At church yesterday all those who have served in America’s military forces were asked to stand and be applauded.
This morning I caught a few minutes of a conservative talk radio show. Listeners were encouraged to call in and thank those currently enlisted in the military.
But this isn’t Veterans Day.
Veterans Day is red, white and blue; patriotism is in the air, flags fly in front yards, parades packed with men and women in uniform make their way down Main Streets from coast to coast. It’s a day set aside to thank military personal for their service. The day is celebratory.
But today is Memorial Day. It seems to me that on this day there should be no parades, no marching bands or celebrations. Today seems best observed with tears.
Today we recognize those sacrificed at the alter of nation and physical freedom at the order of a president. On this day the sweetness of every victory is tempered by the sting of their deaths. War is no longer abstract to us, no longer a political strategy or a chapter in a history book. It’s costly and painfully real for all who remember.
Today is about counting the price charged to a nation at war. And mourning it:
REVOLUTIONARY WAR (1775-1783)
4,435 dead
WAR OF 1812 (1812-1815)
2,260 dead
MEXICAN WAR (1846-1848)
13,283 dead
CIVIL WAR (1861-1865)
364,511 dead
SPANISH AMERICAN WAR (1898)
2,456 dead
PHILIPPINE AMERICAN WAR (1899-1901)
3,216
WORLD WAR 1 (1917-1918)
116,516 dead
WORLD WAR 2 (1941-1946)
405,399 dead
KOREAN WAR (1950-1953)
54,246 dead
VIETNAM CONFLICT (1964-1973)
58,209 dead
PERSIAN GULF WAR (1990-1991)
382 dead
OPERATION ENDURING FREEDOM (Afghanistan/Pakistan, 2001-Present)
606 dead
OPERATION ENDURING FREEDOM (Philippines, 2001-Present)
15 dead
OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM (aka Gulf War 2, 2003-Present)
4,281 dead (as of May 1, 2009)
Total U.S. military casualties from America’s major conflicts:
849,898 dead
Comments for this post have been disabled. The only response necessary today is remembering.
A few weeks ago the judge handed down my sentence. Last night it was time to pay the piper. I drove to City Hall, signed in, and took a seat.
A little guy with a big chest, crew cut, starched uniform and shiny badge stood behind the lectern at the front of the room and asked us four questions.
“How many of you would like to be here all night?” He squinted slightly and slowly scanned the room for any raised hands.
“All right then,” he said. “Who would like to go home early?” Again his eyes squinted, this time counting the room full of hands raised in the affirmative.
“All right then,” he said. “What is the meaning of a stop sign? ...It means stop, not roll. Stop, wait for your vehicle to reset itself, then progress through the intersection.” The officer glanced down at his notes as if things were about to get complicated.
“All right then,” he said. “What is the meaning of a speed limit sign? ...It means do not drive faster than the stated speed once you have reached the sign. If a sign ahead of you indicates an increase in speed is allowed, it is not allowed until you have reached that sign. Do not accelerate before you reach that sign. If I catch you rolling through a stop sign or speeding I will issue you a ticket. We’re done. Sign out.”
And just like that my debt to society was paid. I did my time. All ten minutes of it. And I had to sign my name twice. In cursive.
Sure, justice probably wasn’t served all that well last night. But when I’m the one benefitting from a little injustice? Well, it’s all right then.
The management company that represented icons Michael W. Smith and Amy Grant for ages just folded.
Chuck Finney, the guy who almost single-handedly revolutionized the way Christian radio stations operate a few years back, is “no longer with” powerhouse Salem Communications.
CCM Magazine is only a website now, with a shadow of their 1990’s audience and zero pull with today’s publicists.
The Gospel Music Association is letting people go.
Their Gospel Music Week was a ghost town this April, with major artists no longer taking a break from touring to participate in it.
Speaking of tours - they’re losing money - big money - which means production companies are going down too.
Some say technology will save the day. Lots of artists are going on-line to blogs, twitter, facebook, etc because of this optimism. But this new technology is not the magic bullet some claim it to be. The bullet that works best hasn’t changed - it’s just changed hands.
The music business is about relationship. And now it’s the artist’s turn to have one.
Success in the music business once hinged on only a handful of relationships: a publicist and a magazine, a salesman and a bookstore, a radio promoter and a radio station, a booking guy and a promoter, an artist and a manager, a writer and a publisher. If all these relationships were working, if all parties’ interests were respected and pursued, if no personalities collided to the point of impeding progress, then the project or artist they were tied to would succeed (from a business standpoint.)
Relationship is still king.
Starting a blog, hopping on Twitter, launching a Facebook fan page - these are not cure-alls because they aren’t a relationship any more than buying a basketball is spending quality time with my son.
These technologies can foster relationships. But not without a lot of personal investment and intentionality from an artist.
This is a big shift in thinking for artists, especially at the top levels of this industry. Artists aren’t accustomed to being so accessible, accountable and out of control. Artists are accustomed to being in front of audiences that care about what they do, audiences they know are fans and they keep in the seats for a couple hours by charging a ticket price. But on-line, where spending time with an artist is free, anybody can wander into the crowd, boo, change the subject, or walk out. And they will.
