Memorial Day

Memorializing Iraq and Afghanistan

The sermon below was preached by Rev. Dan Harper at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto, California, at the 9:30 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. services. The sermon text below is a reading text; the actual sermon contained improvisation and extemporaneous remarks. Sermon copyright (c) 2012 Daniel Harper.

I’d like to begin this morning by talking with you a little bit about the origins of Memorial Day: where and when it started, and for what purpose. And after we talk about the origins of Memorial Day, then I’d like to talk with you about how the situation we find ourselves in today is quite different from time of the origin of Memorial Day, and given the changed situation I’ll speak about how we might adequately memorialize the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Historian David Blight tells us that the first recorded instance of Memorial Day took placed in Charleston, South Carolina, on May 1, 1865. The city of Charleston had been evacuated, and most of the non-combatants remaining in the city were African Americans who could not get out. Also present were the Union troops who had defeated the Confederate Army, and a few white abolitionists.

During the war, the Confederate Army had established a prison camp on the site of a race course in Charleston. 257 Union soldiers had died in that prison camp, and were dumped unceremoniously into a mass grave. In April, 1865, the African American community of Charleston decided to create a proper gravesite for the Union dead buried in that mass grave. They disinterred the bodies from the mass graves, and reinterred them in individual graves; then African American carpenters built a fence around the new grave yard.

To officially open this new grave yard for Civil War dead, the African American community organized a parade of some ten thousand people, including African American schoolchildren and ordinary African American citizens. White Americans were represented by some nearby Union regiments, and some white abolitionists. All these people gathered in the new graveyard. They listened to preachers. They sang songs like “America the Beautiful” and “John Brown’s Body” and old spirituals. And at last they settled down to picnics, and while they ate they could watch the Union regiments march in formation.

That, according to David Blight, was the first recorded celebration of Memorial Day. But times were different then, and that was a very different war from today’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. On his Web site, Blight writes: “At the end of the Civil War the dead were everywhere, some in half buried coffins and some visible only as unidentified bones strewn on the killing fields of Virginia or Georgia.” Today, we don’t see the war dead. The most we might see is a photograph or video of a coffin neatly draped with an American flag, accompanied by soldiers in full dress uniform, being taken off an airplane that has just arrived from overseas. Today, we are not confronted with the physical reality of the bodies of war dead.

When it came to memorializing the war dead, the African American community of Charleston had a straightforward task in 1865: after the fighting was over, create an adequate graveyard, and respectfully reinter the Union war dead into that new graveyard. But we have no such well-defined, concrete tasks. Because the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are so far away and such a small percentage of the population have actually fought in those wars, memorializing them is not going to be straightforward; and to complicate matters further, the fighting isn’t even over in Afghanistan.

The 2005 poem “Ashbah” by Brian Turner, a talented poet who served in the infantry in Iraq in 2003-2004, captures something of the problem we face.

Click here for the poem “Ashbah” (both the text, and an audio recording of the poet reading the poem).

In the poem, the ghosts of American soldiers are alone and cannot find their way home. Even though they are exhausted, they keep trying to find their way home, unsure which way to go. The Iraqi dead are, of course, already home, and they can watch the American soldiers from a safe perch on the rooftops; but as I imagine the scene, the Iraqi dead would just as soon the American dead would figure out how to get home so that they, the Iraqi dead, could have their streets back.

Now obviously this poem is not literally true. The poet did not see the ghosts of dead Americans literally wandering the streets of Balad, and the Iraqi dead were not literally sitting on the rooftops watching them. But there is symbolic truth in this poem.

For me, part of the symbolic truth in the poem lies in the fact that the war dead of Iraq and Afghanistan remain ghostlike and insubstantial to most Americans. The vast majority of us have not seen the body of someone who died in Iraq or Afghanistan. Indeed, I would be willing to bet that the majority of Americans don’t even know someone who died in Iraq or Afghanistan. Although something on the order of six thousand five hundred soldiers have died in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan [link], this number is tiny compared to the three hundred million people who live in the United States today.

