I was able to take time out during my work today to have lunch with Ed Cook and Andrew Gross at Catholic University. Good times, good times.
I also took some time to visit the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. Beautiful place of worship.
March, 2009:
Lamb-entations: “You can believe in God and still miss Him.”
That title was not mine, but that of the print version of Carla Carlisle’s “Spectator” column in Country Life magazine from last Lent. (Thanks to Philip Jenkins for sending me a copy last week.) Carlisle is not only a columnist, but also a farmer (near as I can tell) in England who raises sheep. Last year she reflected on the fact that her father used to read all of the book of Lamentations every Lent, because he “believed it was spiritually lazy not to concentrate in the run up to the most momentous event in the Christian calendar.” She admits to never having finished the book (now that is lazy, spiritually and otherwise!) but offers some thoughtful musings nonetheless. Last year, you will remember, was the 5th anniversary of the war in Iraq.
Between the beginning and ending of these broadcast laments, lambs were born. Lambs arriving during Holy Week have a Biblical poignance. The Old Testament is full of shepherds looking for new pastures. The Gospel for the Sunday after Easter begins ‘Jesus said, I am the good shepherd’. All week long, our pastures were transformed into windswept tundras, with howling winds and bitter rain, hail and snow. Each morning, I tried to scoot the newborns and their mamas into the shed. Without a sheepdog, this is a job that requires picking up the lambs and encouraging their mothers to follow. There are no sheepdogs in the Bible either, an oversight that Jesus may have lamented during the parable of the lost sheep. Once inside the shed, I settle down, a lamb tucked inside my jacket, and my radio tuned into Book of the Week. The choice for Holy Week was Julian Barnes’ Nothing To Be Afraid Of, a meditation on mortality and the fear of death. He begins: ‘I don’t believe in God, but I miss Him.’
By the time Easter Sunday arrived, the snow had descended like a veil over the countryside, a climatic version of the cloud in Lamentations, created so ‘that our prayers should not pass through’. Modern theologians claim that Lamentations is not a breast-beating, self-pitying lament, but an account of a disaster that, without offering easy grace or cheap hope, tells us how to handle grief. It’s a useful interpretation when there is much to grieve about. The cries of the bewildered ewes as we take away the lambs that didn’t survive the freezing night. The milestone of ‘4,000 American soldiers dead’ reached by Evensong on Easter Sunday. Tibetan monks dying for freedom. Houses repossessed. I could go on.
But I’m trying not to dwell on the ‘grandeur of sadness’, but to marvel at what has lived. Daffodils that survived the snow. Lambs that have begun their lamb games and the bereaved ewe that has adopted a hungry triplet. The hope that someday even this war will end. And here’s the Lamentation for the Day: you can believe in God and still miss Him.
Mandatory Volunteer Corps to be created?
UPDATE: The Senate version of the bill is receiving far more attention. Senator Kennedy is making a trip back up for the debate. NPR had this story this morning, featuring one of the AmeriCorps projects (and a Cornellian). And the NYTimes has this story. (Keywords also make a big difference in searching. Yesterday I could not find this NYTimes story about the House version discussed below.)
Isn’t that an oxymoron? “Mandatory volunteer”? I have no idea what I clicked or from where (was it a link in facebook?) but when I sat back down at my desk I noticed this story from “WorldNetDaily” open in Firefox. “House adopts plan for ‘volunteer’ corps.” As far as I can tell this is a very right website which would explain all the quotation marks. I think they are trying to tell us something.
The U.S. House of Representatives has approved a plan to set up a new “volunteer corps” and consider whether “a workable, fair, and reasonable mandatory service requirement for all able young people” should be developed.
The legislation also refers to “uniforms” that would be worn by the “volunteers” and the “need” for a “public service academy, a 4-year institution” to “focus on training” future “public sector leaders.” The training, apparently, would occur at “campuses.”
A quick reading of the bill seems to indicated that the “mandatory volunteer” tag comes from the commentary not the bill. The bill refers to the possibility of “all individuals in the United States” participating, but not requiring it. WND clearly sees this as the thin edge of a Socialist wedge. They cite a Canadian commentator who says, “It becomes forced labor and like the practice of another era, presses American citizens of all ages and creeds, unknowingly into military service.” And another commentator who says, “This is the equivalent of brown shirts.” Given that this bill (1) doesn’t call for any such thing (primarily in that service would not be compulsory) and (2) is not likely to pass, such comments seem more than a bit hyperbolic.
About 18 months ago I put up this post arguing that we should have a form of compulsory civil service. At the end of my post I asked if Senators McCain or Obama would like to pick up my proposal. It looks like Obama, to some extent, has. I will be interested to see what develops. I still believe there would be great benefits for individuals and our country, even more so in our current economic climate.
