May 2011

^“Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” John 15:13

Many people on the losing sides of wars die for lost causes promoted at times by evil men.  However, many of them truly live and die for love of their fellowman, giving the “last measure of devotion” for those whom they believe they are protecting.  This counts for something with humankind and it is only in the economy of God that we will learn how their devotion is transcendent in eternity.  At most times there is no way for us to avoid the moral contradictions of such service.

On days of memorial we remember men and women of honor for their praiseworthy sacrifices and leave even the final judgments of history of their causes to be countermanded or affirmed at the throne of Almighty God.  To pay tribute to the concept of honor is not a bad thing.  To honor is good.  To call evil causes good or good causes evil is an abomination.  To call honorable deeds praiseworthy is a good thing.

 ***

Remembering

There are places in my memory I can never go back to again but which remain idyllic.  Strangely, many of them are sites of war and places where men shed blood in some of the bloodiest battles which are now nearly forgotten.  Other similar sites, remembered in history books, are all but forgotten in the normal course of living for the pain that was inflicted there. We remember them for the good that has come from them. Sometimes those places are the location of legends and gilded heroes.  Most often they fade into the annals of history or anonymity.

Today I am remembering several hills in the Republic of Korea.  I only know them now by their military numbers or names which I have assigned them: Hill 303, 131, Eagles Nest, Sky Land, Bloody Ridge and C’hun Cheon Knoll.  These were remote places I visited as a Chaplain.  At the time I was ministering to American Forces trying to maintain a fragile peace twelve years after the Korean War stalemate.  I lived for a while in the shadow of two of these hills.  As a result I became acquainted with some of their sad histories and their resurrections from the plains which they protected.

For one, Hill 303 looked down on the Naktong River in Waegwan, Korea where the line was drawn for part of the Pusan Perimeter during the Korean War.  This is where American troops stopped the North Korean advance southward and began to drive them back. One bright Sunday I climbed Hill 303 with two other soldiers to locate a spot where 41 American soldiers were murdered.  The pictures in stark black and white show them bound with wire and lying murdered in a trench.  I found that trench in its still primitive setting and stood over it in reverential awe.

Today, that same ground, I am told, burgeons with vineyards and orchards and is remembered by only a few for the horror which it once staged  when it was strewn with dead soldiers far from their homelands.  This is an interesting thing about war.  The Hell which battlefields represent is usually covered up in a short time.  This is also true of tornados, floods, tsunamis, hurricanes, fires, earthquakes and other tragedies. 

There is something in nature’s laws, conceptualized by its Creator and in the human heart, which does not love a tragic ending. We are made by our Creator to understand that there is a redemption factor in all of life.  So history and nature heal.  However, at the same time, lessons that we might have learned may be easily forgotten.  That is why we must make a decision to remember the paths and the pains that have brought us to our present state of grace.

At the end of this month we traditionally celebrate Memorial Day.   This is a good thing.  It is a time to take time to remember that there have been many people who have gone before us who made our lives richer and more promising.  This is true of those who died for patriot cause and our parents, ancestors and benefactors who lived and served us.  Let us take time to give thanks for those blessed souls.  In remembering let us also draw a resolve to live to benefit those who will follow after us.  Remembering is a good thing.

 

***

 

Soldier at D-Day

 

I have seen that same warrior etched

in celluloid black and white

fall a hundred times,

stumble upon the beach,

drop like a sack of wet sand-

broken-

a winged bird crumpled

by the marksman shot.

 

He is faceless,

two-dimensional youth,

whose death is more important

than his unrealized life,

a macabre shadow,

dropping as  stone into primal sea.

 

He was senseless,

not aware that we die as him

to relive a thousand resurrections.

and scribe his bronzed name

under the footstones

of a thousand institutions.

 

He lives

in all the tears we shed

when shattered dreams

sing deaths’ song.

 

He lives  

when we rise from the grit

to take the ground upon which he fell

where swirling waters

suck corpses back to sea.

 

He lives as we.

Together we are Jonahs in the belly

of our rumbling Leviathians,

would be deliverers

probing Ninevah’s shores,

trembling as that great jaw opens

at water’s edge

and the monster belches

through gaping maws.

 

He lives as we.

We have known his fear

on our own beaches

where he filled his helmet

with soured breakfast

and white hot fingers

tore his chest

to fall in sands

where innocence recedes. 

 

He lives as we.

 We have paddled with him

up to armpits in crimson sea

lapping at the shores of the evil abyss

and topple sandcastles of summers past.

 

Falling with him,

I often wonder what some mother

asks if this was her son who fell.

I have imagined what father

 had his heart ripped out

as that familiar shape trashed their dreams

where beasts cowered in their lairs.

 

***

 

Heroes

Their shadows do not eclipse the sun.

Following the gray line beyond their earthly mien

we see the Light.