Cowboys and Indians

Dear Boo and Bubble,

Today I’m thinking about your great uncle Bryant, who was my older brother.  (He’s the one you’re named for, Bubble.)  You will never know him because he’s been gone for quite a while now.   But it’s very important that you know something of him as he was an amazing person.  Of the three children in our family, Bryant was the most serious.  Actually, I think the adjective most appropriate was soulful.  Although he had plenty of playfulness in him, he was more contemplative and sensitive, even as a little boy.

Alex, you are now a big brother and it’s a tremendous responsibility from what I’ve observed.  You’ll be the one to pave the way for Bubble because you’ll be the one that teaches your parents what they need to know about raising children.  This makes it so much easier on your sibling.  And Bubble will always hold you in awe because you’re the one with the advantage of experience in navigating life’s pitfalls.  You’ll be the one to whom he is compared; the explainer; the example-setter.  Most importantly, you’ll be his protector.

I was two years younger, almost to the day, and totally adored Bryant.  His name was too hard for me to pronounce, so I called him “Bye.”  Our father teasingly expanded this nickname to “Bynie Beenie, Tipsy Teeny, Apple Jack, John Squeeny” which Bryant quietly disdained, but stoically accepted – that is, until the first grade.  Mother had occasion to go to his school one morning and she took me along.  When we arrived, Bryant’s class was on recess out into the play yard.  Mother and I went there and when I spotted Bryant across the yard, started yelling “Bye, Bye, we’re here!!”  He totally ignored me. 

I went running around after him.  “Bye, Bye, here I am!”  He shot across the play yard as far away from me as he could get. 

That evening when we were sitting around the dinner table, mother asked him why he wouldn’t play with me.  His liquid brown eyes took on a stern cast and his countenance signaled that what he was about to say was probably as important as anything he had ever said. “My name is Bryant and she calls me Bye. I don’t want anyone to call me Bye.” 

No matter what I had to call him, I still relished being with him, sometimes to the point of being a pest I’m sure.  One day, Bryant was outside playing with some of the boys of University Ridge, the apartment complex where we lived.  I fretted to mother that they wouldn’t let me join in.  She called Bryant over and told him to include me in their game or he’d have to stop and come inside. 

Somewhat triumphantly, I ran out the door and immersed myself in the group.  Bryant approached and called the boys aside.  They huddled for a few minutes, then Bryant came over to me and said, “Okay, Beth, we’re going to play cowboys and Indians……and you’re going to be the cowboy.” **(Please see the footnote.)

I was elated.  Not only was I getting to play, but I was a significant part of the game. 

“Okay, run now.  We’ll give you a head start and then we’ll capture you.”

I took off as fast as I could, squealing with delight.  The boys followed, whooping and hollering like the Indians they pretended to be.  In short order, they caught up with me and grabbed my arms and marched me over to a sandbox dad had built for us off a ways from the back stoop of our unit.  It was shaded by a couple of trees.

“What should we do with her?” Bryant asked the group.

“Tie her up.  Tie her up!” They responded.

They took a rope and tied me to one of the trees on the side that hid me from the view to our apartment. 

“We’ll deal with her later.  It’s time to go before the cavalry gets here!”  They raced away out of sight, beating their mouths with their hands, laughing hilariously. 

I stood there, arms secured behind my back around the tree, all aglow with the excitement of participating. 

Time passed, but I didn’t mind.  The Indians would be back soon and we’d continue the game.  More time passed.  The sunlight coming through the tree began to diminish.  Still I waited patiently, secure in the knowledge that my older brother was out there somewhere as the Indian Chief leading his braves against the cavalry.

At dusk, the mosquitoes came out and virtually had their way with me since I didn’t have the use of my hands to swat at them.  It never occurred to me to yell for help.  My older brother would be there any minute.

Meanwhile, inside our apartment, dad had come home from work and mother busied herself fixing dinner.  She set the table and brought the food out from the kitchen. 

