Today, I needed a breather from cleaning and striving to keep the house redded up… It’s been months here and I still have a long way to go and the toil had my concussion let me know it was time to sit down. I settled down at the base of my stairs outside, breathing the fresh air without baking soda or cleaner and I started to reflect. As I thought of memorial day, I noticed my community’s flags. I thought of the tremendous sacrifice some paid to defend our freedoms. Mighty Wings from Top Gun has been playing in my head the last few days since I joined karate. I remember the Ken stage from Street Fighter II had a version of Mighty Wings that Capcom did not have the rights to. Lots of Japanese video games stole USA movie IP directly back in the day and no one seemed to care. Contra’s cover is Alien and Predator. Metal Gear’s cover is Kyle Reece from Terminator I.
Anyway Mighty Wings has been echoing in my mind since it’s a very good song, I reflected on the opening lyrics,”It’s just a ball of dust underneath my feet. It rolls around the sun, it doesn’t mean that much to me.” I’ve been agreeing with that lately as there are many things that matter much more than owning a piece of this ball of dust. It is better to live noble in defense of your friends and family than to rich noble in a castle with lots of stuff but cowardly and weasel-ly. We all know this. We come from dust, we go to dust, so why should we cling to it tightly as we walk on it for a fleeting wisp?
I did clarify to God tho. Yo,”Your Creation is beautiful. It ain’t like I am dissing it that it doesn’t mean much. It’s amazing, it’s awe inspiring.” I was looking at flowers even weeds produce and their beauty as I was perched on the bottom step one knee up hands in prayer. Again I saw birds I talked about before, but this time it was a chubby little wren bouncing around the yard, obviously successful in its hunt based on the stout roundness it has achieved. Wrens are supposed to be tiny little birds, but this one was a chubbers, easily four times the mass of normal wrens. Saw a robin fly by, and some normal sized wrens were in the area too.
God knows everything, but sometimes you just gotta make things clear for clarity sake. The Bible lets us know sometimes more than just God is watching our prayers and musings. Sometimes even we entertain angels in our comings, goings and prayers to the Almighty, and angels though powerful don’t know everything… So I like to clarify from time to time that “This ball of dust” is pretty awesomely made, but nothing worth clinging over, or as the terrible rap trend in our youth has portrayed,’Get rich or die trying’. That’s just devil stuff…. Defending other’s freedom to live their lives safe on this ball of dust though is God stuff.
Some people have trouble understanding what God wants on self defense. Jesus himself did not actually address directly to soldiers on this topic, but John The Baptist who was guided by God did talk on this, and his words are as if they came from God also:
Luke 3: 14 Some soldiers also asked him(John The Batptist), “What about us? What are we to do?” He said to them, “Don’t take money from anyone by force or accuse anyone falsely. Be content with your pay.”
[The surrounding scripture to this is a gem to read. The Bible is like mining for gems, where even the dirt supports the gems… but people who dig into the Bible then tire of the dirt and give up before the gems, well they may miss things greater than the meaning of life.]
When John said for soldiers not to bully others for loot, he wasn’t just talking about when they travel through towns on work, he was also scaling it up to entire armies of soldiers. God teaches us it is not right to go to war with another country just because you want their stuff, their land, their piece of the ball of dirt. God did not tell us being a soldier is sinful though… For sometimes you have to fight wars that defend your land and sometimes this involves fighting outside your land. There’s whole treatises written on “Just War”, but lots of time man’s interpretation of God’s word gets stretched to favor the man who’s doing the interpretation’s will, and the people who push war are typically politicians, so always take that with salt if someone is saying a war is Just or Not. The general of concept of fighting and dying for the freedom of your family, friends and fellow citizens is noble though, even God is teaching us through John the Baptist that it is not a sin to kill in battle. Remember back to the Old Testament with David and Joab and all those noble skirmishes of war vs murder when it happens in civilian life. It’s perfectly fine by God to be a soldier, in fact we thank you!
We thank Veterans on Veterans day. I like to thank active soldiers on Memorial Day because they don’t get paid enough to defend freedom. They know they could die just like those who fought in battles or worked with supply dangerous equipment in the past. Knights used to own land for fighting for a king. Samurai got paid land by their Daimyos. In fact throughout all of history, it’s pretty hard to convince people to fight and possibly die for you so they resorted to paying the fighters handsomely only second to the King normally.