Because so few soldiers have died relative to the total population of the United States, it’s easy for us to spend very little time thinking about the war dead. I don’t want to say that we ignore the war dead; certainly we don’t do that; but we concentrate on other things. Those of us who are politically active might concentrate on advocating for policy changes that will keep us out of another long-term military engagement like Iraq and Afghanistan. Or — and I think this is more likely among us here — those of us who are politically active have turned our attention to problems that seem more pressing, like global climate change or election reform or homelessness in Palo Alto or food security or one of the many ethical and political challenges facing us today. This is not a bad thing: Lord knows, we are faced with a great many pressing problems; and we do the best we can to address those problems, but one person can only do so much. If, for example, you’re going to tackle global climate change, a problem that can be morally and psychologically draining, you may not have much energy left over for other ethical challenges.

We’re doing the best we can to make this world a better place. But most of us have turned out attention away from the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. And as a result, those ghosts of American soldiers that Brian Turner writes about in his poem still wander the streets of Balad by night, still unsure of their way home, still exhausted.

I’m not trying to make you feel guilty about the war dead. I’m not asking you — many of whom work 70 hours a week at your job, take care of your family, volunteer in the community, and work on social justice projects besides — I’m not asking you to do one more thing to make the world a better place. You do enough as it is. But because this is Memorial Day, I would like to remind you of three things we already do that can help memorialize the war dead, and thus help those ghosts of American soldiers find their way home, find rest.

First, as religious people we are not afraid to talk about death and about those who have died. In this, we are quite different from mainstream American society, which prefers to ignore the fact of death. At the beginning of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush administration carefully enforced a long-standing Pentagon ban on media coverage of the arrival of coffins containing dead soldiers from overseas. This Pentagon ban had been in effect since the First Gulf War, and while some critics accused the Bush administration of using the ban for propaganda purposes, it always seemed to me that the Pentagon and the government were also motivated by a typical American squeamishness when it comes to death, a typical American denial of the reality of death.

But as religious people, we are less likely to deny the reality of death. A central part of what we do as religious people is we celebrate rites of passage, including memorial services for those who have died. Many of us here this morning have been in this room for a memorial service; and when we come here on Sunday mornings, we will always be aware of the dual use of this room. The very nature of our religious community helps us be free of the unhealthy American denial of death. Because we don’t deny the reality of death, we are better able to understand that our actions as a nation have resulted in very real deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan.

By confronting the reality of the deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, we are taking a step towards allowing the ghosts in the poem to find their way home, metaphorically speaking. And when those ghosts of American soldiers leave the streets of Iraq and Afghanistan, then the Iraqi war dead, and the Afghani war dead, can come down from their roof tops.

Second, as religious people we engage in critical patriotism. Let me explain what I mean by “critical patriotism.”

As religious people, we have a strong allegiance to certain moral and ethical principles, and our allegiance to those moral and ethical principles can be stronger than our allegiance to our nation. For example, as Unitarian Universalists we say that one of our ethical principles is that we affirm the inherent worth and dignity of all persons. We adopted that particular principle in 1985, but it has roots going back much further than that. That particular ethical principle can trace its roots back to the Golden Rule, a far older ethical principle that states that we shall do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Unitarians and Universalists got the Golden Rule from the ethical teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, who was reported to have told his followers a form of the Golden Rule some two thousand years ago.

But Jesus did not make up the Golden Rule; he was restating an even older ethical precept that he got from his Jewish upbringing. In the Torah, those Jewish books traditionally supposed to have been written by Moses, in the book of Leviticus, chapter 19, verse 18, it states: “Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” The book of Leviticus is at least two thousand five hundred years old, in its present form, though it is made up of even older material; and surely the Golden Rule is among the older material in the book. Suffice it to say that we are the inheritors of a religious tradition that has affirmed the ideal of this ethical precept for thousands of years.

