Dante

After her father’s death when she was ten-years-old, Tracy Edwards began to get in trouble and fail academically – especially after her mother remarried and the family relocated from England to Wales. By age sixteen, she had been expelled from school, trekked across Europe and signed on as a stewardess (the title in the 1970s) on a luxury yacht; she learned navigation and worked her way from deckhand to first mate. She came to worldwide prominence in 1989, when she recruited the first-ever12-woman crew and captained the 58-foot yacht Maiden through the 27,000 nautical mile Whitbread Round the World Race; the Maiden finished first in its class and second overall.   

Why are you a bystander in your own life?
You’re supposed to be a star in your own life.
Tracy Edwards

NEWS FLASH!

DATELINE: ROME

In startling new developments on the seven-hundred anniversary of the death of poet Dante Alighieri, Vatican sources have announced the discovery of previously unknown elements of the author’s descriptions of Purgatory – and a whole new feature that seems predestined and prescient for some American politicians. 

The September edition of The Vatican Journal of Poetry announced the translation of recently discovered chapters of Dante’s Divine Comedy – an allegorical journey through Heaven, Purgatory and Hell – with special dungeons reserved for politicians who facilitate the spread of plague by inaction, political cowardice and denial of Science. 

In the new chapters of the narrative poem begun around 1308 and completed in 1320, a year before his death, Dante takes aim at politicians whose only apparent concern is not upsetting a deposed emperor who has lost all power except bloviation and incoherent threats. As a result, in the midst of a plague, they refuse to implement basic health precautions like masking and vaccinations; their people die alone without the support of family or friends, drowning as blood fills their lungs, gasping for air and refusing to believe that the plague is fatal – because the princelings have denied the pandemic’s reality. “This is a flu. This is like a flu…,” they say, echoing the blowhard who delighted in proclaiming “I think it’s going to work out fine. I think when we get to April, in the warmer weather, that has a very negative effect on that… We have it very much under control… But the people are getting better. They’re all getting better….”

Dante describes the inevitable, bordering on eternal, punishment of those who deny Science, while cowering because of their fear of the tyrant who constantly brags about the gold ornamentation of his palaces and how his “people” love him.

Because they act from cowardice, because they speak what they know to be untrue even though it will cost the lives of those whom they have pledged to support, they will crawl – eternally face down – through the lands of Pride, Envy, Wrath, Sloth, Avarice, Gluttony and Lust, forever tethered to respirators that will fail with each day’s setting sun - every day for one year for every man, woman and child of their lands who died from the plague. 

Only when reparations have been made will the unjust cowards be admitted to the Kingdom of the Just Judge, explains Dante in the newly discovered texts.

“These new verses represent an extraordinarily vivid anticipation and description of the fate of Twenty-first Century American politicians and their response to the deposed emperor’s Great Lie and the plague Dante imagined,” reported an anonymous Vatican source. 

“It’s tragic,” noted another Vatican theologian. “These men and women have the power, the potential to make history and make better the lives of the People of God. Instead, they tremble like terrified bunny rabbits because the emperor might roar. They have become invertebrate bystanders in their own lives. Rather than stars, they are lightless moons swirling around and bowing to the emperor who’s been discovered to be naked.

“And they make their cowardice all the worse by claiming that they are concerned about ‘rights’ – rights not to wear masks, rights to refuse vaccinations, rights to gather in crowded religious services and huge crowds – as though those are God-given.

“No! God gives no such rights. Those who claim them merit Dante’s Purgatory,” the theologian emphasized.

On January 6, 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt, who had watched from across the Atlantic as Hitler’s fascist regime consumed Europe, addressed Congress, insisting that people in all nations of the world were entitled to Four Freedoms: of speech and expression, to worship God – each in his or her own way, from want, and from fear. However, more than three years earlier, speaking in Chicago, the President called for an international “quarantine” against the “epidemic of world lawlessness” by aggressive nations. Without mentioning them by name, it was clear that Roosevelt was referring to the Japanese Empire, the Kingdom of Italy, and Nazi Germany.  

Roosevelt’s October 1937 call for isolating/quarantining was roundly rejected by the international community and American isolationists and, days later, he observed in a letter that he was “fighting against a public psychology which comes very close to saying ‘peace at any price.’” Eventually, the failure of Roosevelt’s calls for quarantine would claim 291,557 American combat deaths and 670,840 Americans wounded in World War II.

