1) It’s strange the random mission memories that stick with you. For example, early on my mission to Puerto Rico in the early-2000s, my trainer and I got invited onto the front patio of this random middle-aged man out in the rural fringes of our area. It would swiftly prove to be the sort of go-nowhere first discussion that every missionary can recall teaching and then promptly forgetting all about, but this one I can still remember for the most innocuous of reasons: he had left his radio on while he went inside to fetch us glasses of water, and “Linger” by The Cranberries came on.

This stood out to us, because as you can guess, most Puerto Rican radios are tuned to Salsa, Merengue, Bachata, Reggaton, and various species of Latin Pop (Shakira and Juanes were quite popular at the time). If they listen to English-language music at all, it was typically Hip-Hop (50 Cent and Black-Eyed Peas were then in ascendancy). To hear a bona fide Alt-Rock hit from our youth right there in the heart of Puerto Rico–and that from that whitest of white bands The Cranberries, no less–was a shock to our systems. We had spent the entirety of our MTC experiences “detoxing” from the music of “the world,” or so we were told, and so had resigned ourselves to never hearing our favorite songs again for two full years, considering such to be one of many minor sacrifices before the Lord.

But then, we were still in our late-teens at the time, and all the hormones of puberty still had not fully subsided from coursing through our veins, in the sort of inner-turmoil that still made Pop music feel like a sacred experience to us–and that’s not a switch you can easily turn off just because you spent 8 weeks in the MTC. Apropos of the song title, we both let the track “linger” in the air for a minute, before asking the man with some regret in our voices if he could turn off the radio for a minute while he began our lesson.

But here’s the thing: maybe it really was a sacred experience, a “tender mercy of the Lord” (to quote a talk Elder Bednar gave two weeks after my mission homecoming), a way for my trainer and I to bond over one of our childhood favorites out there under the palm trees and the overgrowth.

2) In my second area, out in the suburbs of San Juan, Puerto Rico, a certain Elder Mann in my district (who told everyone he was from Virginia, but had in fact lived most his young life in Idaho), a very obedient and hardworking missionary; the sort of guy who scrupulously kept all the mission rules; always got up at 6:30 sharp and woke his companions up too; never complained and regularly suggested tracting through lunch; a soft-spoken, clean-cut, 6”4 gentle giant whose mission photo featured an array of American flags in the background—

I say unto you, I recall all us meeting in Elder Mann’s apartment on P-Day to play board games like we normally did, and he put on a burned CD-R of Flogging Molly’s then most recent Irish-Punk album Drunken Lullabies (most assuredly not mission approved) on a cheap little Walmart CD player behind him, and him doing a quick little nonchalant head-bang to the opening title track, the kind he had clearly done to many a Punk CD growing up, all while we set up another round of Risk.

It wasn’t even a moment that particularly stood out to me at the time, or thought I would be reflecting on even later that same day, let alone over 20 years later. But then, isn’t that the case with all such seemingly random memories that stick with you, almost in spite of yourself?

If I were forced to localize why it so stayed with me all these years, I suppose it would because it exemplified how two things that once seemed so incongruent and contradictory turned out to suffer no contradiction whatsoever: a straight-laced Mormon missionary head-banging to Punk on P-days? Well, this site has detailed before how the Strength and Youth of Zion are often some of the biggest Punk and Indie fans you are ever liable to meet–with reasons ranging from Mormonism’s own shared marginalized status, to the very entrepreneurial nature of Indie-labels themselves.

And the apparent incongruity of listening to an Irish-themed Punk Band in Puerto Rico, of all places? Years and years later, my dissertation (and first book) explored how there could be no more serendipitous pairing than Ireland and Puerto Rico: two small Atlantic islands of 3-4 million predominantly Catholic residents that have served as colonial possessions of two neighboring, nominally-democratic, Protestant-majority, Anglo-centric superpowers, the UK and US respectively. Moreover, the two populations do not just parallel but intersect: not just in the Caribbean, but from Bernardo O’Higgins Riquelme in Chile to the San Patricio Battalion in Mexico, Irish immigrants have a long and influential history across Latin America. Indeed, a woman I baptized in that same San Juan suburb (she later sang in the stake choir for the San Juan Temple dedication) did her genealogy and found 19th-century Irish ancestry of her own. That Flogging Molly CD Elder Mann played in outer San Juan was unknowingly continuing a very long tradition.

