"Memorial Day Service "

OPENING WORDS

The world we know is passing;
all things grow strange;
all but the stout heart's courage;
all but the undiminished luster of an ancient dream . . .

And what we have loved and lost
we lose to find how great a thing
is loving
and the power of it to make a dream come true.

For us, there is no haven of refuge;
for us, there is the wilderness, wild and trackless,
where we shall build a road and sing a song.

But after us there is the Promised Land,
strong from our sorrows and shining from our joys,
our gift to those who follow us
along the road we build
singing our song.

A. Powell Davies
Written in early 1940s

READING

"Dirge for Two Veterans"

The last sunbeam
Lightly falls from the finish'd Sabbath,
On the pavement here, and there beyond it is looking,
Down a new-made double grave.

Lo, the moon ascending,
Up from the east the silvery round moon,
Beautiful over the house-tops, ghastly, phantom moon,
Immense and silent moon.

I see a sad procession,
And I hear the sound of coming full-key'd bugles,
All the channels of the city streets they're flooding,
As with voices and with tears.

I hear the great drums pounding,
And the small drums steady whirring,
And every blow of the great convulsive drums,
Strikes me through and through.

For the son is brought with the father,
(In the foremost ranks of the fierce assault they fell,
Two veterans son and father dropt together,
And the double grave awaits them.)

Now nearer blow the bugles,
And the drums strike more convulsive,
And the daylight o'er the pavement quite has faded,
And the strong dead-march enwraps me.

In the eastern sky up-buoying,
The sorrowful vast phantom movers illumin'd,
('Tis some mother's large transparent face,
In heaven brighter growing.)

O strong dead-march you please me!
O moon immense with your silvery face you soothe me!
O my soldiers twain!
O my veterans passing to burial!

What I have I also give you.
The moon gives you light,
And the bugles and the drums give you music,
And my heart,
O my soldiers, my veterans,
My heart gives you love.

Walt Whitman
Written 1865-66, 1867

SERMON

Although Memorial Day honors those who have died, it is those who live - and grieve the dead - who seek healing in it. With its origins after the Civil War, when devastating losses on both sides taught the survivors that grief was a common bond, people set aside this time to reflect on what it means to live after a war. Walt Whitman's exquisitely sad "Dirge for Two Veterans" evokes the diverse feelings we have for the dead. The procession, with its bugles and drums, uplifts. The moon looks down. And the heart goes out. The dead have lost their struggle, but the rest of us, especially those who fought, have only just begun. All wars are terrible, though some may concede that some wars are just. Our current war falls short of the moral criteria. That reality is devastating too. Combat, while just as lethal and traumatic as it ever was, has lost its transcendent luster.

We worry about how to support our troops as all this goes on. We carefully parse our sentiments to separate our concern for military men and women from our objections and frustration with why they are fighting at all. Our politicians seem unable to move us out of the mess we are in. The rest of us just shake our heads - or our fists, fighting our despair.

One morning while I was walking my dog in the park I saw a young woman jog by, her prosthetic leg attached at the knee. I thought, "Iraq," though of course I couldn't know for sure. War casualties are rare in my neighborhood, and she may not have been one. But it's a logical association to make. War maims young people.

Yes, many survive - and all are grateful. Many will adapt. But some will not; not without a long and arduous journey through the perils of outliving their peers. Survival is only the beginning.

Unfortunately, for many veterans, staying alive is just as difficult after war as it was during combat. We need only look at our local situation to appreciate the depth of this problem. New Directions, an agency that serves homeless veterans in greater Los Angeles, counts 20,000 veterans living on the streets of LA. "Many of these men and women suffer from co-occuring disorders, including substance abuse, mental illness, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), as well as chronic medical problems," the website reports. It's only a matter of time before these numbers grow, as a new generation of veterans returns from the current war. The needs of new veterans and the care they are receiving have made the headlines this year. Clearly we were not prepared to deal with the number of wounded people when we made the decision to go to war. I have heard that soldiers survive what would once have been fatal injuries because we have improved medical care on the battlefield; now the demand is for rehabilitation for serious traumas such as brain damage. While I am not so cynical as to think that anyone anticipated it, we have a serious gap in our system of care. This gap will lead to more homeless people.

According to "The Christian Science Monitor," "veterans' service providers are concerned by the increasing numbers of new veterans ending up on streets and in shelters. Part of the reason for these new veterans' struggles is that housing costs have skyrocketed at the same time real wages have remained relatively stable, often putting rental prices out of reach. And for many, there is a gap of months, sometimes years, between when military benefits end and veterans benefits begin." Linda Boone, executive director of the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, said, "You can have all of the yellow ribbons on cars that say 'Support Our Troops' that you want, but it's when they take off the uniform and transition back into civilian life that they need support the most."

Some day these wars will be over. Politicians will speak of healing and unifying and moving on. But then - even as it is now, some people will not be healing or unifying or moving on. Our country, eager to embrace the future, will all too quickly forget the past. Those of us who protested the war, who marched and signed petitions, who went to meetings and kept up with the news, will also be happy to let it all go. But thousands of human beings will be left behind.

We have an obligation not to forget that for many people the war will continue, in shattered dreams and nightmares, in not being able to cope with what they have seen and done and become. We cannot wait until the war has ended, for some other Memorial Day to talk about our common bonds and our unity. There must be something we can do right now.

During this painful, protracted war we have had ample opportunity to yearn for peace, that Promised Land we no longer know how to find. "The world we know is passing; all things grow strange;" wrote A. Powell Davies during World War II, "all but the stout heart's courage; all but the undiminished luster of an ancient dream." We ask much of our soldiers in battle, to put aside their own doubts and questions, to live with constant fear and danger, to risk everything - whether they die or live.

But these times require more than one kind of courage What do we ask of our ourselves, of our politicians and leaders, as month after month goes by, and "all things grow strange"? Perhaps we ask too much of our soldiers and too little of ourselves and those who represent us.

"There are many kinds of courage," we learned from our Story for All Ages. There is the courage of young soldiers, facing danger in a foreign land. There is the courage of veterans, returning home to the task of rehabilitating themselves - physically, spiritually, psychologically.

There is the courage it takes to support them. We who watch the war on the evening news, who watch and wait for it to be over, need the courage to remember how real it is. Don't go numb, your mind blank because there is no solution. That is the temptation. But even if we cannot fathom what we see, there are people who need our help. There must be something we can do.

There is also the courage we should expect from our politicians and leaders. Any leader - on any side of the debate about war - has an obligation to be as brave as the soldiers they send to fight. Even if that means admitting a mistake, or a lie.

After all these years of war all things do grow strange. Where is the sense of urgency, the compassion, the conscience? Why doesn't anything change? Why do we accept it?

Then there is the greatest courage of all, the courage to put an end to war. As veterans return home and we learn what it really means to support them, it will become clear, as it always does, that only peace can heal us. Only when we can stop - and see that once again, tragically and irreversibly, we have made grief our common human bond, can we become whole.

This sad day, this Memorial Day, has more meanings than the heart can hold. It is not enough to honor the dead. We must help the living. It is not enough to grieve. We must work for peace. And only when that Promised Land rises before us, will we have done what we can do, for veterans, for ourselves, for the world. It is time to begin again.

(Note: Footnoptes are available upon request.)