Memorial Day is a tough topic for me. I always want to show gratitude to those who have served our country with honor, and I never want to be disrespectful. My father and his brothers served in WWII, one of them died in France. The war defined my family in ways which are difficult to explain. Such was the case for many families.
My dad died on July 4, 2009. He did not like war. In fact, even though I never heard him use the word "hate" that I can remember, he felt what could be described as hatred for all of the wars the U.S. has fought/is fighting in the Middle East. "How can you fight a war when you don't even know who the enemy is?" he would often say. His disdain was directed at the leaders who have gotten us involved in these wars and not the men and women who are fighting them. Such is the case with me.
Military men and women sacrifice so much, emotionally, often physically, and sometimes they die, leaving behind grieving families -- mothers, fathers, wives and children. I think the greatest desire of all of us is that no such loss is in vain. Can't we use the memory of those who have fallen to question the policies which embroil us in one conflict after another? Is it unpatriotic to say the price is too high to fight with no clear goal in sight? Can we at least consider that the 'war on terror' may be counter-productive?
I believe the best way to honor the memory of those who have
died in conflict is to seek peace above all else. Somehow, there are
those who seem to be, oddly, almost offended by the notion of mentioning
peace on Memorial Day. They say talk of peace is naive and even misguided. But I call to remembrance the words of Jesus when he said, "Blessed are the peacemakers." He taught The Way of peace, not of war. He radically commanded that we love our enemies.
I find Memorial Day to be the perfect day to talk about
peace. My father who gave up so much, at so many levels, during WWII
believed it was worth the sacrifice for his country to do what he did, knowing it was a necessary war if there ever was one. But it didn't make him love war. It didn't make him glorify combat. War
is hell. Perhaps that's what we should remember.
Sunday, May 26, 2013
Sunday, May 19, 2013
What to Remember
Few things get to me on an emotional level like talking to WWII veterans about their wartime experiences. I spoke to three this week, including one Marine who lived through 41 days during the Battle on Iwo Jima. (History note: during "Operation Detachment" on Iwo Jima there were 26,000 American casualties, including 6,800 dead. Of the 22,000 Japanese soldiers entrenched on the island, nearly all died either from fighting or by ritual suicide.) Another veteran I spoke to had been a Navy ordnanceman who flew on missions to take photos of enemy territory. He was in a plane which flew 20,000 feet above the mushroom cloud to take photos after the bombing of Hiroshima.
Excerpts of the interviews are scheduled to be in a special section in the West Plains Daily Quill on May 21 for anyone who wants to read a bit more about their experiences.
My father was a veteran of WWII. He spent most of the war in relative safety in India in the Army Air Corps running the metal-working shop which repaired planes that had flown missions and been shot up. But even he had a horrible realization that he had been directly responsible for the deaths of other men. Like many veterans of his generation he never got over calling them "Japs," but he broke down in tears the one time he told me the story of going on a special detail to install guns on the fronts of planes to protect our pilots from the Japanese fighters. He read a story in an Army publication a few months after he'd done it that said "several Jap pilots had been killed" with the guns my dad and others had installed. He was proud he had been able to help protect the U.S. pilots, but the guilt of the deaths he felt responsible for was heavy on his heart nearly 70 years after the fact. In many ways, he felt he deserved no forgiveness from it.
My dad's brother James, who incidentally was my mother's first husband, was killed by a sniper at St. Lo, France shortly after D-Day. His brother Floyd received a Silver Star for bravery in Italy after running through enemy fire to save his unit after their radio had been destroyed and they had no way to communicate. To say that WWII was a time of honor, courage and grave loss to all sides is, of course, an understatement. It was for my family and it was for millions of others around the world. "You can't really explain it to civilians," said one of the 93-year-olds I interviewed this week.
Fast forward to 2013. On May 5 in my blog post I questioned the wisdom of arming school employees. Wondered what it might be doing to our national psyche. Dared to say it might be causing our kids to grow up in a culture of fear while taking a toll on what is beautiful and good about our country. I didn't say anything about curtailing individual gun rights in any way. That was not the point of my blog.
