Memorial Thoughts

As Memorial day ebbs into night I would like to spend a few moments considering where our nation is, and where it appears to be going. Each of us has spent this weekend within ourselves, as we saw fit. There were the obligatory rememberences, the mandatory sound bites from the politicians, the barrage of war films on TV, but for many there lingers the pain and anguish of combat past, and the scars from those battles. War is not glorious, and when it is fought without respect for the enemy, and when it is conducted by those who give no regard for life it leaves vast populations crippled, scared, and damaged, both physically and mentally.

During and after the Vietnam conflict American soldiers came home to an unfeeling nation, wrapped up in its own desire to forget the conflict, and as a result we forgot the survivors of that conflict. This time we've convinced ourselves we will remember, but how many have given more than a passing thought during a news story? How many have seen the survivors of a roadside bombing and offered encouragement as they struggle to return to a sense of normalcy?

If you believe in God, pray for all who are savaged in this conflict against evil that they may find peace within themselves and not foster the hate that has caused this outrage against all civilization.

Few words have summarized the sacrifice of Americans as well as Abraham Lincoln's address at the dedication of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met here on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But in a larger sense we can not dedicate - we can not consecrate - we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled, here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract.
The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but can never
forget what they did here.

It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they have, thus far, so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us - that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.