-^-for posterity-^-

today, the fourth of july, our family went to 'the great auditorium' in ocean grove for church. the service was not necessarily in line with my personal views.

we sang some songs and basked in the glow of their thirty food lighted american flag. we listened to an opening prayer about how god should really protect our soldiers. the lady praying asked god to help america. she asked that god bring, 'peace from war, democracy from tyranny and death, death (this is where she stopped and stammered for a bit) no, life from death.' i thought the slip up was all too fitting. i didn't agree with what she said at all.

we listened to a wonderful solo from a soprano who sang 'this is my song' and that included the line, 'god of all nations.' i liked that.

there was then a moment of sharing and the man that was introducing the speaker made a joke. he said, 'i'd like to introduce henry will. at least he's not henry the viii!' people laughed. people are still making jokes about loyalists. i didn’t know that was still happening.

the service continued and we sang 'soldiers of christ, arise.' i was raised in a mennonite environment and was always taught that nonviolence was the ideal, that pacifism was a quality to be revered. i was taught that war was wrong on all levels. here are the lyrics of the song we sang:

soldiers of christ, arise, and put your armor on,
strong in the strength which god supplies
thru his eternal son;
strong in the lord of hosts, and in his mighty power,
who in the strength of jesus trusts
is more than conqueror.

stand then in his great might,
with all his strength endued,
but take to arm you for the fight the panoply of god;
that having all things done,
and all your conflicts passed,
ye may o'ercome thru christ alone
and stand entire at last.

from strength to strength go on,
wrestle and fight and pray,
tread all powers of darkness down
and win the well-fought day.
still let the spirit cry in all his soldiers, 'come!'
till christ the lord descends from high and takes the conquerors home.

wow.

i especially like the line, 'wrestle and fight and pray.' hilarious.

we sang the song loudly and i was thankful for the blue hymnal at my church.

then, the sermon. our preacher was rev. dr. thomas k. tewell (pronounced, fittingly, 'tool'). he talked to us about doing justice, loving kindness and walking humbly. i resonated with parts of the sermon, the parts where he was talking about respecting people, looking to find solutions to problems in non confrontational ways and helping to decrease the social injustices that have plagued our world since its inception (my interpretation). the sermon was called 'x-treme christianity', which was frightening. he said the word 'dude' a lot which also caused me to cringe.

i enjoyed it, for the most part, until he tried to relate part of his sermon to dick cheney. a couple of days ago, dick cheney was at a yankees game. the crowd was singing 'america the beautiful' or some other patriotic song and they flashed mr. cheney's picture on the screen. he was booed and they removed the picture. our pastor said that, by booing dick cheney, the crowed made jesus look bad. i think there's some round-about logic to this, but i still haven't caught it all.

all in all it was an interesting sunday. happy fourth of july and remember that we're not all perfect.

thoreau said that patriotism was a maggot.

garrison keillor said that a person without self doubt was a monster.

i said that being hubristic just isn't cool.