WE’LL MEET AGAIN-Surviving the Virus War [W, 5-5-21]

 CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

 

My Reds and the White Sox of Hall of Fame Sports Writer Bob Hammel played a two-game series this week. I figure it will be preview of a repeat of the 1919 World Series, but this time in the WS the Reds will beat the Sox without taint, since the Sox all make way too much money to need to throw any games. 

All this is a preamble to noting that writing about baseball does not void my attempt to hear God’s Word, without the writing of words by me getting in the way, since baseball itself is a well-known pathway directly to the Word of God. As we all know, the Bible itself starts with, “In the big inning…”

Bob Hammel and I are almost the same age. Grew up in opposite ends of Indiana, and lived very similar lives, even though we didn’t meet until 30 years or so ago. So you’d think we might share a common childhood image. But we don’t, not exactly.

Bob says he thinks of himself as a Great Depression kid, because of the effect that had on the people who raised him. Despite our similar age and circumstances, I think of myself not so much as a Great Depression kid but as a WWII kid. Unlike Bob, who was raised in a “peace church,” and who remains a practical pacifist, although he does approve of gas wars, I was pulled in by the glamorous side of war. I glorified soldiers, at least the soldiers on our side. Besides, I had an officer’s uniform, with a Sam Browne belt, and a wooden pistol in case any Nazis got too close. I knew every word of every military service song [except The Coast Guard; they weren’t very obvious in southern Indiana].

WWII was a time of huge loss and anxiety and fear and destruction and deprivation. But I was a kid. That was all I had ever known. I accepted the war time as normal. I just wanted to be on the winning side. I didn’t know yet that there is no winning side in war.

I don’t remember the song, “We’ll meet again” from those days, but it was the quintessential WWII song, or at least one of them. It was especially popular in a recording by Vera Lynn.

We’ll meet again

Don’t know where

Don’t know when

But I know we’ll meet again

Some sunny day

It was a glimmer of hope for families torn apart by loss and death, but it was more than that. It was hope not just that we would meet separated loved ones who survived the days of fighting, but that we would meet again a world being put back together after being torn apart so badly.

It's a song I’m beginning to sing again, because we are all now Covid19 kids—the Covid19 Great Depression and the Covid19 World War. It’s better in Vera Lynn’s voice than mine--and you can find her recordings on YouTube—but it is meaningful even in my croaking. We have survived Covid19—almost. We’ve been torn apart in this world-wide war. We’ve lost loved ones, some “overseas,” out of contact in isolation wards. Some have suffered lasting traumas. But we’ve had some soldiers to glorify, those front-line workers who have battled the virus, fought to keep us alive, to keep us going until we could meet again.

And now, if we can meet again, in person, face to face, there is hope. It’s not yet time for victory songs, for “Happy Days Are Here Again,” because “don’t know where, don’t know when,” but it’s time for a song of hope. We know “we'll meet again, some sunny day.”

John Robert McFarland