Memorial Day weekend "typically marks the start of the summer vacation season". Of course, it also is the day Americans "typically" honor those who have died in military service.
I served in the Army Chaplain Corps for 4 years between the Vietnam War and the first American incursion into Iraq. My father's father served during World War I. My dad wore the Army uniform, and my deceased uncle was in the Navy toward the end of World War II. Robin's father was a combat veteran of the latter war. He died last year. He lived his post-war life trying to cope with the emotional consequences of that experience. I have a son who is in the Connecticut National Guard. He and his unit were sent to Kosovo for 15 months in 2010. He missed much of the first year of his daughter's life while he was serving our nation overseas.
There are many we honor for their service in my family, although none was killed while serving in combat.
When a family and a community grieves the death of one of their own in a war, it is a heart-wrenching thing. We rightly afford them our deepest respect for making the supreme sacrifice on our behalf. At the same time, we are so sad and angry to have had them swept from our lives in such a violent way. Sometimes, we rage at the state of a world still awash in the churnings of international conflict.
Then there are moments - I believe these are our best moments - when we are inspired to imagine a world without war; a world like the one envisioned by one of Israel's prophets: "... they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more."
Believe me when I say I have my cynical side, the voice within saying, "oh, c'mon! We ARE like "ashes to wildwood", doomed to be consumed by the passions of our human existence! Let us surrender to the global conflagration and be released from this terrestrial angst!"
And then I still have the tenacity to listen to ... and hear ... what lies beneath and beyond that cacophony of cynicism. A vision of love binds us together. By "vision", I mean a pre-conscious cellular image, a seed that dwells deep within the genetic matrix of our DNA. By "love", I mean what poets and prophets have spoken of for many millennia, a depth of intimate connection within the fabric of all that is alive.
Life appears to require that we lose lives - sacrifice honorable lives - in our quest for human peace and wholeness. May we evolve beyond the gruesome violence of the warfare we are enduring today.
