America, Why I Love Her

You ask me why I love her? Give me time and I’ll explain;
Have you seen a Kansas sunset, or an Arizona rain?
Have you drifted on a bayou down Louisiana way?
Have you seen the cold fog drift over San Francisco Bay?

Have you heard a Bobwhite calling in the Carolina pines,
Or the bellow of a diesel in the Appalachian mines?
Does the call of the Niagara thrill you when you hear her waters roar,
Do you look with awe and wonder at her Massachusetts shore
where men who braved a hard new world first stepped on Plymouth’s rock?
Do you think of them when you stroll along New York city dock?

Have you seen a snowflake drifting in the Rockies, way up high?
Have you seen the sun come blazing down from a bright Nevada sky?
Do you hail to the Columbia as she rushes to the sea?
Do you bow your head at Gettysburg at our struggle to be free?

Have you seen the mighty Tetons? Have you watched an eagle soar?
Have you seen the Mississippi roll along Missouri’s shore?
Have you felt a chill at Michigan, when on a winter’s day
her waters raged along the shore in thunderous display?

Does the word ‘Aloha’ make you warm?
Do you stare in disbelief when you see the surf come roaring in at Waiamea reef?
From Alaska’s cold to the everglades, from the Rio Grande to Maine,
My heart cries out, my pulse runs fast at the might of her domain.

You ask me why I love her? I’ve a million reasons why –
My beautiful America, beneath God’s wide, wide sky.

~John Mitchum
Copyright 1971
Listed 11/28/2006

The poem recited by John Wayne.

I wanted to get the rest of the photos up before July begins…

The difference Photoshop makes to my renders.
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Created in Poser and Photoshop.
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Wis 1:13-15; 2:23-24

God did not make death,
nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living.
For he fashioned all things that they might have being;
and the creatures of the world are wholesome,
and there is not a destructive drug among them
nor any domain of the netherworld on earth,
for justice is undying.
For God formed man to be imperishable;
the image of his own nature he made him.
But by the envy of the devil, death entered the world,
and they who belong to his company experience it.

Homily for June 28, 2009: 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Over the past several days, we’ve been inundated with stories, pictures, soundbites about three high-profile people who passed away: Farrah Fawcett, Ed McMahon and, of course, Michael Jackson. It has given us all an opportunity to think about living and dying, about fame and the cult of personality that is so much a part of our world these days.

Those people were all household names. I imagine there were few people in the civilized world who had not heard of Michael Jackson – or, at the very least, heard his music.

Contrast that with two key characters in this Sunday’s gospel – a woman with a hemorrhage, a little girl who died suddenly. Both have a dramatic encounter with Christ. And that changes everything. He brings healing, and restores life. Their stories became woven into the fabric of Christianity, and are re-told and recounted again and again, year after year, in pulpits around the world.

And yet: we never find out their names. Like so many other figures in the gospels, they have remained anonymous. Even the one name we do hear – Jairus – is something of a mystery. The rest of his life story is lost to history.

They help remind us that it’s not who you are that matters. It’s who you are, because of Christ.

While the world has been preoccupied this week with celebrities, the papers have carried some other obituaries of people who aren’t household names.

They are people like Dr. Jerri Nielsen, who died this week from cancer at the age of 57.

If you don’t recognize her name, chances are you do know her story.

In 1999, Dr. Nielsen was doing research work at a laboratory at the bottom of the world, at the South Pole, when she found a lump on her breast, and diagnosed her own cancer. It happened in the coldest and darkest part of the Antarctic winter, and it was months before rescuers were able to reach her, to bring her home and get proper treatment. But her courage and tenacity during those long months were astounding. Not only did she perform her own biopsy, but she continued to serve as a doctor to others at the base.

Her cancer was successfully treated back in the U.S. and went into remission, but returned a few years ago.

In 2006, she wrote about what she had learned. “My experience at the pole had to do with accepting things that most people fear most deeply and coming to feel that they need not be feared,” she wrote. “It certainly had far more to do with peace and surrender than it did with courage. Being ‘on the ice’ was a great good fortune: It created a much greater clarity for me about what was essential in life.”

Or to put it in the words of Christ:  “Do not be afraid. Have faith.”

…from Deacon Greg’s The Deacon’s Bench.

Green Mount Cemetery

Created in Poser and Photoshop.
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