A Changing of the Mind (6/2018)

My friend Lilli asked: When was the last time you changed your opinion / belief about something major?

 This is a difficult question to answer. I need to really think about it. Not because I don't change my mind and have to search out such an instance, but because I work hard at keeping it open enough to hear all sides of anything. Thus, I can change my opinion without malice, so to speak, and there are many from which to choose. I'd like to mention one that's significant and interesting. *strums fingers on chin* hmmmm, let me see. . . 

Mind you, I'm not a wimp or an airhead; I just believe things can change. People can change. What was true (or what seemed true) yesterday, may not be true today.

 Ah! *snap* I've got it. I hate to be "political" - and especially publicly, but I think I shall address this issue of kneeling during the presentation of our Flag and the singing of the national anthem of the United States, (for you youngsters who don't learn it in school anymore, it's called The Star Spangled Banner).

 Okay. *takes a deep calming breath. Whispers a prayer for clarity in mind and presentation*

 Respectfully,
I'm an old hippie. I know it's cliche, but I truly think of myself this way. I went to Woodstock, protested Vietnam, and marched to Washington to beg President Nixon to bring our boys home and stop what I perceived to be utter madness. Some of my contemporaries burned our Country's flag; I never did that. It angered me. I spoke out against that, usually at the top of my lungs. And when President Nixon kept his promise to bring our boys our young men and women home, I rejoiced and welcomed them back with open arms and a loving heart.

I volunteered for many years at our NJ Veterans' Association and one of our VA Nursing Homes. Believe me, they had a rough time of it. Many blamed them for the atrocities committed, for the horrors of war they were forced - at 18 and 19 years old - to take part in, to witness, to experience on a level most of us don't even have the capability to know or understand.

= = = = = = = = = =   = = = = = = = = = =   = = = = = = = = = =

 My grandfather, though he was a newly acclimated immigrant, fought under the Star Spangled Banner in WWI; his son, my father the first and only of his siblings to be born in the great land of the free, and all my mother's brothers, my uncles, under that same banner in WWII; my cousins in Korea; my schoolmates, friends, and neighbors in Vietnam; nephews and the sons and daughters of friends, in Afghanistan and through the middle east. And still it goes on. To me, our National Anthem rings out to them - to those who came home, and were never the same; to those who did not come home, but are remembered and deeply loved. For this and for them, I stand. This has been my choice. I stand even when I am at home and it plays before a game, or at the olympics. And I sing. I always sing.

 But I must also consider what "the kneel" is about. I don't believe it is a mockery of our beloveds; what I see is a statement. A call to attention that this land of the free, for which our beloveds gave the last full measure of devotion, must be the land of the free for all its people. Must be fair for all its people. This is the platform on which this Country, this great country, was founded, and has been protected by its greatest natural resource: our young.

 Of all the things a person can do that might be considered disrespectful, kneeling is not one of them. Stop rolling your eyes and hear me out.

 When do we kneel?

 First and foremost, we kneel before God. We kneel to pray. To show respect. To humble ourselves. We kneel to a loved one when asking forgiveness or for a hand in marriage. To show the utmost respect; not to mock, belittle, degrade, dishonor, or treat with contempt. Kneeling is the highest form of respect one can offer.

 If we believe it's enough for God, how can it be less for us?

 There is a vile wrong taking hold in this country right now. I blame myself. I blame all of us who thought we had made a difference back in the 60s. We thought we had won the battle against hatred over skin color, ethnicity, religion, diversity. How could we have been so blind? So lax? We not only dropped the ball. We lost it. And then we forgot about it.

 So, for those among us, for those who are no longer among us, I hereby acknowledge every American's God-given Constitutional right to kneel if he or she sees fit to do so. I believe in it, and I will defend it with the same dedication and vigor with which I defend anyone's right to stand, as well as to disagree with my way of thinking about this. Because THOSE VERY RIGHTS are the thing for which so many have indeed given the last full measure of devotion to protect.

 It's not the kneel that insults our freedom; it's the forbidding of it that not only insults our freedom, but defies it.

 How can you do this? How DARE you?

 I close with some words from our first Republican Party President.

 (Some time) ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.

We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

 But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.

The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

 And that's all I have to say about that.

 Carol, who has opened, pondered, and changed her mind. *on my knees, I humbly ask* God, bless America. God bless her people. Amen