Words of The Lamb magazine

by Todd Matson

What does it look like to love God and country? Wear red, white, and blue along with a cross? Go to church on Sunday while judging everyone who doesn’t? Sport tattoos and bumper stickers of the American flag? Boast love of country while hating a large portion of “we the people?” Boast love of God while hating “the least of these?”

What does it look like to love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength and love our neighbor as ourselves? I have a feeling that we know it when we see it. We need only open our eyes and look.

“Put your head on a 360-degree swivel and never stick it where the sun doesn’t shine. If you don’t stay frosty, you’ll have a life expectancy of about 3 minutes.” Walker was 76 years old when he shared these words with me. He explained that these were the words that his commanding officer spoke to him when he was deployed on an aircraft carrier at the height of the Vietnam War. Walker described how his job was on that part of the ship where the planes initially touch down and are caught by cables that bring them to a stop to keep them from crashing into the ocean. He shared that as a young man he was not going down the best road, and since he didn’t have anyone to catch him and stop him from making a mess of his life, he felt he needed to enter military service for the structure and discipline that being in the service could provide to him.

“I had some close calls with some difficult landings while I was on that ship,” Walker said, “and at times I had to run for my life, but at least I lived to tell.”

Walker’s eyes began to fill with tears. “I need to tell you something I’ve never shared with anyone,” he whispered.

I had known Walker for several years at the time, walked with him through the tragic death of his nephew, through the heartbreaking death of his wife, as well as through the many challenges of raising his granddaughter on his own. I thought I knew where most of the bodies were buried. This was something new about something old.

“When I finished my tour of duty in 1968 and was sent home,” Wallace said, “I landed at Camp Lejeune and was looking forward to being back home with my wife. I was told that to get home faster, I could hitchhike to the bus station about 30 miles from the base. Eager to get home, that is what I did. I gathered my bags, went out on the road, and put my thumb in the air, hoping to arrive home safely to surprise my wife. Before long, someone stopped to pick me up. I threw my bags in his car, and we were off. What I didn’t realize until we were speeding down the road is that the driver had been drinking, which became evident by the smell of alcohol in his car and the erratic way he was driving. That would have been a fine time for some cables to snag his car and bring it to a stop so I could get out, but the road he was taking me down was no aircraft carrier.”

Walker paused for a moment as if to gather the courage to continue telling his story, and it was then that I began to sense that Walker was about to tell me something that impacted his life more deeply and profoundly than anything he had experienced at war.

“That drunk driver had driven out into the middle of nowhere,” Walker said, “and since I didn’t feel safe in the car with a drunk driver, when his car stopped at an intersection, I got out and suddenly found myself in the middle of nowhere. After the drunk man drove away, I was there all alone. I had no idea where I was or how I was going to get to the bus station.”

Walker began to wipe tears from his eyes, and as he continued to speak, his voice began to crack.

“I was in a heightened state of alert,” Walker insisted, “and my head was still on a 360-degree swivel. I can’t explain this, but out in the middle of nowhere, there was suddenly a tall man standing behind me in a white shirt with blood all over it. I had no idea where he came from. All of a sudden, he was just there.”

Walker explained that this was happening at the height of the Vietnam War when soldiers returning home were met with hostility. It was in 1968, at the height of the civil rights movement in the United States, the year that Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated by a white man, no less. After Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, racial tensions only increased, within the military and society at large, and many Black Americans came to believe that the Vietnam War itself was a form of racism. It isn’t hard to understand why. Young Black men were being disproportionately drafted and sent to the front lines. Young Black men were having to do a disproportionate amount of the dying. It didn’t help matters for Black soldiers to hear white soldiers spew racial slurs against the Vietnamese, all of which echoed the sound of the n-word.

“Did I mention that the man who suddenly appeared out of nowhere in a blood-soaked shirt was Black?” Walker asked. “I was standing there all alone, a white boy in the middle of nowhere, and from out of nowhere, I was startled to find a tall Black man standing directly behind me in a white shirt soaked in blood. I was stunned, speechless, frozen. For all I knew, my life expectancy had fallen to less than 3 minutes. I must have looked lost and scared.”

Walker appeared to feel lost and scared as he continued to tell his story, as if he was in uncharted territory to even be telling it, uncertain as to whether he would sound credible, whether he would be believed. For a moment, Walker looked like a little boy walking up to an intersection, looking both ways before crossing the street.

Walker continued. “‘What are you doing here all alone?’ the man in the bloody shirt asked me. ‘Where are you trying to go?’”

Walker cleared his throat, as if to clear out the fear and hesitation that remained within him. “I told the man that I was trying to make it to the bus station, and just as suddenly as the man in the bloody shirt had appeared, along came a car with three Black men. The Black man with the bloody shirt and the three Black men in the car exchanged a few words, which I can’t remember, and I found myself on autopilot getting into the car with the three Black men. I don’t recall where the Black man with the bloody shirt had gone, only that he was no longer there. He was not in the car with us. I didn’t know what was going to happen to me after I got into that car. I thought maybe my 3 minutes was up. I only remember them asking me where I wanted to go. I told them that I wanted to go to the bus station.”

Walker’s eyes overflowed with tears. He nodded his head in the affirmative while he struggled to get his words out. “They drove me to the bus station and dropped me off!” Walker cried.

Some silences seem to last forever. This one certainly seemed to.

“I have carried this memory for nearly 50 years,” Walker confessed. “I never told anyone, and now I’m telling you. I don’t know why I’m telling you this or why this memory has come to mean so much to me. All I know is that through the years, it’s like I have been able to look back with more clarity. In my mind’s eye, that tall Black man’s white shirt has become whiter, and the blood on it has become redder.”

Walker looked at me as if he felt somehow forgiven, as if the negative stereotypes through which he had previously viewed people who didn’t look like him dropped like scales from his eyes, as if the shame and regret he felt for keeping this beautiful, life-changing experience a secret for so long melted away into relief. It was as if Walker’s conscience finally had its way with him, and at 76 years of age, he was brand new.

“I have the feeling that someone was looking out for me,” Walker said. “I don’t know if I was visited by an angel. All I know is that as the years have passed, in my mind’s eye, I see a black angel dressed in white, bleeding the same red blood as my own. As the years have passed, the white has become whiter, and the red has become redder.”

What does it look like for us to love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength and love our neighbor as ourselves? We know it when we do it. We need only open our hearts and love.