Mary and Martha

In 1979, Charles and I visited the Holy Land. On Sunday morning we drove out to the Eastern slope of the Mount of Olives for a worship service.

We had a breathtaking view of Jerusalem across the Kidron Valley.

Alvis Waite from the South Georgia Conference United Methodist Church read the scripture and Charles preached.

Afterward we made a pilgrimage to see Lazarus’s tomb and the site of the home of Martha, Mary and Lazarus.

Who could visit Bethany and not write something about Mary and Martha?

Mary and Martha.

When I was a child
I loved the story best
Of Mary and Martha.
When Jesus was their guest
Martha prepared
The bread and the meat,
While Mary kept sitting
At Jesus feet.

Somehow in the reading,
The thought was inferred
That women, like children
Should be seen and not heard!

And I thought like a Martha,
Stayed in my place,
Tended my household,
Took care of my face.

One day reading further
With a strangely warm heart,
I heard Jesus say
Mary has chosen that good part.

How I long to be Mary
Disciple devout,
While I’m more often Martha
Cumbered about.

Much hurry and serving
I stay on the . . . run,
For a Martha’s work
Is never all done.

One day reading closer
In lovely retreat,
I learned even Martha
Can sit at His feet!

~1979

Do Blogs Create a Poverty of Attention?

"What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the over-abundance of information sources that might consume it."

So said Herbert Alexander Simon (1915-2001), American social scientist, economist and Nobel Laureate.

When I read the above quote, it occurred to me we could substitute the word "Blog" or "internet" for "information" in the piece. I sometimes think we are all drowning in the over-abundance of information at our finger tips.

My father died when I was nine. My mother kept his memory alive in my mind by telling me many things about him. She thought he, Benjamin Wilson Baird, was very wise and often mentioned to me his beliefs and his understanding of issues.

In Mama's amazing love and respect for this man, she seemed to think her husband and my father, Benjamin Wilson Baird, had the last word on matters of faith and values.

For example, she told me one time, in conversation about theology, "I don't think your daddy would agree with that."

In conversation Mama mentioned to me about a time early on when their church was questioning about the influence of "movies" or "picture shows" on the lives of adults as well as children. Mama told me about my father's view on this issue about whether or not Christians should be spending time at the movies.

This was before Hollywood's binge on violence and gratuitous sex. Even before Clark Gable and Gone With the Wind's famous "damn." We have a different set of issues today.

Anyway, Mama said Papa did not see movies as a problem as such for Christians to see and enjoy. The major problem with movies ,Wilson Baird thought, she told me, was our taking time away from more important ways one could be spending our precious allotment of time which brings us back to the quote by Alexander Simon.

Psalms 90 reminds us that in the eyes of God, "1000 years is as a day when it is past," and goes on to tell us "so teach us to number our days." If we should live to be 100, it is a brief time in the light of eternity. So life here is a preparation for life eternally.

But this does not mean we are to keep our noses to the grindstone. We all need recreation and leisure time. From my mother's point of view, Papa had a good sense of humor and they found much to enjoy and laugh about.

But we have to make some choice about how we spend our precious allotment of time.

Weeding out Leukemia in Lily's Garden!

September is Childhood Cancer Month! We neeed to get serious about raising money to fund reseach into a cure for Childhood Cancer!

It has been over two years since our precious great -grand-daughter, Lily at age seven was diagnosed with Pre-B ALL (Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia) on December 1, 2008.

Lily has learned a lot since this picture was taken. She has shown incredible courage beyond her years.

I recently filled in for the pastor at Beech Creek United Methodist Church, who took a well-deserved day off to visit family. While at Beech Creek I met a beautiful 4 year old boy named Nick who was born with brittle bones (osteogenesis imperfecta). In fact ,Nick was baptised by Dr. Bob Ozment signifying he is a child of God until he reaches the age of accountability when he can accept Jesus for himself. Nick is a beautiful and intelligent child. I do not know his complete diagnosis but, depending on the severity, osteogenesis imperfecta can significantly shorten one lifespan. This is only one of Childhood diseases we do to do serious reseach to find the cause and cure.

As Lily's family, we have become acquainted with more and more children, like Nick, suffering from some form of cancer or terminal illness! We ask for prayer for Nick and Lily and all these children and to consider supporting vital research to find causes and cures.

