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JD Wetterling, Author.xml
MIDWEEKLY REALITY CHECK

• Sunrise, sunset...
  Tevye fiddled on the thatched roof of his house at sunset, singing about the cycles of life and pining for worldly riches. It’s a scene from the stage play, Fiddler on the Roof, that Karen and I saw in London’s West End in 1971. The milkman in early 20th century Tsarist Russia struggled to maintain his family traditions and religion while the world around him was changing rapidly, just like a Christian father in 21st century America.
  
  Funny how some snapshots of life’s experiences are so perfectly preserved in the grey matter and float to the surface at the most opportune times. That mental image revealed itself from the archives during another one that is overwhelming me with God’s grace. This scene is a 10x10-foot tent pitched in Myakka River State Park, Florida, as I lie in a sleeping bag with my wife, 9-year-old son, and 3-year-old daughter beside me.  Somewhere in the middle of the night a full moon shined right in my eye through the screen window of the tent, a Hillary (as in Sir Edmund) brand purchased from Sears for the then princely sum of $110. It woke me up. I lay there counting my blessings to the heavy breathing of my sleeping family, which was barely audible above the angry zing of a billion skeeters outside the tent, voicing their frustration at not being able to dine at the smorgasbord of warm Wetterling blood inside.
  
  This Saturday night my thirty-something son and family will be camping in that very same park…same campground…same tent! It’s a life cycle that warms my heart and an investment that is still paying dividends three decades later. My grandson, Logan, has joined the Cub Scouts, a family tradition—his father went all the way to Eagle Scout. I have a number of delightful memories of camping with my son, and I recall how sad I was when he advanced to Boy Scouts and dads could not go along on campouts…unless they were willing to be scout leaders, a civic duty outside the parameters of my personal sloth. These days not just dad but the whole family is invited along when a Cub goes camping, a wonderful idea! Logan is beside himself with anticipation.
  
  I cannot wait to hear all about it next Sunday night. We will be making a quick visit to his home near Naples after a speaking engagement at a Presbyterian Men’s Retreat at Lakewood Retreat in Brooksville, FL, on Saturday and teaching a Sunday School class at Westminster Presbyterian Church in suburban Tampa on Sunday morning. Perhaps you recall I’d rather write and speak than eat. Enroute to Florida we are stopping for a day (Thursday) at the Atlanta RV Show (danger, danger!). I am at least as excited as my grandson at the upcoming adventures of this weekend.  God is so gracious to this unworthy and his family!     
  
• Confluence
  And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good,
  for those who are called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28).
  
  This confluence of outwardly unrelated events happens with some regularity in my life, for the good of my spiritual life if not also my physical life.  Actually I know it works this way in every believer's life. The Navigators Military Ministry held a conference here again at Ridge Haven this Labor Day Weekend.  The vast majority of the group was young soldiers and their families. I took part in more intense conversations—peppered with “Sir”—and overheard more passionate discussion on the great commission (Matt. 28:18-20) by young men with high-and-tight haircuts, than I hear the rest of the year at Ridge Haven by men and women of any other age or hairdo. What an encouragement to this aging passionate patriot/Christian zealot!
  
  Simultaneously two disparate pieces of excellent writing presented themselves before me.  The first was a periodical entitled, The Intake: Journal of the Super Sabre Society, by a newly formed group of ever more doddering former F-100 pilots, of which I am a charter member. The F-100 Super Sabre was the first plane to break the sound barrier in level flight, one of the first widow-makers in the Air Force’s expensive learning curve for pilots and aeronautical engineers of swept-wing supersonic fighter aircraft.  I served in one of the last USAF F-100 squadrons—the 494th Tactical Fighter Squadron, 31st Tactical Fighter Wing, at RAF Lakenheath, England in 1971-2—long after the lessons about prevention of adverse yaw, unrecoverable flat spins and other such unpleasant esoteric events were learned at catastrophic cost.
  
  Contributing Editor and former F-100 pilot Bob Krone wrote (Summer 2007 edition) about a recent interview between Tom Wolfe, author of The Right Stuff (an American classic about fighter pilots and astronauts—the movie was a classic, too) and a reporter on Fox TV News.  Bob wrote:
  
  He was asked, “Wouldn’t you say that one can also speak of ‘The Right Stuff’ in journalism or in the business world where everybody’s up against tough moments?”
  
  Tom Wolfe replied: “The Right Stuff is a very specific term applied to the code of military pilots who have the moxie to hang their hide over the great gulf of death, be smart enough to bring it back, then go out again tomorrow and do it all over again. People don’t know how dangerous it is just to take off in an F-series airplane.  When a businessman dies it’s usually choking over a hunk of chateaubriand in a classy restaurant.  The Right Stuff has no application to anyone but pilots and astronauts.”
  
  I think it was a pretty presumptuous question from a reporter who apparently did not read the book, but with my forty years of hindsight and God-given sanctification/enlightenment in His providence, I no longer share Wolfe’s eloquent hyperbole—I know “the stuff” was not of my own manufacturing. I also vividly recall, when “the stuff” was not sufficient, the Super Sabre responded in ways that had nothing to do with my adrenaline drenched inputs…or in spite of them. The Apostle Peter drew his sword and was ready to take on the world in Jesus’ presence in the Garden the night he was betrayed (John 18:10), then a few hours later was  a craven coward in the presence of a peasant girl who fingered him as one of Jesus’ followers (John 18:25-27).  Then again, 51 days later, on Pentecost, he was a courageous preacher who delivered one of the most efficacious altar calls in history (Acts 2:14-41). By the grace of God I am what I am…, as Paul told the Corinthians (I Cor. 15:10).
  
    I also think Wolfe applied the term to far too small a segment of the warrior class.  Robert Kaplan makes that plain in an insightful think-piece for The Atlantic Monthly (August 24, 2007) entitled “Rereading Vietnam,” that also profoundly moved me this weekend.  A better title might have been “Rejudging Vietnam.”  I happen to personally know some of the warriors Kaplan wrote about—Medal of Honor winner Bud Day and the Vietnam era Misty pilots (F-100 pilots)—and I am so grateful that at least one highbrow, highly regarded liberal establishment periodical is finally seeing the light about the debt America owes it warriors in the modern era’s “unpopular wars.” Yes, it would be too much to expect such a secular source to declare that courage in the chaos of combat is a God-given gift to an undeserving nation, but one day we will all understand, we will all be sophisticated theologians (John 16:8), some eternally grateful, some eternally sorry (Matt. 25:31-34).
  
  The soldiers—military laborers—here at Ridge Haven this Labor Day Weekend, many of them Army Rangers, are of that “Right” warrior class, and their courage is simultaneously directed toward another, greater war, the one between good and evil, witnessing to God’s truth in a hostile culture that worships such absurdities as atheism, diversity and politically correctness. By grace it extends to a willingness to die for a citizenry, a significant segment of which, in their self-absorbed rush to judgment, holds them in contempt, both for their career field and their faith.  It is indeed the Right Stuff from the Right Source, the source of all truth and the only Judge that matters. It was a my great blessing to serve them.    
  
• Attitude
  We ended two weeks vacation with the blessed birthday celebration of our 1-year-old