Obviously, then, our ethical tradition can trace its roots back to well before the founding of the United States. In fact, some of us would say that our ethical principles transcend any one people or nation or moment in history. The Golden Rule has been worded differently at different times, and we further know that there are examples of ethical principles in other cultures that sound a good deal like our Golden Rule. All these are specific manifestations of a general transcendent principle; as a religious people, we owe our allegiance to this transcendent, eternally true ethical principle; and as a religious people, we owe a greater allegiance to this transcendent ethical principle than we do to the relatively short-lived American nation.

Our adherence to such transcendent ethical principles leads us to what I’m calling “critical patriotism.” We do owe patriotic feelings towards the United States; but our patriotic feelings will never overpower our allegiance to our higher ethical precepts. Indeed, the opposite is the case: we must critically examine our country’s actions and policies in light of our higher ethical precepts.

Such critical patriotism allows us to look with open eyes on the reasons and motivations behind our military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. If we as Americans are not honest about our motivations for going into Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s going to be difficult for those ghosts of American soldiers in the streets of Balad to be able to come home. Critical patriotism allows us to see that some of the reasons for starting these wars could be ethically justified, and other reasons could not be ethically justified; critical patriotism allows us to decide which reasons for war pass muster with our own transcendent ethical principles, and which reasons for war do not pass muster.

This kind of careful ethical examination of the war, and an attendant acceptance of responsibility as American citizens, is one of the things that we as a religious people do as a matter of course. We take the time to reflect upon, and to sort through the enormously complex ethical arguments surrounding the war. And this kind of ethical reflection, this kind of critical patriotism, is another step we take towards allowing the ghosts in the poem to find rest, to find their way home.

Third — and this is a corollary to the last point — we can affirm that religion is an important moral and ethical counterweight to politics. Political decisions are often made from expediency, and made in a hurry, without time for adequate ethical reflection. At its best, organized religion can serve as a metaphorical place where we can take the time to reflect seriously on the ethical implications of political decisions.

One of the reasons that the ghosts of the American soldiers roam the streets of Balad in the poem is that they have not been memorialized by American society, except in the most superficial way. Of course they have been memorialized by their Army buddies, and of course they have been mourned by their families. But wider American society has done little more than assert “We support our troops.” That last statement does not constitute adequate ethical reflection on the death of American soldiers. But by carefully reflecting on the death of American soldiers — and on the death of Iraqi and Afghani civilians, and on the death of other soldiers, for that matter — by such careful reflection, we can lay the metaphorical ghosts to rest.

We can engage in this ethical reflection through our ongoing participation in the democratic process. Most obviously, you and I can engage in ethical reflection through carefully exercising our right to vote. We have a primary election coming up very soon here in California, and the national election is only a few months away. It is our duty as religious people to carefully study the issues in the election, and then to reflect on the moral and ethical implications of those issues, to consider how our vote can be a moral and ethical response to American policy. Of course any vote is going to be something of a compromise — reality never seems to match our transcendent ethical ideals — but with careful reflection, our participation in the democratic process can have a worthwhile moral and ethical outcome.

Back in May of 1865, the African American community of Charleston, South Carolina, had a fairly straightforward task: to memorialize the Civil War dead by disinterring their bodies from a mass grave into a graveyard that was more in keeping with the respect that was due to them. Our task today, memorializing the dead from the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, is not quite so physical and concrete.

But there are some straightforward things we can do to memorialize our war dead. We can be honest about death, and not try to deny the reality of the war dead. We can affirm our transcendent moral and ethical ideals, and in so doing we can engage in a kind of critical patriotism. And finally we can understand our religious ideals as a moral counterweight to politics, so that when we participate in democracy we will have a moral impact on the country.

These are the things we can do to memorialize the war dead. And so, at last, may the ghosts of American soldiers wandering the streets of Balad at night find their way home once again.