Also, artists are used to hiring people to handle their relationships for them. That’s at least 90% of what a manager does. Labels congratulate and critique through a manager, for instance, who adds his own diplomatic spin to every word so the artist’s feelings aren’t hurt and the relationship is preserved. Not so on-line. Someone can be hired to hit the “publish” button on a blog post that gets e-mailed over, invite people to a Facebook event and even write to people for an artist and signed their name (it happens), but no one can convincingly be the artist every day in post after post or interact with commenters regularly. Artists can’t hire anyone to be them 24/7 and the internet demands those kind of hours.
Lastly, labels are used to creating and maintaining the image of an artist: focussing and filtering, controlling who can and can’t have access, and how much, when and where. There’s one official bio and one fact sheet carefully crafted in a record company office and then parroted by every media outlet. That’s not possible on-line. And that’s distressing, fatal even, if an artist has nothing to say or, worse, has lots to say about things that don’t matter to anyone but them. Hair products, high priced jeans and guitar pedals aren’t all that interesting to folks with real jobs. The public is now discovering through an artist’s blog what publicists have known for quite some time and expertly covered up: This guy’s just a singer. And that’s no basis for a relationship.
If the music industry dies it won’t be because everything changed. It will be because artists didn’t. Artists today have to - no, we get to - do what the rest of the industry and human race has been doing for eons: We get to be real human beings spending time with other real human beings. There’s no shortcut for that.
The Man was afraid to tell us artists this before: It was never about our music. And it’s not about new technology now. It’s always been about people. All that matters is.
Wow. Cheer on the compassion and hard work of a church in the third world and a lot of folks say “Amen.” Talk a little smack about a big plastic whale and quite a crowd gathers to leave their two cents.
95 people left comments on a recent post of mine called Our Witness about a pastor in Kolkata, India whose church is caring for hundreds of children in its neighborhood because, he said, “Our witness is our service.” 95 attaboys for this Indian congregation or stones thrown at our allegedly more self-absorbed churches in the West.
One of those comments stood out to me more than the others. I kept coming back to it for hours after I first read it. Jared Wilson, a complete stranger but apparently a pastor here in Nashville, said in part, ”...the Bravo’s ring hollow to me. Put up or shut up, is what I say.”
Ouch.
Like I said, I don’t know Jared. I don’t know everything that’s behind those words but I wondered if he was a tad irritated, if he’s pastored Christians more apt to criticize shabby work and cheer excellence than roll up their own sleeves. “Put up or shut up,” he said. So I did something to prove that the comments on that post weren’t just hollow words and well wishes. No, I thought, if they’re simply asked I bet most of these commenters are ready to get to work meeting the needs of their neighbors themselves, if they’re not hard at it already. They’ll put up.
So I posted the My Witness Challenge. I spread the word about it through Twitter and Facebook - rallied all the troops I could. I asked everyone to dream a little and share their plan for meeting the physical and spiritual needs of those around them. I asked everyone to write down their plan and send me the details or a link if they blogged them. I promised I’d compile everyone’s great ideas and post them here today so we could all be inspired and bring some more of that good work we all loved in India back home where we live.
*crickets*
Are we all talk?
Then, a trickle. A tweet here. An e-mail there.
-Stretch Mark Mama posted 10 Marginally Interesting Ideas
-Matt Cleaver posted quite a few of his own.
-Lindsay posted some things we can and could do.
-So did Happy Geek.
-Misty wrote about what she’s already doing to serve female prisoners.
-Molly wrote about her work in Belize.
-Cheri wrote about what she’s doing with the Haitian community.
-And several people just left their ideas in the comments of the My Witness Challenge post.
And there may be more out there. If I missed yours, let me know and I’ll add it to this post.
This is a great start! This is plenty to get us all inspired and thinking a little more clearly about how we can each serve our communities like that little church in India did.
But, at the risk of sounding ungrateful or discouraging, I’m a little disappointed really. 95 people applauded one church’s great work and booed American Christianity in general but only a handful of people were enthusiastic or disgusted enough to do more than leave a comment?
And, you know, I’m being hard on us, really. Unfair. I know. I know. We’re busy people. We have jobs and families and soccer practices and whatnot. There’s not a lot of time left for homework like this. And some of us just need more time to ponder before we go off dreaming up some big plan and writing it down for all the world to read. I get all that. But still, I just wish there were as many people contributing as there are criticizing and cheering the contributions of others.
It’s not too late to share your ideas. We’re listening.
It’s official. 1,000,000 children are now sponsored through Compassion International! 1,000,000 children in 25 of the world’s poorest countries! And an estimated 6,000 of those sponsors are you guys reading this blog, college students who sat through my ramblings at a chapel service, and folks who came to my concerts. Thank you! (Wess Stafford, Compassion’s president would like to thank you here.)
An official press release about the 1,000,000th sponsored child will be out soon and I’ll add the link to this post when it is. Stay tuned!
But that’s not all! The Compassion bloggers trip to India has officially resulted in the most kids sponsored of any blogging trip we’ve taken so far. Yesterday, the 900th child was sponsored as a direct result of the India trip and the incredible work of the bloggers who went. Thank you to everyone who posted a widget, banner, tweeted, linked, prayed and made this trip the success that it’s turned out to be. Because of you 900 children now have sponsors whose generosity makes meeting a child’s physical and spiritual needs possible. Thank you!
The blogosphere could use some good news don’t you think? Spread it.
