Monday, September 7, 2020             (today’s lectionary)
Taking refuge
Our library lets us keep books for months and months. I get a bunch and then keep them, and now my shelf is full of books I got last summer after a trip through Mississippi, getting to know Eudora Welty’s Jackson and William Faulkner’s Oxford and the blues of Clarksville, along with the anguished Confederate patriotism of Vicksburg. Vicksburg surrendered to General Grant on July 4, 1863, and it was a hundred years before its citizens would submit to celebrating the Fourth of July.
While several brand new citizens were pledging their allegiance in the back room of the Natchez Trace Parkway Visitor Center at Tupelo, a park guide told me how to get to Oxford by way of a Civil War battlefield called Brice’s Corners. “You won’t regret it,” she said.
I set out, got a little lost, found my way again, and spent two hours visiting the dead men in cemetery, their graves marked with barely readable stones below five flags waving in the August wind.
It took a bit to find them, out of the well-groomed way. These were bodies, not cannon or plaques or statues. These men did the work, and their brothers buried them after the battle was over. Mostly they seem forgotten. Since this visit I have been mesmerized by the Civil War and most things southern, and I wonder why.
The ghosts rise out of their graves and follow me around, whispering.
What do you want, anyway? I ask, and they speak.
“I just want to be remembered.”
“On that day, glory beckoned and I answered. Can’t you tell someone about that?”
“If you could just have heard our yell! Forrest (Nathan Bedford Forrest was their general) yelled, and so did we, and it was a good day to die.”
Later I found a booklet written by a Mississippi armchair historian who dug through every detail of the battle, and I absorbed it sitting in my own armchair.
Still another Mississippi-born historian, Shelby Foote, places great stock in that battle. Mr. Foote once spoke with Forrest’s granddaughter, who lived near him in Memphis. “I think the war produced two geniuses,” he said. “Lincoln and your grandfather.”
She hesitated at the other end of the phone and then said to the great historian,  “Well, yes, although around here, we don’t think much of Mr. Lincoln.”
Reading scripture today, I hear echoes of the soldiers’ cries.
Deliver these men to Satan for the destruction of their flesh
So that their spirits may be saved on the day of the Lord!
And I speak strongly back at them.
Your boasting is not appropriate!
Clear out the old yeast and become a fresh batch of dough.
They turn away, cocking their gray and blue hats against the Son. But their preachers, sweating on Sundays north and south under heavy canvas tents, pound on their Bibles and make them turn back. They call them out for service and sacrifice to more than any Cause.
Let us celebrate the Feast not with our old yeast
That spoiled yeast of malice and wickedness
But with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
Call for the better angels, please! Here is what our president said at his first Inaugural in 1861:
Though passion has strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.
The mystic chords of memory stretch from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone.
These memories will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when once again they are touched,
As surely they will be,
By the better angels of our nature.
President Lincoln pauses as he notices a clamor in the crowd, men and women turned away to watch Jesus, who is healing someone with a withered hand. How inappropriate! But then Lincoln sees that both the healer and the healed turn back toward the stage, attentive with quiet enthusiasm. Lincoln smiles to himself, and resumes his speech.
Let us take refuge in you, O Heavenly Father.
You will never delight in wickedness.
The arrogant may not stand in your sight.
Lead us in your justice, Lord.
As Lincoln completes his speech and Jesus heads on down the road, one dead soldier stands up straight out of his tomb and whispers in my right ear, and then my left.
Lord protect us, that we may be the joy of those who love your name.
And as I turn toward him, he finds my other ear.
Now I hear your voice, Lord. I know it and I follow you.
Alleluia, alleluia!
           (1 Corinthians 5, Psalm 5, John 10, Luke 6)
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