The Brood X periodical cicadas have made their presence clearly heard and felt to the south and west of my corner of southeast Pennsylvania these last weeks, but here there's been nothing on the scale of what's been true elsewhere. Paolo, whose Amy yesterday began posting some very fine photographs of the small-scale natural world, himself posted a picture of one of his buggy visitors a few weeks ago, and people have told me that the cicada's racket is a constant background of telephone conversations with folk in the affected areas.

They're not the locusts of the plague of Egypt, of course, and in fact do relatively little damage to the world on which they descend. But I've been thinking of them in that connection, and in connection with the great Malcolm Muggeridge who, though having enjoyed extravagant worldly success and acclaim as an author and a vendor of words -- Paul Johnson considers him, with Evelyn Waugh, one of the great masters of English prose in the twentieth century -- yet, in looking back over his life, called his autobiography Chronicles of Wasted Time. Like most of his work, it's informative and vastly entertaining but still the sense of having spent much of his time on trifles is strongly evoked.

We've all spent part of our time on trifles and on immediate and quotidian concerns and enthusiams. Some of us so much of our time in such trifles that conscience scalds at the memory. And such pursuits can lay waste to our time in the way that locusts ravage the land. But the Lord God remains faithful, and rich in blessing. And, of His abundant mercy and grace, has promised that He will, in the words from Joel 2, restore the years that the locust has eaten.

The hymn of Robert Bridges, later Poet Laureate, is based on that chapter of Joel.

Rejoice, O land, in God thy might,
His will obey, Him serve aright;
For Thee the saints uplift their voice:
Fear not, O land, in God rejoice.

Glad shalt thou be, with blessing crowned,
With joy and peace thou shalt abound;
Yea, Love with thee shall make His home
Until thou see God’s kingdom come.

He shall forgive thy sins untold:
Remember thou His love of old;
Walk in His way, His word adore,
And keep His truth for evermore.

It is easier for us to get inside Augustine's unregenerate skin than perhaps it would be for any of the intervening generations. The similarity between his circumstances and ours is striking if not to say alarming. There is the same moral vacuity, leading to the same insensate passion for new sensations and experiences; the same fatuous credulity opening the way to every kind of charlatanry and quackery from fortune telling to psychoanalysis; the same sinister combination of great wealth and pointless ostentation with appalling poverty and unheeded affliction. As Augustine wrote, O greedy men, what will satisfy you if God Himself will not?

Malcolm Muggeridge, in A Third Testament, a series of studies and meditations on seven "wrestling prophets."

There's no season of the year when I'm not conscious of how greatly I've been blessed by sharing in the lives of sixteen nieces and nephews. Some fairly near, some at a distance, all treasures. And, as was true at this season last year, it's a time of advances in educational careers and I'm an especially proud and happy uncle. It's fitting that I'm posting this on the eve of the memorial of Aloysius Gonzaga, the patron of youth, and I ask his prayers for all of this year's graduates. He's also, since Confirmation, been my own patron and also that of two family Josephs, one my uncle and the other my nephew and godson.

Family graduations this year from Naperville North High School, Archmere Academy, and Pennsylvania State University. Warm congratulations to Deirdre, Maggie and Charles on their achievements and every good wish and blessing as another stage of the academic journey begins at the University of Illinois, Goucher College and Widener University Law School.

I AM YOUR FLAG


Traditionalists say I was born of a woman's hand -- fashioned from bits of colored cloth by a seamstress in a small house in Philadelphia, a year after the new country was born.

Historians are less certain of my origin. Yet, no one doubts my existence. I was
created out of necessity to serve as the emblem of a people whose experiment in
nationhood was as unique as the arrangement of my stars and stripes.

I have proved my adaptability to change. I've accommodated growth. I've stood up to
time and troubles. I fluttered in the Fall air with General Washington and his loyal
French allies at Yorktown. My fabric was shredded by cannonballs from British frigates
in the War of 1812 and I was carried in triumph by Andy Jackson at New Orleans. The
British could see me clearly in the mists of "dawn's early light," waving from the
standards at Fort McHenry.

I've witnessed turmoil and bitterness, even lost some of my glory in mid-century in a
war between brothers, but I was restored as a nation's emblem at Appomattox.

I traveled West with the new frontier. I flew from the headlamps of the Iron Horse in
Utah. I was with the prospectors at Sutter's Mill, with the cavalry against cattle rustlers, with the Rough Riders at San Juan Hill.

I crossed the Marne with the doughboys anxious to make the world safe for democracy.
I was with brave GIs storming the beaches at Normandy. I was raised over a shell-pocked hilltop at Iwo Jima and I stood by the grim-faced negotiators at Panmunjom. I was on that last helicopter from Saigon and with the men and women of Operation Desert Storm.

I have been around in victory and defeat. I've seen pleasure and pain. I was raised
over the rubble of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. I've been folded smartly by
soldiers and handed to weeping widows. I've covered the coffins of those who've served
country and community.

I also decorate bandstands and concert halls. I am saluted in parades, in schools
and at ball parks. I am part of political campaigns, high holidays and ice cream socials. I fly from skyscrapers and bungalows. I've been to the moon and the ocean floor.

I am everywhere my people are. I am saluted and, occasionally, scorned. I have been
held with pride and I have been ridiculed, because I am everything my people are: proud, angry, happy, sad, vengeful, argumentative, ambitious, indifferent.

I was created to serve a people in struggle and a government in change. There are
now more stars in my blue field than there were in the beginning and, if need be,
there's room for more.

But, those red and white stripes remain as they've always remained, clearly visible
through the struggle -- the symbol of the "land of the free and the home of the brave."

I am your past. I am your future. I am your flag.


by Bob Nelson
KYW Newsradio 1060
Copyright 2002, Infinity Broadcasting Corp.
All Rights Reserved.

You can listen to a recording of Bob Nelson's meditative tribute here.