And I then proceed to reflect on all the contradictions within the Gospel that ultimately turn out to not be contradictions at all: how you must lose your life to find it; how “Man is nothing” and “less than the dust of the earth,” yet also Gods in embryo seeking a crown of glory; how the first shall be last and the last shall be first; how the humble shall be exalted, the rough places made plain, the crooked places made straight, and the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together; how “when ye are in the service of your fellow being, ye are only in the service of your God,” and “Inasmuch as ye have done it to the least of these, ye have done it unto me.” These all once seemed contradictions to me, seen through a glass darkly, but then face to face—

3) I’m embarrassed to say that I can’t remember his name. Oh, I’m sure it’s recorded somewhere in my old mission diaries–especially since the activation of his National Guard unit for the invasion of Iraq resulted in a sudden reshuffling of missionaries that got me getting Emergency Transferred from Gurabo to the Arecibo area to finish out my mission. But compulsive reader and self-reflector than I am, I still have not been able to bring myself to re-read my old mission journals, even after all these years. (Probably has something to do with the fact that my mother dying two days after I got home.)

Missionaries are not supposed to read or follow the news anymore than they are supposed to listen to Pop music (I didn’t even know John Kerry was the 2004 Democratic nominee till after I stepped off the plane); but even we couldn’t avoid learning about the invasion of Iraq. Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory, so I met investigators and local members alike with loved ones serving overseas. We beheld plenty of yellow ribbons tied around the Palm trees. I saw the stomach-churning photos of Abu Ghraib on the news stands as we walked down the streets. And it was, again, the activation of the Idaho National Guard for combat that got me Emergency Transferred to my last area.

I had known this Elder in San Juan zone, had even chatted with him amiably on P-Days; soft-spoken guy, one of the few missionaries I knew who actually wanted to serve in the rural interior of the island rather than on the coast, cause it reminded him of home. I even remember that he was a big Yes fan. Hence my guilt that I can no longer remember his name, such that I can’t even try to find him on social media, to learn what became of him. He is invariably where my mind goes whenever I put on Dropkick Murphys’ The Warrior’s Code around St. Patrick’s Day each year, which album closes out with the hard-rocking elegy “Last Letter Home.”

Some context: Somehow there was enough room in the 2000s for two different Irish-American Punk bands to rise to prominence. But of the two, Flogging Molly was generally considered the more respectable option; their lyrics tended to be more poetic, more playful, more clever, and more historically informed by the centuries-long struggles of Irish rebels against the savagery of English colonialism. Dropkick Murphys, by contrast, were more macho, more meat-headed, more given to ridiculous tough-guy posturing and clichéd sentimentality. Even when they seemed in on their own jokes, that still only made them seem less serious than Flogging Molly.

The irony of course is that Flogging Molly were from Los Angeles (hardly a major Irish-American conclave), and hence were arguably the ones most posturing; whereas Dropkick Murphys were from Boston and proud of it. In their working-class machismo, they represented their core demographic quite faithfully. And for all of their jokey meat-headedness, I maintain there was still real depth to them, especially on the aforementioned “Last Letter Home.”

The song is based on the real-life correspondence between a certain Sgt. Andrew Farrar–a young Irish-American father from Massachusetts and early Dropkick Murphy fan–and his family back home after his unit was deployed to Iraq. Excerpts include his wife telling him how his sons are “the spitting image of you in every way,” his Dad informing him “We saw the news today/it frightened your Mom/Now all she does is pray,” Farrar himself telling his wife “I’m gonna be home soon” and “I wanna be more than a voice on the phone,” and thanking his Mom for a CD of “The Fields Of Athenry/I swear I want ’em to play that song on the pipes at my funeral/when I die.” All these passages take on knife-twistingly ironic resonances when the final letter home is from the Army itself, informing his family at the bridge: “We regret to inform you that on January 28th, Sgt. Andrew Farrar died while serving his country in the Al-Anbar province of Iraq. Words cannot convey our sorrow.”

After a one-beat pause, the electric guitars and the bag-pipes break in together as the band belts out the chorus of “If I lead will you follow/Will you follow if I lead?” The chorus is intentionally ambiguous: are they praising the ultimate sacrifice that Sgt. Farrar paid in defense of his country, his family and their freedoms? Or is this chorus an implicit condemnation of a wasteful and unjust war-machine that asks young men to follow their leaders to their deaths for no good reason? As with all good art, your interpretation of the chorus will reveal more about yourself than it ever will about the band.

I lean towards the latter interpretation, because they’d earlier mocked the U.S. Intelligence apparatus on “Citizen CIA” and waxed sentimental on the futility of war in “The Green Fields of France” on the same album–but now I’m getting too far afield. I hope that Elder whose name I’ve shamefully forgetten made it home safely from Iraq. I hope he got back to Idaho with a minimum of PTSD. I hope he found some measure of meaning in his military service, even if I can only condemn that pointless war that dominated my mission-and-college years and wasted so many thousands of lives. But whether that Elder ever made it back to his Idaho home or only skipped ahead to his celestial one, I hope he followed the only One worth following—and that I do the same when I arrive home, as well.