The Last True Story

This sermon was preached by Rev. Dan Harper at First Unitarian Church in New Bedford. As usual, the sermon below is a reading text. The actual sermon as preached contained improvisation and extemporaneous remarks. Sermon copyright (c) 2009 Daniel Harper.

Readings

The first reading this morning comes from The Last True Story I’ll Ever Tell, a book by John Crawford which tells the story of his tour of duty in Iraq. I thought is was important for us to hear the words of an Iraq veteran this Memorial Day. This is from the end of the book:

It was raining the day I stepped off the plane and into a chilly Georgia morning. The line of soldiers, heads down, struggled underneath the weight of their gear across the tarmac and into the long, low building full of Red Cross coffee and doughnuts. Along the way a general stood shaking hands and exchanging salutes with returning soldiers. Next to him, a young lieutenant shivered as he held an umbrella out at arm’s length over the general. Neither had combat patches on their uniforms, and I splashed by without saluting or shaking hands.

The first time I had been at the airport, there had been banners and flags, family members waving fervently at the departing plane. This time the weather, I guess, had kept them home, and the gray sky was the only real witness to our return. Clouds or no, the “freedom bird” had landed and our war was over; we were home.

That night, in the same dilapidated World War II barracks that we had deployed from an eternity before, I didn’t sleep. I thought it was because of the Christmas-morning-like tremble in the air. In reality, I had become addicted to Valium in Baghdad and was going through withdrawal. Sitting alone on my bunk in the darkness, I felt a wave of nausea approaching. That sick feeling hasn’t entirely gone away yet….

While many in my platoon had relatively easy transitions, within days, I found myself kept from homelessness only by the hospitality of a friend with a sofa. It was like being at a party and going to the restroom for fifteen months and then trying to rejoin the conversation. Everyone and everything had changed without asking me first.

…to be continued…

The second reading this morning is a continuation of the first reading.

I took solace in becoming the kind of self-deprecating drunk who shows up at parties naked and wonders why everyone reacts the way they do. The sequence of events that followed culminated in my waking up on the dingy bathroom floor of an even dingier one-bedroom apartment devoid of furniture, except for a couch pulled from a Dumpster early one rainy morning before the garbage man could claim it. In that bathroom, fighting off sickness from the year’s excess, with my dog eyeing me and wondering if a coup d’état would be necessary to ensure his continued food supply, I did some soul-searching.

I didn’t find a whole lot. I don’t have nightmares, or see faces. When there is a flash outside my window at night I know it’s just lightning and not a flare or explosion. I can even drive without cringing at the slightest pile of rubble along the roadside in anticipation of an ear-rending explosion and shrapnel tearing through my flesh. I rarely get into fights with people who I imagine are “eyeballing me.” I actually adjusted quite well.

It certainly could have been worse. One of my buddies got locked up in an institution by the police for being a danger to himself. Another woke up in the hospital with no memory of the beating he received from police — not for being a danger to himself, but to everyone else. One guy got a brain infection and wakes up every morning expecting to be in Iraq. Two more are in Afghanistan, having re-upped rather than deal with being at home. Five more went back to Baghdad as private security guards. Their consensus on how it is a second time around: still hot and nasty….

War stories end when the battle is over or when the soldier comes home. In real life, there are no moments amid smoldering hilltops for tranquil introspection. When the war is over, you pick up your gear, walk down the hill and back into the world.

Sermon

The readings this morning came from a book written by a John Crawford about what it was like for him to return from serving in the Iraq War. They paint a pretty bleak picture of what it’s like to be a returning veteran. But I’d like to add something else that Crawford says. Near the beginning of the book, he writes:

“As much as I feel like this book is the story of innocence not lost but stolen, of lies and blackness … I should also share a few words from my father, from a phone conversation we had about halfway through my time in Iraq. He said to me, ‘Son, of all the things I wanted to see you achieve, a combat infantry badge was the last. It is also the one I am most proud of you for.’”

