Animal Sacrifice: The Other Casualties In Our Un-Civil War

The “Coaling,” a fiercely contested hill in the Civil War Battle of Port Republic just south of us, was the bloody scene of numerous engagements where Confederate and Union troops battled for control on June 9, 1862. A historical marker near the little Grace Memorial Episcopal Church that stands there today describes some of that battle’s terrible toll, not only in human casualties, but in the losses of horses and mules deemed vital to the war effort.

Confederate Brigadier General John D. Imboden describes an incident in the Port Republic battle in which he took his men, along with his mules carrying the guns and ammunition into a shallow ravine about 100 yards behind Captain William Poague's Virginia battery, with Union artillery screaming overhead:

"The mules became frantic. They kicked, plunged and squealed. It was impossible to quiet them, and it took three or four men to hold one mule from breaking away. Each mule had about three hundred pounds weight on him, so securely fastened that the load could not be dislodged by any of his capers. Several of them lay down and tried to wallow their loads off. The men held these down and that suggested the idea of throwing them all to the ground and holding them there."

Historian Gary Ecelberger, in a special edition of the Blue and Gray magazine, XXVIII #2  2011, describes the terrible fate of Union horses in the conflict at the Coaling:

“The Louisianans swiftly gunned down artillery horses by the score. Those that were not killed by bullets were bloodied by Bowie knives drawn across their throats. By the time they abandoned their positions, no fewer than 50 horses were slaughtered to keep the guns in place.”

According to historian Deborah Grace, in an article on “The Horse in the Civil War,” the total number of horses and mules killed in the entire bloody conflict from 1861-1865 may be over a million, as compared to recently revised human casualties being estimated at 750,000. At the Battle of Gettysburg, for example, the number Union horses and mules killed was 881, and the Confederacy lost 619. Some estimates are even higher.  Other sources have more conservative numbers.

I’m dismayed at how we tend to glorify a war that in my mind was one of the most barbaric and insane of all the bloody conflicts throughout all of history. The cost in human and animal lives lost and property destroyed is truly horrendous.

Anyone with a heart for human beings--as well as for animals--should weep.

What's Amore? A Different Kind of Love Story

When the moon hits your eye
Like a big-a pizza pie
That's amore *

In the Greek language of New Testament times there are numerous words for love, such as "eros" (romantic, passionate desire), "philia" (filial or "brotherly" feelings of affection) and "agape" (unconditional love without thought of reward).

Ronald Sider, in his book, "Living Like Jesus," writes about the latter kind of love as modeled by his uncle Jesse Sider of Ontario, Canada. Five years into his marriage, and after the birth of their second daughter, his beloved wife Lydia developed a severe mental illness. Over time, she became increasingly disoriented and unstable and finally lost almost all touch with reality. When it became clear that it was impossible for him to take care of her at home, Lydia was committed to a psychiatric hospital, where she spent most of the rest of her life.

When the world seems to shine
Like you've had too much wine
That's amore *

Jesse faithfully visited her every week, expecting her to eventually get well enough to come home again. But one day her doctor recommended that Jesse simply give up on her and get on with his life. “Your wife is not going to get any better," he said. "I think you should go home, take care of your girls and try to forget about this woman.”

To which Jesse said, “I can’t forget Lydia. She’s a part of me.”

So for over twenty more years he made regular two-hour trips to Hamilton, Ontario, to see the person he had promised to love for better or worse, and until death do them part. Sometimes she seemed to recognize and welcome him, but often he got either no response or a negative one, Lydia having lost all of her former warm emotional feelings.

When the stars make you drool
Joost-a like pasta fazool
That's amore *

Eventually, after the doctors took the radical step of performing a lobotomy on Lydia, she got to briefly be at home again, although things were still extremely difficult.

One day, for the first time in many years, she asked Jesse, “Will you pray for me?” which he eagerly did, as he had often done before. The next day she died of a ruptured appendix, she having been unaware of the problem because her lobotomy had rendered her unable to feel pain in that part of her body.

