Bag-ucation

‘This child [Jesus] is destined … to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed ….’ (Luke 2:34-35)

The malignant malice and ignorance of Elon Musk and his cadre of young tech-bros transports me to the belly of a C-130 turbo prop flying at 20,000 feet over the horn of Africa.

How I’d love to go back and take them with me, riding the bags, not that I think it would do much to illumine the darkened souls of those who imagine human life and society can be reduced to a series of algorithms.

There are a few things they don’t know as they stump their way through the national treasury like a bear in heat, supposedly eliminating waste and fraud, which would actually require them to know something about what federal dollars do.

I am far from an expert, but I know what it is to ride bags of USAID grain into war zones and killing fields amid rampant starvation.

I sat on those bags and climbed into the cockpit more than once or twice to listen to pilots talk to aid workers on the ground, who advised them whether it was safe to land. I watched men young and younger than Musk’s arrogant army scramble to unload tons of grain and cooking oil from those planes, loading them on smaller trucks and jeeps before hostile soldiers and warlord bandits descended with AK-47s to steal it.

Those jeeps and trucks bore many signs, like, WFP, the World Food Program, Catholic Relief Services, International Committee of the Red Cross, Goal, and Doctors Without Borders. The food whisked away went to feeding and distribution centers run by these agencies and others, including the Sisters of Charity, Save the Children and Lutheran World Federation-World Service, whose initials, LWF, were also emblazoned on some of the C-130s.

It is not only domestically, within the United States, that the U.S. government depends on public-private partnerships—such as with Lutheran and Catholic social services—to accomplish aspects of its mission.

Those bags of grain represent only a small portion, I’m sure, of the work and reach of USAID. But I know this much: Lives are saved. Regions are stabilized or given the hope of stabilization. U.S. foreign policy goals are served, undergirding the reputation of the United States as a just, generous and reliable partner in the welter of global affairs.

I doubt Musk and his minions know much, if any of this, and they show no evidence that they care to know, as they slash away at the fabric of relationships that help hold the world together and keep it, at least, somewhat sane and decent.

Still, I would love to take them for a ride in one of those Southern Air Transport planes. I’d have them scramble to pick of 50-kilogram bags of grain and carry them down the ramp and onto the trucks. I’d like to watch them look over their shoulders, wondering if they were about to come face-to-face with armed men, who didn’t give a damn who they are or what they think they know.

I want aid workers to walk them among starving kids with orange hair, kwashiorkor, as they withered away. 

I’d like to bring them face-to-face with something beyond a confounded computer screen so they might see the faces of these kids—and the young men and women who work among them, revealing a depth and beauty of heart they, too, could have … if only they could feel something beyond the cocksure arrogance of those who know little more than numbers on a screen.

I’d call it bag-ucation.

The eyes have it

Guided by the Spirit, Simeon came into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him what was customary under the law, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying, ‘Lord, let your servant now depart in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation. (Luke 2:27-30) 

Crystal blue eyes, shining clear as an April morning, shimmer in memory when I hear Simeon’s name. I knew Simeon. I still know him and always will, except his name is not Simeon. It’s Eilert. But he is Simeon to me. Of all the souls I want to meet in that realm where tears are no more, Eilert is on the short list.

I want to look into his moist, blue eyes one more time. But I don’t need to wait. All I need to do is close my eyes and imagine old Simeon taking the infant Jesus in his arms and blessing God, his heart a fountain of gratitude.

For when I do, the face I see is Eilert’s … in the last hours of his life, his eyes as blue as the day I met him, his heart as generous, his words blessing me one last time as he had dozens of times before. As surely as Simeon held Jesus in his arms, Eilert held my heart in his.

‘Just know, we love you, and we love you a lot,’ he whispered. ‘But now it’s time for auf wedersehen.’ That was more than 40 years ago, or was it yesterday?

The old man’s heart, like Simeon, was a fountain of gratitude. He had seen what he needed to see, touched what he needed to touch, felt what he needed to feel to die in peace, knowing his life, the life of his people and the life of this crazy world rest in the hands of a Faithful Love, stronger than every death that was ever died or ever will be.

Eilert had tasted salvation in the beauty of the earth, the bounty of the soil, the goodness of love and the stories of Jesus he read from the worn Bible and devotionals lying on his kitchen chair.

His heart rested in peace in the early morning hours when eternity came to claim him, leaving me the holy privilege of closing his eyes on this earth for the last time.

Those eyes have lived in me all these years, and I suspect they always will. It was one of those moments that reveal your heart so clearly that the mind, so slow on the uptake, begins to understand what you most dearly want and need.

I want to see and touch and feel the faithful love of the One who is Love, the One held in Simeon’s arms and Eilert’s heart, the One who made their old eyes glisten with gratitude and so filled their hearts with words of blessing that they spilled out … even on the grossly unworthy, like me.

I want my eyes to shimmer with the secret of Love’s Living Presence that maybe, just maybe, I might bless someone as surely and profoundly as they continue to bless me. Maybe then, the Holy One will have some reasonable return on the great investment of love and wonder the Lord has poured out on me.

For I, too, have seen the Lord’s salvation, not least in the sparkle of old eyes alive with the Love who is everywhere present … and every moment for us.