As I’m doing research on family ancestry, I’m finding a very high percentage of our family’s forebears who served in the Civil War (both north and south); quite a few Revolutionary War veterans, and several WWI AND WWII military. We have a couple of career military relatives who are currently serving who have been brave, earnest and dutiful in their service and we are proud of their sincerity.
I’ve both spoken and written in opposition to various wars and have filled many care packages for those serving overseas. It seems there is rarely “one right way” to view war and peace. I’ve been about speaking against misguided military intervention but honoring and respecting our soldiers. Kind of confusing.
In another case, I feel passionately that it was right to intervene with Hitler’s activities in WWII. But the internment camps for Japanese Americans during the same war was a misguided exercise in fear and racism, not unlike the attitude some hold toward “all Muslims” today (post-9/11 and post-Isis terrorism). And certainly the use of the atomic bomb demonstrated that there clearly are moral limits to the use of indiscriminate force.
On holidays like Memorial Day, I often wish I could just be patriotic or just be completely against it all. It would be simpler, more fun for the moment to feel morally certain.
Unfortunately, we somehow have to keep walking the less popular road of the not-quite-middle-ground. It can be a lonely road in today’s political climate. To live a deeply spiritual life in our complex world means seeing the Sacred in every person and having compassion even for those whose point of view would choose to obliterate our viewpoint. Ugh!
It is easier when I watch birds fly, feel the wind in my face, pray and meditate at sunrise, look out on vast oceans and deserts, see the sunset over the horizon or hike up a tall mountain to view wilderness. It is easier when I let go of “us vs. them” and focus on oneness.
There is so much more to this universe than our own perspective. So I will lift my gratitude today for the triumph of love, unity, respect, diversity, kindness, and courage. I will celebrate the passage of time, moments of healing and reunion, and I will honor ancestors who sought to do their best – whatever their beliefs – and seek compassion and forgiveness for us all.
following the golden thread 
Very sweet words. Thanks for articulating it well. 🙂
Hi Karen,
I loved what you wrote! You did an amazing job of expressing the challenges that many of us baby boomers feel. We grew up post WWII. Our parents experienced the Great Depression and the war at a deeply personal level. We burned our bras, marched against mandatory ROTC, the Vietnam War, and insisted on our rights to the birth control pill and our right to choose. I look at whom is getting elected, the raping of our environment due to greed, the fact the evil doers on Wall Street are still smoking big cigars and I feel like I am caught in some strange twilight zone! What happened to my generation that we let these things happen? I recently have become more politically active. Otherwise, how can we face our grand children without being able to say, “I tried.”
Linda Lillie Rosson Sent from my iPhone
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Thanks, Linda!