I do wish that we had a day to recognize the sacrifices and courage of people who refused to fight in unjust wars and who were peacemakers and justicemakers. It's right to represent the sacrifices made in battles and to reflect on what "sacrifice" means and what actually was sacrificed and what has been lost. It is also right to include those people who resisted joining in unjust wars and tried to build an alternative and to reflect on how most of the time we can create alternatives to imperialist wars that also also create justice.
And always there are victims to remember.
I believe that there is a scene in the film "Matewan" where the main character is explaining to a young mine worker and preacher that he saw members of the Jehovah's Witnesses tortured in prison during the First World War for refusing to wear uniforms and how they refused to relent and how that taught him about solidarity. You don't have to be a pacifist or a JW to admire that or learn from that. And you can't say that anyone who experienced that was a coward. I knew some World War One vets; they were brave people, but the war they fought in was an extended family quarrel between European royalty that helped kick off a century of previously unimaginable brutality. The dead from that war and from the genocides of Indigenous peoples, of the Armenians, and in the Belgian Congo are still crying out to us.
I remember from my childhood a kind old woman who rented a tiny room in a house near us in the 1960s who was still mourning her brother who had been killed in France during the First World War. Grieving can take forever. But what has happened to grieving when Memorial Day means a holiday or a sale on barbecue grills?
Tony Herbert, whose book "Soldier" should be required reading, told the story of how he became a highly-decorated Marine by talking first about how he learned to think with a group by growing up in the Pennsylvania anthracite coal region and having mine workers all around him. He recalled an incident that occurred when he was a child when a playmate fell into an icy pond and boys jumped in to save the child without giving it a second thought although it cost several of them their lives. Mine workers think like that. Coalfield kids think like that. Soldiers think like that. Healthcare workers think like that. Teachers are being expected to think like that. Appalachia, the Indian reservations, and Chicano communities give the U.S. more soldiers, and more dead war heroes, than other sections of the U.S. when measured against population numbers. Let's recognize heroism and sacrifice where we find it. Wherever we find it. We find heroism and sacrifice in battles. And sometimes we find them on a picketline or in a jail cell in Alabama or during a school shooting or at an antiwar event.
Through the sagas of the wars there are real stories of sacrifice that rightly touch us because of their humanism and because they force to consider our own virtues and shortcomings and what we gained because someone else gave their life for us. Shame on anyone who uses those stories to encourage more killing. Here is one such moving story from Grace Baptist Church in Philadelphia, Pa. And following that is a photo of a memorial to mine workers lest we forget other sacrifices as well.
And following that are two memes to bring us back to the beginning...
This Memorial Day as we in America gather for barbecues and fireworks, we pause to remember those who gave their lives in service to our country. In "Faith Walks and Talks--The 150-Year History of Grace Baptist Church," one chapter is dedicated to the remarkable story of The Four Chaplains, pictured here in a stained-glass depiction that hangs in the Pentagon today. In the 2nd worst sea disaster of WWII four chaplains of 3 different faiths helped men find lifeboats an lifejackets, ultimately giving up their own lifejackets to men who couldn't locate their own. Nearly 2/3 of the men aboard, including the 4 chaplains, perished in the icy Atlantic on February 3, 1943, after being hit by a torpedo from a German U-boat. One of the four chaplains was the son of our pastor at the time, Rev. Daniel Poling, and the church decided to build an interfaith memorial in the lower floor of the church, The #chapelofthefourchaplains Rev. Poling himself also served as a chaplain himself often traveling to war zones and bringing home news of members' sons. Faithful members over the years have written letters in support of servicemen. One Sunday after teaching an adult Sunday school class I noticed the tarnished urns on the shelves and decided to take them home, one by one, to polish. They were in remembrance of sons and loved ones lost in the war. Today, we pause to remember. "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." John 15:13 #faith #remember
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