Lily's doctor explained leukemia by telling her that the leukemia cells are like weeds that crowd out the good flowers in a garden. Lily has passed some important milestones in her treatments in order to kill all the weeds so that only healthy and beautiful flowers will grow in "Lily's Garden." Lily and her family are reaching out and working and raising funds to find a cure for childhood cancers that attack children in frightening numbers.

Weave Shop Ran 24 Hours a day in World War II

My father died during the great depression in 1932. When the Japanese attached Pearl harbor in 1941 and President Roosevelt declared war, my mother worked as a weaver in the Osprey Mill in Porterdale Georgia.
The Cord Weave Shop looms ran 24 hours a day During World War II to weave the heavy cloth used in making truck and tank tires.

Mama, an intelligent and hard working woman became quite expert as a weaver in the Cord Weave Shop. She seemed to be one of the few people who knew all about how to thread the warps and looms to begin a new supply of heavy cord material.

As I understand it, when a bolt of cloth was cut off the looms to be bundled up and shipped out, a new bolt of cloth could be begun in a relatively simple way. But to begin a different width of cloth required the loom to be threaded in a different way.

During World War II, with so many men away in Europe or the South Pacific, the word went out to recruit everyone who would work in the textile plants. I worked for a few months and was assigned to work in the Cortd Weave Shop and saw for myself Mama was exceedingly knowledgeable about all the workings of the warps and weaving of the heavy cloth.

Mama was no longer young and had deep concern her two youngest sons who were everseas in the Army. My brother Tom was in the Army Infantry in Europe and Jack was in the Army Air Force serving in the South Pacific. Mama was working in the Textile plant Mondays through Friday. She handled the massive looms with energy and skill. The woven cord was used in the production of tires for trucks and tanks as well as for tents.

Long after Mama retired and was no longer on the payroll, on several ocassions the Bibb Manufacturing Company officials sent a car to her home on Hazel Street to take Mama back into the Osprey Mill to thread the looms for a new batch of cloth. She was always happy to go back into the building to thread the looms and teach the skill to other weavers.

I do not remember that Mama was ever paid for this service. But to Ieula Dick Baird, the lady who collected food for families "out of work, " the women who helped deliver babies or visit the sick when the need arose, the lady who told me we came for "good stock," this deed was typical of her. So going back to her old job in the Cord Weave Shop to help someone learn the skill was just another neighborly thing to do.

The Bible

The Christian Bible include the books of the Hebrew Bible, but arranged in a different order: Jewish Scripture ends with the people of Israel restored to Jerusalem and the temple and the Christian arrangement ends with the book of the prophet Malachi.

When I was a child, I learned to name all 66 books of the Christian Bible in order from Genesis (The first book of the 39 books of the Old Testament) to Revelation (the last of the 27 books in the New Testament.) As with most things we learn early, I can still name the 66 books of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation.

The Old Testament or the Jewish Bible, or Tanakh, is divided into three parts:

1. The five books of the Torah ("teaching" or "law") comprise the origins of the Israelite nation, its laws and its covenant with the God of Israel;

2. The Nevi'im ("prophets") containing the historic account of ancient Israel and Judah plus works of prophecy; and

3. The Ketuvim ("writings"), poetic and philosophical works such as the Psalms and the Book of Job.

Christian Bible is divided into two parts. The first is called the Old Testament, containing the 39 books of Hebrew Scripture.The second portion is called the New Testament and contains 27 books. The first Four, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are The Gospels , telling the story of Jesus. A Physician named Luke writes the book of Luke and Acts, telling the story of the early church and the conversion of Jewish persecutor of the church named Saul who was converted in a vision of Christ on the Damascus Road and became the great apostle Paul. Paul became the preacher to the Gentiles and the author of most of the New Testament.

MUSIC OF THE SPHERES.

MUSIC OF THE SPHERES:
My mother, Ieula Ann Dick Baird was born in 1885. She was married to Benjamin Wilson Baird in 1903 and widowed in 1932.

Mama was only 18 when she married this man in his 40s. I suppose psychologists would say she was looking for a “father figure” as her father had died when she was only two years old. However, It proved to be a very happy marriage.

