Patriotic Address

On November 6, 2001, I was asked to give a short speech to an assembly of middle school students that would be both instructional and patriotic. We had just been attacked on September 11th of that same year. I had lost a few of my former students in the towers of the World Trade Center on that day.

As I look back over that speech today, it seems a tad sentimental; yet today we remember, with appropriate sentimentality, those who have died to keep us free, so I am posting it today.


Patriotic Address
Christopher Bogart

“Freedom of speech and expression - Freedom of every person to worship God in his own way - Freedom from Want – Freedom from fear anywhere in the world.”

These are the four freedoms President Franklin Roosevelt spoke of in his Four Freedoms speech in 1941, and that have gone before us in our two hundred and twenty-five year history to light our way, ensuring the freedoms we enjoy today. These freedoms have guided us. They have been bought and paid for by the blood of our military heroes in war and by the efforts of our civilian heroes in peace. They are the creed of our political faith. They are our touchstone. Our foundation. Our hope.

We are so used to enjoying our freedoms that sometimes we forget what they have cost us to protect and preserve. We forget until they are under threat. We forget until we are asked to defend them again. As we are asked to do today.

Today we honor the veterans of the wars that were fought to get these freedoms, to protect these freedoms, and to ensure these freedoms. From the brave young men who froze with Washington at Valley Forge, the men and women who fought in Europe and Asia in two World Wars, in the hills and valleys of Korea and the jungles of Viet-Nam, the men and women of Desert Storm who braved heat and fire in an unforgiving desert, to the young men and women who are now traveling to the mountains of Afghanistan to insure that we are never attacked again as we were on September 11 of this year – we honor them, and the country that produced them every day when we Pledge Allegiance to our flag and when we sing our National Anthem.

Each time you look at a flag, know that the seven red stripes stand for the blood of these men and women who have defended us in the past, and will continue to do so in the future, making us safe. Know that when you see the six white stripes, they stand for the purity of our intentions to guarantee freedom to our own citizens and to the world. Know that the fifty white stars in the blue night’s sky stand for the fifty states of the United States of America. Thirteen stripes for the thirteen original colonies. Fifty stars for the fifty states. And out of those fifty states – one nation. Out of many faiths, many cultures, many regions – one people.

Panis Angelicus

Panis Angelicus
Christopher Bogart

Introate ad altare dei.
Approach the altar of God.

Understand the history.
Seek the mystery
Of the Word made Flesh –
Et verbum caro factus est.

Filium Dei, uni genitum.
He is the only begotten Son
Of the sons of God.
The Only One.

Et homo factus est.

And from the town of bread
Came the Bread of our Salvation.
Hoc est enim
Corpus meum.

His est enim
Sanguinis mei.

He is the Vine,
Bleeding rich wine,
Red rills for your redemption.

Red rain falls
Within wheaten walls,
For He was crucified in strife
To win for us eternal life.

The forces of the darkness fight,
Grasping from eternal night,
Swirling ‘round in Red and White,
Reaching for the Son of Light.

Cherubim and Seraphim,
Raise their voices
O’er battle’s din,
To one great voice
Compelled from within:


Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus.
Lord God of Hosts.
Dominus deus
Sabaoth.

Fill heaven and earth
With all Your Glory.
Fill life’s canvas
With this story.

Do these things in memory of Him.
Come and let Him dwell within,
For in Him there is peace from strife –
In Him is Eternal Life.

Now the Angels’ voice depletes.
Now the mystery is complete.
Give your deo gratias.
For now the Bread belongs to us.

Thanks be to God.

The Price of Silence

“Our lives begin to end, the day we become silent
about things that matter.” (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.)

"THEY CAME FIRST for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

THEN THEY CAME for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.

THEN THEY CAME for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

THEN THEY CAME for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up." (Pastor Martin Niemöller)


The Price of Silence
Christopher Bogart

Silence is always profound,
No matter the message.

It rarely chatters,
Sometimes punctuates,
So often communicates
Not in pages, but
In volumes.

It speaks
When our voices
Can no longer be heard;
It cries from the darkness
Of our frailties,
Our fears.

It speaks
To what we wish
We had the courage to say
But were unwilling,
Or unable,
To find the words to say it.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer broke
That silence which maintains
Itself in fear, and fear alone,
Until no voices
Can be heard.

He died
In a stripped suit
In the mud
Of Flossenburg.

