Listen to the song Homeward Bound, written by Marta Keen Thompson, and sung by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Here’s the LINK
Our granddaughter Madeline has a smart phone that can play any song in the world anytime she wants to hear it. Kids today have it so easy. Why, when I was her age, I had to ride my bicycle into town to Money’s TV and Radio, and buy a 45 record for a dollar, serious money in those days. That’s if Mr. Money even had the song I liked. He didn’t care for what he called “hippie music.” Now we have YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, and we can hear anything we want. But know this, they work on algorithms. They assume if you like this song, you’ll also like this other song, and somehow, they must have found out I was a pastor and began suggesting songs they thought I might like, including the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, which made me think about Mr. Money, because he loved the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, even though he was a Methodist. Just to be clear, I have never listened to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, but when the song Homeward Bound appeared on my playlist, I was deeply moved by these lyrics, “Bind me not to the pasture. Chain me not to the plow. Set me free to find my calling, and I’ll return to you somehow.”
Hearing those lyrics made me think of the young people whose graduation from high school and college we recently celebrated. Every year when we do that, my favorite part is asking the young people their plans and watching their eyes light up and their expressions come alive. You can almost see their dreams. Do you remember the excitement you felt at that age?
We’ve been talking about our propensity for war and our Quaker rejection of it, as our founder George Fox said, we “live in the virtue of that life and power that takes away the occasion of all wars.” We’ve said war is an enticing elixir, our national drug of choice, an addiction we seem unable and unwilling to break. Its casualties include not only those killed on the battlefield, but those who knew and loved them. We’ve said war is the reason we can’t have nice things. It is the reason we lack universal healthcare, universal education, and universal childcare. It is the reason our infrastructure is in ruins. We’ve said war is a destroyer of democracy, started by the wealthy and powerful, but always at the expense of the poor and powerless. And we’ve said war is nothing less than the organized abuse of children. If an individual did to children what war did, they would go to jail. Today, let us add this: Just as young people are launching their lives, are moving into their dream and passion, war says, “You may not do that. You must go kill other people.” We do not set them free to find their calling. Instead, we bind and chain them to our foulest impulses, sending them forth to kill, because we, their elders, are not willing to do the difficult work of peace, reconciliation, and justice.
Have you ever asked a child what they want to do, to have them say, “I want to travel the world, meet interesting people, and kill them.” No child I’ve ever met aspires to do that. My granddaughter wants to be a dolphin trainer; my grandson wants to be a firefighter. Some of Joan’s students told her they want to be librarians. And just last month, a little girl told her she wanted to be a unicorn, and I say more power to her. I hope she pulls it off. Because it is her life, not mine. She should be set free to find her calling.
But war, couched always in the language of honor, patriotism, duty, and nobility, first acts to rob people of their dreams and aspirations, then acts to rob them of their freedom. The Austrian philosopher Friedrich von Hayek said, “Emergencies’ have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.” Haven’t we seen this happen time and again? An emergency, a looming disaster or crisis, stands ready to destroy us unless we send forth the young people of our nation to kill the young people of another.
Rather than learning how to mend bodies, they are ordered to destroy them.
Rather than learning how to educate children, they are made to traumatize them.
Rather than learning the law, they are conditioned to be lawless.
Rather than studying great books and beautiful music, they are taught the platitudes of nationalism and violence and made to listen to the bitter chorus of human suffering.
Rather than securing our freedom, war does just the opposite. It robs the young of their dreams and aspirations. It is the cruel coercion of the young and powerless by the elderly and powerful. It is the thief of hope and ideals. It is the chaining and binding of them to our desires and not their own. And what are those desires? The desire to control, to gain wealth, to acquire power and posterity, to ascend. But always at the expense of our young, whose lives and dreams are taken from them and placed in the hands of others, in the ironic quest for freedom, thereby robbing them of the very liberty we claim to be protecting.
Many of you have met my sister, who is a nurse specializing in blood disorders, working in Indianapolis and Kenya. When she was a senior in high school, she was told by the guidance counselor that she wasn’t smart enough to be a nurse and shouldn’t go to college. But she had this dream of being a nurse, so off she went to college, where she graduated with a 4.1 GPA. Now, just to be clear, I graduated with a 4.3 GPA, but mine was on a 12-point scale. So now she’s been a nurse almost 50 years, and has helped tens of thousands of people. But here was her guidance counselor telling her she wasn’t smart enough, trying to kill her dream.
What a cruel thing to do. A man like that has no business counseling young people. Then again, it’s no different than a government telling its young people, “Your dreams and ambitions don’t matter.”
Any endeavor that depends upon the denigration of another’s dream, any endeavor that binds and chains another to our will and not theirs, is intrinsically wrong. And we know it’s wrong, because to get people to abandon their dream for our dream, we must drape our demand in the language of duty, virtue, and loyalty, and we must stigmatize them as cowards for having the courage to refuse.
It is a terrible thing to teach our children that murder is wrong and forbidden by God, then demand they go forth and do it.
As Voltaire said, “It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind.”