Charles (Don) Albury, 84, the Co-pilot on a B-29 that accompanied the Enola Gay, said a prayer after the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima: “Lord, please take care of all of them down there.”

About a week or ten days later, he and the commanding officer Colonel Paul Tibbets, flew a C-54 transport plane into Nagasaki to take some doctors and civilians there to see the devastation visited upon the city. They saw people looking out their windows at them with hatred in their eyes, yet relieved the war was over.

Albury said he saw a man who looked as though he were still bleeding, begging by the side of a hospital high on a hill; his clothes were all ripped up.

I had never really appreciated until then that this bomb could do something like that. All I could keep thinking was, I hope there is never, ever another time when we have to use one of these.

(Time, August 4, 2005, by Coco Masters, Carolina A. Miranda and Tim Padgett.)

In these confusing days of war without war, of finding ourselves running up the down staircase, seeking someone to make sense of the carnage, distrust and sheer hatred being spread around the world in our name, with our tax dollars, Nagasaki’s cloud appears to have spanned the decades, threatening to station us in the nether world of uncertainty and fear.

The other day, I was praying over the words of the Psalmist in Psalm 42, and pondered how they might appear to us today:

1. I remember, and my soul melts within me:
    I am on my way to your wonderful tent,
    to the home of God,
    singing my songs of joy and thanksgiving.  

2. I am broken, so I call to my Savior;
    as the waves roar down, sweeping over my head,
    and I call to you,
    be with me now, the God of my life.

3. In the day time may the Lord’s love be with me;
    in the night your song will be still on my lips.
    I will sing to you,
    sing prayers to you, the God of my life.

In the first stanza, the Psalmist is harkening back to the appearances of God’s love in his life, and he sings his sacred songs of praise. For one to be able to recapture those special moments of grace, a certain amount of peace is necessary, a peace that appears not to be inhabiting the hearts of those in the White House this day.

Remember, the poet is on the way to God’s “wonderful tent.” Let us imagine he is walking down Main Street, U.S.A.. to the parish church or synagogue, when President Bush stops him on the way and tells him why it is necessary to change our Land of Freedom and Opportunity into a Police State. “It’s for everybody’s good. We live in dangerous times. Now, go along to your place of prayer, but watch out for your neighbors.” No longer does the poet’s soul melt within him, and his heart may be too heavy for glad songs.

The second verse will be easier to pray, for there is hardly a thinking, God-fearing, God-loving American who doesn’t feel broken these days, with waves of near-despair threatening to drown the gift of faith. Words of God’s presence, love and peace emanate from the Oval Office, but the deeds are those of unbelievers.. Our people know the difference.

In the third verse, we find a grace-filled moment, the realized presence of the Lord’s love, and the Psalmist is moved to sing songs of praise to the God of his life.

What are we to do, encircled on all sides by authority separated from the Divine; authority bent on creating the greatest fear and unrest possible to keep the citizens in their place, cowed and silent?

It seems to me that we must come together, pray together, give voice to our fears and hopes. We must, one by one, reclaim our inheritance, enter into a prayerful desert, find the God of peace, and beg for courage to act with love for the truth, not violence for the sake of retribution. .

Not as Democrats, nor Republicans, nor Independents do we shrug off the chains of self-doubt, but as Christians, strong and hopeful, remembering the Lord’s faithfulness in the past, and trusting in his wisdom to lead us out of Egypt’s fearsome slavery into the freedom of the children of God, this Year of Our Lord, 2005. Amen.

Home

Archives