On This Day…

I paused yesterday in memory of the uncle for whom I am named. That’s Staff Sargent James Alexander Harnish, 22, on the right, feeding the birds in Trafalgar Square. He was by all accounts the joy-bringer in a family infected by Germanic/Irish seriousness.

On February 10,1944, they were returning to England from their thirteenth bombing mission over Germany when they were hit by enemy fire over Holland.

The official account says that observers watched the flaming bomber pass over the village of Blokzil before it hit the ground and bounced into a meadow at Baarlo. It rolled toward two farms, smashing cows along the way. A young boy stood in the yard watching the havoc. His father ran, grabbed him in his arms, and dove behind the brick barn wall. Seconds later the barn collapsed around them. They survived but were covered with the blood of a mutilated cow hanging over them. The rest of the crew had parachuted to safety. They found the charred body of Sgt. Harnish in the wreckage and buried him in the village cemetery. 

After receiving the word that one of the four sons she sent to war was “missing in action,” my Grandmother died with a massive heart attack on March 1, at 51 years old. We believe she died of a broken heart. Jim was buried beside her in the Western Pennsylvania cemetery where we gathered around their graves every Memorial Day while I was growing up. Seeing my name on his gravestone obviously left an indelible mark on my life.

My family story is a familiar story to countless families who are forever marked by the loss of people they love in the violence of our conflict-ridden world. It’s why Harry Emerson Fosdick taught us to pray,“Cure Thy children’s warring madness…” But we keep on doing it, sadly convinced that might makes right; intoxicated by the myth of redemptive violence; convinced that we can use the ways of war to bring peace; even on the streets of Minneapolis.

My family story is also the story of lives that are lost when there is no other option in the struggle to defeat what Fosdick called “the hosts of evil round us.” My uncle, and so many like him, died to defeat the forces of Nazi dictatorship. They died to defend democracy; to protect our freedom to vote, even when that freedom is used to elect a would-be autocratic leader and a movement that carries with it the same evils of racism and fascism he gave his life to defeat.

But There’s More!

But the story goes on. Though I was the first to carry Jim’s name, it’s been passed on to my nephew and great-nephews. Fifty-nine years later, on February 10, 2003, our first grandchild, Julia, was born. I pray that the best of who my uncle and grandmother were in their generations will be passed on to theirs. Even in the darkness of our present moment, I choose to hold Lincoln’s hope that “The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone 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.”

It’s a great time to pray and sing Fosdick’s hymn:

God of Grace and God of glory,
on your people pour your power;
now fulfil your church’s story;
bring its bud to glorious flower,

Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,
for the facing of this hour.

Lo, the hosts of evil round us
scorn your Christ, assail his ways.
Fears and doubts too long have bound us;
free our hearts to work and praise.

Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,
for the living of these days.

Cure your children’s warring madness.
Bend our pride to your control.
Shame our wanton selfish gladness,
rich in goods and poor in soul.

Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,
lest we miss your kingdom’s goal.

Set our feet on lofty places;
gird our lives that they may be
armoured with all Christ-like graces
in the fight for liberty.

Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,
lest we fail ourselves and thee.

May it be so.

Jim