In An Often Cruel World, Peaceful Ordinariness Is To Be Savored

A summer Sunday in an old Midwestern river town, walking down the avenue under the elms past yards burgeoning with vinous and hedgy things and multicolored flowerage, the industry of each homeowner shown in the beauty offered to the passerby. The children of these homeowners may be telling their therapists harrowing tales of emotional deprivation suffered in this very home, and yet back in April and May, weekends were devoted to making this front yard splendid, and that is worth something. Much can be forgiven of those who make beautiful things.

I'm on my way home from church, where I tried to forgive myself, which is a good reason to go. And also for the stories. This morning it was about John the Baptist, imprisoned by Herod though he knew John to be a godly man and was a fan of his preaching, but John had condemned Herod for taking his brother's wife, so into the dungeon went the prophet. Herod threw a feast, got roaring drunk, and when his young stepdaughter danced, he was deeply moved, as drunks so often are, and offered her her heart's desire, and she, consulting with Mom (the brother's wife, now Herod's), asked for John's head on a platter, and - voila! - there it was, the bloody head of a godly man, dripping on the dance floor, and Herod felt terrible about it, end of story.

A tale of cruelty that somehow brought Dick Cheney to mind and the secret CIA program that he kept secret from Congress, in defiance of law and tradition, and also the late Robert McNamara, who was, by his own admission, a war criminal, having helped engineer the fire-bombing of Tokyo on March 10, 1945, that incinerated 100,000 souls in one blazing evening, a military attack on civilians, its purpose purely cruel. The Japanese had committed their own atrocities on the Chinese and Koreans, the British destroyed Dresden, the Germans carried out the Holocaust, and so it goes. The heart of man is merciless.

All the more reason to savor this peaceable street and its lawns and driveways, kids' bikes leaning against the house, the listless cat on the porch, the sheer beauty of ordinariness. The ambitions of our society are met on this street: peace, prosperity, a bed of petunias, a porch, a pitcher of tropical punch. There are men who would destroy this street and other men would defend us against them: Those opposing men may have more in common with each other than with the people living on this street or the people in whose names it would be destroyed.