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Home For Christmas

Richard Barnes

In past letters or posts I’ve referred to a family reunion that took place shortly before Christmas in 2006. For that occasion we compiled a video, of which we made DVDs along with soundtrack CDs to give to each of us to take home as a memento.

One of the selections is the Coplandesque “Short Trip Home”, composed by Edgar Myer and performed by a classical and bluegrass quartet: violin, bass, mandolin, and guitar. I know it doesn’t sound promising, but check the YouTube link below (if you are reading this on the blog) and decide for yourself after giving it a hearing.

My son and I picked this selection to play as the DVD displayed a 1972 family photo, which served as the basis for the reunion. We had the piece reprise towards the end. Our extended family has had a good balance of the country and the city, the folk and the highbrow. In our view the piece embraces that balance and is a fitting background to those of us in that picture throughout our lives.

Unfortunately the topic of home and Christmas has become so gooey as to have lost all meaningful significance. In other words, listening to Glenn Campbell’s rendition of Sammy Cahn’s “There’s No Place Like Home” misses the mark by a mile, in my opinion. “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” is better, but not by much.

Each of these songs and others like them aim for sentiment, which has its place, of course. It’s not that I don’t like the songs; it’s simply that home means so much more to me and these songs don’t touch the outskirts of that meaning.

When I was a kid, I’d often hear my mother tell me to “remember whose you are”.  By that she meant both God and family, or home. Regretfully, I did not always remember. However, that admonition left a mark on me. And it’s obvious that many of our parents said similar things to my cousins and other loved ones because they all seemed to have an idea of their duty to what has gone before.

About 12 years ago, looking for a grocery store in a foreign land, I drove by a large intersection, one corner of which had large plastic bags before which sat a woman with 4 or 5 small children, all begging. I had been warned not to stop when I saw such a sight, for it could be dangerous to do so; that if I wanted to give, there were other means available. I did pray for her and the children and gave elsewhere. 

However that sight immediately hit me: why was I not born in such a place and in such circumstances? Indeed, why was I not born, say, in a tribe in 1420 in what we know as Mexico, easy prey to the cannibalistic Aztecs? When we pause for just a moment to think on such matters, if we are honest, we cannot but marvel at the Lord’s sovereign care for us and our duty to Him and to others. Properly understood, this ought to humble us and to inspire us to eternal gratitude.

My grandfather was born in Massachussets, my father, in Cuba. My mother was born in Venezuela as were her ancestors. But their heritage was Christian. The title of my blog is The Pull of The Land and most of my posts have to do with the land of my birth, Venezuela.

However, when I’ve traveled to Spain or to England, I have sensed the pull there also. Unmistakably. I very much enjoyed my visits to other lands and wish I could visit them again. However, if given the choice (besides Venezuela) I’d vote for Spain or England. The pull is that strong.

And if you pause to consider your own home and your own background, I daresay you also sense that pull. I believe the Lord puts that pull in us all. Once again, I agree with Whittaker Chambers: “No land has a pull on a man as the land of his childhood.”

In my view, the source of such a calling to one’s roots is simple gratitude.

Gratitude to the Lord for having given you your parents and those who went before; your culture and background; your experiences; and most of all your Christianity, which can only come through faith by God’s grace through Jesus Christ, the Second Person of The Trinity incarnated on that first Christmas a couple of millennia ago.

It’s all a gift. And home ought to bring forth that recognition and the accompanying gratitude. Even if your childhood was not a happy one, you can still be grateful. Reading Whittaker Chambers’s powerful autobiography, Witness, you readily see that his childhood was not a rosy one. Yet he was a grateful man.

Going back to that 1972 reunion, the DVD and CD closed with John Rutter’s arrangement of “The Lord Bless You and Keep You”. This hymn was sung at the conclusion of each worship service, every Sunday, year after year, at the Community Church where Aunt Sarah would take us whenever we were in Miami with her. 

We are fully persuaded that the Lord has indeed been good to us. He, the only Constant in life and eternity, adds delight and joy to our lives as we seek to please Him.

We are well; grateful for decent health which enables us to continue to visit with one another throughout the year and hopeful we can continue doing so throughout next year as well. 

And grateful to old friends, including our parents’ friends, who continue to challenge us to do good.

Our family wishes yours a Very Merry Christmas and a prosperous 2026.

Family get-together, December, 1972

Short Trip Home

The four siblings with our Cousin Janis, March, 2025, after Cousin Vivian’s burial

With the grandchildren, summer, 2025 

From Lawful Immigration To Darien Gap To Institutional Exploitation   

Richard Barnes

In 1975 our family worked with the United States embassy in Caracas to seek approval to bring into the United States a young girl who had in effect become a member of our family. We had her parents’ approval along with legal, notarized papers and other documents which had been requested of us.

