Two views from This Place of Peace and Quiet

Election Day is 19 days from today. I am back in Maine, at the far northwest edge of Moosehead Lake. I feel so blessed to have this place of peace and quiet amid the troubles of the world. As my daughter Abigail typically writes in our camp log book, “this place is always here and always the same.” It provides time and space for quiet thought and reflection as the waves roll on and on from the mountains to the shore. Being here allows me to approach the reconciliation of conflicting currents that compose my mindset, and the resolution of doubts regarding politics, history, faith, and life.

In addition to sitting by the lake, my reflections on this visit were influenced by two books – Tom Holland’s Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World (2019) and Noam Chomsky’s Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship (1969), and the music of Ralph Vaughn Williams. Holland’s magisterial account of the rise and vicissitudes of Christianity through the centuries lays out the horrible harms done by and in the name of Christianity and its churches. But Holland also shows how St. Augustine, Peter Abelard, Thomas Aquinas, and Baruch Spinoza established that faith can be and was consistent with reason and later with science, both its apparent antitheses. Indeed, for some, it may be driven by those intellectual forces. The applied theology of St. Francis, Gerrard Winstanley (of the “Diggers”), St. Teresa, and many others acting sometimes on the “spirit rather than the letter of the law,” reveals Christianity as a real labor of love, as Jesus taught and as reason might also direct.

Martin Luther’s rejection of the Catholic Church and the Papacy and the founding of Protestantism exemplified the resilience of Christianity to reform itself, although Luther noted that this required combatting what appeared to him as a movement, as we see again today, toward the “end of truth.”  I read Morning Prayer from the Book of Common Prayer on my first morning at camp. Thomas Cranmer’s words reminded me again of God’s brilliant and (it is to be hoped) ever living creation, as I looked out over the lake.

Noam Chomsky, turning to scholars’ and Presidential advisors’ justifications for the American War in Vietnam, shows how “reason” can just as easily produce tragic human results as advance us along the arc of love and justice. The key actors in JFK’s administration who moved on to LBJ’s after November 22, 1963, and the scholars who wrote about them, were generally agreed that social science data, “objectively” and hard-headedly considered, should overshadow empathy and concern for human rights in driving policy decisions. It is ironic that today the political spectrum has shifted so far to the right that “liberal intellectuals” of the sort that favored the American War in Vietnam are now leading the fight against the authoritarianism and proto-fascism of the Trump/MAGA movement.

Nevertheless, my reflections over Moosehead Lake, were leading me to envisage how reason and justice could indeed be reconcilable and indeed interdependent. This feeling was reinforced as I listened to some of Vaughn Williams’ beautifully crafted music from the period of World War I, the horrors of which he experienced in the British Army. This includes “The Lark Ascending,”

“Norfolk Rhapsody No 1,” and “A Folksong Suite.” These pieces, inflected by English folk songs, were capable of instilling patriotism for the war, despite its agonies, but also a longing for the peace and beauty of the English countryside.

While my reflections gave me a dose of optimism about the possibilities for peace, justice, and reconciliation of people and ideas, I could not escape that progress on these fronts does often require conflict. After all, the “Collect for Peace” in Morning Prayer asks God’s protection from “all assaults of our enemies.” As a congenitally uncertain and indecisive person, I have mostly shunned conflict and real activism. For my own sanity and its projection to the good of our country, I crave reconciliation of ideas and people. I am doing the bare minimum of activism – writing “non-partisan” letters for Vote Forward to likely Democratic voters in swing states with irregular records of showing up at the polls. These letters require the writer to complete the sentence “I vote because…” with a personal story. Mine is the following: “I vote because I am a Vietnam veteran who loves our country, my family and community. I am voting for a bright future for our country and all of our people – especially my two beautiful grand-daughters!” I hope my story is effective in encouraging its recipients to vote, and to vote for Harris and Walz. However, I must admit that it is not entirely honest. I am a Vietnam veteran but one who opposed the war. I may still (barely) love my country, but I don’t think I will if it elects Trump. Am I just as selfish and lacking in empathy as MAGA folks in wanting a bright future “especially” for my own grand-daughters. I found myself looking repeatedly at photos of the girls as I was writing my letters.

So, you see, I can slip easily back into my doubts—particularly on one of those rainy days at camp when one seems to sit on ‘the very edge of the world” with zero visibility into the future. Writing out my story hundreds of times in these letters helps me to believe it more – maybe like the “Big Lie” increasing its credibility through sheer repetition! Lord, please help me to absorb what this place offers and take it into action in the world beyond. Contrary to etiquette, I have started leaving the American flag up all night at camp. I hope this convinces me that it can survive the dark.