Ten Thousand Graves

Ten thousand graves

Normandy

Ten thousand graves ... 

Tended with care ... lush grass precisely trimmed.

Crosses mostly ... and Stars of David ...

Young men and women cut down in the prime of life.

They were brave and they were afraid ...

Their pictures reveal that haunted look ...

Of soldiers too tired to be afraid, 

And too frightened to find sleep.

Seasick and wet, 

They hit the beach …

Under the cover of …

Steel and smoke.

Death and tears abound …

Ahead, my friends, ahead.

There’s no going back now.

No stopping for any of us.

A continent enslaved awaits the charge.

Nations, yes, and then some, to be unshackled …

And the years pass us by quickly …

Memories roll beyond the reach of words …

Silent tears still shed …

By those who made it home.

Slowly, now, they join their comrades,

As we all do … with the passage of time.

Hand-in-hand; arm-in-arm … a band of brothers …

A chorus of sisters …

Smoke and steel … 

And a victory in hand.

And may those 

Ten thousand graves remain ever well-tended!

© Tom Eggebeen, 2010

Strolling among those graves, on a bright, sunny, Normandy day, we each paused from time-to-time by a grave, for no other reason than our feet stopped moving … and we’d read the name, the dates … I set out to find the date of my birthday, July 7, 1944 … I found two graves - two soldiers who died, and who knows how, while a squalling baby Eggebeen entered this too often sordid world, in the early morning, it was, Sheboygan, WI, Memorial Hospital, on the north side of town, on the shores of Lake Michigan. I remember standing by those two graves in Normandy, and I kept saying “thank you.”

I didn’t have any choice to be born - that’s how it is for us - either by design, or by chance, we’re conceived, and if things work out, we make it nine months in our mother’s womb.

And those soldiers, too, they were born like most are, in the hopes and joys of a family … and they went to school and had big dreams, and played cops and robbers and then dated, and found love, and maybe lost it … and then a war … and however it was, those bright and eager lives were abruptly ended, too soon ended, and families received the news they all dreaded to receive, and they wept … the remains of a loved one, now, to remain in
Europe, where they fell … and life goes on, sort of, but something missing, always … death does that to a family, to towns all across America … the missing ones, buried across the sea … 

Do the buried ones have a voice?

Perhaps they do … a singular voice, a quiet voice, from the grave - “Why?” Their question, if they have one, to us … who yet live. “Why?”

The eleventh month, the eleventh day, at eleven o’clock in the morning, the Armistice was signed … to end the war that was so horrible and violent, folks thought it might be the “war to end all wars” … 

We do well today to honor the dead … and to hear their quiet voice, with their quiet question, “Why?”

We are a warring species … for good reasons, and for lousy reasons, we kill one another … if not with the tools of war, then with words … and a host of other devices so cleverly woven in our behavior - of how we treat one another, the things we say, the glance that says it all, the flipped eyebrow, and so on and so forth.

On this good day, to search our souls … and pay attention to the gospel of our LORD Jesus Christ … that by the Spirit of mercy, and kindness, to quiet within ourselves, the darker thoughts that breed the stuff of harm.

And to pray for our nation and its leaders, that the darker materials of violence and death would be better managed by faith, hope and love.

On this day, Nov. 11 … God’s Peace, and Amen!

Hell's Version of Creation

The rich grow richer ...
The evangelicals have their judges and
A sec of education dismantling public education ...
The malcontents have a new lease for bigotry and racism.


It will take a mighty effort for this nation
To find its better angels
As the evil angels have hit us with a vengeance.


Stranger Things, indeed.
The Liar in Chief has opened the gate
And hell is pouring through.


Lots of people profit from hell.
Always have, always will.
Hell offers and hell delivers.


For the time being.
But only and ultimately only to destroy.
... Everything.


Hell's version of creation.
Not light, but pitch dark death.
The death of faith, hope and love.
The end of grace, mercy and peace.


It has always been this way.
And only with effort can we find again
Our better angels.