This is Memorial Day weekend, and Memorial Day is an appropriate time to reflect on what our veterans go through; it is an appropriate time to remember that we should take pride in our American servicemen and servicewomen; it is an appropriate time to reflect on the moral issues that go along with war, moral issues that reflect, not on individual veterans, but on all of us who are part of American society.

On this Memorial Day in the year 2009, what is uppermost in our minds is the fact that the war in Iraq has been going on for more than five years now. When we are in the middle of such a war, a war that threatens to drag on for quite a while longer, it’s easy to forget the origins of Memorial Day.

Historian David Blight tells us that Memorial Day was first celebrated in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1865. The city of Charleston had been evacuated, and the only non-combatants remaining in the city were African Americans who could not get out. The Confederate Army had established a prison camp on the site of a race course. 257 Union soldiers died in that prison camp, and were dumped into a mass grave.

In April, 1865, the African American community of Charleston decided to create a proper gravesite for the Union dead buried in that mass grave. They disinterred the bodies, and reinterred them in individual graves, and African American carpenters built a fence around the new grave yard.

To officially open the new grave yard, the African American community organized a parade of some ten thousand people, including African American schoolchildren and ordinary African American citizens. White Americans were represented by some nearby Union regiments, and some white abolitionists. All these people gathered in the new graveyard. They listened to preachers, they sang songs like “America the Beautiful” and “John Brown’s Body” and old spirituals. And at last they settled down to picnics, and to watching the Union regiments marching about.

This was the first Memorial Day: a day to commemorate those who had died in the war, to honor those who had fought in the war, to reflect on the meaning of the Civil War, and to reflect on the end of the war. These are still the purposes of Memorial Day today: to commemorate those who died in war, to honor the veterans, to reflect on what wars mean for us, and to think about the end of the present war and the eventual end of all wars. That first Memorial Day was celebrated in that newly-built cemetery; and it is still a tradition in many families to go to the cemetery on Memorial Day, and tend to the graves of family members who have died.

I’d like to reflect on some of these points with you this morning. I’d like to begin by thinking about how we might best honor our veterans. I’d like to reflect on the meaning of war, particularly what the current war means for us. Finally, I’d like to commemorate those who have died in war.

1. How might we best honor our returning veterans? This is a question that the United States has struggled with again and again. Sometime we give our returning veterans parades and hero’s welcomes; just as often, we have seemingly forgotten our returning veterans. Or, as we heard in the readings this morning, the welcome given to returning veterans is not much of a welcome.

There’s an underlying problem here. When we send soldiers off to war, we have trained them to do a very specific task, which is to wage war. When soldiers return home again, we have to think about how to help them make that transition. It take months to train a soldier to go to war; we should expect that it might take months to train a soldier to stop being a soldier. It isn’t enough to greet a returning soldier with a salute and a handshake from a general without a combat badge. Nor can we try to make this the sole responsibility of the military; in a democratic society, it is the responsibility of all of us.

We all know that our democratic society has to take the responsibility for making sure all returning vets get integrated back into society. There are veterans who become non-functional, and we have to take care of them: either by helping them become functional once again; or if that is impossible, then we have to adequately care for them. When we hear that a disproportionate number of homeless people are veterans, we know that we have not done a good job of caring for our non-functional veterans.

Then there are the veterans who are basically functional, although they may need several months of transition time. For these men and women, society has to make sure that their transition goes smoothly. John Crawford’s transition did not go smoothly, and he says that at one point the only thing that kept him from homelessness was the kindness of a friend. This represents a failure by society — by us — to take care of returning veterans who will go on to lead fully functional lives.

And there are the veterans who made it through the war basically intact, and who have an easy transition back into civilian life. Even with these men and women, we can’t abdicate all responsibility. When these veterans come back to civilian life, they need society’s help — they need our help — as they reclaim old jobs or find new jobs. This may be a difficult task for us in the current economic climate.