“Dinner’s served,” she announced, at which point Dad AND BRYANT appeared and took their seats. 

As mother slid her chair out, she asked “Where’s Beth?”

Bryant must have spewed his food all over the table as he realized he had totally forgotten about me tied to the tree.  He bolted up and out the back door, mother and dad close behind. There I was, faithfully fulfilling my role as the cowboy albeit looking somewhat like I had the chicken pox with all of the mosquito bites. 

Although I’m sure Bryant went without his dinner that night, my reverence for him never wavered.  From that point on, he took his role as my big brother very seriously and he fulfilled it with masterful aplomb.  To the day he died, I looked up to him and found some sort of steadiness in his presence.  Yes, Boo, being a big brother will be quite a responsibility.  But, you’ll do fine.  I can already tell. 

**(For a bit of orientation, please understand that this story happened before the advent of modern day entertainment.  We had no computers so there was no Plum Vision or Thomas the Train or Sponge Bob Squarepants.  Nor had our movies evolved into the likes of Star Trek, Star Wars, or Avatar.  There weren’t even any forerunners to Nintendo, X-Box or Wii. It was a simpler time and many of the shows we watched were called “Westerns” – stories about the settlement of the great western part of our nation which was the home to Native Americans or Indians.  Everybody rode horses to get around and cowboys were called such because they corralled cattle out on the plains.  As children, we would pretend to be cowboys and Indians, straddling imaginary horses and galloping around as if we truly were riding the magnificent creatures. 

Much of the historic interaction between Indians and cowboys was unpleasant.  The U.S. Army, known as the cavalry, was dispatched to defeat the Indians and take the land.  It is a vital yet disturbing part of our history that you should study.)

Bryant's Sermon on Beirut and Grenada

VOL. 149, NO. 44 of the Biblical Recorder dated December 3, 1983

Beirut and Grenada:  God’s Question

By:  S. Bryant Kendrick, Jr.

Chaplain to Students, Bowman Gray School of Medicine

(The following message was delivered at an ecumenical service in Winston-Salem called to express concern over the bombing of the Marine Corps Headquarters in Beirut and the invasion of Grenada.  For his text, Kendrick selected Isaiah 65:17-25.)

            We are here in this service of worship because of the recent events which have happened in Beirut and in Grenada.  The explosion at the Marine Corps barracks in Beirut has sent shock waves of grief and concern into our hearts.  We mourn our countrymen who have died and share the sufferings of those who were wounded.  And now many questions are emerging – questions concerning why we are in Lebanon, questions about what we can hope to accomplish there, questions about the adequacy of the defense of our personnel, questions about who is responsible for this act of terrorism, questions about how we retaliate.  All of these questions have mushroomed in the halls of Congress and in the media and they are being asked in the hearts of the relatives of those who have died and who were wounded.

            As these events were pouring forth from Beirut, as we watched the body count grow day by day, the news of the United States’ invasion of Grenada splashed across the headlines of our consciousness.   More Americans dead and wounded, more and more families who have lost a father, a brother, a son, and the chorus of questions grew louder.  Were the American medical students in Grenada in real danger?  What was the purpose of this act of aggression?  What is the meaning of the Cuban presence there:  Is their presence connected to arms shipments to Nicaragua?  Were they hoping to be able to invade other nations in the Caribbean?

            I am not here to discuss these questions or to debate the issue of whether we should or should not have troops in Lebanon or whether we should or should not have invaded Grenada.  I am here to pose the question of what these events might be saying to us in the light of our faith.  The question which we who are the people of God must raise is “What would God have us to see in the midst of this grief?  What would God try to reveal to us and require of us when we experience these deaths, and what does God try to say to us in the political questions which these events have forced to the forefront of our attention?