It can be done.
It has been done.
It will be done.


And with tremendous effort.
With terrible damage already inflicted.
Before the demons take flight.


To my friends and family, remain faithful.
Stay engaged.
And vote ... for heaven's sake, vote.


No one's perfect, but the philosophy of
Our better angels is clear:


Freedom:
For women to choose.
For marriage equality.
For better wages and better schools.
For universal health care.
For our National Parks.
For the whales and the wolves.
For all of God's creatures, great and small.


Thy Kingdom come.
Thy will be done.
On earth as it is in heaven.

All We have to Fear is Freedom

As best as I can tell, evangelicals fear freedom:

Their opposition to abortion is less a care for the fetus than a fear of a woman's freedom to choose. They can't really say that, so they dress it all up in a pretended care for the unborn.

Their opposition to euthanasia is less a care for life than a fear of someone's freedom to choose.

Their support of the death penalty, a tit for tat response, requires no thought, and no care for justice, because justice demands thought, and thought requires freedom. The criminal violated the law, as they see it, and while that's true, the evangelical is content to see the death penalty as th final elimination of freedom - theirs in the deliberative process and that of the criminal.

Their labeling of climate change as a hoax is less a regard for truth, or God's purposes, or whatever, as it is a fear of responsibility, which is an element of freedom.

Their love of the military stems from their fear of the other's freedom, and the need to build a wall against the other's freedom, whether that freedom be a mother and a child crossing the border or Iran building its own nuclear weapons. The evangelical cannot allow that kind of freedom, so they join the military and learn how to kill freedom for others, even as they salute and march in lockstep with one another, having long ago surrendered their freedom to half-wit preachers, narcissistic politicians and their "almighty" gawd.

Their approval of fascism is linked to their need for order, complete order, an order that no longer needs thinking, because thinking requires freedom, the freedom to consider choices and options, and that's deeply disturbing to the evangelical mind. There is only one way to interpret the Bible, only one way to worship, only one way to live. In that kind of mindset, freedom is a bother, a threat.

Their need for a "sovereign" god who approves of rape is driven by their fear of freedom ... there has to be plan for all of this suffering, so rather than challenging the nature of suffering, which requires their responsibility, and likely requires regard for the woman/girl and her life, and her right to choose, they lay it all at the feet of god, walk away, as Pilate did, washing their hands of responsibility, care, concern and love, and then sanctimoniously tell the girl that her pregnancy is of god, and she darn well better carry that fetus to term.

And with that, not even their god has any more freedom. And without freedom, there is no love; only rules and regulations, guns and violence, enforced by fear, the fear of freedom.

Supporting Abortion Rights

To support abortion rights, one has to care ... to love ... for

More than the fetus.

But the mother, too, and the family, and then seek some understanding of the situation, the many pieces involved in such a decision, because life is complicated.

To seek the end of Roe v. Wade, one has to limit the scope of care and knowledge, reducing everything down to the fetus, and in the process damning the mother, calling her names, supporting the "rights" of a rapist father over against that of the mother ... and all sorts of other mean-spirited thoughts and laws.

It doesn't take long to see the harshness of heart driving the anti-abortion community ... they really don't care about the conditions of life, but only their ideas of life.

To want to criminalize abortion, one has to trim the energy of love down to just about nothing, and then ramp up the anti-abortion rhetoric, and dress it all up with religious language, to justify the shrunken love and still manage feel good (though the shouting and ferocity of their moods belie the claim of righteousness).

A loving heart acknowledges the wholeness of a person and their life ... all the elements, all the pieces, all the actors and all the moments.

And, fundamentally, essentially, a loving heart trusts that most people will make a thoughtful decision, and then, even when "thoughtful decisions" are not likely, driven they might be by panic and fear, and even irresponsibility, to still trust God Almighty, to be, faithfully, at work in all things, for good.

