother and his wife are here, and I like to cook for family when they are around.  Plus, I have moved laundry to Friday during the summer.

I’m not going to talk about the particular book here, but I will talk a little about the reading experience before I get back to it.  I’ll save my review of the book for when I have it finished (hopefully sometime tomorrow).

Reading a book, a novel especially, has a secret world quality to it.  I open the pages, and suddenly I’m in another place with other people.  I have a group of ideas to consider that have nothing to do with the here and now, with politics or practicality.  It feels indulgent and luxurious.  I’m sure there are people out there who envy me the hours I will spend of these two days reading this book.  I don’t blame them.  Reading a book is delightful, a long sumptuous meal with good wine and a dessert if you’re really lucky.  It’s nothing like Youtube, which I enjoy, or television, which I enjoy, or pod casts, which I enjoy as well.  It’s more challenging than all those things, and if the book is well written it’s much more rewarding.

Here’s to reading a book.  May all those who desire to do so, find a good book to read this summer, under a fan, with a cool drink at hand.

So…I’m behind on posts because yesterday, 6 June, was my parents’ anniversary.  I had intended to post in the evening, but I’m clearly not capable of posting anything after one glass–ONE GLASS–of red wine.  After one glass I have nothing left in me but a surfeit of sleep.

Anyway, my parents’ anniversary has been my responsibility for years now.  My dad died in 1982, and since that time, I always give my mom special attention on their anniversary date.  In fact, I know about D-Day partly because of my dad’s old joke that he had two different D-Days.  It was a pretty bad joke since he did not make the D-Day landing, and since their wedding was not exactly a D-Day.  I guess the date was what gave him a perfect record as far as remembering their anniversary.  He NEVER missed making a fuss of it, and perhaps that is why.  He did have a number of friends and family who were part of D-Day, and he was always aware of the important dates of history.

I have a brother who teaches history.  I wonder what his thoughts might be about D-Day and the current state of the world.  I bet it would be more amusing than mine.

I will say one thing about history.  I have a favorite historical image concerning courage.  It’s from the WWII era, and I just love it.  I’ll include a copy of it here:

This little boy was in London during the blitz, and a Nazi bomb trapped his little sister under some rubble, and he pulled her out.  Look at that tough little face.  I hope that I am that kind of tough.  The modest face and crossed arms fill me with admiration and love.  I suppose that same attitude is what I love about John Oliver.

I also love that John Oliver is funny.  I would love to be funny this morning.  I will try to figure out something funny to write today.  I feel a little like Mary Wordsworth who kept a journal all her life while her brother William became Poet Laureate of England.  Then again, she had entries like “William gathered sticks today.”  So…yeah.

(Two posts today.  Dentist today.  Exterminator today.  This is my vacation.)

It’s D-Day, June 6.  I’ve heard a great deal of fat-headed talk about D-Day lately, people making snide remarks about young people and they don’t know about this day or what it means.  How are they supposed to know what this day is if people who do know a little  history have trouble putting it in perspective? Here’s mine.

The Canaanites had a god called Molech, to whom they sacrificed their little children in fire.  It was brutal, barbaric.  D-Day is when Molech came to Europe.

Of course, that’s not how historians put it.  On D-Day the allied forces landed on the beaches of Normandy in order to drive out the invading Germans who were entrenched in machine gun nests along the beach in France.  American warriors landed and were cut to pieces, and yet they kept coming–into machine gun fire.  Why were the Germans in France?  They had given their hearts, minds, bodies, and considerable energies to a maniac who told them terrible lies and encouraged them to become the hosts to one of the worst orgies of blood and hatred the world has ever known.

I truly believe that the allies won because the German Third Reich was too evil to sustain itself, and God said, “Enough.”  The charge for we humans allowing this maniac loose upon the earth was the youth and beauty of the world.  The men who did NOT die on that beach, who lived and carried on, and came home, were brave in ways very few men are asked to be today.  What a terrible cost they paid because (let’s face it) even those who lived carried terrible internal wounds.  Those who lived were never the same, never so happy nor so hopeful nor so whole as they were before they became a part of that shattering war in the name of God and country.

My father was in the Pacific at the time.  I’ll tell more about that later.  I’m convinced that war cost my father twenty years of his life, maybe more.  It had to be fought.  The people of earth arrayed themselves and poured blood in great rivers.  I think that is the fruit of original sin.  Molech is still marching over the earth, gobbling up people in his terrible fires.