Springsteen and Beethoven Meet on Memorial Day

A sort of musical harmonic convergence seems to me to have taken place this Memorial Day weekend here on the North Coast.

“Springsteen Rocks Cleveland with Political Fury” was the headline on cleveland.com Saturday morning. I wasn’t at the Friday night concert, but reportedly “the Boss” shared his rage about and hope for our country with his audience for nearly three hours. Must have been quite a show, a blessing to his fans and a bane to his critics. (I hope both would defend his right to express his convictions freely.)

Meanwhile, just a few miles away the Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus and a team of absolutely riveting soloists were performing Beethoven’s only opera, Fidelio. The Sunday afternoon performance, which we attended, made clear Beethoven’s rage at injustice of any kind, including illegal incarceration. But the libretto does not end in rage, but in a celebration of freedom. As is well known, Beethoven firmly believed in the worth of every human being as a free member of our human community.

Right at 300 years separate the lives and art of Beethoven and Springsteen, yet I am quite sure they would celebrate each other’s convictions if they could ever meet. To those who dare to hope, the longing for better ways to live together as a human family is neither diminished by time nor compromised by set backs. Out of such hope artists of every age critique what is wrong and point us toward what can be set right—what we can set right, if we have the courage to take a stand.

Then, last night, we watched the annual Memorial Day Concert on the Mall in Washington. We remembered again and shared our thanks for the men and woman who sacrificed their lives to protect our nation and its vision. That concert, plus hearing Fidelio and reading about Springsteen’s show, reminded me to honor not only the deaths of our defenders, but also the ideals and hopes of the United States of America they died for--all worth our remembering and our defending.

Ersatz Euergetism

Have you ever been ambushed by a new word?

      You are calmly reading, and suddenly a word appears you don’t know, occupying so unassuming a place in a sentence that you think you should have been seeing it all of your life. That unexpected appearance without explanation raises your fear that everyone else has known that word forever, that you alone are ignorant of it.

That is how I felt like last week as I was reading a short commentary on one of the apostle Paul’s New Testament letters. Without warning, a new-to-me word came out of the bushes:

“In the first-century Roman context, euergetism was accompanied by standard expectations regarding the giving and reception of gifts depending on the status of the parties involved.” (Notes on 2 Corinthians 9:13 in The Westminster Study Bible [2024].)

Well, of course.

As the beneficiary of more than a little education and who has lived quite a long time with that education and who regularly reads, writes, and pays attention to words, I cannot remember ever being confronted by euergetism.

(My word processor cannot remember it either because it insists on underlining the word in red because it thinks I have misspelled it. I am not the only dunce!)

Of course, I got a sense of the word’s meaning from the way it was used in that sentence. Going further, Wikipedia informed me that

“euergetism (from the Greek word for ‘doing good deeds’) was the ancient Greco-Roman practice of wealthy and high-status individuals voluntarily distributing their personal wealth to benefit the community. It served as a system of exchange: donors gained immense social prestige, while cities received vital public works and entertainment.”

The root of euergetism occurs 4 times in the Greek New Testament, but the word itself is a relatively modern construction. As now used, it applies when a wealthy donor gives something to the public in return for recognition and status. Every gift is a deal; every offering is part of a transaction.

If you knew the meaning of euergetism before reading this essay, I salute you. If you have ever used the word, I double salute you. And if you use it regularly in causal conversation, I still salute you, but for your pretentiousness.

A couple of points about what follows my being ambushed by a new word:

First, shortly after I learn a word that is new to me, I almost inevitably come across it a second and even a third time. It is as if it has been waiting in the wings to stride out on the stage and say, “See, I warned you this was coming! Thank me!”

The second point is that the new word helps me talk about something happening here and now. For example, what do you call it when the President of the United States builds things bearing his name and likeness in D.C., but cons other people (including tax payers) into paying for them? What do you call doing that?

Ersatz euergetism, of course…as if you didn’t know.

Turning Point USA DBA a Charity

Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA recently added me to their mailing list. I have no idea who sold them my name and address.

A couple of weeks ago, my first mailing offered me a bright red, “We Are Charlie Kirk” wristband and an opportunity to make a donation.

Last week’s mail brought me a small American flag and an impassioned letter from Riley Gaines, former All-American swimmer turned anti-trans-people activist. Her letter invited me to participate in the “Campus Patriotism Project” by signing a tag attached to the flag and returning it so that it can be displayed “with thousands of others from like-minded patriots at one of 4,500+ schools with a Turning Point USA chapter.”

What will these flags inspire? Charlies’s dream—a dream of “inspiring young men and women to get married, start families, and rely on each other the way their great-grandparents did.”

Here is a graphic included with that mailing:

It conveniently overlooks the truth that the next patriotic generation can and should fight to raise both flags. The two flags are not mutually exclusive.

One more thing, which you may note in the lower right-hand corner of that picture: Turning Point USA is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit charitable organization. That apparent fact completely upends my understanding of what it means to be a charity. TPUSA’s tax status, like its partisan rhetoric, baffles me.