Master Blueprints # 40: "Flashing for the Warriors Whose Strength is Not to Fight, Flashing for the Refugees on the Unarmed Road of Flight”

(Personal reflections inspired by Bob Dylan songs)

Song: “Chimes of Freedom”
Album: Another Side of Bob Dylan
Release Date: August 1964

Several weeks ago, a retired colleague, Chris, who reads my blogs, sent me the link to an October 12, 2018 Opinion article in the New York Times titled “10 Great Protest Songs” ( https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/12/opinion/loudon-wainwright-protest-songs.html ).  To my surprise, the last entry in the list (presumably # 1) was “America the Beautiful”, in its original, unsanitized form, which is unknown to most of us.  As discussed in the article, that Kathy Lee Bates version includes such lines as “America, America, God shed his grace on thee. Till selfish gain no longer stain the banner of the free”, and “Till nobler men keep once again thy shining jubilee”.  “America the Beautiful”: A protest song indeed….and stripped of some of its strength in our much more familiar version.

Around the same time, on a call home from Panama, daughter Charlotte was lamenting a handful of national fiascos here in the States in a never-ending wave of them (I can’t recall the specifics, but at this stage you can just pick em’ out of a hat).  My daughter is an environmental scientist working in the tropics.  Like her Dad, Charlotte struggles regularly as she observes the lack of political willpower to tackle crucial issues like climate change, made all the worse in the past two years with the reverse now actually playing out; the United States having pulled out of the Paris Agreement altogether making our homeland the only industrialized country in the world not partaking in this critical international collaborative. 

Charlotte considers today’s status quo as a war on the environment, a thought she expressed on that call, and I couldn’t agree more.  How to respond to such ignorance?  Well, we talked about a handful of ways people are doing this, which reminded me of protest songs and that New York Times article.  This lead to my bringing up Bob Dylan’s early-60s protest songs, including the no-holds-barred “Masters of War”.  Since Charlotte has been reading my blog entries, she then suggested I do a Blue Print about that one.

I’ve yet to write on Bob Dylan’s early protest songs to any great degree, but I had planned to all along.  And so, between Chris, Charlotte, and especially the buildup of all that has played out on the national stage these past 2 years, I was getting the hint that the time had arrived.  It’s difficult however, because in the context of this blog series I typically try not to pass judgement, and “Masters of War” is as finger-pointing of a song as one could imagine.  However, what I can do here is shine a light on the ideals which I find to be righteous in the hope that the antithesis can be revealed. So instead of a “Masters of War” focus, I’ve decided to tackle its polar-opposite “Chimes of Freedom” ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVIWA9VTiN8 ).

“Chimes of Freedom” is Bob Dylan’s version of the Sermon on the Mount, a beautiful, heartfelt song of admiration.  Here he recognizes…. the unarmed refugee, the underdog soldier (“in the night”), the luckless, the rebel, the rake, the abandoned (“and forsaked”), the outcast (“burnin’ constantly at stake”), the gentle, the kind, the "guardians and protectors of the mind" the "unpawned painter behind/beyond his rightful time (* note the fantastic poetry in behind/beyond), the deaf, the blind, the mute, the mistreated mateless mother, the mistitled prostitute, the misdemeanor outlaw (“chased an’ cheated by pursuit”), the lonesome-hearted lovers (“with too personal a tale”), the searching ones (“on their speechless, seeking trail”), the unharmful gentle souls misplaced inside a jail, the tongues with no place to bring their thoughts, the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed, the countless confused accused misused strung-out ones an’ worse, and finally “every hung-up person in the whole wide universe”. 

