Chapter 5
PLAYING SOLDIERS
[I sometimes think this is the best of my writings here.]
Our house when I was a little boy was ideal for being a little boy. We shared a driveway (to use a good old American phrase) with the family next door. The driveway was gravel. We had bought our house first, then six months or a year later our neighbors bought theirs. As it happened, just before we came to Washington (to use another good old American phrase) we had lived for some time in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. As it turned out, our new neighbors who moved in next door also came from Wisconsin.
They had a little boy, Joey, a year younger than me. To use another good old American phrase, Joey and I became best friends. In the earliest 1960s, the time of the story events in my life related here, Joey was in Kindergarten or First Grade and I was in Second Grade.
As everyone knows, it’s funny how things happen in Washington, D.C.
By happenstance we had bought our house in 1955 from what was then termed a junior Congressman, that is a Member of the United States House of Representatives, named Melvin Laird. (As I was just three years old, I do not recall these details from that time myself, but heard them occasionally in family discussions as I grew older. Some recollections may not be 100% factually accurate.)
What had happened to bring us our new neighbors is like what the author of the best book I’ve seen on the 12 Disciples of Jesus Christ wrote about Andrew. The book is a wonderful collaboration between the Author and a Professional Photographer; it is titled The Chosen Twelve Plus One.
Andrew, you may recall, is rumored to have made his way to Scotland following the dispersion of the followers of Jesus in the years after the crucifixion. The flag of Scotland, still today, portrays the X-shaped cross upon which it is said Andrew chose to be crucified rather than an upright cross.
It is an enduring bit of Christian history that Peter asked not to be crucified in the same manner as his Lord and so was crucified upside down at his own insistence. Peter cited as his reason for this strange request, which would make his crucifixion even more terrible than it had to be, that he was not worthy to die the same way as his Lord and Master.
Perhaps the best description of this strange incident I have read is in a marvelous book by the Swedish author Par Lagerkvist, titled Barabbas published by the Vintage House Book Division of Random House, which (almost uniquely among books I have read) contains a letter from Andre Gidè, has an Introduction by Lucien Maury, and was translated by Alan Blair.
Andrew was the natural brother of Peter, who became a lead Disciple. Andrew may be expected to have been at the center of the events in the Disciples circles during the three years of Jesus’s ministry in Galilee.
As many may not realize, it is almost only the final week of the mainly three years of Jesus’s adult life in Galilee recorded in the Gospels that took place in or around Jerusalem. It is during that week that at The Last Supper the sacrament of Communion is introduced. Communion has been practiced since then by hundreds of millions of people in virtually all parts of the world.
That was also the week of the Passover and the Resurrection, the week I have heard referred to by some Christian writers as the high ground of the New Testament Gospels. That eventful week was when the destinies of the Jewish and the Gentile peoples of the world were inextricably woven into one unbreakable melded thread of shared history.
That week is examined in closer detail in the spirit-oriented Gospel of John than in the other three somewhat longer-term historical formats used in the three Synoptic Gospels. There, again, in that crucible week Andrew was present.
With such an intimate role at the heart of the inner circle of the inner circle one would expect to hear quite a lot reported about Andrew in the New Testament. For remember that Jesus’s Disciples did not number merely The Twelve. It is recorded in the New Testament that there were Seventy which he sent out two by two. This figure of seventy is given curious importance sometimes even in our modern world.
In The City of Brotherly Love, Philadelphia, Pa., for instance, where The Junto, a secret group started by Benjamin Franklin over 200 years ago to influence events there has left a fine legacy, there is a civic group styling itself The Committee of Seventy which exercises great care for the welfare of the area.
And, Andrew was Peter’s brother, so he was really close to all that happened.
Actually, Andrew is mentioned extremely rarely in the New Testament. Even the thief on the cross who was crucified next to Jesus may speak more words in the Gospels than does Andrew. Strange!
One might wonder why?
Yet Andrew is said by the author of the book I am referencing to be like yon pebble on the top of yonder high mountain where as single drops of rain or dew fall on it and each drop is turned to one side and not the other, and so combines with another drop, the two touch and adhere and start a barely noticeable trickle which rolls downhill and picks up strengthening trickles to form a stream and then a mighty river of great power surging unstoppable over every terrain down to the great sea.
What was it this nearly anonymous Andrew did that was like that pebble? He told Peter, “We have found the Christ” and when Peter was bluntly skeptical of Andrew’s presumptuous sounding assertion he simply said “Come and see.” With those three simple words Andrew became the first in a line, nearly stretching away into infinity it is so long, of Christian evangelists and workers who simply tell others “Come and see”.
So if you ask what did this Andrew do, after all?
Andrew brought Peter.
Like that was the effect on my life of the fact that Mel Laird was in the Congressional delegation from Wisconsin.
For an entrenched Member of Congress from Wisconsin had unexpectedly passed away in mid-term. His home district constituency - at a loss for how to replace him - decided that for the time being they would just send the church organ player from the heavily Polish local Catholic Church. They thought they could get a real politician in there at the next election.
So here came Clem, the seventh grade social studies teacher who played the organ on Sunday in Milwaukee, to Washington as the Freshman Congressman from Wisconsin. He became The Honorable Clement J. Zablocki, M.C. (D-Wis.) Guess what? He liked it. He stayed until he died during the middle of Ronald Reagan’s tenure. He was then Chairman of the 56 member House Committee On Foreign Affairs. As The Chairman of that Committee Clem had the responsibility for giving the official Social Reception to every Head of State or Government visiting Washington. More importantly, as the Constitution mandates all Bills must first Pass and all Money Bills must originate in The House of Representatives, he also controlled the creation of all implementing legislation for all aspects of America’s international relations. Yes, including funding.
Sometimes it was a sort of, well, wonderful. Once he told me he had deleted Nerve Gas, only, from a bill authorizing the arms The United States of America would manufacture, stockpile and use in war because he received a newsletter deriding the use of nerve gas from a small group of nuns in Iowa who just called themselves Network. I wonder if that particular gentling touch has survived his death in American military lawmaking. But that is getting far ahead of the story.
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