Remembering A Time Of War

SAT., MAY 24, 1986, 6:53 AM
FARM, STUDY

One of the days of this next week (the specific one is not important) is set aside as a day for remembering a time of war and, especially, those whose life in the earth was shortened by death as a result of war. This has not been part of your pattern of remembrance, mainly because you have not lost anyone of close significance in wartime. Hear, then, as I speak of the value of this remembrance, o son.

For you, a time of war was a time of learning and training, not a time of death and destruction. You have seen many movies about war, and these have given you some feeling for suffering and the loss of life, but it is vicarious and not particularly real. It is unlikely that you shall experience war in a direct way in this lifetime of yours. How, therefore, can this be a time of genuine memorial?

I have told you before that war is not usually a commendable way of settling differences between powers. It does change the conditions of those differences, however. The earth would surely have been different in its human organization if Germany and Japan had triumphed in the war of which you were a tiny part. Yet the conditions of life are changed, for some, even in small wars. And changes in life conditions can be beneficial for all of the conditions in a peaceful world are not idyllic and sacrosanct.

The focus of Memorial Day is on those whose earth lives were shortened. Yes, in the terms of your society they were killed or they died, but in the terms I have offered to you they have had just another experience, though perhaps quite dramatic, along a spiritual path. Fundamental life continues, even as the physical body can no longer function. Occasionally death is a relief, and occasionally it is a very traumatic leaving, but most often it is just an event whose effects subside into the ongoing stream of life, in the earth or beyond.

A time of war usually is a time of patriotism. The nature of the warm influences the population of each country in ways that increase or diminish this patriotism. You have remembrances of the patriotism of the early 1940’s in your country, and you know that it was much less for the two wars that followed in which Americans fought and died. In one sense this matter of patriotism is unimportant, for any enthusiasm for a particular country or culture is not of lasting value in one’s whole spiritual journey. In another sense, however, it is evidence of a kind of love, and all expressions of love, as well as manifestations, are to be “counted” and valued.

This implies, of course, that the patriotism is fundamentally and mostly a love for one’s country and way of life rather than a hate for the enemy. You can remember no hatred for those who were your enemies in the contest for world domination, and yet you wonder whether experiences in actual combat would have brought forth hate. You think not, and I agree.