For the record, my personal belief: Any kind of gun control efforts are pointless. There are vast numbers of weapons and rounds of ammunition in this country, legal and otherwise. It is impossible to go back and un-ring the bell of nearly unlimited gun ownership, and I don't believe we should. My family has always owned guns and we always intend to. Furthermore, even if gun ownership was limited, it wouldn't matter. Guns aren't the problem and we're merely stirring up resentment and helping gun sales skyrocket with the constant political wrangling over them. It's what we do with guns, like maybe put them in the hands of school employees who are not law enforcement officers, that I see as the problem. It's the way a criminal or mentally unstable mind works which cannot be changed by trying to take guns out of the equation. It's that we have become a country of "us" versus "them" and half the time we don't even know who "they" are. There. Have I managed to offend my Liberal friends while at the same time still not getting through to my Conservative friends that I really don't want to see your guns taken away?
Back to the point at hand. When I recited the Pledge of Allegiance at the MSU-West Plains graduation ceremonies on Saturday morning tears came to my eyes when I said, "one nation under God, indivisible." The division in this country is heart-breaking. I thought of those who had fought and died to "save our way of life" just to see us now behave with so little civility, respect and love toward our fellow Americans. My dad's been gone three years now, but I can tell you, he was disappointed in the way we treat each other. I thought of part of the thread of comments after my blog about guns in schools.
A friend said the following: "I'd love to see you folk armed with hugs and love and sunshine facing down an active shooter. I plan to use you as human shields while returning fire. Namaste."
This is an actual friend from high school, not someone who has requested a Facebook friendship because he is a friend of a friend, but a person I have admired and loved since we met. He made our debate coach angry all those years ago by writing on the chalkboard in our classroom a quote from 2nd-century Church Father Tertullian, "The blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church." He's always been what you might say quirky, but that he can now say something like what he said to me is baffling and appalling. Will he say he was trying to be funny? I doubt it. I think he meant it. But I don't think the men in my family who fought in WWII would be laughing even if it was meant to be a sick joke. I'm sure my mother wouldn't have thought it was funny.
Memorial Day, to remember those in the military who died while serving their country, is coming up. Here's what I suggest we remember. Remember how to treat other people. Remember how to be civil. Remember my Uncle Floyd who risked his own life to save the lives of his friends and fellow soldiers. Remember a guy who managed to survive a month on an island of pure hell where nearly 30,000 others weren't so lucky. Remember my uncle James who died in France, shot in the head by a sniper. He hadn't been able to give my mother a wedding ring when they got married because they couldn't afford it, but he had a wedding ring in his pocket when they found him which he planned to give her when he made it home. The wedding ring made its way to her, but he didn't. James and my mother already had three little girls. To honor his brother's memory, my father married his brother's widow to raise those girls as his own.
If we want to remember something on Memorial Day let's remember what honor means.
Excerpts of the interviews are scheduled to be in a special section in the West Plains Daily Quill on May 21 for anyone who wants to read a bit more about their experiences.
My father was a veteran of WWII. He spent most of the war in relative safety in India in the Army Air Corps running the metal-working shop which repaired planes that had flown missions and been shot up. But even he had a horrible realization that he had been directly responsible for the deaths of other men. Like many veterans of his generation he never got over calling them "Japs," but he broke down in tears the one time he told me the story of going on a special detail to install guns on the fronts of planes to protect our pilots from the Japanese fighters. He read a story in an Army publication a few months after he'd done it that said "several Jap pilots had been killed" with the guns my dad and others had installed. He was proud he had been able to help protect the U.S. pilots, but the guilt of the deaths he felt responsible for was heavy on his heart nearly 70 years after the fact. In many ways, he felt he deserved no forgiveness from it.