However, the gatekeeper at the embassy was not cooperative, to put it charitably. She crossed her arms and summarily denied our request, without giving a reason. We therefore requested a tourist visa for a short period of time to allow the girl an opportunity to see us in our new environment before returning to Venezuela with, hopefully, a promise of a future visit.

This too was denied by the officious woman, who this time gave her reason: “Oh no! You will take her to the US and then you will hide her there and never return her to Venezuela.”

My father was justifiably angered and incredulous; however, there was not much he could do. After further pleadings, we resigned ourselves to the life-changing reality both for the girl as well as for us. 

About 10 years later, my father’s cousins from Cuba got hold of me in Kalamazoo, Michigan, requesting my assistance in helping them immigrate to the United States. I of course told them I’d be happy to help in any way possible. That story turned out happily and they eventually made their way to Florida where they were welcomed and became U.S. citizens.

Another 15 years and the catastrophe in Venezuela became known worldwide and, to date, we are told that about 8 Million Venezuelans, 20% of her population, have fled the country — legally and illegally; vetted and unvetted. 

We know that within that vast number are very many whom we definitely do not want here, such as Tren de Aragua. We also know that countless numbers have been trafficked here, particularly young girls and boys, many of whom survived the unbelievably harsh, forbidding, bandit-and-snake-infested Darien Gap and the less cruel yet still dangerous passageways through Central America and Mexico.

We don’t have the statistical breakdown for the numbers of people who have come to the United States from Venezuela because they were defrauded by Coyotes who took their money, horribly abused, and then abandoned their prey along the way or at the border; or how many came for the promise of meeting up with family once here; or how many were kidnapped and forced to come.

I personally do know that many who wanted to come were dissuaded once they began the legal processes and were discouraged by the cost and time required. In one case, my acquaintance desisted from seeking to come to the United States and decided to go to Argentina instead, where the process and related costs were much less. He and his family are now doing well and contributing to the Argentine economy and society, active in a good church there.

(Someone ought to expound on the paradox alluded to above: the many decent Venezuelans who admired the United States and wanted to come here; who would have contributed to our economy and to our society; but who were discouraged by what to them were insurmountable obstacles; and who ended up in another country and made their lives there, contributing positively to their new homeland.)

However difficult the long and excruciating journey to the United States has been, for countless numbers the arrival has been even worse.

Earlier this year, in early April to be precise, the Senate Judiciary Committee issued a press release calling attention to the Office of Inspector General report, issued in March, noting the utter failure of the United States Department of Homeland Security to fulfill its legally required duty to monitor the location and status of unaccompanied children who crossed our borders.

The Committee’s press release has links going back to the Obama administration in 2014; one link addresses the evidence noting that administration’s releasing minors into the custody of criminal cartels.

However, all past abuse and indifference pales when compared to the apocalyptic calamity that minors faced during the 2021-2024 years. 

One need not be a parent or grandparent to be angered by the actions or inactions of our elected officials and their bureaucracies concerning the legally-required protection of boys and girls who found themselves at our borders.

Once again, by the time these children arrived, many of their peers had already perished or disappeared at the hands of outlaws or beasts or acts of nature during the long journey. The children who arrived were true survivors, in many cases, of heinous, horrible acts of man. 

Can you imagine what they must have thought when they realized with horror that their ordeal was but a foretaste of what lay ahead of them?

Over 320,000 children were lost track of during the 2021 through 2024 years. Many were released to unvetted sponsors with no accountability whatsoever. To put it bluntly: these children went from the border to forced prostitution across our country and forced labor and unspeakable abuse.

Although many of these children were kidnapped to be trafficked up here, we must acknowledge that many were actually sent by their parents. Why? How can such a thing be? Perhaps they believed that their kids would make it easier for them to come later? That’s a wild guess. As a parent, I cannot imagine doing such a thing and am disposed to find any sort of reason to ameliorate my judgment of such fathers and/or mothers.

The concept of “open borders” is attractive to many well-meaning people. But do they for a moment pause to consider the real life consequences of such a concept? Do such people have children? Would they want this for their little ones?

During the aforementioned years, unvetted sponsors were OK’d, by telephone(!!!) to take many children with them at a time. Young girls were pimped by such sponsors, many of whom actually were criminals with rap sheets.

If you have the stomach, read the release and the report; they tell how our compassionate bureaucrats and experts ignored pleas for help against adult men who assaulted little ones as they slept; how a whistleblower told about handing children to known criminals; how NGO’s got rich with taxpayer dollars funneled to them by the billions only to use them to get rich and to hire criminals to care for these little ones. 

