Celebrating Patriots

I remain a lover of old bookstores.

To hell with electronic books that have no smell of fresh print, no crackling of the binding or the lavish ceremony of writing your name after you've made the purchase for your library.

These remain part of the experience of reading and to open a book without them is akin to losing your virginity with a mannequin.

Sarah and I are strolling down the quaint streets of Killarney, Ireland when we discover it's Bookshop and immediately lose ourselves in its sweet pleasures.

It's an ancient bookstore with rolling ladders to reach the top shelves, a bowtie clad clerk and the smell of wisdom, folly, secrets and hidden delights.

The aroma is a written incense that's intoxicating and erotic.

My wife loses herself in one section and I another.

There are only a handful of American titles ... no Grisham or David Baldacci or other glorifiers of death and bad government ... though Hemingway's here and England's great Graham Greene ... and Irish authors of whom I've never heard.

My interest naturally draws me to a section of Irish writers and the Holy Spirit leads me to pick up "Confessions of an Irish Rebel" by Brendan Behan and standing there in the aisle I read the forward.

A member of the Irish Republican Army when the British ruthlessly ruled the Emerald Island,
charging them rent to live on their own land, Brendan wrote plays, books, shot at the English Police and became famous before dying at the tender age of 41.

Immediately I like him and have to know more.

Instinctively I knew he is of my elk. Che Guevara, Leonardo Boff, Harvey Cox, Gandhi, Frederick Buechner and such are my favorites and Brendan Behan can obviously hang with such Rebels.

Now I'm sitting on the beloved back deck, basking in the sunshine, learning the life of a fascinating Rebel who dearly loved his country and fought the oppression of British Tyranny with the most marvelous sense of humor.

Opening the book I can smell Ireland, holding it close to my nose to inhale deeply the soul of a patriot who died before victory was his.

On this American Memorial Day, I raise a glass to the Patriots ... not just the American soldiers ... but everyone who believed and gave their all for freedom in whatever time and whatever country.

Some things transcend nationalism, something the United States struggles to understand, and freedom ... be of speech, worship, want or fear ... or above all the Free Will that God gave us all ... is the thing that should primarily be remembered today.