“Yes, she was a burden,” Jesse said, reflecting on their relationship, "but I never felt it was something I should be relieved of. I loved her, and I did all I could.”

Love is patient, love is kind. 

It always protects, always trusts, 

always hopes, always perseveres.
 

 That's agape

* "That's Amore" by singer Dean Martin (Number 2 Billboard hit in 1953)

An Ancient Hymn For Lent

Hear the Choir of St. Martin in the Fields Church

"My Song is Love Unknown" is my chosen hymn for Lent this year. It was written by Samuel Crossman, a minister and hymn writer in the Church of England, in 1664. The melody was composed by John Ireland. You can hear several verses of it here.

The hymn is #235 in our "Hymnal, A Worship Book." Some of Crossman's other hymns are preserved in the Sacred Harp.

My song is love unknown,
My Saviour’s love to me;
Love to the loveless shown,
That they might lovely be.
O who am I, that for my sake
My Lord should take frail flesh and die?

He came from His blest throne
Salvation to bestow;
But men made strange, and none
The longed-for Christ would know:
But O! my Friend, my Friend indeed,
Who at my need His life did spend.

Sometimes they strew His way,
And His sweet praises sing;
Resounding all the day
Hosannas to their King:
Then “Crucify!” is all their breath,
And for His death they thirst and cry.

Why, what hath my Lord done?
What makes this rage and spite?
He made the lame to run,
He gave the blind their sight,
Sweet injuries! Yet they at these
Themselves displease, and ’gainst Him rise.

They rise and needs will have
My dear Lord made away;
A murderer they save,
The Prince of life they slay,
Yet cheerful He to suffering goes,
That He His foes from thence might free.

In life, no house, no home
My Lord on earth might have;
In death no friendly tomb
But what a stranger gave.
What may I say? Heav’n was His home;
But mine the tomb wherein He lay.

Here might I stay and sing,
No story so divine;
Never was love, dear King!
Never was grief like Thine.
This is my Friend, in Whose sweet praise
I all my days could gladly spend.

Does Solitary Confinement Create Psychosis?

APA photo

It was both heartening and heartbreaking to read George Will’s column in Friday’s Daily News-Record, “We’re Creating Psychotics,” one that deserves the attention of every mental health professional, politician and taxpayer in the country.

Will describes how harmful confining inmates in isolation cells can be, and cites Charles Dickens, who as early as 1842 had this to say about America’s experiment with solitary confinement:

“I hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain, to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the body: and because its ghastly signs and tokens are not so palpable to the eye and sense of touch as scars upon the flesh; because its wounds are not upon the surface, and it extorts few cries that human ears can hear; therefore I the more denounce it, as a secret punishment which slumbering humanity is not roused up to stay.”

According to a March 10, 2010, article in the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, “the adverse effects of solitary confinement are especially significant for persons with serious mental illness... All too frequently, mentally ill prisoners decompensate in isolation, requiring crisis care or psychiatric hospitalization.”

Here's some information on our local jail's use of isolation cells for the suicidally depressed and mentally ill:
http://harvyoder.blogspot.com/search?q=jails

Also check the following link, and another by the American Psychological Association.

Marry Well, Live Longer?

To all my single friends, let me make clear that I don’t believe being married is the only way to fulfillment and happiness. Jesus’ example alone should be enough to make that point.

But studies do show that on the whole married people live longer those living alone.

In spite of that, Dr. Mache Seibert, in a Care2 blog post, cites a report from the Pew Research Institute that shows that the number of new marriages dropped 5% from 2009 to 2010 and that only half of all adults in the United States are currently married. He also cites a 2006 study that shows that unmarried people living alone have the highest risk of death in the United States, and that compared with married people, people divorced or separated are at a 27% greater mortality risk, and people who have never married 58% greater.

Yet Americans are increasingly opting out of marriage, and there is a definite trend among young adults to wait until their later 20’s to legally marry (even though they are clearly not opting out of being sexually intimate or of living together in what would have previously be considered “common law” marriages).

