The Mystic Chords of Memory

SERMON: “The Mystic Chords of Memory”

The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

Abraham Lincoln spoke those words at the outset of our Civil War:

Twenty-three years earlier, speaking about the American Revolution before the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, Lincoln had expressed the same idea with less poetic brevity, but in more concrete terms. He said:

[T]he scenes of the revolution are [not] now [nor] ever will be entirely forgotten; but ... like everything else, they must fade upon the memory of the world, and grow more and more dim by the lapse of time. ... At the close of that struggle, nearly every adult male had been a participator in some of its scenes. The consequence was, that of those scenes, in the form of a husband, a father, a son or a brother, a living history was to be found in every family – a history bearing the indubitable testimonies of its own authenticity, in the limbs mangled, in the scars of wounds received, in the midst of the very scenes related – a history, too, that could be read alike by all, the wise and the ignorant, the learned and the unlearned. But those histories are gone. They can be read no more forever. ... They were the pillars of the temple of liberty; and now, that they have crumbled away, that temple must fall, unless we, their descendents, supply their places with other pillars, hewn from the solid quarry of sober reason. Passion has helped us; but can do so no more. It will in future be our enemy. Reason ... must furnish all the materials for our future support and defence. Let those materials be moulded into general intelligence, sound morality and, in particular, a reverence for the constitution and its laws ... Upon these let the proud fabric of freedom rest, as the rock of its basis...

The “reason” Lincoln called for was most personal, grounded in living flesh-and-blood memory. Memory – with all its intricacy of picture and feeling and story and aims – Lincoln likened it to an instrument that our higher selves can play, as angels do their harps. And the strings to be plucked are stretched between violent crisis and mild routine, between chaos and order, terror and tranquility, war and peace.

A generation whose experience embraces both battlefield and hearth fashions such strings from its own gut. Its story gives fingerings for the chords. When death takes that generation, we, their children, move – as always with death – from a relationship of presence to a relationship of memory. No longer graced by their living story, we may still keep alive its meanings by the grace of our own memory and the genius of our imagination. As generation follows generation, imagination bears an increasing burden. The story becomes distant, virtual at best, enlivened only by our engagement with it. If we are conversant – and conversing – with our forebears' stories, we may better understand our own, for our story continues theirs.

Lincoln spoke of:

the powerful influence which the interesting scenes of the revolution had upon the passions of the people as distinguished from their judgment. By this influence, [he said,] the jealousy, envy, and avarice, incident to our nature, and so common to a state of peace, prosperity, and conscious strength, were, for the time, in a great measure smothered and rendered inactive; while the deep rooted principles of hate, and the powerful motive of revenge, instead of being turned against each other, were directed ... against the British ... And thus, from the force of circumstances, the basest principles of our nature, were either made to lie dormant, or to become the active agents in the advancement of the noblest of cause – that of establishing and maintaining civil and religious liberty.

How difficult, to entrust the noblest cause to the basest principles of our nature!

And so today, we find our accustomed lives – our mild and comforting routines, the safety and promise of home and hearth-stone, the passion and aspirations of hopeful hearts – juxtaposed fast by battlefield violence and terrorist slaughter. And – if we'll allow it – we can feel the mystic chords binding the one to the other. We feel joy and woe woven fine. They are blended in the world's spectacles and we are beside ourselves. The world is filled with joy and woe, in scale and quantity far beyond our capacity to encompass, with contradictions too painful to hold in our hearts and minds. What will we remember? What token of this flood of violence will we carry into tomorrow? What chorus will sound when our best selves touch today's memories?

In her new book, titled Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag reflects on the impact upon us of media images of violence and suffering, and our response to them. “Such images,” she writes, “cannot be more than an invitation to pay attention, to reflect, to learn, to examine the rationalizations for mass suffering offered by established powers. Who caused what the picture shows? Who is responsible? Is it excusable? Was it inevitable? Is there some state of affairs which we have accepted up to now that ought to be challenged? All this, with the understanding that moral indignation, like compassion, cannot dictate a course of action.” “Compassion,” she says, “is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers. The question is what to do with the feelings that [the images arouse], the knowledge that [they communicate].” She continues: “There's nothing wrong with standing back and thinking. To paraphrase several sages: `Nobody can think and hit someone at the same time.'” [pp. 101-2, 116-7]

There's nothing wrong with standing back and thinking. We who have lived through the coinciding Vietnam War and Civil Rights struggle have experienced some passionate and troubling times. I think we are still digesting that experience, still working out its meaning. We reach farther back to find secure and positive patriotic images to identify with today. 9/11 was compared to pearl Harbor. Tom Brokaw's book, The Greatest Generation, originally published in 1998, was released in paperback just four months before. Indeed, it seems appropriate to look to the time of the Second World War for inspiration: that is when our nation's whole-hearted engagement in international affairs began. What was our vision, our self-image, the story we told of ourselves then? What chorus sounded when our best selves touched the memories of that war's horrors?

