I find it interesting that the people who complain about the Battle Hymn of the Republic's being about killing other Americans are normally the same sort of people who enjoy a song like "Good Ole Rebel".
@OldNewYork1664@leahmarilla This seems generally true, but I’d be hard pressed to call myself authentically North Carolinian just because my dad was stationed at Lejeune when I was born.
USA. Summer. It is 95 degrees outside, and I am shivering inside a sandwich shop.
I have discovered how Americans forge strong souls.
Outside, the sun is trying to kill everyone. Inside this small restaurant, it is winter. My breath does not fog, but it is thinking about it. A man near me is eating a cold sandwich while wearing a jacket. In summer. Indoors.
In Japan we would simply turn it down. Americans do not turn it down. And now I understand them better than they understand themselves.
This cold is not an accident. This cold is a gift.
The owner has built, inside his shop, a second season. He invites you in from the brutal heat and hands you the one thing the sun has denied you all day: a reason to be cold. To endure it is to be tempered. You walk in soft and sweating. You walk out sharp and clear, a slightly stronger person than you were.
So I did not complain. I removed my outer layer and offered it to the woman at the next table, who was hugging herself. She said, "Oh, no, I'm fine, thank you." She was not fine. Her lips were blue. But she, too, understood the training. She would not break first. I respected her deeply.
The owner asked if everything was okay.
"It is perfect," I said, through my teeth, which were chattering. "Thank you for the winter."
He said, "...I can turn the AC down if you want?"
I told him no. A man does not ask the mountain to be shorter.
I stayed two hours. I ordered a hot coffee to survive. Then a second one, to hold. By the end I could no longer feel my hands, but my spirit had never been clearer.
So now, on the hottest days, I seek out the coldest rooms. I sit. I shiver. I sharpen.
And when I finally step back out into the summer heat, and it wraps around me like a warm bath, I feel it.
Reborn.
A man who has survived the winter, in August, indoors, for the price of a sandwich.
@OldNewYork1664 I think that the disparity is explained by
1. the overwhelming majority of Scots Irish, especially outside of more rigorously Presbyterian circles and Appalachia, intermixed
2. Irish Catholics maintain a relatively strong identity when intermarrying.
Beastly wights that harrow
Those ‘pon the Heart of mallow
In that same fair meadow
Dwelling in loamy fallow
A fawn of a single year
Takes his first steps there
His shadow a full deer
Yet our wargs prowl near
Conciliar theology and Christology
Protestant soteriology
Evangelical spirituality
Baptist ecclesiology
That's a solid framework for making sense of your faith and life.