Jackson Jambalaya

Mississippi State Senator Will Longwitze (R-Xanadu) delivered the following homily for the 14th annual September 11th memorial service at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Cathedral in Jackson. The text of Sen. Longwitz’s remarks are included below:


I like Proverbs. There. I said it. The Book of Proverbs lives in the long shadow of the poetry and music of the Psalms. But if you go to Proverbs, you can find some pretty beautiful images there, too.

And in Proverbs 25:11, there is one image that I love. You’ve probably heard it before: “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver.” Now, that’s a lovely image on its face, even in translation – a pristine pile of apples all radiant in a gleaming silver bowl. Now, King Solomon was probably not referring to an apple at all – It was probably something a little more Middle Eastern like an apricot or some other similar piece of produce that actually is yellow. But the color or the type of fruit is not the point.

The point is, as one commentator has put it, that the “Word fitly spoken” is the fruit set off by the circumstances around it – here, the silver bowl . . . and the fruit’s beauty is enhanced by the vessel which contains it.” Now that’s well said, Let’s read it again: “The word is the fruit set off by its circumstances . . . and [the beauty of the fruit] is enhanced by the vessel which contains it.”

The produce made richer by the quality of its container. And the word is just right for the circumstances. Now, isn’t that a nice image?

But I do have some other people to vouch for today’s verse from Proverbs. Miss Eudora Welty liked our image so much she named her best book of short stories after it. And she’s not the only one.

President Lincoln liked the image of the fruit, too. Lincoln wrote that his golden apples were the principle of “Liberty to all people . . . the primary cause of [America’s] great prosperity.” And to Lincoln, the Union and the Constitution were the “tray of silver,” and our Founding Fathers created the Union and the Constitution to frame, adorn and preserve the great principle of human Liberty.

And that powerful combination – “Liberty plus a framework to protect it” had to be preserved – at any cost. This was Lincoln’s great contribution to American political thought: The framework of Union & Constitution had to be protected, however much blood and suffering had to be paid to keep them, and to keep the precious fruit of Liberty safe. Because if Liberty were ever lost to America, it was lost to the entire world.

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In our own beloved Mississippi, we have just been steeped in the remembrance of the ten years since Hurricane Katrina struck. Having just passed that anniversary of America’s greatest natural disaster, we cannot avoid thinking about it on this day when we remember so much courage and so much sacrifice that so many made to protect our nation.

Shortly after Katrina hit, we all saw things we remember. And of all the examples of bravery and selfless courage I saw, one sticks out.

I saw video footage of hundreds of people standing in line. They weren’t waiting for tents or for housing or even for food. They were simply waiting in line for ice – that most basic and essential commodity at the time. They were desperate but patient, hoping to get some ice to keep what little food they had through the night until the next day.

A woman was standing in the line. And she finally got two bags of ice for her and her family. She gets the ice, she pauses. Then she looks down at the bags and you can see her say: “Can I have some more?” Because she needed it, badly. And the relief worker says, apparently, something like: “Everybody just gets two.”

And here’s the important part to me: The woman didn’t argue. She didn’t complain. She didn’t scream. She didn’t cry. She didn’t stamp her feet and say how bad off she was. She simply responded, without hesitating: “Oh. Okay.” And she started walking back to her family with two bags of ice melting in the heat.

Now, that was a small moment in a very big disaster. But that was the kind of reaction that showed Mississippi was special. In the circumstance of that natural disaster we showed the whole world who Mississippi really is. We showed them the beauty and the bounty of our character. And if you were visiting here volunteering or if you were just a person standing and looking around during that time, you saw our courage and our resilience on display. Hurricane Katrina was the circumstance that set off just how special we really are.

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On that shocking and now surreal-feeling September 11th day, 14 years ago, when the Twin Towers fell, when the Pentagon was burning, when patriots forced a plane to the ground rather than let lunatics succeed with their demented plan, all of us watched as unimaginable things happened right here in our own country.

And in the response, and in the fights that have followed in years since that day, our friends & family, our young men & women have stood up the face of these mortal threats. They have volunteered again and again, placing their bodies and their souls – their literal lives, their actual vital limbs and their mental health – between us and our safety here & facing that dreadful harm again. They have put themselves between us and it. And we can never put into adequate words our gratitude to them for the sacrifices they have made for us and for our safety.

In the face of disaster – whether natural and overwhelming or man-made and ongoing – our soldiers, our first-responders, the men and women in our state’s National Guard & our other volunteers, have all stood up to do their work for us.

And it’s not just the traditional saying that “crisis brings out character.” That’s true. But I mean that our soldiers and our first responders are the very frame that surrounds us. They protect us, and they make it possible for us to be the exceptional nation we are. They make it possible for us to be the exceptional people that this chaotic world counts on America to be. They surround us and that allow us to be great.

Whatever our shortcomings and imperfections, America is great. We – perhaps alone among nations – still stand up for a great ideal. And that ideal, in my own imperfect expression, is that human Liberty Matters. And, Thank God, we have fellow citizens with both the strength and the courage to stand up, to surround us and to protect us when America – and by extension Liberty itself – are under attack.

They stand up for us. They allow us to be great. And we can never, ever thank them enough for it.

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So how do we honor those who have fallen and those who serve?

In the face of a world full of death, chaos and fear, we can choose courage, strength, resilience and life, just as we always have.

So let us pray today for the strength always to be exceptional. Let us pray today for the wisdom to know that Freedom and Liberty are worth protecting. Let us pray for the fortitude to see others as our brothers and sisters first, and as different from us last. Let us pray for the faith to choose any solution before resorting to violence and war, but let us also pray never to shrink from that fight when it is necessary to protect our lives and to defend freedom.

Let us pray for the capacity to love and serve others before ourselves.

And let us always, always lift up the families of those in uniform and of our fallen heroes, that we may honor their sacrifice that they have made for us so that we may live free.

For it is in Christ’s holy name we pray. Amen.