In those years, over $10 Billion were granted to nonprofits, including religious enablers such as Catholic Charities and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. Have they never read what our Lord said about this? Do they not remember that Jesus Himself said it would be “better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea”?

People can criticize President Trump all they want. Have at it. But are they aware of the aforementioned catastrophe? Are they aware that he has put a stop to it and that over 60,000 of those missing children have been found in 2025 alone? Is that not something we can be grateful for? 

I am grateful for it; however, my sadness overall persists.

It persists because we as a people have lost our way. We need to find the way back. 

Let us purpose to consider these things during this Advent and Christmas Season. Not to overwhelm our joys. No. 

Let us purpose to commit ourselves to honor the King of Kings by living in obedience to Him and His law. Let us determine to demand righteousness from our elected officials. 

And especially to require that religious denominations be held to account.

Crossing the Darien Gap (2021-2024)

When The World Was So New And All

Richard Barnes

There are days which are achingly crisp and clear. 

They are not restricted to a specific part of the earth. We’ve seen them “everywhere”. They are, however, restricted to certain days wherein precise weather conditions and time of day and season of the year on occasion cooperate in such a wonderful way as to gift us so marvelously. I am told that, in addition to outside factors, one’s own state of mind also contributes to how such days are beheld.

Invariably such moments remind me how new the world seems when we look back. And one is tempted to think that all was crisp and clear when one was a child. We know better, of course — or at least we ought to know better. However, if your childhood was blessed with a decent home — whether rich or poor or in between — you certainly should be grateful.

I recall visiting the El Morro fort in San Juan, Puerto Rico one late afternoon in 1978. It was one of those aforementioned, astonishingly clear days, about two hours or so before sunset. The beauty of the day was not due only to my personal inward peace; a television crew, which I later learned was from an advertising agency, was filming a lady on a horse. It must have been a shampoo commercial as her almost-waist-long hair reflected the sun’s rays as she rode her horse, with trees and fort and sparkling ocean in the background. Clearly the advertising agency knew this was a “perfect day” to shoot such a commercial in that spot.

(Lamentably, the trees are gone; my understanding is that they were removed in the early 90s to make the fort look “exactly” as it did in the 16th Century when it was built.)

But one need not be in an exotic location to enjoy such days. I’ve seen them as I worked on the property outside my home in Texas or as I drove grandchildren to a Puerto Rico mountain top or sitting on the low wall outside the camp club in El Pao. And you have seen such days also, I’m sure. We all have.

Invariably, such days tug me back to a vinyl record my father bought when I was not yet two years old. No, I don’t recall the day he bought it; as far as I am concerned, it had always been a part of my life; however, in writing this post I looked at the issue date: 1955.

It is Gary Moore’s The Elephant Child: Musical Adaptations based on Just So Stories For Little Children by Rudyard Kipling.

The second story in the album is “How The Camel Got Its Hump”. Like all such tales in Just So, “Camel” is an origin story. Moore delightfully channels Kipling as he unfolds the yarn about a world that is just beginning and has much work to be done. The horse, the ox, and the dog are doing their best to help the man; however, the camel just sits there in the desert doing nothing but saying “Humph!”

A recurring motif throughout the story is that “The world is so new and all” and this creature refuses to carry her weight. If you don’t know it, I’ll let you read the rest of the 2 or 3 pages; or look it up in Internet Archives and listen to Moore’s adaptation.

It’s the recurring refrain that comes to my mind on days of crispness and clarity: when the world was so new and all.

Robert Redford is quoted as saying, “Life is essentially sad.” I understand his meaning to be that happiness is a rare thing and when one encounters it one must grasp it for a moment, for it is too seldom seen. 

Mr. Redford’s is a sad philosophy of life, I am truly sorry to say. Yes, we may see much tribulation in life, as the apostle tells us. However, life can be joyful and its end, glorious and eternal, as per the Westminster Shorter Catechism.

I see the aforementioned days as reminders of God’s goodness. They are one of life’s gifts which cannot be explained with mere words; but are part of the joy unspeakable that is ours in Christ and in His Kingdom.

As for our childhood, yes, colors were bright then … but they are bright still, no? Sure they are.

We may have storms today … but we had them back then as well.

As we begin the new ecclesiastical year, celebrating this Advent Season, we could do worse than remember to be grateful for the days we have been given and to determine to make our remaining days worth the while.

So, in a sense, the world is as new and all today as it was in 1955.

Photo of El Morro Fort taken in 1977. Notice the trees along the driveway and to the right. These were cut down and removed in the early 90s.