If, according to current findings, married people have the longest life expectancy, it also follows that if we’re married, staying married is going to be better for our health, he says, unless we’re in a relationship in which there is ongoing adultery, addiction or abuse. Most couples who became single again by either divorce or death of a spouse, according to Dr. Seibert, tend to experience a decline in their physical health, are more likely to experience a chronic health conditions and a greater decrease in mobility than those still married to their first wife or husband by middle age. The divorced or widowed individuals also experienced more health and mobility problems.

The studies he cites suggest that those who remarry after being widowed or divorced still tend to experience 12% more chronic disease and 19% more mobility problems than those who are blessed with healthy enduring relationships. So his advice is that we should do everything we can to work at remaining happily married, and if we’re unhappily married, to try to work it out.

In order to do that, he says, “Don’t go for the jugular; don’t punch below the belt. Arguments are best recovered from if there is civility; some element of touch, some words of endearment rather than total hostility...Try to make up. Try to reconcile. Try to balance the emotional ledger. If both parties are committed, it’s never to late to repair. Marriage is good for your health.”

So far, it certainly seems to have been good for mine, for which I am thankful to God and to my wonderfully longsuffering and supportive wife.

Is This Outrageous or What?

$618,000,000 F-35 fighter

 “I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live.” Deuteronomy 30:19 (RSV)

According to the last issue of TIME magazine, the Pentagon’s newest F-35 jet fighter is still not fully operational after frequent production delays and a multitude of technical problems. All of which have nearly doubled the original estimated cost of the program, now projected to reach a grand total of $396 billion.

That’s billion, at a time when politicians are bemoaning how devastating our deficits are and how drastically we must cut federal spending for health care and other life supporting programs currently under the gun.

I find this obscene. And just how many of these fighters are we committed to paying for?

It turns out that it’s a total of 2,457, according to the TIMES piece, making this the costliest weapons program in the entire history of humankind. And remember this project is being initiated by a country that, with less than 6% of the world’s population, is already responsible for 45% of the world’s total military expenditures. And in the article, Frank Kendall III, acting Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, is quoted as saying, “Putting the F-35 into production years before the first test flight was acquisition malpractice. It should not have been done.” In other words, it has a lot of serious problems that still need to be ironed out.

Can we afford to keep on borrowing for, and investing in, these kinds of high tech, high cost killing machines? Our personal calculators can’t even handle the numbers of wasted dollars involved, and this is only one line item in one part of our nation’s massive military budget. But the ultimate cost to us, our children and our grandchildren for the F-35 program alone, is staggering, with the total life cycle expense for the entire American fleet estimated to be $1.51 trillion over its 50-year life, or $618 million per plane.

May God have mercy on us all.

See also "Welfare Waste Versus Warfare Waste"
And here's a link to a 90-second video on projected Pentagon "cuts"

Observing the "Plain English" Rule

"You should have known that would upset me."  
"You don't really love me anymore. I can just tell."
"You've lived with me long enough to know that..."  
"If you really loved me, you would have done that without my having to tell you."

Assumptions, assumptions.

We all make them, based on the irrational belief that if our spouse, friends or loved ones remotely cared about us, they would know our every wish, understand our every intent and respond to our every need whether we've actually stated them or not.

Not that we shouldn't try to be as sensitive as we can to unspoken cues we get from others, but relationships do best when we don't take too many things like that for granted. After all, the reason we have the God-given the ability to communicate is so others know things about us they would otherwise never know, and so have the opportunity to respond accordingly.

Many couples I've worked with report having their relationship improve significantly through adopting what I've called the "Plain English" rule (or the "Claro Espanol" rule if you're Spanish!).

It works like this:

I will not hold another responsible to respond to my need without my having made a polite and clearly stated request to that effect.

Nor will I accept either blame or responsibility for being unable to read another person's wishes, positions or intentions without their having stated them clearly.

A simple rule like that can eliminate a lot of misunderstandings and resentments.