America the Beautiful

Photo: Kai Brinker (CC BY-SA 2.0)

America the Beautiful is one of those patriotic songs that we Americans heard so many times growing up that we barely think about it anymore. Like the National Anthem, we only know the first verse, and when we sing those words it’s from memory and often from habit.

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

My view of this song changed forever after September 11, 2001. Due to the mix of grief and patriotism that naturally gripped us all in the weeks following that horrible day, I heard all four verses of America the Beautiful sung for the first time in I don’t know how long. It was the last verse that brought me to tears.

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

May God comfort those who lost loved ones that day, shed his grace on all of us, and grant us peace.

Amen.

In Memoriam

Ten Years Ago

June 26, 2004

Ten years ago, these words from The Song of Songs were read at our wedding. They have always expressed the depth of my love for her in a better way than I ever could.

“Set me like a seal on your heart, like a seal on your arm. For love is as strong as death, passion as relentless as the grave. The flash of it is a flash of fire, a flame of the LORD himself. Love no flood can quench, no torrents drown. Were a man to offer all his family wealth to buy love, contempt is all he would gain.” —Song of Songs 8:6-7

Ten years ago, I vowed my love and my life to her and I have never regretted it for one moment. She is the best wife, best mother to our daughter, and best friend I could have asked for, and I thank God every day that he brought her into my life.

Happy Tenth Anniversary my love! May we have many, many more together.

25 Years Later …

Image via Google Image Search

Have we forgotten? Did they die in vain?

Spilled Salt

Detail of the copy of Da Vinci’s The Last Supper by Giacomo Raffaelli (1809)

There isn’t a Five Minute Friday topic today. Lisa-Jo Baker is taking a break until January. But I felt like writing anyway, so here goes. Today is Friday the 13th and my prompt—chosen just this moment off the top of my head—is “superstition.”

I’ve never been superstitious. I don’t put any faith in little trinkets or actions that might help things break the right way. I don’t believe in “curses” or “hexes” or “mojo.” I don’t think the universe is capricious and certainly don’t believe that God is either.

But I inherited one superstition from my mom. A silly one—more a habit than anything else.

If I spill salt, I immediately pick up a pinch and toss it over my shoulder.

I don’t believe for a minute that spilling salt is unlucky. I also don’t believe that tossing a little of it over my shoulder before I clean the rest up somehow negates this non-existent bad luck. I just do it without thinking.

I’m not sure why. And I’m not sure what it says about me. Maybe just that I have habits like everyone else—habits that I don’t think about. Maybe I have more that I don’t even notice.