HOW IRONIC!

HOW IRONIC

How ironic, the Holy Cross Cemetery of Cleveland, Ohio, being forced to remove the Holy Cross from its cemetery---maybe. If it is city-owned, the crosses must go.

I assumed---and you know what they say about assuming---that church cemeteries are church-owned. Not so, at least not so in all cases. St. John’s Cemetery, of Cleveland, is city-owned.

The city of Cleveland, concerned about "rising maintenance costs" are implementing cost-saving measures, such as the enforcement of a “14-year-old rule” that prohibits crosses and other “decorations” in city cemeteries. Letters have been mailed to relatives of people buried there telling them to "remove crosses and other decorations from graves or have them taken away." Although the city says its policy has been in place for 14 years, now that it's actually going to be enforced, the question of its legality with inevitably arise.

For me, the ultimate consideration of all decisions made, in all matters involving governmental policy, governmental law, and all matters of morality, whether great or small, should be: Is it right? If one must choose between two things that are good, the choice should be in favor of the thing that provides the greater good.

As far as I’ve ascertained, there is no subplot to this story. So far, I’ve found no evidence that the A.C.L.U. is behind the edict to remove crosses from Cleveland city-owned cemeteries. Naturally, in any issue that arises that concerns the removal of anything religious, the A.C.L.U. comes to mind, because the A.C.L.U. has played, and continues to play, a major role in efforts to remove all references to religion from American government.

The important question of this issue, that needs to be answered is: Is it more important to lower the budget of the city, by removing crosses from cemeteries or----Is it more important to maintain a tradition that dates back two thousand years, not only in American history, but in world history, of placing a cross on the grave of a deceased loved-one.

What is the significance of the cross on a gravesite?

It is a silent message of faith in Almighty God. It is an emblem that represents faith in all things good and lovely. It is a symbol of acknowledgment of the Holy Bible and its inspired teachings. It is a reminder of the greatest sacrifice one person can make for another.

Should we now take down the thousands of white crosses scattered across vast landscapes, of foreign lands, where American soldiers have been laid to rest? American soldiers, mostly young men, in their salad days, who gave their lives for God and country?

Shall we just take down all of the crosses from North Carolina to California and North Dakota to Texas, because we now face budget crunches brought on by power-seeking, money-hungry politicians, who use the Bible as a prop.

We need the cross more than we’ve ever needed it before in America, to remind us of love, sacrifice, mercy, and forgiveness---qualities that some parents find unnecessary to instill in their children.

For those of us who grew up before, or during the 1960s, we have seen the devastating results of the removal of prayer in school. In the fifties and sixties I lived in homes where doors were left unlocked overnight. In the sixties, I shopped for Christmas presents, for hours, on Main St., in Washington, North Carolina. When I could carry no more bags, I went to our family car, on Main St., slipped the bags through the open windows of the car and continued my shopping. I may have left the keys in the car, for all I know, because no one would steal your car in our community.

Things could be that way again if people simply adhered to the Ten Commandments. You think not. Read them and you’ll see. There would be no need for security locks on your bicycles, automobiles, homes, schools, and businesses. Morality and religion would once again dictate the behavior of society. The decent mores that make a happy society would be re-established.

I watched a television show, where families lived the way families lived in the 19th century. I watched as the face of a young boy lit up with a smile upon receiving---an orange! When the family returned, from the prairie, to their brand-new, never-before-lived- in home, I watched as the boy sat alone in his bedroom, staring blankly, at the hand-held electronic game he was playing, saying: “I’m bored. I’ve got too much stuff.”

It bears repeating. The same boy who, deprived of the excesses of life, on the prairie, who was thrilled at the sight of a simple orange, sat in his bedroom like a zombie, bored with his expensive, electronic toy, in his expensive home.

Toys and Corvettes ain’t gonna make you happy---in the long-run. The short run yes, but not the long-run. Only God-given spiritual joy is everlasting. You will experience as many or more trials and tribulations in life as before, but with God-given spiritual joy, you will face them and embrace them with uncharacteristic optimism. I cannot explain “peace that passeth all understanding;” I can only tell you, from experience, that it is real.

In the 1970s, my dad and I saw a man pushing himself down a street in Kinston, North Carolina. He had the biggest smile on his face that I’ve ever seen. He had no body, from the waist down! That’s not all. My dad said he’d seen the man’s girlfriend and she was pretty!

I know a man who lost his arms and shoulders as the result of touching electric wires on a utility pole. He teaches and preaches in church whenever given the opportunity. He turns the pages of the Bible with his tongue. He has a wonderful, faithful wife, who’s been by his side for many years.

You think Mayberry was just a figment of someone’s imagination? Sure there are exaggerations of the way life was then, in the South, in the Andy Griffith Show, but much of what you see was real before the revolutionary years of the sixties. People were much kinder to one another back then. They were much more courteous and mannerly in public.

I believe people, in general, are kinder than we know, today, we’re just conditioned to expect the worst from everyone, today, thanks to television, especially cable TV, and we’re afraid to talk to strangers, afraid we’ll be rebuffed.

Even when my faith dissolved or waned in temptations and explorations of life, I was still fortified by the faith my parents and grandparents maintained throughout the years and their moral teachings of knowing things like the difference between wrong and right.

Now, whenever I see a cross, I see my grandparents. I see my parents. I see fallen soldiers. And I see my other loved-ones, who cherish the cross and what it stands for.

For those who say America is not, and never was, a Christian nation, I say, read the works of our founding fathers. Read the stories of the early settlers. Read about the old west. Have you ever seen a movie in which words of the Koran were read over the gravesite of an old cowboy, on the prairie? No. Someone said a few words from the Holy Bible. Afterwards, the camera would pan back to the wooden cross with a lonely-looking cowboy hat hanging from it.

Someday when “White Christmas” and “God Bless America” will no longer be allowed to be sung in America. When Bibles must be smuggled into America as they are in China. When churches have been replaced by statues of Obama. And when crosses are outlawed across this once great land, I will curse the ones who made it so. I will raise my arms in defiance, looking heavenward, and, at the top of my lungs, say to them: Go to hell! Then I will look all around me and realize that----Hell is all around us!