Memorial Day Remembrance

Here is a post from ten years ago about how I came to understand the origins of Memorial Day with some thoughts on how best to honor our soldiers, both the fallen and the living.

I don’t recall much being made of Memorial Day when I was growing up. It was barely on my radar. I suppose there were Memorial Day sales, but as a holiday it was not high up on the list. Several years ago, Alison, a young colleague at work started talking about her childhood memories of Memorial Day. “I was always excited about the holiday because I would get brand new clothes. My mamma would always take me shopping. She would tell me, ‘We were going out to get your Memorial Day dress.’ That was the big thing about Memorial Day.” She was a young African American woman talking to me and Kevin, another young white colleague. Kevin and I looked at one another in mild amusement. We had never heard of such a Memorial Day tradition.

“You mean ya’ll didn’t get new clothes on Memorial Day?”

Kevin and I said no we didn’t.

“I wonder if my mamma was just telling me that. I sure thought new clothes were a Memorial Day tradition.”

It got to my young black colleague so that she went to another black co-worker to ask her about it. Alison returned later with a big smile on her face. "I asked Phyllis about it – she said it was a black thang.” We all three laughed about it.

That incident led me to ponder how and what we remember, and how we mark special days of observance. A quick look at the history of Memorial Day reveals the difference in how I, Kevin, and Alison had grown up observing the holiday. Memorial Day first came to be observed to commemorate Union soldiers who died in the Civil War. After World War I, it became a day to honor Americans who have died in all wars. In my white southern heritage, Memorial Day had no strong observance because it was not a thing that my white ancestors would have particularly wanted to honor or remember. To our black neighbors’ ancestors, however, Memorial Day would have signified a new beginning, new hope and opportunity (even though it took 100 more years for Civil Rights to be enacted). It makes perfect sense that our black neighbors would have celebrated with new clothes for a new beginning.

How then should we observe the day in the 21st century, after so many other wars have given us so many other soldiers killed in the service of our country? On Memorial Day it is certainly fitting to remember those soldiers who have paid the ultimate price for our country. It is also fitting to be thankful for the freedom we enjoy in this country. We would be remiss, however, if we did not pause to consider the price all of our soldiers pay during wartime. Rather than glorifying the fight, we should consider what our brave soldiers actually endure. We do not honor our soldiers by holding on to fantasies about the glories of war. By really understanding what it is we ask our soldiers to do, perhaps we would not be so quick to enter into armed conflict.

Nancy Sherman of Georgetown University writes of the invisible wounds of war in an article, "What Good Soldiers Bear". The article appeared in America magazine and was written after interviews with soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Well stated and insightful, I recommend the article which you can find by clicking here.

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Photo by Mark Wilson (Getty Images)



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Aleppo After the Fall

There has been so much beauty and so much history in Syria. There are many beautiful and noble people, just as there are in any country. Unfortunately, the people have suffered too long under the wartime destruction brought on by continued conflict in the region. Think of the children growing up who know nothing but the desolation of war. Last week we witnessed yet another chapter in that tragedy as the U.S. moved out and Turkey moved in to begin the removal of the Kurds from their Syrian border.

The following poem is a lament that I first posted in June of 2017. I am re-posting it here in honor of those whose hardships and sufferings I can only helplessly grieve. We see once again that "victory is as dangerous as defeat."

Ruins near the citadel in Aleppo’s Old City. Credit Sebastián Liste/Noor Images, for The New York Times

"Aleppo After the Fall: As the Syrian civil war turns in favor of the regime, a nation
adjusts to a new reality – and a complicated new picture of the conflict emerges"

(title of article in The New York Times Magazine)

Aleppo After the Fall

In a city so ancient

That a merchant can stand on a street corner

Where his blood ancestor may have stood

Three thousand years before,
There comes a haphazard reprieve from war.

A weary silence falls
Where streets once bustled

With sales of fabric and spice

Amid the sweet cacophony

Of exuberant traders and pilgrims.

Like a shattered plate,

The courtyard of The Great Mosque

Now lies in fragments –

The hundreds of daily footsteps

But a prayerful memory.

Children play –

When they dare come out –

In the rubble-strewn side streets

While old men try to remember

The ancient pathways.

A flute still plays in the distance;

A dancer regains her steps.

The rest of us settle

Into a strange new world

Where victory is as dangerous as defeat.

                                                                      ~ CK

“On March 7, 2006, the sun rises on Aleppo. Aleppo, along with Damascus and Sana'a, is one of the three oldest inhabited cities in human history,  added to UNESCO's World Heritage List in 1986.” (From The Atlantic Monthly, “Aleppo Before the War"  - Photo by Khaled Al Hariri / Reuters)

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Songs for Christmas: I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day

This carol is based on the poem “Christmas Bells,” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. He wrote the poem in 1863 in the aftermath of the news that his son, a lieutenant in the American Civil War, had been wounded in battle. Longfellow had lost his wife two years before in an accidental fire. Thus the poem was written during a time of national crisis and personal loss. I can remember hearing this carol sung in church when I was a teenager. I suppose it was partly that I was growing from a childhood view into an adult view of Christmas, but I remember being impressed by the admission of doubt and despair over the hate and wrong in the world at a time when one wants to celebrate peace and hope.

The carol has been set to a number of tunes. I tried to find one with the hymn tune (WALTHAM) that I was familiar with, but could not find that version. Harry Belafonte does a sensitive rendition of the song set to a 1950s tune written by Johnny Marks (better known for writing “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer).







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