Robert B. Simpson: Christmas promises
If you're expecting to experience a Christmas this year that's full of hope, peace, and good will, you may be disappointed. In a world swept by an endless series of bloody, murderous attacks on innocent people, a world infected with hate and intolerance, there no longer seems room for those characteristics we used to hope for at Christmas.
My daughter, Stacey, talked about this in her sermon this past Sunday. She told her congregation that, being battered by a reported 355 mass shootings this year and our apparent inability to change anything, "I have arrived at a very difficult place for a Christian and especially for a preacher. I am out of hope." To illustrate her feeling of hopelessness, she talked about the carol, "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day," based on a poem that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote on Christmas Day, 1863. You may recall that the first verses talk about the bells ringing out a promise of "peace on earth, good will to men." But Longfellow's wife had died recently, and now his eldest son, who'd joined the Union Army against his father's wishes, had been seriously wounded. And so the poet's response to the promise of the bells is:
"And in despair I bowed my head:
'There is no peace on earth,' I said,
'For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.'"
I share her and Longfellow's despair. The poet was living in a country torn apart and soaked in blood. We live in a country where violent deaths threaten to desensitize us to bloody mass murders and a country under threat from murderous thugs out to destroy what we stand for.
Yet we have a history of recovering from supposedly insurmountable crises. Not least was the one occurring when Longfellow wrote his poem, and also pretty significant was the one that hit us seventy-eight years after he wrote it. So I have no doubt that we can figure out a solution, if we only will, to the constant reports of shootings of the innocent. I am also confident that we can, by working with allies, eventually curb the threat of terrorism.
Unfortunately, though, solutions require cooperation. And cooperation is hard to get in a land, once celebrated for its dedication to personal freedom, where differences of opinion are met with words of hatred. Modern communications allow hateful thoughts, once likely to be kept to oneself more often than not, to be converted into words and spewed at each other and around the globe in minutes. Words are important. They can inspire to greatness. Hateful words can inspire hate.
I want to do my part. So in the future I will not call you a fool if your political beliefs don't match mine. I reserve the right to think you are a fool, but I won't say it. I will not ascribe motives to you for the actions that you take unless I know them to be your actual motives. I may believe you hold a certain position because you think the poor are shiftless or because you hate white people or black people, but I won't accuse you of such unless I know it for a fact.
If my beliefs and yours don't match, and if I think it's important to explain my position, I'll try to explain it without accusing you of being stupid, dense, ignorant, or prejudiced. Understand, I have the right to think you are any or all of those things, but I won't say so, as that would be impolite and counter-productive.
I won't demand that you think the way I do or that you say what I want you to say. If I want to greet you with "Merry Christmas," I will. If I'd rather say "Happy Holidays," that's what I'll say. I will gladly offer you the same freedom, because I don't think it's any of my business which you choose, and I'm certain that it's not any of your business which I choose.
The only compensation I ask for making these small efforts is that you do the same for me. Who knows? We may start something that will eventually grow into at least a small portion of peace on earth, good will to men.
Robert B. Simpson, a 28-year Infantry veteran who retired as a colonel at Fort Benning, is the author of "Through the Dark Waters: Searching for Hope and Courage."
This story was originally published December 12, 2015 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Robert B. Simpson: Christmas promises ."