My dad's brother James, who incidentally was my mother's first husband, was killed by a sniper at St. Lo, France shortly after D-Day. His brother Floyd received a Silver Star for bravery in Italy after running through enemy fire to save his unit after their radio had been destroyed and they had no way to communicate. To say that WWII was a time of honor, courage and grave loss to all sides is, of course, an understatement. It was for my family and it was for millions of others around the world. "You can't really explain it to civilians," said one of the 93-year-olds I interviewed this week.
Fast forward to 2013. On May 5 in my blog post I questioned the wisdom of arming school employees. Wondered what it might be doing to our national psyche. Dared to say it might be causing our kids to grow up in a culture of fear while taking a toll on what is beautiful and good about our country. I didn't say anything about curtailing individual gun rights in any way. That was not the point of my blog.
For the record, my personal belief: Any kind of gun control efforts are pointless. There are vast numbers of weapons and rounds of ammunition in this country, legal and otherwise. It is impossible to go back and un-ring the bell of nearly unlimited gun ownership, and I don't believe we should. My family has always owned guns and we always intend to. Furthermore, even if gun ownership was limited, it wouldn't matter. Guns aren't the problem and we're merely stirring up resentment and helping gun sales skyrocket with the constant political wrangling over them. It's what we do with guns, like maybe put them in the hands of school employees who are not law enforcement officers, that I see as the problem. It's the way a criminal or mentally unstable mind works which cannot be changed by trying to take guns out of the equation. It's that we have become a country of "us" versus "them" and half the time we don't even know who "they" are. There. Have I managed to offend my Liberal friends while at the same time still not getting through to my Conservative friends that I really don't want to see your guns taken away?
Back to the point at hand. When I recited the Pledge of Allegiance at the MSU-West Plains graduation ceremonies on Saturday morning tears came to my eyes when I said, "one nation under God, indivisible." The division in this country is heart-breaking. I thought of those who had fought and died to "save our way of life" just to see us now behave with so little civility, respect and love toward our fellow Americans. My dad's been gone three years now, but I can tell you, he was disappointed in the way we treat each other. I thought of part of the thread of comments after my blog about guns in schools.
A friend said the following: "I'd love to see you folk armed with hugs and love and sunshine facing down an active shooter. I plan to use you as human shields while returning fire. Namaste."
This is an actual friend from high school, not someone who has requested a Facebook friendship because he is a friend of a friend, but a person I have admired and loved since we met. He made our debate coach angry all those years ago by writing on the chalkboard in our classroom a quote from 2nd-century Church Father Tertullian, "The blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church." He's always been what you might say quirky, but that he can now say something like what he said to me is baffling and appalling. Will he say he was trying to be funny? I doubt it. I think he meant it. But I don't think the men in my family who fought in WWII would be laughing even if it was meant to be a sick joke. I'm sure my mother wouldn't have thought it was funny.
Memorial Day, to remember those in the military who died while serving their country, is coming up. Here's what I suggest we remember. Remember how to treat other people. Remember how to be civil. Remember my Uncle Floyd who risked his own life to save the lives of his friends and fellow soldiers. Remember a guy who managed to survive a month on an island of pure hell where nearly 30,000 others weren't so lucky. Remember my uncle James who died in France, shot in the head by a sniper. He hadn't been able to give my mother a wedding ring when they got married because they couldn't afford it, but he had a wedding ring in his pocket when they found him which he planned to give her when he made it home. The wedding ring made its way to her, but he didn't. James and my mother already had three little girls. To honor his brother's memory, my father married his brother's widow to raise those girls as his own.
If we want to remember something on Memorial Day let's remember what honor means.
Sunday, May 12, 2013
A Day for Moms
While there are certainly many mothers
and fathers who share responsibilities of child-rearing, today is the
day to celebrate motherhood, so I will laud moms in my comments while
noting there are many variables in the roles which not so many years
ago were divided much more strictly along the lines of “women's and
men's work.” In fact, shortly after my daughter gave birth to her
son one year ago last Friday, I gave her a “raising baby” book
from the 1940s. The duties assigned to dad as described just 70 years
ago mostly fell along the lines of staying out of mother's way while
she took care of everything. Some families still operate this way,
but in many cases that advice is quaint by today's standards.