In America, the noble of us value freedom above any treasure. We need our freedom of speech. We need our freedom to choose where to work. We need freedom against illegal search and seizure. We need our freedom to a speedy trail. The way freedoms work is if you lay down any of them, you can easily lose all of them. Read up on Exodus what happened to Goshen to know what it’s like to have no freedom, or just listen to Black Sabbath’s “Egypt: The Chains are on.” We rightly value freedom above any treasure, for even the richest man in America Elon Musk understood that a gilded cage is just like any other cage, so he fought against the targeted censorship of religious groups on Twitter. Then the retaliation by the Department of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas made that damned Ministry of Mis-Information which still hasn’t gone away, but operates under shadows now. That was the death of free speech.
Corrupt politicians know Americans are willing to value defending freedom higher than anything… So politicians exploit our young men and women in the armed forces by not paying them what they deserve, and you see homeless vets while bankers, scammers and credit pushers own thousands of homes… Seriously, why do you need a thousand homes when your brothers and sisters of humanity go homeless… Worse yet, homelessness is actually by design to lower supply of housing so demand is high and people pay more in rent. The Californian politics everyone said was the future is the same politicians who say they want to preserve the sandy desert… Well you could preserve it in cement, its still sand, but now it’s useful! Anyway anyway, homelessness is not a problem we can’t solve, it’s a problem they cause… And knowing a solider values freedom and defense of his friends and family and fellow citizen means politicians will exploit them by paying them little… Please thank our active duty soldiers and veterans.
So that “Mighty Wings” song been echoing with me since I started back up in karate just a few days ago and a stage in Street Fighter II has Capcom steal an electronic version of it as the stage for Ken. . For those trying to draw connections, I got the concussion before Shotokan karate, but I should have rested two weeks before starting. And I explained to God that his creation does matter to us, but just the preservation of it and defense of innocents through freedoms we have in the USA matter more than owning a stake in it. The devil fell because he wanted what God made and would do any foul act and betrayal to get it. We must stand for freedom as those who died and we remember. These selfless individuals did not get paid in money for what they deserve.
As Memorial Day approaches, the Mighty Wings song takes on a whole new meaning… A meaning to me of not caring about wanting a piece of this ball of dust, but looking higher into the skies for something that means more, the spirit of what it means to be an American. An American is free, as free as a bird Skynard would say. Our bodies may fall down into this ball of dust, but our spirit does not have to stay low. My spirit knows this and my spirit is flying high, even though nursing the concussion had me kneeling down on the ground, hands clasp asking for mercy.
I know the praise we give God in our struggles, pain and suffering now is the best praise we’ll give him in eternity. Sure we might enjoy heavenly orchards with our old friends and family, playing some horseshoes, ladder golf, motorcycles or whatever is fun… We will be having great fun in Heaven, and one might thing in our fun, our praises are more intense… No, its down here, in our struggles to make ends meet, when family and friends are in pain, we’re in pain personally, or expectations are not met and people letting you down. Terrible things can happen on this fallen Earth, and if we still praise the God of Love and Creation then, boom, that’s the best praise we have for all of eternity, matchless, peerless, and extraordinary.
Remember this when you go through trials: Thank and praise God even in your depths. God can and often does heal anything especially if you choose the way of love through Jesus. But if the healing never comes, a resurrection is sure… So our deepest depths of despair are cheated by conscious knows better that hope is there in Jesus and will not ever leave. Even those who died defending our freedom, who we honor by having BBQ and hanging out with friends and family… They’ll too burst from the graves those who fought with love, honor and bravery.
I thought of the closing lyrics of that Cheap Trick song Mighty Wings echoing in my head,”Make you take me, On your mighty wings across the sky…” I thought of the prospect in the future dying and handing my spirit up to God and his mighty wings uphold me with a song and hope in my heart. I looked up and saw the sleek playful flying black birds fly over I talked about that I talked about when I was feeling high on library hill in the local town the other day. Another answered prayer to see the freedom and play that I appreciated the other day fly over. Thus concluded my prayer and I came up to type it up in hopes you might have faith in the Spirit of Love and Freedom.