The definition of protest is “a solemn declaration”, which Bob Dylan empathizes with in “Chimes of Freedom” for each characterization in the previous paragraph.  Last week I drove seven hours north for a work trip from Massachusetts to Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.  As I was nearing my destination I decided to reflect on my own observations of freedom chimers, while listening repeatedly to that song.  What played out in a 2-hour time-span were seven mental connections to both the people in my personal life and those in the public eye (actors, musicians, politicians, other newsmakers).  I’ve fleshed out all 7 of those domino-connections below, followed by an abbreviated collection of other, more determined thoughts that came to me afterwards.  Without further ado:

Ok, well, perhaps it was because I was on a work trip, but the first thought that hit me was of a genuine, generous colleague, Silvia, who work-travels in similar circles as myself.  The two of us were in Austin, Texas about 5 years ago, and after a long day’s meeting we headed uptown to the Congress Ave Bridge over the Colorado River (not that Colorado River, but a much smaller, albeit significant one in west Texas) to catch a natural phenomenon: Thousands of Mexican Free-Tailed Bats uniformly leaving their roosts under the bridge to fly off and feed at night.  We were hanging out waiting for the action to commence when a homeless guy who called himself “Batman” approached us in a somewhat tattered ‘batman’ outfit.  This benign gentleman, with obvious mental challenges, offered a small token pin with a bat on it, hoping for a couple of bucks in return. I had no cash on me, and Silvia only had a $20.  She accepted the pin and handed him the bill without hesitation, while also engaging with Batman in a kindly, compassionate way.  A relatively minor expression of good will, sure, but revealing to the true character of this colleague.  This reflection was a perfect one to begin delving into my Ottawa car-ride chain of thoughts. Silvia, striking for the gentle: Chimes of freedom.

With “bridge” as metaphor (in more ways than one), I suddenly found myself recalling an article I had read 13 years ago about New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.  This article included several paragraphs where the keen-eyed author had spotted an unassuming famous person on an off-the-beaten-path uptown bridge helping the downtrodden one at a time in whatever way he could; sweat, toil and all.  When I first read this story, my brain was apparently not functioning properly seeing as, where the words on the page were recognizing actor Sean Penn’s actions, I was mentally interpreting the name as ‘Sean Hannity’ of Fox News claim.  Immediately, I began to second-guess my belief-system, thinking ‘wow, there’s a humanitarian in Sean Hannity after all’.  A day later I proceeded to show my wife the article and at that moment realized my error:  My views of quality persona had not been challenged after all (which was in some ways disappointing).  Sean Penn (not Hannity) striking for the underdog soldier in the night: Chimes of freedom.

From there, I thought of humanitarians in my own life, near the top of that list being my late, great Aunt Ginger, a Dominican Sister (Nun), whom I have written about before.  Sister Virginia Smith had made many humanitarian gestures in her too-short-a-time on Earth, with one of these being of special fascination to me.  It was a trip my Aunt had made to Southeast Asia near the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, to address the safety of the local Dominican Sisters as the world was collapsing around them.  The writing was on the wall that the South was soon to be overtaken.  Chaos and finger pointing were already kicking in.  These nuns were facing persecution from many directions.  Ginger headed right into the danger, bombs dropping around her in several of the regions she visited. I believe this experience had a huge influence, and that my aunt came back home even deeper in her faith-centric convictions than when she had left.   Aunt Ginger, striking for the unharmful gentle souls misplaced inside a jail: Chimes of freedom.

With that said, my thoughts then jumped to capital punishment and actress Susan Sarandon’s moving portrayal of Sister Helen Prejean in the based-on-true-story film Dead Man Walking.  Sarandon’s portrayal has always reminded me of my Aunt Ginger (that mind-leap of mine could also very likely have been related to the prior-mentioned Sean Penn, who co-starred in Dead Man Walking).  I soon found myself thinking too of former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, who once signed an affidavit while in public office, which stated in so many words that if he or anyone close to him was ever killed in a violent way, that the death penalty be off the table.  The ability to forgive is a blessed thing, which includes an understanding that we are not to be the final judge.  Mario Cuomo and Sister Helen Prejean, striking for the countless, confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse: Chimes of freedom.