Raising children is a tough job and an
often messy business. Infants are literal mess-makers producing
surprising and unpleasant natural by-products on a regular basis and
delivering those things out of both ends of their tiny bodies. I know
many moms who have to work past gag reflexes to get through this
stage. Toddlers still offer plenty of body function unpleasantries
while adding the element of being able to pull everything out of a
drawer and throw the contents onto the kitchen floor with lightening
fast speed. Picking up the debris left behind by tiny human tornadoes
is an exasperating job often relegated to mom.
On a more serious note, the messes
children create can often escalate as they approach their teenage
years and into adulthood, but mothers tend to stand by their kids, no
matter what. On the way to work on Friday, I saw a mother cat
carrying a kitten across the road by the scruff of its neck. The
kitten was well past the age of needing to be carried. But the mother
dragged it along, stumbling because the kitten was so big. It
reminded me of some human moms.
Moms who are present in the lives of
their children are privileged to share a special bond with them
through every stage of life and difficult situation. I believe one of
the most important legacies a mother can give her children is
spiritual guidance, helping to instill a sense of purpose and
direction. A great gift for every child is to have someone to
encourage them by example to show love and respect for others, to
follow the Golden Rule and to not live in fear.
Sunday, May 5, 2013
A Shift in Tactics
I have been contemplating the arming of school personnel, as one of the local elementary schools in the West Plains area has recently done. Aside from whether or not it "works" as a deterrent or possibly as a way to stop someone intent on doing violence from inflicting widespread harm, I've been considering the effect it has on the children at the school. As usual, the adults are having their say and making the decisions which impact kids, but what does a decision like this do to young people in the long-term? What lessons are we teaching them?
Again, my opinions in this blog are religious in nature, not political. Let's put aside arguments about rights for a moment and think about what is right. The teachings of Jesus are clear in that we are not to try to attempt to overcome evil with more evil. I know many will say guns are not inherently evil, and I know the intent of school administrators is to do good, rather than evil. But as followers of Christ what lessons do we see being taught to children? Are we teaching fear as a daily way of life? Are we giving the not-so-subtle message that guns are the solution to society's ills? Are we injecting yet more paranoia into the minds of the young? What kind of citizens are we spawning for the future?
I know what my answers are to these questions even though many would not agree. I also know there are alternatives. Check out the following link, which shows how a shift in focus from negative to positive can cause a huge change in a situation.
http://dailynightly.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/05/01/18005192-principal-fires-security-guards-to-hire-art-teachers-and-transforms-elementary-school
If we lose our ability to appreciate and nurture that which is beautiful and creative, rather than what is frightening and destructive, what is the point of saving our way of life? To quote a line from a favorite movie of mine, "A life lived in fear, is a life half-lived."
Again, my opinions in this blog are religious in nature, not political. Let's put aside arguments about rights for a moment and think about what is right. The teachings of Jesus are clear in that we are not to try to attempt to overcome evil with more evil. I know many will say guns are not inherently evil, and I know the intent of school administrators is to do good, rather than evil. But as followers of Christ what lessons do we see being taught to children? Are we teaching fear as a daily way of life? Are we giving the not-so-subtle message that guns are the solution to society's ills? Are we injecting yet more paranoia into the minds of the young? What kind of citizens are we spawning for the future?
I know what my answers are to these questions even though many would not agree. I also know there are alternatives. Check out the following link, which shows how a shift in focus from negative to positive can cause a huge change in a situation.
http://dailynightly.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/05/01/18005192-principal-fires-security-guards-to-hire-art-teachers-and-transforms-elementary-school
If we lose our ability to appreciate and nurture that which is beautiful and creative, rather than what is frightening and destructive, what is the point of saving our way of life? To quote a line from a favorite movie of mine, "A life lived in fear, is a life half-lived."
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