Robert Redford (1936-2025). Photo taken in 2003

Dorothy Bradford

Richard Barnes

I remember hearing a dramatization of the Pilgrims’ voyage to what became Plymouth Colony and their first year there. I had known about most of the events dramatized in the recording, notably the major Atlantic storms they had to traverse which cracked the main beam, which event almost caused the entire enterprise to be abandoned in favor of a return to England.

However, there was one event which I had not known: the suicide of Dorothy Bradford, William Bradford’s young wife. The dramatization posited that she greatly missed he 3-year-old son which the couple had left in England pending a future voyage once the colony had been better prepared to receive the child. That longing developed into a discouragement which compelled her to jump into the icy bay.

The drama treated this event with great sensitivity; however, that did not diminish my wonder as to why I had never heard this before.

As the years went by, I learned that although Dorothy Bradford did indeed die in 1620, there is no contemporary evidence that she died by her own hand. William Bradford, self-effacing as ever, merely lists her death as one of the many that first year. The great New England clergyman, Cotton Mather, 80 years later, wrote a history of Plymouth Colony in which he notes that William Bradford’s wife, Dorothy, died by accident, falling overboard and drowning in the harbor in December, 1620.

Mather’s account makes much sense given that the weather had turned bitterly cold that December and we know many on the Mayflower suffered from scurvy, malnutrition, and overall weakness, all of which would exacerbate the danger of the icy decks on which a passenger walked and slipped into the freezing cold bay waters.

Imagine my surprise when I later learned that the suicide narrative originated from a mid-19th Century work of fiction published in Harper’s. 

We await for a talented biographer or, if primary documents are not available, a sympathetic novelist to develop a true-to-life story of Dorothy Bradford: her marriage at 16 to 23-year-old William Bradford; her entrusting her 3-year-old to family in England; her suffering from scurvy and malnutrition; her seeing the Massachusetts shore and bidding her husband farewell as he went ashore with a scouting party to seek a decent site for the colony; and her accident on an icy deck which resulted in her death by drowning. 

Such a biographer or novelist might also weave his or her work in such a manner as to demonstrate that a short life devoted to God, husband, and son can also serve to propel great things which she never saw in her life on earth, but will understand One Day.

Her and William’s son, John Bradford, arrived in Plymouth in 1640, twenty years after his mother’s death.

Picturesque America

Richard Barnes

My (modest) library includes the late Clarence Carson’s six volume A Basic History of The United States, which, by the way, I happily recommend to anyone interested in our country’s history, especially if you have school and university age children or grandchildren.

The third volume is titled, The Sections and The Civil War (1826-1877). Dr. Carson vividly describes a country whose divisions, culminating in a catastrophic war, “constituted a major break in the continuity of American history …. the memory and resentment lingered on … long after the desire for revenge or retribution, or the memory of the animosities had died out ….”

Dr. Carson goes on to demonstrate how the 20th Century wars and politics reflected many of the impulses manifested in the Civil War, but that is not the focus of this post.

My point is that after the war and the reconstruction which immediately followed, the wounds and resentments were very real and impossible to heal, apart from God’s grace.

One of the tools for healing was the publication in 1872 and 1874 of the two-volume Picturesque America. This massive work included 900 wood engravings and fifty steel engravings of scenes from Maine to Florida, from New York to California, and countless places between. About twenty years ago I found a two volume centennial edition which, although not as magnificent as the original, 19th Century editions, was nevertheless beautiful and, importantly, affordable. I purchased it for our children’s curriculum.

Picturesque America was edited by the poet, William Cullen Bryant and includes works of art and essays by numerous artists and authors. 

As I consider the very real anger and hatred towards our history and heritage, knowing that however irrational and ahistorical it is — and it is ahistorical — it is nevertheless very genuine … and dangerous. 

This is not a situation amenable to short-term correction.

However, a publication such as Picturesque America would surely be a balm on these angry waters for it illustrates that our land is truly beautiful with a lifetime of scenes and adventures to relish and experience, should one have the time and budget and discipline to do so. 

But even if one simply cannot personally visit any of these sites, he would certainly be able to read descriptions and histories or appreciate photos or paintings thereof. 

The intent of Picturesque America was to help heal the divisions and promote a unity among our country’s peoples. My personal opinion is that there was a growth of unity in the late 19th Century and into the 20th. However, this was due primarily to religious factors which we cannot discuss in this post. Nevertheless, those factors enabled an appreciation of the publication along with a love for the land and her people: in essence a love for one another.

May we see a like spirit in the days ahead, whether or not we are once again blessed with a similar publication.