{"id":6039,"date":"2021-01-25T06:19:59","date_gmt":"2021-01-25T13:19:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qualityofmercy.com\/blog\/?p=6039"},"modified":"2025-09-06T03:44:45","modified_gmt":"2025-09-06T09:44:45","slug":"the-old-normal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qualityofmercy.com\/blog\/2021\/01\/25\/the-old-normal\/","title":{"rendered":"The Old Normal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I was annoyed Tuesday when the Biden-Harris tribute to the 400,000 fallen included that old, mm\u2026, warhorse “Amazing Grace.” I muttered to my wife Andrea Carney<\/a>, “Well, as long as they don’t trot out ‘Hallelujah\u2019\u2026,” which of course they did. “Amazing Grace” showed up time and again during the inaugural spectacle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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\"Amazing<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

In her introduction to a book about that hymn and its words, which were penned by former slave trader John Newton, Judy Collins writes that it’s “a song about letting go, bottoming out, seeing the light, turning it over, trusting the universe, breathing in, breathing out, going with the flow [\u2026].”<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Obviously it was tailor-made for January 19, the last day of a tyrant’s reign, the American carnage left behind, and the promise of the future, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No. Because we haven’t been saved or found at all. Here’s what secretary of state nominee Antony Blinken had to say in his confirmation remarks<\/a> the afternoon of the memorial:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But for all that has changed, I believe some things remain constant. American leadership still matters. The reality is, the world simply does not organize itself. When we\u2019re not engaged, when we\u2019re not leading, then one of two things is likely to happen. Either some other country tries to take our place, but not in a way that\u2019s likely to advance our interests and values, or maybe just as bad, no one does and then you have chaos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blinken tried to temper that with platitudes of “humility” and “no single country alone,” but we get the gist. The Old Normal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Andrea loves “Amazing Grace” and wants it sung at her memorial. It was sung, memorably so, by Barack Obama during his eulogy for Rev. Clementa Pinckney, who was murdered in Charleston at his church with eight others during Bible study, by a racist fanatic. When Obama ventured the idea of singing it, Michelle Obama asked<\/a>, “Why on earth would that fit in?” And I have to ask the same question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe because her husband, like the slave trader Newton, and like Pinkney’s killer, had a lot of blood on his hands. And power in<\/em> them. Here’s what CIA torture whistleblower John Kuriakou told<\/a> Democracy Now!<\/em> on the day of Joe Biden’s inauguration about the president’s nominee for Director of National Intelligence:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We know that Avril Haines, at the [Obama] NSC<\/span>, was in charge of determining whether it was legal or illegal to place people on John Brennan\u2019s kill list. We know that in almost all cases that she said it was legal to put these names on the kill list, and people were subsequently killed by drone, including American citizens, like Anwar al-Awlaki and his son. They were American citizens who had never been charged with a crime. They had never faced their accusers in a court of law. There was no due process for them. She\u2019s never had to answer for that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This, mm\u2026, hits kinda close to home. Anwar’s son Abdulrahman was born in Denver, where I live; Anwar in Las Cruces. When asked to answer for it about a year later on the 2012 campaign trail just days before the election, Obama’s former press secretary said<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would suggest that you should have a far more responsible father if they are truly concerned about the well being of their children. I don’t think becoming an al Qaeda jihadist terrorist is the best way to go about doing your business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few months before that, Obama was quoted by his chief of staff as saying that the elder Awlaki’s murder was “an easy one” to approve, from that secret kill list.<\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Michelle
Photoshopped<\/a> or not, consider this image of Michelle Obama holding a photograph of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

There were suggestions at the time that Obama’s killing of sixteen-year-old Abdulrahman al-Awlaki\u2014two weeks after the extrajudicial execution of his forty-year-old father\u2014was grounds for impeachment. So much for more recent exclamations, in the Trumpian era, of “If Obama<\/em> had done thus-and-such\u2026.” Protestations of the recent attack on our Temple of Democracy are specious alongside drone strikes against actual temples\u2014mosques\u2014in southwest Asia. Those goons in D.C. on January 6 were attempting extrajudicial executions of American citizens. Like the one(s) that succeeded in Charleston.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I realize that if I was to recieve [<\/em>sic] life imprisonment, I would eventually be pardoned.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014Dylan Roof journal<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those were the \u201ceasy ones\u201d on Obama\u2019s kill lists\u2014by way of an amazing grace<\/em>, which the dictionary defines as \u201ca manifestation of favor, especially by a superior.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so Avril Haines is the first of Biden\u2019s cabinet nominees to be so favored, confirmed by the Senate on Inauguration Day. Only ten opposed it, Republicans all. Which means that Bernie Sanders (at least) must have a porkbarrel project on tap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Servants of Slavery<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

