I hear the Lonesome Whippoorwill
Remembering five years ago…July 3, 2020
Last night, Hubby and I took a drive to Springville.
We turned down Franklin Street, and unexpected grief intruded into my day.
From the passenger seat of our moving car, I looked to my right and saw the empty lot where we park our car every July when we come to the Fiddler’s Green Bluegrass Festival.
It’s a community day. It’s a day that provokes nostalgia and gratitude. It’s an event I look forward to each year.
But it’s not happening this year.
I grew up a farmer’s daughter in a world saturated with old country and bluegrass music. Each year’s Fiddle Fest carries me back to years gone by. It is a day in which my roots are watered with memories held dear, and my gratitude swells for the God of my youth who is now the God of my middle years, who has carried me through the ups and downs of this thing we call life...
But 2020 is a very different year. It’s a year in which Fiddle Fests may die.
Positioned in our slow-moving car, I glimpsed the beauty of the evening sun on its downward trajectory as it glowed over the empty parking lot. The scene struck a blow to my spirit and a sense of sorrow gripped me with its sharp mournful claws.
I just felt so sad, so suddenly, so unexpectedly. No bluegrass festival this year. Everything different now. Didn’t see this coming. Still feeling knocked off balance, trying to catch my breath and steady my step. Lonely. Just a lonely moment in the middle of a culture gone mad.
In my head, I can hear the lyrics of an old Hank Williams song…
“Did you hear that lonesome whippoorwill?
He sounds too blue to fly
The midnight train is whining low
I'm so lonesome, I could cry
I've never seen a night so long
When time goes crawling by
The moon just went behind a cloud
To hide its face and cry….”
(YouTube link to hear Hank's song)
And now it’s a new day…
The morning sunshine is coming in the living room window. Hubby sits on the couch reading God’s Word. The cat, sound asleep in a patch of sunlight with her black hair iridescent in its beams, is a picture of perfect peace. A good day stretches out before us.
But I just can’t seem to shake the sorrow carved in my heart in an instant last night.
I sound melodramatic, I know. Since the lockdown and transformation began with all its shadows and complexities, I have been admonished by many a voice – sometimes my own – that our complaints are minor compared to those who face real persecution and poverty in other lands. I have been frequently confronted with the idea that I am mourning merely my creature comforts and that Americans have been much too spoiled. In other words, I have been accused from time to time that I am being a pampered brat.
Is this so? Am I wrong to grieve the freedoms morphing into memories and the government transmuting from the protector of my liberties into the controller of my actions? Certainly, I cannot spend the rest of my life grieving. That would not be Biblical. The Word of God tells us we must press on.
But I am also aware of a growing sense of understanding of another wrinkle to this old story: the world has benefited from a free America.
Missionaries have benefited from a free America. The persecuted church around the world has benefited from a free America. For a free America has been a prosperous America, and despite the fact that these days are days in which we are told we ought feel guilt for our prosperity, the truth is that the prosperity of the American experiment has been shared with many in the most desperate of cultures around the world. Americans have been generous. We have supported the work of those ministering to the least among us in the world’s population. Take a moment and consider what will become of missionaries in the farthest reaches of the most isolated people groups of the world. Consider those people groups. Do you really believe that a diminished America is advantageous to the rest of the world? I know we are being pressured to believe this is so, but use your sound mind given to you by the Creator God, and really think this through.
The concept that Americans should not grieve or oppose the limitations of our liberties or the shrinking of our economy simply based on the idea that other people have suffered worse than we is a one-dimensional and shallow concept. The struggling masses around the world will not struggle less if we despise our freedoms and abandon prosperity. I suggest - should this happen - that life will grow worse for them, and soon for us.
Standing up for the history, freedoms, and prosperity of America is not a selfish act.
And so I grieve, not just for me. But for you. And for all of humanity…
Yes, I hear the mournful whippoorwill…and I join him in sorrow.