In the Romans passage, Paul adds, "for those who love God," which is to say, those who love God can certainly trust God in all matters of life and death, but that doesn't mean the negative for those who may not know God in any coherent sense. The work of God throughout creation is for all of God's creatures, great and small, including those who are lost in the sorrows and hurt of life, and likely, most especially, the lost and the confused.

To support abortion rights, there can never, ever, be a moment when one can label a rapist and the ensuing pregnancy as "gawd's will." This is an ultimate cruelty revealing the bankruptcy of thought and faith in those religious circles wherein law trumps mercy.

Never ... ever ... dress up such evil with good ... never.

Ah, you who call evil good
and good evil,
who put darkness for light
and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet
and sweet for bitter! ... ... ... Isaiah 5.20.

Gay Pride

Thinking a bit about Gay Pride.
Transgender.
Me and mine.

We're all a hodgepodge of nature and nurture.
Mystery and mayhem.
And who knows what?

Those who fixate on sin can't stand it.
They gotta have answers.
Binary answers.

Yes, no.
Right, wrong.
Up, down.
Good, bad.
Male, female.

Sin-fixation requires delineation.
But delineation fails.
Fails to be real.

But, heck.
Who needs real.
When we can count sins.

Anyway, life is fluid.
Flexible.
Not fixed.

We transition.
Transform.
Move along some kind of continuum.

A calculus of mystery.
Beyond comprehension.
But here we are.

A wonderful holy confusion.
Which is what the Trinity is.
Nothing to pin down.

The only real choice?
Welcome.
Peace.

Joy:
Diversity.
Splendor.

Ok?
Good to go.
Love!

The Unfound Finding God

Save me, O God,
From ever finding you.

For you are the finding God.
Never the found one.

For what is found is only prideful illusion.
What I find of you is what I pretend to find.

So, let me be content.
To never finding you.

For it is you, dear God.
Who finds me!

We Will Recover

The genius of American Democracy is that neither "side" should ever gain a permanent victory.

The nature of the beast should then always offer a degree of tension, and likely frustration, too, as the two sides vie with one another to implement their vision (and it most always boils down to two sides, here or in other parts of the world).

When Eisenhower agreed to run for the Presidency, he became a Republican, believing that the US has been in the hands of the Democrats for too long. Emotionally, politically, Eisenhower could well have been a Democrat, too. But he wanted to balance the system.

For me, we're in a period of time when the Oligarchy has essentially taken the upper hand, using both Republicans and Democrats to game the government for their advantage. America, more than ever, has fallen in love with money, fame, fortune, and the power associated with all of it. And for millions more, who always seem to be locked out of the house of plenty, a deep and often violent resentment fueled by tribalism and fear.

It's always been about money, but somewhere along the line, the scales were tipped toward a particularly venomous version of money - no longer the WASP sense of duty to a nation, or even a semblance of some kind of Christian or Jewish orientation, but now just greed, and hanging around the edges of power, those in the tattered rags of evangelicalism yapping on about Cyrus and Israel, and a whole of biblical cockamamie.

Democracy is threatened, as I see it.

Yet, we will recover, not because we're Americans, or because we're the apple of God's eye, but because we're human beings, and this is how history totters along, always out of balance, and always seeking balance, and sometimes, in those brilliant moments of peace and wellbeing, actually achieves some degree of balance, wherein the two sides, locked in struggle, enable the better angels.

Empires come and empires go ... and along the way, enormous suffering, and always war. Yet science discovers, musicians compose, poets write, historians publish, people fall in love, children are born, some rise to greatness of heart and vision, and lead nations to better days.

It pays to be cynical in order to be honest about humanity's inhumanity to itself ... but it pays to be hopeful lest one give up and sink into despair or some form of quiet hedonism. As long as poets write and artists tell their stories, there is hope for tomorrow.

I don't know the timeline. A physician-friend said to me a few days back about socialized healthcare - "We'll eventually get there, but not likely in our lifetime."

He may be right, but I hope he's not, and I hope that we can move things along a bit more swiftly.