By the last week of September 2021, the United States had recorded more than 692,000 deaths and 43,200,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19.

Simply stated, more than 2.3 times as many Americans have died as a result of COVID-19 as were killed in action in World War II and the Land of the Four Freedoms has experienced more than 64 COVID-19 infections for every American World War II casualty.

It is just and proper to give the 45th American presidential administration credit for the development of three lifesaving vaccines. Nonetheless, some Americans – who would not be willing to go to war for anyone or anything but the “fake news” and Great Lie of the Emperor Without Clothes - refuse even the emperor’s vaccine – putting themselves and others at infinitely greater risk than war. All in the name of an imagined “freedom.” 

“My body. My choice,” they claim, echoing Americans women’s struggling for the “right” to choose abortions. 

In December 2018, the [President Jimmy] Carter Center issued the Scripturally Annotated Universal Declaration of Human Rights, emphasizing:

“Freedom, equality, and dignity are bestowed on all by virtue of being human, made in the image of God… these rights are not earned but divinely ordained…  All are instructed to ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’ Ultimately, the reason we are called to care about human rights is because of God’s love for all human beings and our human obligation to love others.”

Surprisingly, the four Gospels of the Christian tradition make no reference to “rights.” They have a number of directives and a few “you’d better or else” verses. In the fourteenth chapter of Matthew, Jesus recognizes that the crowd – the multitude – that has followed and been with him is hungry. He doesn’t suggest that the disciples feed them. He directs: “You give them something to eat.” In the sixth chapter of Mark, he repeats Himself: “You give them something to eat.” John 6 tells us he simply took the bread given to him and “gave thanks and distributed it.” 

Matthew’s famous parable of the sheep and the goats does not present an “if you want to” option. Jesus is frighteningly emphatic: Feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, care for the sick- by wearing masks and being vaccinated - and visit the imprisoned and you will be welcomed to “the Kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.” Fail (or even worse, refuse) to do so and you will hear “Depart from me, you who are cursed…”

In the thirteenth chapter of the Gospel of John, Jesus - the “Master… Teacher… and Lord” does the unspeakable, the unheard of – assuming the role of an unrecognized, faceless hired servant - essentially the lowest of the lowest ranks of society in first century Jerusalem, worthy only of washing the feet of guests at banquets – and then tells his “friends” – a title he will use with them in barely a few minutes – “You should do for others – be servants - as I have done for you.” 

Writing to the Galatians one or two decades after the commandment to serve, Paul admonishes the community “Serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” Created in the image and likeness the God – the source of human rights - the Christian is free not to do what her or she wants, but free to love our neighbors; such love – in all its forms – is not a choice but an obligation; personal freedom must be put aside for the good of all, even when that means the discomfort of wearing a mask or a day of side effects that might result from the COVID-19 vaccines. 

Seventy-eight years ago, in the time of the Greatest Generation, the Rite of Marriage of the Roman Catholic Church required the priest – immediately before the Exchange of Vows - to counsel my father and mother: 

“You begin your married life by the voluntary and complete surrender of your individual lives in the interest of that deeper and wider life which you are to have in common. Henceforth you will belong entirely to each other; you will be one in mind, one in heart, and one in affections. And whatever sacrifices you may hereafter be required to make to preserve this mutual life, always make them generously. Sacrifice is often difficult and irksome. Only love can make it easy, and perfect love can make it a joy. We are willing to give in proportion as we love. And when love is perfect, the sacrifice is complete.”

Sacrifice – the loss of public honors and office; the disappearance of fame and recognition; of the spotlight “privilege” of circling – like as lifeless moon – a fading star; of telling the truth despite its consequent rejections; of displeasing the naked emperor by rejecting his lies – may be difficult and irksome. Only love – for God and His People, not just for the party and the vote – can make it easy, and perfect love can make it a joy. 

The world watched in transfixed awe as Tracy Edwards and her courageous twelve-woman crew dared the impossible and made history. Perhaps it is time for America’s politicians – of both parties – to come out of the bystander shadows and become stars willing to make difficult and irksome sacrifices.