My father (a devout Christian and articulate churchman) became seriously ill with a heart-kidney ailment when I was eight and died when i was nine. Papa had been bedridden for nearly a year before he died. Mama cared for him tenderly. She adored this man and he treasured her. She grieved his passing as long as she lived.

I have seen the love in her eyes as she stood looking at his framed picture on her mantle above the fireplace. I remember all the positive words she told me about him as I was growing up.

A few years before she died, my mother told me this story. She said she had cried inconsolable for many days after my father's death and had not been able to sleep. Then one night, Papa came back to her in a dream that seemed to her more like a vision.

Mama told me how he talked with her, telling her all about heaven and the music in heaven and the hymn that was being sung when he arrived in his Heavenly Home. Then he sang the amazingly beautiful hymn to her (my parents both loved to sing).

My mother said she thought it was the most wonderful hymn she had ever heard. She told how she had joyfully sang the words over and over in her dream and felt sure it was a song she would never forget!

Mama told me that after singing to her the beautiful hymn being sung in heaven when he arrived, Papa put his hands on her shoulder, as he had done many times in life. Papa then told her of his love and told her to dry her tears and go to sleep, because he was alright and she would be too.

Mama said, for the first time since her husband's passing, she went soundly to sleep in peace, still feeling his hand on her shoulder and singing the words of the hymn over and over.

My intelligent and practical mother awoke refreshed the next morning and remembered the story above as I related here. But she told me she could not remember a word or a note of the hymn heaven was singing when her precious husband arrived there.

She remembered only that it was the most beautiful hymn she had ever heard!

The Apostle Paul wrote: “No eye has seen, nor ear heard, neither has it entered into the human heart what God has prepared for those who love him."
(1 Corinthians 2:9).

Pioneer Clergywomen,

Georgia Harkness, Ruth Rogers and Me.
I went back to school after my children were grown. In one of my early history classes at Georgia State University, a professor showed a great deal of interest in a paper I had submitted and asked, “What do you plan to be?”

The question of “to be” was unexpected. I had “already been.” I was an older “sometimes” student, having now raised seven precious children was now pursuing a hobby of "education."

However, when the question of “to be” came up, for strange reason I thought about Georgia Harkness and Ruth Rogers. I suppose they were the only woman theologians I knew about at that time. Far back in the recesses of my mind I must have been slowly preparing for Christian ministry.

As a lifelong Methodist I had read Harkness articles and had even filed some of her work when ministry for me was beyond my thoughts or wildest dreams.
Dr. Georgia Harkness (photo left) was the theologian who kept holding the Methodist General Conference’s feet to the fire until in 1956 they voted for full ministerial rights for all qualified women. Her many books and articles as a Professor of Theology provide a wealth of information about her long career as a theologian, author, and clergywoman.
Harkness believed and taught that women’s rights is more than a matter of justice, It is also a theological issue. What does the church really believe about the Christian God? The theological themes that Harkness expresses in her writings were also lived out in the experiences of Ruth Rogers and other Christian women who spent much of their talents and energy in trying to find a place to serve in answer to a strong calling from God.

On the issue of ordination for women, Harkness believed that ordination with all rights and responsibilities belonged to women as well as men and offered three reasons. Her first reason was a Biblical one. In Jesus Christ all barriers that separate persons from one another have been destroyed. She quotes Paul’s well-known passage in Galations that “there is neither Jew nor Greek, bond or free, male or female, for all are one in Christ Jesus.” (Galations 3:28)

Harkness further noted that ordination for women could be argued from a “practical” standpoint. She pointed out that a portion of the church’s constituency was alienated and the gifts and graces of women were being lost to the mission of the church to the world. The third reason as a spiritual one. Harkness pointed out that the richest and most intimate experiences in the life of the Christian are those that have to do with church membership, the sacraments, marriage, baptism, and bereavement. She said that so long as a person is debarred by reason of gender from acting as an agent in the church in these high spiritual moments, no matter what other opportunities are opened to her, she is debarred from the largest Christian service.

Yet, Harkness remained aloof to issues regarding inclusive language. The personal nature of God, for Harkness, seem to demand a personal pronoun reference. She said, “I see little sense in trying to change the terminology of the ages.”

