To Everything There is a Season

There is a Season implies known cycles in time or a lifetime. We are familiar with this concept even as we speak we are getting ready for the fall. Of course we know from experience that it will be getting colder. But it also means that it is back to school time. It is the end of summer and we are probably ready for some cooler (notice I did not say colder) weather. So are these cycles good? At least we can always look forward to something changing, but no necessarily changes for the good. So let’s talk about these seasons.

By Robert E. Freer, Jr., President of The Free Enterprise Foundation

“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven” (Bible, Ecclesiastes 3)

“We’ve done this before: Each and every time, a new generation has risen up and done what’s needed to be done. Today we are called once more, and it is time for our generation to answer that call. For that is our unyielding faith that in the face of impossible odds, people who love their country can change it.”(President Obama)

Life sometimes is like a mighty river, majestic and ponderous as it flows. From whence does it appear, so vast, silent and inexorable? At its birth was it bubbly, bright and quick to delight our senses and spark us to smile? It has so far to go, and at its end, its majesty lost within the ocean’s indefinable vastness, leaves us to ponder is that what awaits us just beyond the next bend?

The two quotes that begin this article reflect truisms that life has cycles that can be traced through centuries without change. The second quote from our President reflects our enduring faith that a concentrated exercise of united will can change the future. While accepting the first, my fear is that the future I seek in the second is not that which our president seeks at all. We might choose the same words but mean almost diametrically opposite for the result.

The recent weeks brought me news that I am to be a grandparent in the coming weeks. As I contemplated being a grandparent for the first time and thought about this column, my mood was light and expectant. In fact I am facing a grandchild explosion with three of my four children expecting between now and next April. Previously, I have said to those who have asked, “No, I am too young. I leave that to older folks.” But no more; in addition to our grandchild explosion, I was reminded recently that time was sliding by when one of those persistent invitations we get over the Internet to see how old we really are told me, ex-cathedra, I was only 5 years younger than the calendar reveals. I would be happy, along with my doctor, who says I am about age twelve, to debate the point, but there it is. None of us can resist forever the passage of time.

My mood turned somber on Friday when I received an email from one of my classmates that The Rev. David C. Mackenzie, one of our high school classmates and one of my most enduring friends had passed away the day before of a massive heart attack. David did have some of the aches and pains of advancing age, but was not in my mind a candidate for such a sudden recall by our maker. He loved his ranch in the Mountains of Wyoming and thought nothing of driving from his non ranch home outside of Pittsburgh to take part in my youngest son’s marriage at St Michaels’ this past May and thence to visit his daughter in Florida and continue on for the summer in Wyoming. He was to me like his beloved Wyoming hills, indestructible, and I will miss him terribly. His lovely wife, quoting her father, reminded me that death is never convenient and left me contemplating the ying and yang of life.

Our challenge when faced with the sadness caused by such a loss is not to let it turn us inward but to absorb all the good memories and the wisdom learned from a life force like David and to shine it out on others so it lives anew. He is beyond pain and the cares of this world, and it is for us, temporarily left behind, to make the most of his life in how we treat others. We know he would not like us to remember him in any way but joyously and would entreat us to embrace those he loved to keep him alive in all those who shared his magnificent life. Keeping him alive is not just remembering his kindness, however; there was a laconic bite to his opinions which were pointedly conservative and devoutly Anglican.

We both shared a concern about the challenges facing the next generation of Americans. In addition to lamenting the secularization of the Episcopal Church which had motivated Dave to affiliate with The Anglican Church of North America, Dave looked at the “fuzzy everything goes” attitude of our contemporary society as reflecting a deeply distressed society. In this anxiety, I strongly sympathize.

While the United States with over four million live births in 2007 has not yet joined the ranks of European countries that are experiencing a replacement rate of less than current population, our birthrate in 2009 is down and society as a whole appears ill equipped to handle the challenges our generation has left for them. Demographic data can be confusing with inconsistent findings skewing data, but it seems clear that births with unmarried mothers are up significantly and account for 40 percent of live births. With more than half the live births to women 20-24 representing unmarrieds and dropping to 28 percent for women 25-29, this is not just a teenage phenomenon anymore. Data also indicate that, while undefined acceptance of the existence of God remains high, fewer denominations are showing growth, and we poor Episcopalians are abandoning 2000 years of catholic guideposts to create a secularist, humanist feel good church where all our previously sacred beliefs are up for re-evaluation and slick re-definition.

With our porous borders providing a lure for the world’s downtrodden, not only is there record instability in family structure, there is an increasing lack of homogeneity to our society that represents growing racial diversity and ethnic and cultural differences that foster a society that does not know or treasure our history and pulls us apart, not together. Without allegiance to the core Judeo-Christian beliefs of our ancestors, navigating a road forward is strewn with almost insurmountable boulders.

We are headed towards a minority non white population no later than 2042. If those who succeed in being our cultural and electoral majority accepted fully the values of our founders and identified with the virtues of the Judeo Christian society we have sought, it would be one thing, but leaders of both major minority groups themselves are as concerned as I that their youth are abandoning the Christian faith that has sustained them during their struggle for equality. They are as saddened as David and I were as we surveyed the majority that is now calling the shots in America.

For the sake of my unborn grandchildren, I will continue to reason, cajole, remind and struggle to secure acolytes to carry the torch into the future. If the sun is going to continue to rise for our American republic, however, each one of you who treasure the country that protected our sacred liberties and expected our self reliance and enduring effort to produce a better life for those we loved needs to become vocally involved. It should be unthinkable that we won’t produce a better life for our descendents.

To be successful in returning the country to its righteous path, we must be insistent that we hold religious faith and personal responsibility as sacrosanct. George Washington, perhaps said it best, “Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be, that good policy does not equally enjoin it - It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and at no distant period, a great nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence. Who can doubt that, in the course of time and things, the fruits of such a plan would richly repay any temporary advantages which might be lost by a steady adherence to it? Can it be that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a nation with its virtue? The experiment, at least, is recommended by every sentiment which ennobles human nature. Alas! Is it rendered impossible by its vices?”

President Washington would respond, “Yes, it is rendered impossible by our vices.” What we see around us is not a made for television movie but life itself in all its chaos. Our failure to come to grips with this threat will destroy those values by which our founders set our course in life and any hope that the America for which our parents fought will be there for our children to protect and carry forward for theirs.

Copyright © 2009 by Robert E. Freer, Jr. All rights reserved

About the author: Robert E. Freer, Jr. is President of The Free Enterprise Foundation. He is a Visiting Professor, at The Citadel and elected in 2005 to be their first John S. Grinalds Leader in Residence. A regular contributor to the Mercury, He can be reached by E-mail at The Citadel . Copies of his earlier columns can be found The Free Enterprise Foundation.

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