\u2019Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,<\/em>
And grace my fears reliev’d ;<\/em>
How precious did that grace appear,<\/em>
The hour I first believ’d !<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although he was white, John Newton (1725\u20131807) once was enslaved himself. This says a lot about how even the headstrong son of a London shipmaster could be forced into Royal naval service, work on a slaver ship, and wind up a “servant of slaves<\/a>” in Sierra Leone. Whereby he might have acquired some empathy for human chattel.<\/span>3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> But after being rescued from that bondage in 1748, and praying to his Lord for mercy on the return voyage during a life-threatening storm\u2014the kernel of his conversion\u2014, he kept captaining slavers. Newton left the slave trade in 1754, only due to infirmity, while continuing to invest in it.<\/span>4<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Amazing Grace” wasn’t written by Newton in self reflection after having his appeal answered during a tempest off the Irish coast. He wrote the hymn more than two decades later, in 1772, and long after his 1764 ordination, as a priestly obligation to a parish prayer group. It wasn’t until 1788 that he opposed his former trade in print<\/a> with his famous pamphlet, Thoughts Upon the African Slave Trade<\/em>, which mentions his own enslavement but not his storm-soaked supplication.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Thoughts<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Music aficionados likely are aware of how Bach wrote hundreds of cantatas for the Lutheran liturgical year. When first I was told this as a chorister, I imagined The Old Wig composing on a Monday for the next Sunday’s worship. Not quite. A list<\/a> of these 200+ cantatas begins in 1707 and ends in 1748, two years before his death. So too with “Amazing Grace”\u2019s John Newton.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the parish of Olney, Buckinghamshire, Fr. Newton seems to have bonded well with his flock by sermonizing from experience rather than authority, involving himself in their lives rather than remaining aloof. Upon the arrival and influence of poet William Cowper in 1767, the two began writing hymns to present at Newton’s popular prayer meetings.<\/span>5<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their collaboration would become the Olney Hymns<\/em><\/a> (1779).<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Olney<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Nestled in Book I, On Select Passages of Scripture, is a hymn that takes its inspiration from 1 Chron. 17:16\u201317 on a theme of Faith’s Review and Expectation, in which the wretch King David begins:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who am I, O Lord<\/span> God, and what is my house, that you have brought me thus far?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The hymn contains the first line:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amazing grace! (how sweet the sound)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus begins what I’m told is the most popular hymn in the English language. William Cowper likely is not remembered as the author of an equally memorable opener:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

God moves in a mysterious way<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like Judy Collins, Joan Baez has a hearth in her heart for “Amazing Grace.” From her memoir Daybreak<\/em>, her last page and the back flap:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You, Dear Reader\u2014
You are Amazing Grace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Daybreak<\/em> was my introduction to the notion of pacifism, as a high schooler of about sixteen in 1971. It’s not in the book, but I remember Baez explaining elsewhere how even the Nazis could have been stopped with nonviolence, citing the apocryphal legend<\/a> of Danish King Christian X donning the yellow Star of David, in essence declaring, “We are all Jews,” and his compatriots doing the same. Legend or not, I’d hoped that People Have the Power.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Daybreak<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

And so I was quite disappointed to find that Baez was moved to tears<\/a> by Zoe Mulford’s “The President Sang Amazing Grace.” My eyes were dry. Because I know Barack’s answer to Michelle’s question: “I think if I sing, the church will sing with me.” Rally \u2019round.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As much as we are dealing in this country with the truly wretched legacy of slavery, something both Collins<\/a> and Baez<\/a> recognize, our enslavement to the military remains a pillar of The Old Normal. In fact, the President Who Sang Amazing Grace ran on a promise to build up military efforts in Afghanistan (a land that has shed intervention and occupation like skin): a servant to our<\/i> slavery. But was that preeelection pledge enough? My brother Richard and I had a conversation about Obama’s subservience, like that of his predecessors, to the Captains and the Kings (to quote Brendan Beehan via Philip Chevron). Do they ask for an Oval Office visit on January 21, invoking Newton’s “grace that taught my heart to fear”?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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