At the heart of her theology seems to be a “responsible concern for persons everywhere and in every condition.” This includes men! Her idea of the partnership of the sexes emerges whereby the goal of shaping society in the direction of the kingdom of God relies upon mutuality and good will between Christian men and women.

In that same historical year of 1956, Dr. Ruth Rogers was the first woman to be ordained elder in the North Georgia Conference of the Methodist Church and my husband, a rising senior at Chandler School of Theology was ordained deacon.

Although my husband and I had sat in large Methodist conferences with her, I had never met Ruth Rogers until I, as Atlanta-College Park District Communication Chairperson in 1988, interviewed her for an article in the Wesleyan Christian Advocate.

The Rev. Dr. Ruth Rogers(photo to the left -made in 1958) believed, as do I, that the call from God is what makes a preacher, not whether one is a man or a woman. The deaths of two close family members had a great impact on her. Ruth Rogers had adopted a nephew, but in 1945 lost him at the age of 14 to bone cancer. Among his last words to her, “Aunt Ruth, you are going to have to do my preaching.” Then in 1947, her beloved mother died in her arms saying, “Don’t you see Christ? I can see him. He’s right on the edge of a crowd . . . He’s opening the eyes of the blind. "

After her son Billy’s death, Dr. Rogers did a great deal of thinking “and more praying” about it, but was not quite willing “to take on the enmity...” to answer the call to preach. But after the experience of Christ at her mother’s death bed, Rogers, who came from a family of Methodist ministers, said: “I felt I had to tell the story whether I wanted to or not.” After she preached at a District Conference, the vote was unanimous to accept her call. But she was to learn that the “enmity against women as preachers did not stop there.

When I interviewed her, Rogers was 84 years old and walked on crutches because of a fall on ice at the front of a church some years before. But she still had a twinkle in her eyes and a lovely smile and she indicated to me that she has forgiven those who rejected her for whatever reason.

And I? I was a happy wife, a devoted mother and an enthusiastic teacher of Woman's mission studies and Sunday School Bible lessons! I was unaware that Georgia Harkness and Ruth Rogers were paving roads over which I would one day be called to travel.

How can I briefly tell the story that led to my identity as pastor and as theology student? (photo taken in 2004)The path that led to that incredible day in December, 1986 when I first stood in the pulpit of a United Methodist Church as “pastor” and to a bewildering day in Chandler’s Commons in August 1987 as “student.”

Go with me briefly to my childhood. I am nine years old and my father is dying. He has been ill for a year with a heart and kidney ailment. He is a committed Christian. Earlier, he had put his arm around me as i stood by his bedside and told me to never leave our yards without "leave" from my mother. Then he reminded me to always tell the truth and went on to explain the importance of truth. I am profoundly impressed by the faith my wise and good father lived. I am thinking, “When I grow up, I want to be that kind of Christian.”

I found it interesting to note that both Georgia Harkness and Ruth Rogers were also profoundly affected by a dying parent’s last words and/or actions. Harkness had told in her autobiography about returning home to nurse her father in his final illness. He had asked about her many successful books and remarked, “. . . but I wish you would write more about Jesus Christ.” Harkness understood these remarks to be a “directive from an eternal realm” and saw this experience as a turn in her thinking and writing to a more “Christ-centered approach to religious truth.” (Gilbert, p. 18)

Two years after my father’s death, I was sitting with my mother in a worship service at our small town Methodist Church, the same church in which I had been baptized as a small baby. The congregation was singing an old gospel song entitled “At the Cross.” The song later fell into disrepute because of an offensive verse that went like this: “Would he (Christ) devote his sacred head for such a worm as I?” The Hymnal committee later deleted “such a worn as I” and substituted “sinner such as I.” I do not know about changing the words of a poem after the author's death but I ,along with the hymnal committee did not know any “worm like” people. We didn’t even lock our doors at night in my home town. The Psalmist had written that we were created just a little lower than angels!

But one phrase did capture my attention during the singing and I began to ponder the first theological question I ever remember giving thought to. It is a big one. As the singing continued, I was listening to: “Was it for crimes that I have done, Christ died upon the tree?” I thought, “How could my sins today have anything to do with the death of Jesus on the cross nearly 2000 years ago?” Yes! The mystery of God in Jesus Christ became a real part of my life ... my story.”

