Nate & Kristen’s Weblog

A victim of the last terrorist war fought in Lebanon tells of her experience with the nation she was taught to hate.

I became friends with the families of the wounded Israeli soldiers, one in particular, Rina, whose only child was wounded in his eyes. One day, I was visiting with her and the Israeli army band came to play national songs to lift the spirits of the wounded soldiers. As they surrounded his bed playing a song about Jerusalem, Rina and I started crying. I felt out of place and started walking out of the room, and this mother held my hand and pulled me back in without even looking at me. She held me, crying, and said, “It is not your fault.” We just stood there, crying, holding each other’s hands.

What a contrast between her, a mother looking at her deformed, 19-year-old only child and still able to love me, the enemy, and a Muslim mother who sends her son to blow himself up to smithereens just to kill a few Jews or Christians.

The difference between the Arabic world and Israel is a difference in values and character. It’s barbarism versus civilization. It’s democracy versus dictatorship. It’s goodness versus evil.

When a man raises himself from the lowest condition in society to the highest, mankind pay him the tribute of their admiration; when he accomplishes this elevation by native energy, guided by prudence and wisdom, their admiration is increased; but when his course, onward and upward, excellent in itself, furthermore proves a possible, what had hitherto been regarded as an impossible, reform, then he becomes a burning and a shining light, on which the aged may look with gladness, the young with hope, and the down-trodden, as a representative of what they may themselves become. To such a man, dear reader, it is my privilege to introduce you. — James M’Cune Smith in the introduction to My Bondage and My Freedom

Kristen and the kids have been in Tucson visiting the great grandparents the last couple of days so I had some time to read and finish the second autobiography of Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom. I had heard excerpts of his writings and speeches in Ken Burns’ The Civil War–best documentary film ever by the way–but that hardly prepared me for his amazing story. The grace, compassion, and hope he had for both his country and its countrymen is mind-boggling and could only have been fueled by his tried Christian faith. If I wasn’t a bum I’d try to convince you how awesome this book is and why Douglass deserves to be on a very short list of the greatest American heroes, but instead I will only encourage you to find out for yourself.

William Carey wrote the epitaph for his own gravestone.

William Carey
Born August 17, 1761: Died—
“A wretched, poor and helpless worm,
On Thy kind arms I fall.”

According to Lee W. Minikus after he made a routine stop of a drunk driver the perpetrator’s mother went berserk and sparked the flame that fueled the 1956 Watts Riots. In an article in today’s L.A. Times he also remembers that during the riot three militant organizations put a bounty on his head, but the good neighbors of his multicultural neighborhood protected him by standing guard with rifles on their front porches. I wonder if that would happen today.

Over the past weekend I was reminded of some very inspiring quotes mady by men who were willing sacrafice their lives for a noble cause. Quotes I was taught in grade school like the stirring words of the hero Patrick Henry who in his most famous speech proclaimed, “give me liberty, or give me death!” And those of the courageous Nathan Hale who with his final words said, “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.”

But my wife rightly pointed out that quotes like these pale in comparison to the prayer of mankind’s greatest champion just hours before his brutal death:

Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You, as You have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him. And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.

But then, he was no ordinary man.

Today marks the day back in 1776 that the Declaration of Independence was signed by representatives of the thirteen colonies that became the Unites States of America. It was an act of genius and bravery that, in my opinion, has never been matched in American politics.

With the last stanza of Concord Hymn by Ralph Waldo Emerson I salute the United States’ forefathers and thier incredible determination for freedom,

Spirit, that made those heroes dare
To die, and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.