On Memorial Day For Peace

 

 

Oh say can you see feel hear taste touch

The awful memories of trenches and foxholes

The ocean’s entombing  thrall

And buried beneath the turncoat  waves

Oh say can you see feel hear taste touch

In the treachery of the skies above

The valleys laced with menace below

And on foreign hillsides and alien mountain tops

Dangers that numb the spirit and root out hope

Oh say can you see feel hear taste touch

On lakes still with foreboding, rivers streaming with blood and capsized desire.

Wherever there was destruction and cruelty

and in the hearts of children women men despair
and loneliness, mercilessly spawned by war and violence

Endlessly  twisting the knives of grief and abandon

Oh say can you see feel hear taste touch

Can you remember? Of course you can, memories close as marrow bone.

Then now here forever

And in all places vow to bring a healthy balm

By sheer will married to unearned forgiveness

Make peace a portion plentiful enough for each of us to consume

Our fill many times over and so slake our thirst

For justice and hunger for understanding

and true friendship

Satisfy our restless anxiety and grant us

Humility sufficient for the journey

For we are confused and thou art love.

We gather because

We need each other

Even as we struggle separately

We need each other

To tame our anger

We need each other

To increase our kindness

We need each other

To steel our courage

We need each other

To sing our joys

We need each other

If we are to transform our individual hells into communal fields of glory

We need each other

Louder

Softer

Amen so be it blessed be let it be.

From USMemorialDay.Org

Memorial Day, originally called Decoration Day, is a day of remembrance for those who have died in our nation's service. There are many stories as to its actual beginnings, with over two dozen cities and towns laying claim to being the birthplace of Memorial Day. There is also evidence that organized women's groups in the South were decorating graves before the end of the Civil War: a hymn published in 1867, "Kneel Where Our Loves are Sleeping" by Nella L. Sweet carried the dedication "To The Ladies of the South who are Decorating the Graves of the Confederate Dead" (Source: Duke University's Historic American Sheet Music, 1850-1920). While Waterloo N.Y. was officially declared the birthplace of Memorial Day by President Lyndon Johnson in May 1966, it's difficult to prove conclusively the origins of the day.

Memorial Day was officially proclaimed on 5 May 1868 by General John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, in his General Order No. 11, and was first observed on 30 May 1868, when flowers were placed on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery.

Here's Moore's Proof via Brian Hicks at Post and Courier.

On a Monday morning that spring, nearly 10,000 former slaves marched onto the grounds of the old Washington Race Course, where wealthy Charleston planters and socialites had gathered in old times. During the final year of the war, the track had been turned into a prison camp. Hundreds of Union soldiers died there.

For two weeks in April, former slaves had worked to bury the soldiers. Now they would give them a proper funeral.

The procession began at 9 a.m. as 2,800 black school children marched by their graves, softly singing "John Brown's Body."

Soon, their voices would give way to the sermons of preachers, then prayer and — later — picnics. It was May 1, 1865, but they called it Decoration Day.

Dozens of groups and individuals have claimed that they are the originators of Memorial Day. A General ordered it and a President enacted it. Two origins are among my favorites. One was the report that the widows and loved ones of slain Confederate soldiers in Mississippi looked over to that part of the cemetery where the graves of Union soldiers were untended and overgrown. They cleared the graves and looked after them along with their own.

The other origin is of a race track turned into a cemetery for Union soldiers in Charlston, (South Carolina?) where slaves and their children buried the dead and memorialized them.

My vote for the true Memorial Day is today, here, in an event created by Veterans for Peace and now joined by many peace and justice groups. Here is proof that the human heart is capable of holding the plaints and griefs of all who call out for justice and mercy, for love and understanding.

In the words of Bob Doss, one of our greatest ministers, For all those who seek God, Allah, Yahweh, the divinity in each of us, may God go with you. For all those who embrace life, may life return your affections. And for all those who seek a right path, may the way be found and the courage to take it, step by step. Amen so be it blessed be let it be.

​There are probably many agnostics here and that is good. Remember when you sing this that God is love and we are the angels referenced.
​

Sleep my child and peace attend thee,
All through the night
Guardian angels God will send thee,
All through the night
Soft the drowsy hours are creeping,
Hill and dale in slumber sleeping
I my loved ones' watch am keeping,
All through the night

​Writ​

ing from the Universalizing Zone,
Ralph Blickenstaff Galen, M.Div.