This was before Hitler, the Holocaust and World War II. The New Deal was beginning to work. Education was going to do away with crime, disease, and discrimination. Later, when I read about the extent of Hitler’s crimes I thought back to that day in church. “Is it possible,” I thought with great sadness, “For human beings to act like ‘worms?’” The jury is in. Education and prosperity are not enough. Germany and Japan excelled in both education and prosperity when they plunged us into World War II. Only Christ can solve our sin problem.

Becoming a preacher is the last thing I even expected or aspired to do. Charles recognized my call to preach early on and mentioned it to me before i said anything to him about it... in 1975. He as pastor and the church (Park Street UMC) recommended me for license to preach, which was then and still is the starting point for Ordained Ministers in our United Methodist Church.

Charles began to have health problems and after a second heart attack and bi-pass surgery he retired on disability in 1983. A year later the District Superintendent needed someone to fill in at Rico Church in Palmetto and called one Sunday morning and asked Charles to go down that morning to preach and conduct the service. He did and kept preaching every Sunday except on two occasions when he asked me to go down and preach.

Charles preached his last sermon the first Sunday in advent in 1986 and 3 days later "went home to be with the Lord." Two weeks later the D.S. called me and told me the congregation had asked to have me appointed to finish the conference year. The Bishop and Cabinet agreed. Would I do it? After much prayer, I knew this was an open door the Lord wanted me to walk through.

In spite of grief and responsibilities, I began as their pastor the 4th Sunday in Advent and continued to serve as pastor at Rico while I started and finished the work for a Master of Divinity degree from Candler School of Theology at Emory.

During my years of "telling the good news of Jesus" behind a pulpit instead of a Sunday School classroom or a Missionary platform, I have sought to learn how to communicate this good news of Jesus. The love and power of God in the hearts of people is able to bring people together across all kinds of barriers as Paul tells tells the people of Galatia in Galations 3:22-28. "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female ; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. "(Galations 3:28)

Ordination is not a right to which any of us, male or female are entitled. It is an unmerited call and an unexpected gift of the Lord's mercy. It is not a call to authority but a call to service.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Gilbert, Paula Elizabeth. Choice of the Greater Good: The Christian Witness of Georgia Harkness. Graduate School of Duke University, 1984.
Harkness, Georgia. Religious Living. Association Press, New York, 1957.
Harkness, Georgia. The Church and Its Laity. Abingdon Press, New York, Nashville, 1962.
Harkness, Georgia. Grace Abounding, Abingdon Press, Nashville, 1969.
Harkness, Georgia. Christian Ethics, Abingdon Press, New York 1957.
Harkness, Georgia. The Ministry of Reconciliation. Abingdon Press, New York, 1971.
Harkness, Georgia. Women in Church and Society: A Historical and Theological Inquiry. Abingdon Press, Nashville. 1972.
Johnson, Helen. “Georgia Harkness: She Made Theology Understandable.”

The Olympic Flame

In July of 1996, the Olympics were held in Georgia. On July 17, the Olympic Flame came to our town and created wild excitement of huge crowds as it passed right in front of the East Point Courthouse!

The historic East Point Avenue United Methodist Church is directly across the street from the Court House near downtown East Point in Fulton County, Georgia just a few miles Southwest of Atlanta.

I joined with dozens on the porch of the church and hundreds of other people on the nearby streets to wave and cheer as the runner and Flame passed by. It created amazing excitement,

The Greek Olympic Flame mean Citius, Altheus, Fortus! In English it means Faster, Higher, Stronger. The Olympic flame is an excellent symbol of the ability and discipline of human beings to excel by going faster, higher and stronger.

The Sunday morning after the Olympic Flame had passed in front of our East Point Avenue United Methodist Church on it's way down Washington Avenue to the excitement of cheering crowds of men, women and children linning the roadsides, I sat behind the pulpit of our East Point Avenue church as the Acolyte brought the Christian flame down the church center aisle to light the Altar candles.

As I watched the Acolyte bringing the Christian Flame down the church aisle toward the Altar, I thought of the Olympic Flame with all it's great meaning of faster, higher, stronger.

And I thought of the Christian Flame and all its' meaning of love, joy and peace which is still burning with a flame lighted over two thousand years ago.