I offer two voices from those times: one from the immediate context of the war, and one from a career soldier speaking several years later.

The journalist Ernie Pyle reported on World War II from the battlefield. Perhaps his most poignant report was his last column, discovered in his pocket after he was killed by a sniper in the spring of 1945. Here are his words:

Dead men by mass production – in one country after another – month after month and year after year. Dead men in winter and dead men in summer.

Dead men in such familiar promiscuity that they become monotonous.

Dead men in such monstrous infinity that you come almost to hate them.

These are the things that you at home need not even try to understand. To you at home they are columns of figures, or he is a near one who went away and just didn't come back. You didn't see him lying so grotesque and pasty beside the gravel road...

We saw him, saw him by the multiple thousands. That's the difference...

That was the reality he saw, not only of war but of the gulf between combatants and non-combatants. And out of that reality, here is his vision of building the peace, from his column the previous August:

[A]ll of us together will have to learn how to reassemble our broken world into a pattern so firm and so fair that another great war cannot soon be possible. To tell the simple truth, most of us ... don't pretend to know the right answer. Submersion in war does not necessarily qualify a man to be the master of the peace. All we can do is fumble and try once more – try out of the memory of our anguish – and be as tolerant with each other as we can.

And that, I daresay, was the original hope behind the founding of the United Nations. That is the story that gives it meaning.

Now listen to what Dwight Eisenhower said in his farewell address in 1960 – listen for the echoes of Ernie Pyle's observations in these words of warning and hope from a career soldier and two-term President:

We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security alone more than the net income of all United States corporations. Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the Federal Government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. // ... Together we must learn how to compose differences –not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. ... To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to America's prayerful and continuing aspiration: We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings, those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibility; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others, will learn charity, and that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth; and that in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.

I take that as the vision of Eisenhower's generation. I think he speaks for them, as Lincoln spoke for his generation. This vision of a world community with peace, liberty and justice for all – guaranteed by the binding force of love – is the chorus sounded by their higher selves, that inspired the international system centered on the United Nations. A peace guaranteed by mutual respect and love was for Eisenhower's generation what establishing and maintaining civil and religious liberty through government of, by and for the people was for Lincoln's generation. It was the value that gave meaning to the action on the battlefield, the chord that tied it to hearth and home.

What value gives meaning to the action on today's battlefields in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere? As Susan Sontag put it: is there some state of affairs which we have accepted up to now that ought to be challenged?

Of course, our generations-long toleration of terrorism – of guerilla warfare – is a state of affairs, like the toleration of slavery in Lincoln's day, that deserves to be challenged. That is the value – the meaning – that our government is trying to place on our military action in Afghanistan and Iraq. In Afghanistan it rang true; in Iraq it sounds hollow. In any arena, it is far short of the value and meaning that Eisenhower proposed for American action in the world: that “all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.”

I believe that if we are committed to our own democratic ideals – and if we are committed to a world community with peace, liberty and justice for all – then we must succeed not only in ending terrorism and guerilla war, but also in discrediting violence as a means of composing our differences. Ending terrorism isn't enough. We must also “learn how to reassemble our broken world into a pattern so firm and so fair that another ... war cannot soon be possible.” We must set a pattern of love and good judgment rather than of righteous force and passion. I pray we will.

Lincoln believed in “the better angels of our nature” – those angels that touch the strings, the mystic chords of memory, connecting battlefield to hearth, crisis to routine, chaos to order, terror to tranquility, war to peace. By those mystic chords may we know, and know deeply, the hope that lies in our best selves – and though none of us knows the answer, though we fumble and try out of the memory of our anguish, though there often seems to be nothing we can do to stop violence and heal the pain of others, nevertheless there is hope that in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love. And may we each live in ways consistent with that great vision.

So may it be. Amen.