Memorial Day

I have written more than a few blogposts on Labor Day, but find none here for Memorial Day. They have all been on another blog where I am responding to Michael Sean Winters at National Catholic Reporter. Those responses used to be here, so I never worried about my own essay. A few years ago, the MSW responses got their own blog and I became painfully aware of how little I was writing on my own, although the number of book reviews, responses to other Catholic writers and scripture commentary shows not much has changed. Even five of my books are commentary, four volumes commenting on congressional hearing topics on tax reform, Social Security and entitlements, health and the budget process and one on anachronistic papal encyclicals. Of the remaining two books, the latest is an update of the oldest. Once you write one reallly thorough book on your political and religious views, it is hard to write another, although having this blog has made it easy to capture thoughts that later went into the last book.

Last year there was not even a comment piece on Memorial Day, but there was a rather thorough piece on removing Confederate monuments,http://xianleft.blogspot.com/2017/08/removing-general-lee.html which is related to this holiday as well, as it started as Decoration Day where in the North and South, cemetaries were cleaned up in what became our version of the Spanish Day of the Dead. White America would never copy its Latino neigbors so closely, so late spring became our holiday, with militarism thown in, as well as Jim Crow once the 50th Anniversary of Gettysburg rolled around and the white war veterans made peace at the expense 0f black America. How fitting that this Memorial Day sees controversy about NFL players kneeling to protest the treatment of not only black youth, but sometimes other black athletes at the hands of police who are being taught to fear all black men by their commanders and veteran officers. I suggest a new protest. Either before or after every game, the players and fans should take a moment to sing Lift Every Voice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ya7Bn7kPkLo

Lift Every Voice and Sing
BeBe Winans

Lift every voice and sing, till earth and Heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise, high as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won.

Stony the road we trod, bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat, have not our weary feet,
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered;
Out from the gloomy past, till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years, God of our silent tears,
Thou Who hast brought us thus far on the way;
Thou Who hast by Thy might, led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee.
Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee.
Shadowed beneath Thy hand, may we forever stand,
True to our God, true to our native land.

Songwriters: J. Rosamond Johnson / James Johnson
Lift Every Voice and Sing lyrics © Carlin America Inc