Eric Metaxas was here

WHY NOT A DUCK OR A CHICKEN?I’ll have you know I’m not the sort of person who gives into trends. Indeed I’m outspokenly and devotedly anti-trend. I sometimes tremble with rage at the phrase “back in the day,” for example. Trendy glasses frames make me weep. And trendy persons themselves bring to my mind the image of vast furry rivers of lemmings cascading over cliffs — which image, I must aver, cheers me not a little. But every now and again one realizes that something one mistook for a trend was no such thing. Heads without perukes and horseless carriages spring to mind. Thus, the blog you now read. So read on, if you must.

DULCE ET DECORUM EST, ETC.A funny thing happened to me at an Education Conference in St. Louis this weekend. It was sponsored by an organization called the Constitutional Coalition and Phyllis Schlafly (sic) was there and the first night Teddy Roosevelt showed up. Well, not the man himself, but a spot-on look-a-like who regaled the crowd with an uncanny impersonation of the great T.R., chopping the air with his hand for emphasis as he spoke as though he were a jerky sepia-toned newsreel sprung to life. He was fab, and I got the man’s card and I’ll post his info eventually so you can contact him for an event, which you should.Not long after T.R. rode away we rose to sing “God Bless America”, and in the midst of doing so I got all choked up.Why did I get choked up? I got choked up for three reasons. First, because I was in a slightly melancholy mood for no particular reason. Second, because I found the song beautiful and moving. And third, because it occurred to me while I was singing this beautiful and moving song that I never sing this beautiful and moving song and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d sung it. I couldn’t even remember hearing anyone sing it. And why not? Because in the world in which I move patriotism is, if not quite a four-letter-word, certainly out-of-fashion or, if you don’t understand English, tres demodi. And I don’t mean out of fashion the way pince-nez or spats are out of fashion — because those kinds of unfashionableness are charming and quaint and attractive in their own way. But in the world in which I live patriotism is out of fashion the way last year’s skirt length is out of fashion. It’s not just not what one wears — it is wrong. It is embarrassing. It is to be scorned and avoided. Someone should tell that woman… But how has this happened? When had patriotism become a synonym for jingoism and near-fascism, and when had the idea of singing “God Bless America” made people suddenly fear that a theocracy was budding… When had things like saying the Pledge of Allegiance made people think less of Nathan Hale and Paul Revere than of stormtroopers and wild-eyed religious zealots? We will come to that in another post. But back to St. Louis. After we sang “God Bless America” I wanted to sing it again and I wanted to shoot off fireworks and shout “God Bless George Washington!” the way Dustin Hoffman does in “Little Big Man.” But I didn’t.Then, on the next and last day of the conference it came my turn to speak about my book, Amazing Grace, and it’s subject William Wilberforce. And after I spoke a woman named Chriss Winston got up and spoke about her book, titled How to Raise an American. In her talk she spoke of how some years ago she and her husband and their son, eleven at the time, had travelled to Normandy to retrace the route her father and his division had travelled after they’d landed on Utah Beach and marched eastward, toward Cherbourg. Her son had put some sand from the historic beach into a plastic bag and carried it home. She was looking forward to sharing the memories and photos of the trip with her aged father on their return, but before she was able to do that he had died. She was understandably upset that he’d never been able to hear his grandson’s recollections of the trip and what it had meant to him.But at the funeral her son did something beautiful and spontaneous. As they were all saying good-bye to her father for the last time, her son had pulled out the bag of sand he’d collected on Utah Beach, and poured it into the grave, to mix with the black soil of Iowa. Chriss realized that her son had gotten something out of their family trip that he would carry with him for the rest of his life. This was what prompted her to write her book, so that other American boys and girls might have experiences like the one her son had had, and so they, too, might come to understand something of the sacrifices that others had made for them and the great and free country in which they live. Of course I got choked up again hearing her speak of this.I got a copy of her book and I read it on the plane ride home. And I’m telling you about it now because I think it’s no small thing to take important things for granted. May God forgive me. And may these electronically-transmitted words being poured out here be a little bit like the hallowed Gallic sand that that 11-year-old boy poured out into the heart of America.