I’d have to say that our society does not do a particularly good job at supporting returning veterans. We don’t necessarily do a bad job, but there’s no real enthusiasm for it. I think part of the problems is that less than one percent of the population is on active military duty during this current war; there are so few returning veterans as a percentage of the overall society that it is easy to forget them or ignore them. And so as a society we don’t make the effort to re-integrate returning veterans into society. In fact, the taxpayers demand that we don’t spend enough money on returning veterans: there is never enough money for the part of the military budget that deals with returning vets.

Morally, this is selfish and wrong. If we’re going to have a war, we have to clean up after that war. This means in part that we have to take care of returning soldiers. This has to be figured into the true costs of every war. The politicians must be forced to figure this cost in, and we as voters and taxpayers have to hold military and political leaders accountable to this.

2. Those are some thoughts about how we might honor returning veterans. Next I’d like to reflect for a moment on the meaning of war, particularly on the meaning of the current war.

One of the central aspects of war that we tend to ignore in our society is that every war requires some kind of atonement. Even a war that is completely justifiable on moral grounds would require atonement for the very simple reason that any war involves killing, and killing always requires atonement. Since war is a society-wide phenomenon, the killing that takes place during war must be atoned for by everyone in society. This is part of the purpose of Memorial Day, in my opinion. That very first Memorial Day was to remember the Civil War, which was fought for the morally justifiable purpose of ending slavery; nevertheless, even after the Civil War, those African American citizens of Charleston atoned for all the killing that went on by building a suitable cemetery for the war dead. This is one reason we visit graves and cemeteries and memorials on Memorial Day.

Obviously, we visit graves and cemeteries and memorials to say goodbye to those who died in war. We have all seen those images of Vietnam veterans at the Vietnam veterans memorial in Washington, D.C., with tears in their eyes as they see the name of a friend who died in that war. This is one way we atone for the killing that goes on during war: we remember it, and we grieve over it. This is a very traditional part of Memorial Day, and this should continue.

But that is not enough. Somehow we have to atone for all the evils of war — not just the killing, but the waste, and the disruption, and the tears in the fabric of society, and the weakening of the moral fabric of society, all of which are results of war. And it is we, you and I, who have to do this, because the evils of war have been done in our name and for our sakes. Even if we didn’t agree with the war, even if we voted against the politicians who supported the war, even if we actively opposed the war (as I did), we do live in a democracy, and in a democracy we are all responsible for public policy.

So how can we atone for all the evils of war? — which, by the way, sounds like a pretty big job. Basically we atone for war by continuing to work towards making our society the kind of society in which war is no longer necessary. And since we live in a democracy, we will find different ways to do this work. Since so many wars are rooted in fights over resources, some of us might find ways for us to use fewer resources as a society. Since so many wars are rooted in hatred of Otherness, some of us might work to increase understanding across religious, ethnic, racial, and other boundaries. In this congregation, many of us are artists of one kind or another, and the artists among us might make paintings and poems and sculptures and plays and music that leads us towards a future that does not require war. I’m a minister, and one of the things I try to do is to popularize the teachings of Jesus and of Buddha, both of whom taught that violence is unnecessary. In short, reducing the likelihood that we will wage war in the future is the best way to atone for waging war in the present.

There is one kind of atonement that all of us should do; we should all grieve the loss of life. In the case of the Iraq War, we should especially grieve the loss of our own American servicemen and servicewomen, because they are closest to us; but we should also grieve all loss of life that occurs during this war, for we are in some sense responsible for it. We Americans don’t like the thought that maybe we should feel a little guilt, but we have to feel at least a little guilty that we’re alive while other people died in a war fought by our country. This is another purpose of Memorial Day: to grieve the deaths of all those who die in the course of war.

3. And perhaps the best way to grieve is to commemorate those who have died. The way we do this is to remember all the people who have died, in all the military actions our country as gotten involved in. That means remembering even the small military actions that resulted in loss of life. That makes a fairly substantial list. In my lifetime alone, I remember the war that spread from Vietnam into Cambodia and Laos; the Cold War; the invasion of Grenada; the military action in Panama; the Persian Gulf War; the military action in Somalia; the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those are just the ones I remember off the top of my head; I’m sure there were some that I’ve forgotten.