            You have heard the scripture from the book of Isaiah (65:17-25) – a word from the hand of one who knew the impact of war and destruction on his own people, and yet one who could look into the cruel face of history and see beyond to a new day.  This reading from Isaiah envisions a world that is wiser and better than ours.  The inhabitants of the world of Isaiah’s vision have learned how to live at peace.  Their world is not hobbled in its development by old hatreds.  It has broken free of the control which the desire for revenge and power exercise over the events of our world and time.  Isaiah envisions a new day in which there is happiness and joy, no longer weeping at the cries of grief.  Here is a timeless pattern where people live and work without fear of oppression or fear of losing to another what they have produced.  In Isaiah’s world there is fellowship with God which is immediate and internal.  And the values of fellowship and interdependency rather than dominance and submission characterize the community’s existence.  In comparison to the realities of our world so clearly focused in the events in Beirut and Grenada, Isaiah’s world seems light years away from us.  And yet, if we value such a vision, if we know in our hearts that it is true and whole in comparison to our world which is false and broken, we must question ourselves concerning what we are called to do to move our world closer to that which Isaiah saw.  What must we change?  What must we repent of?  What must we put to death in ourselves so that God can be freer to work the wonders of His creating Spirit?

            In order to answer these questions we must begin at the most basic level of self-knowledge and self-identity.  For in Christ we have the possibility of participating in a new identity, a new identity which all of God’s creatures shall know in the final days.  Hear these words from Galatians, 3^rd chapter, 28-29^th verses:  “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus and if you are Christ’s then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.”

            From the point of view of God as expressed in this portion of Scripture, our division of the world into various nations, groups, types and classes which we think are so important is seen to be really quite irrelevant, for from the point of view of scripture all of these groups are only parts of the larger whole whose goal is an experience of living in which God will be all in all.  But when that which is only a partial truth is treated as though it were the whole truth, we lose the capacity to see the unity of human community which is God’s intended future.  The signs of our failure to apprehend this truth are everywhere.  We don’t have to look to Beirut or Grenada to see it.  It’s embedded in the very language we use to refer to people as them as opposed to us.

            Hear these words:  Wop, wetback, dago, nigger, honky, gook – these are the words of sin because they deny what God has said about our essential unity, and it is the depersonalizing attitude contained in these words which makes it possible for us so easily to go to war and enables us to so easily keep aggression and hostility directed to those that we no longer even identify as our brothers and sisters.

            I was involved in a war – the Vietnam War.  I was not involved in combat in Southeast Asia; my job as a Navy medic was to treat wounded marines in a Navy hospital.  One of my patients was a young man from Florida who had been severely wounded in his legs by machine gun fire.  After treating his wounds one night, he and I started talking and he took out a picture from his wallet and showed it to me.  He had taken it off the body of a North Vietnamese soldier whom he had killed.  The photograph was one like each of us would have in our wallets or pocketbook, or in an album at home.  It was a family portrait, a young Vietnamese man, his wife, and two children dressed up in their holiday best, smiling.  What broke through to my mind and what I can never forget is that this man who had been the enemy of my country was a human being like myself, whose life was intimately connected to a family just like mine, and who now was connected to me.

            It is only when we find ways to rediscover our primal connection one to another that we can begin to take the first step in moving toward that world envisioned by Isaiah.  God has created us to live as persons in community, not as individuals in isolation and alienation from others, not as members of little groups who are able to point fingers of blame and hostility at others.  The church is the leading edge of the recognition of this truth and the reality of this unity of all persons founded in the love and mercy of God.

            We are, all of us, part of a worldwide event, a continuing historical revelation the coming into being of the humanity manifested in Jesus Christ.  We have a responsibility to further the humanizing process wherever we can, and we retard this divine purpose whenever we continue to insist that we act in the world from narrowly defined spheres of self-interest.

            These are the questions which I ask you to ponder as we explore the issues raised by Beirut and Grenada.  How can we move forward from Beirut and Grenada so that we might help reduce the need for violent solutions to human problems?  How can we move forward from Beirut and Grenada toward that kind of world envisioned by Isaiah which is wiser and better than ours?