Ave America

This is the beginning of Memorial Day Weekend. This is the time when we remember those that gave their lives so that we could live ours. So in tonight's post, I wax patriotic. The poem I have posted is one that I wrote many years ago, but one whose message still feels right to me. I dedicate this posting to all of the men and women in uniform who have died so that we may live in peace, to those who once wore the uniform and defended our freedoms (including my father, Christoper A. Bogart, Sr., who passed away over ten years ago and who served in the U.S. Navy on a minesweeper on D Day at the Invasion of Normandy) and to those who defend us today all over the world. While most of us enjoy a weekend of the beach, barbecues and parties, we do so because of you. Thank you. Happy Memorial Day!

Ave America
Christopher A. Bogart, Jr.

I see verdant fields,
Seas of grass,
Waving to the will of the wind,
As they stretch
Endlessly,
Over the land.

Golden wheat, I see,
Flowing submissively,
Pleading proudly
To the deep blue sky
To be one with the sun.

I hear leafy stalks of corn,
Rustling together
As they wait
By yesterday’s faded split rail fence:
Silent sentries
Of the dusty roads and meandering lanes,
Of the streets and highways –
Enter into
Antique towns of Georgian brick and cedar shake,
And retreating past colonial barns,
Venerable monoliths
Of the soil’s productivity –
Forming a patch quilt,
Thrown out to the west,
From its stitching and seaming
On New England’s rocky shores.

I smell the acrid,
Crisp, dry smell of burning leaves,
Carried by the brisk, cool flow
Of late autumnal breezes.

In a warm and fire lit room,
Snug against the lightly drifting snow,
I smell the fresh ancestral smell
Of dampened pine.

I am this soil’s son.
My ancestors sleep peacefully
Beneath its barren and its bounty.
My heritage is woven thick,
Like a multicolored tapestry,
With sound, and smell,
And sight, and feel, and taste –
And Freedom.

Gloucester Green

Gloucester Green
Christopher Bogart

I really don’t remember my arrival
At Gloucester Green.

From the moment I arrived,
It felt I had been there forever.

As I walked the streets,
So everyday,
I felt in every single way
That I had always been there.

I walked those same streets,
Passed those same ancient buildings
Nodding to passersby.

It felt that way
For ten days,
Day after day.

I walked those honey-stone streets
Of Oxford town.

Natives like me don’t need to enter
For a first time.

No maps,
No charts
Get me ‘round.
I’ve found I know
Where I will go,
Not slow,
Like a tourist,
A newcomer
With eyes darting around.

I already found my landmarks,
My bearings.

Signs tend to hide,
But not me,
For I
Am the American native
Of Oxford town.

I am continually amazed

I am continually amazed
Christopher Bogart

I am continually amazed by beauty
in nature each day.
I am fascinated by variety,
by variability, by complexity,
by simplicity,
the depth of visible attributes
of movement
within the continued flux of time.

Like looking at the sky, lined with
linen white clouds that glide
over surfaces of pale blue seas,
new green leaves that seem to shimmer,
to move in unison, to rustle
independently
in the slightest of winds.

I am amazed at the very sound of rustle,
like the sound of leaves,
suspended from slender stems,
that twist and turn
but never break,
sway to an almost arbitrary rhythm within
the wind, equally arbitrary, that
blows them about.

And as I watch,
I think now
of that word and
I look up,
beyond the dancing leaves,
to clouds that have reformed, again
now, a new terrain
of billowy white
moves across the sky,
the impossibly blue backdrop
which my brain knows is atmosphere
but my heart feels the feeling atmosphere
and hope, I, my soul
is the backdrop of familiar forevers.

I wish that I could join those new green leaves
and dance with them to the slightest of tunes.
I wish that I could stare as time ticks by.
I wish that I could fly with each and every cloud
and capture them within my arms, my mind,
to wrap them deep within the sleeping of my dreams.

Where Am I Going?

Where am I going?
Christopher Bogart

Where am I going?

I don’t seem to know.

I was tasked with a life of purpose,
Of commitment,
Of work,
But when work is done
What then?

Is there life after work?

There certainly should be.

We are raised as Puritans,
With the ethic of the job,
Of the title,
Of the paycheck.

We have spent a life of worry,
Of bills,
Of boundaries between
Office and home,
Of factory and farm,
Of Sunday nights and Monday mornings,
Of summers and of falls,
Of Hump Day Wednesday,
Of TGIF Fridays,
Of finite beginnings
And finite endings.

When one life ends,
Where does the other,
More infinite life,
Begin?