How exciting to gather each week to celebrate the greatest good news the world has ever heard. The Great Truth of Grace that has brought about graciousness and civility enough to build our great and gracious civilization.

The lighted Altar candle, represents and celebrates the amazing grace of Jesus, who overcame death and lives as the Light of the World!

Jesus is the blazing beacon lighting the darkness of our world with love, joy and peace.

MY COUNTRY TIS OF THEE
My country, 'tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing;
Land where my fathers died,
Land of the pilgrims' pride,
From every mountain-side
Let Freedom ring!

My native country, thee,
Land of the noble free,
Thy name I love;
I love thy rocks and rills,
Thy woods and templed hills:
My heart with rapture thrills
Like that above.

Let music swell the breeze,
And ring from all the trees,
Sweet Freedom's song;
Let mortal tongues awake,
Let all that breathe partake,
Let rocks their silence break,
The sound prolong.

Our fathers' God, to Thee,
Author of liberty,
To thee we sing;
Long may our land be bright
With Freedom's holy light;
Protect us by Thy might,
Great God, our King..Lyrics by Samuel Francis Smith

July 4th Celebration

Celebrating the Fourth of July is one of the most important summer activities for many of us. We get to take a day off to picnic or barbecue with family and friends and watch fireworks!

But July 4th is so special because it is Independence Day, a holiday celebrating the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. In 1776, founding father and soon-to-be president, Thomas Jefferson wrote what is now the United States’ most famous and cherished document to give a list of grievances against King George III of England.

It was written to justify the colonies breaking away from the mother country and becoming an independent nation. Revised by Benjamin Franklin and John Adams, the Declaration of Independence was signed by our founding fathers and accepted by Congress on July 4,1776.

But the spirit of Independence Day is not only about the United States officially becoming a country. It’s about celebrating the values that the country was founded upon. The Declaration of Independence was written with the theory that every person has inherent rights, called “self-evident truths” in the official document. It reads: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” In other words, "Independence from England meant Dependence on God" for the young nation.

Harry Rubenstein, a curator of American politics at the Smithsonian Institution, wrote that Independence Day celebrates those very ideals of democracy, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and is for anyone who finds faith in the words “all men are created equal.” It is a holiday to remember and honor those first Americans who made sacrifices to create the Republic and then defend it over the years. We all should understand it is also important to remember that as Americans, we should continue to embody the values our country was built on.

When the Declaration of Independence was signed, John Adams believed it should be commemorated in a celebratory manner. He wrote to his wife Abigail, “I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding generations, as the great anniversary festival... It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.”

For nearly twenty years, our son Terry and his wife Sheila have hosted an outstanding and popular Independence Day pot-luck dinner at their home for friends and family with food, shared fellowship and fun by eating and visiting together and a ring side view of the City of Rome's outstanding “illuminations” … or fireworks!

The Star Spangled Banner
Oh, say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thru the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected, now shines on the stream:
Tis the star-spangled banner: O, long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion
A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

O, thus be it ever when freemen shall stand,
Between their loved home and the war's desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n-rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust"
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

(Composed by Francis Scott Key, "In Defense of Fort McHenry")

History: In 1814, about a week after the city of Washington had been badly burned, British troops moved up to the primary port at Baltimore Harbor in Maryland. Francis Scott Key visited the British fleet in the Harbor on September 13th to secure the release of Dr. William Beanes who had been captured during the Washington raid. The two were detained on the ship so as not to warn the Americans while the Royal Navy attempted to bombard Fort McHenry. At dawn on the 14th, Key noted that the huge American flag, which now hangs in the Smithsonian's American History Museum, was still waving and had not been removed in defeat. The sight inspired him to write a poem titled Defense of Fort McHenry. The poem was eventually set to music that had originally been written by English composer John Stafford Smith for a song titled "The Anacreontic Song". The end result was the inspiring song now considered the national anthem of the United States of America. It was accepted as such by public demand for the next century or so, but became even more accepted as the national anthem during the World Series of Baseball in 1917 when it was sung in honor of the brave armed forces fighting in the Great War. The World Series performance moved everyone in attendance, and after that it was repeated for every game. Finally, on March 3, 1931, the American Congress proclaimed it as the national anthem, 116 years after it was first written.