Love, Reign o'er me

Waking up to the news today that protestors calling themselves "crusaders" protested outside, and then some inside,p a Dearborn city council meeting. Dearborn, a Detroit suburb and home of Henry Ford's motor company, is home to one of the largest population of people with Arabic heritage outside of the Middle East. (Henry Ford was a notorious anti-Semite. My father met my mother while working at a Ford plant building bombers in the early years of WWII.) Mind you the crusades took place 800-1,000 years ago. Makes your heart hurt, from the Detroit Free Press: https://www.freep.com/picture-gallery/news/local/michigan/wayne/2026/08/18/dearborn-city-council-protest-jake-lang/91355944007/ I am sure my parents were concerned when they found out I was going to serve in the Navy in Japan. Dad was drafted in the Army and served under George Patton in France during the war. He was wounded and then evacuated from a small French town not far from the German border. Dad would have for some years used the derogatory terms "Krauts" and "Japs" to describe two peoples. I guess one must hate to be able to kill an enemy. On December 31, 1975, I travelled to Kamakura, home of the Daibutsu, the Great Buddha. New Years is the most sacred of Japanese holidays. Women dress in their finest kimonos. Families visit Buddhist or Shinto shrines. At the Daibutsu, there was a sea of women's colorful kimonos. It was stunningly beautiful as the Buddhist monks chanted prayers and burned incense. (I have no idea what they chanted. As a "gaijin" or foreigner I learned a little Japanese, but not enough to be fluent). Rani Sharma used to work for me at Lakeshore. Her husband Jia (Jim) owned a plumbing business in the area. They invited me to their son's wedding in Dearborn years ago. They are Hindu. In the Hindu tradition, or at least at this wedding, the bride entered the ceremony first under a canopy carried by bridesmaids. Being friends of the groom's parents, we started processing from the parking lot. The groom rode a white horse and was decked out in his best Indian outfit. They started dancing and singing as we proceeded the groom on his horse before entering the wedding facility. Not knowing what to do, we danced or at least attempted to, with them. I had no idea what the Hindu "minister" stated while he blessed the young couple. I don't know any Hindi. But the entire ceremony was pretty cool, a once in lifetime experience like Kamakura. At my public high school, once a week we were bussed in release time to attend Catholic religion classes at Our Lady of Perpetual Help. The lay teacher once told us to never go into a protestant church because "nothing good" would come of it. My first visit to a protestant service was in Navy Bootcamp. On a Sunday there, we were told we could go to church or stay in the barracks and polish our shoes. I ain't stupid so my buddy from near Harlem and I went to church together. I guess the bad that day was that my shoes did not get shined. Karen Armstrong's biography entitled Muhammad is a thoughtful read. Armstrong is a former Catholic nun who studies a variety of religious practices. Shame on us for not tolerating and attempting to understand a multi-cultural world with a wide variety of religious traditions, practices, and beliefs. Whatever the religion, God apparently does Only love can make it rain the way the beach is kissed by the sea... - The Who https://youtu.be/PMxwPOoZm_c?is=uGiFfJTz1ZL12JwG