No doubt by this stage I had a higher power on my mind as my thoughts again drifted, this time to a preacher in my hometown of Pepperell, Bob, who periodically sits at the corner table of a popular local diner with a bible and preaches to the few who are willing to stop and listen.  Bob is a fiery vociferous soul, but he speaks truth.  I’ve granted him my ear on several occasions when I’ve had the time to do so.  He rarely strays from his biblical discourse, and if he does, it is only to make a faith-centered point from a slightly different perspective.  Bob has talked to me in eye-opening ways about his father’s conversion late in life and explained in passionate detail several Biblical passages, including one that really stuck with me about the reason Jesus asked Peter 3 times if he loved him (John 21: 15-17), which was better than any explanation I’d ever heard in church.  Rarely do the folks in town heed his words, but this does not deter him.  Bob the street preacher, striking for the tongues with no place to bring their thoughts: Chimes of Freedom.

No recognition like these would be complete without including my parents, and so as I arrived in Ottawa’s outskirts, my final reflections were on Mom and Dad’s lifelong freedom-chiming ways.  These ways would include their open-door policy to all of mine and my sibling’s friends.  These ways would include their trust in us.  These ways would include their welcoming of the needy into their home.  These ways would include their soft touch with advice.  These ways would include their willingness to let us be ourselves.  These ways would include their faith-centric home.  These ways would include their inclusiveness, their generosity, their patience.  Mom and Dad striking for the kind: Chimes of freedom.

There you go; 7 thoughts, somewhat fleshed out, from roughly 2 hours of driving.  Over the course of the week, a number of others came to mind. I’ll surmise these in short order here:

In terms of those in the public eye (which you will have to look up yourself if unknowing and curious), ‘Chimes of Freedom’ also go out to Maximillian Kolbe, Martin Luther King Jr, the Mississippi Freedom Riders, the Standing Rock and Cheyenne River Sioux tribes protesting the transcontinental Dakota gas pipelines, , recipients of last week’s pipe bombs (all freedom fighters in my book), the Tiananmen Square “Tank Man”, Jennifer Castle and Blake Spalding, Rev. William Barber II, David Attenborough, Jane Goodall, Mahatma Gandhi, Linus Pauling, Mother Teresa, Elie Wiesel, Nelson Mandela, Yitzhak Rabin, Jimmy Carter, Shirin Ebadi, Martti Ahtisaari, Barack Obama, Bobby Kennedy, Pope Francis, Jamal Khashoggi and …..Bob Dylan.

Chimes of Freedom also go out to anyone promoting green energy, anyone standing up for the rights of the unborn through a faith-based – vs legal – position, anyone who knows how to swallow their pride, and anyone who donates large, beautiful land-holdings to the public.  So too those chimes go out to doctors without borders, conservationists, organic farmers, people choosing solidarity over power, and people choosing peaceful protest over war.

And Chimes of Freedom go out to those who still believe in the words on the Statue of Liberty, particularly in these times of ugly discourse.  For those in the good ol’ USA, here’s a reminder: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore”.  I’m reminded of a caravan making its way through Mexico as I write this. Yes, give them to us until we are saturated.  With that said, I too recognize an immigration lawyer and great friend of my wife, Nancy and mine.  Madeline’s chimes of freedom ring true for the unarmed refuge.

In terms of others in my life, there is Father Peter and his profound homilies, and another friend of Nancy’s named Barbara who passed away yesterday (“the mistreated mateless mother”).  Then, there’s the friends of ours who have worked their way through addictions, as well as family and friends who have donated their time to good causes.  And of course, my wife and her kindly ways with others. 

Finally, Chimes of Freedom go out to my daughter Charlotte, who was the tipping-point inspiration for me to write this entry.  Charlotte stands for so much that is good in this world.  She has connected with the oppressed in civil-strife-torn Nicaragua.  She has connected with indigenous people in Panama who have pressures on their way of life.  She has made strides on environmental science at the Smithsonian Institute for Tropical Ecology in Panama City.  She has eloquently expressed herself in her creative writing and through her magnificent art.  She has immersed herself in rainforest ecology. Charlotte is certainly one of those freedom chimers who is making it happen.

Get out and vote, folks

- Pete