11/11/2009

In this day of Facebook and e-mail and mobile phones, it is hard to imagine what the waiting back home must have been like for families during the First and Second World Wars. The 'not knowing' as you rise in the morning and the waiting, day after day, for communication from the front line. It is hard to imagine not knowing the day-to-day activities of a loved one and it is hard to imagine the sheer energy that it must have taken to rise and get on with the day. So, this Remembrance Day we can pause to remember those who have a loved one in Iraq or Afghanistan, or in some other unnoticed part of the world, along with those still grieving for lives lost in past wars. We will hear stories and memories today. We pause, too, to think of the many stories we won’t hear but we must draw from the well of such stories of courage, of loss and anguish, if we are to resist an easy turning to war, or to violence, as a solution to our differences -- granting that the evil of war sometimes may seem an inevitable necessity. Grantland Rice, Confederate veteran of the American Civil War, wrote:

"All wars are planned by older men
In council rooms apart,
Who call for greater armament
And map the battle chart.

But out along the shattered field
Where golden dreams turn gray,
How very young the faces were
Where all the dead men lay".