When we start remembering all the military actions America has been involved in, we are doing two things. First, it helps us to remember that lots of low-level American servicemen and servicewomen have died in the service of this country; and that reminds us that there are plenty of returned veterans, American servicemen and servicewomen who didn’t die, to whom we owe ongoing support. Second, remembering this long list of military actions by our country makes us reflect on the morality of our use of military force. From a moral point of view, this long list makes me think that maybe we could have gotten away with fewer wars. Maybe we could devoted more of our resources, and more of our attention, to humanitarian aid, to supporting United Nations peacekeeping missions, and so on. Helping other nations in peaceful ways is morally better than being involved in war.

I’d like to end by reflecting on the possibility that we could someday end war. At this point in history, we may not have a choice: we can no longer afford to carry on long, drawn-out wars. We are going to have a hard enough time paying the cost of re-integrating so many returning veterans, and providing them with sufficient services to make sure they have the support they deserve. The current war, a horrendously expensive war, is dragging down our economy by putting our country further into debt, which makes it less attractive to buy Treasury bonds. We are going to be paying the price of this war for years to come through our taxes, and I don’t see how we are going to be able to afford another war any time soon. That’s the price we pay in money, but there’s another price we pay, and that’s the moral price.

In our culture, it’s not very popular to say this. Americans like to think that we are always in the right, which means that there is no moral price to anything. So now I get to be the cranky preacher who says: sorry, but there is a moral price. If we don’t find ways to atone for the killing that has been going on in our names, then we will pay the moral price for this war in guilt and shame, and guilt and shame take a long time to finally do away with. Perhaps it is impossible to end all war; human beings are by no means perfect beings, and we are going to continue to get ourselves into situations where we have to go to war. But war has become a luxury that we can no longer afford to indulge so frequently. We need to continue to work towards making our society less dependent on waging war. Since our current war is, at root, a fight over oil resources, some of us will find ways for us to use fewer resources as a society. Since many wars are rooted in hatred of Otherness, some of us will work to increase understanding across religious, ethnic, racial, and other boundaries. The artists among us will make paintings and poems and sculptures and plays and music that leads us towards less dependence on war.

So on this Memorial Day, we will look forward to reducing our society’s reliance on war. And we will also do all the things that those citizens of Charleston, South Carolina, did on the very first Memorial Day. We will have parades. We will commemorate the dead. Some of us will go to tend graves. Some of us will have picnics. We will all pause for at least a moment to remember Memorial Day, and then pause for another moment to look forward to the day when we will reduce our reliance on war — or even end war altogether.

This sermon was preached by Rev. Dan Harper at First Unitarian Church in New Bedford. As usual, the sermon below is a reading text. The actual sermon as preached contained ad libs, interjections, and other improvisation. Sermon copyright (c) 2007 Daniel Harper.

Readings

The first reading this morning is by Dana Greeley, who was my Unitarian Universalist minister when I was in my teens and twenties. Lest you think this is a commentary on the current political situation, I must tell you that this was written thirty-two years ago:

“War is insanity in this day and age. It is total destructiveness; it is total immorality; it is total waste. The end of war should be our goal today. Negotiation should be our commitment. We ourselves ought to be both wiser and more ethical than our fathers, but we are not….

“I covet for America not the fear of the nations but a stronger moral leadership, and not the hatred but the respect of humanity. You may disagree with me, of course; but I make a plea, as strongly as I can, both for the strengthening of the United Nations and for the abolition of war.

“How can we broaden and deepen our own lives? How can we make ourselves more world-oriented, and make the life of our church and our community broader and deeper and more world-oriented? We are the citizens of America! We are America itself, and if we are giving and forgiving and magnanimous and resolute and peaceful, America will be giving and forgiving and magnanimous and resolute and peaceful.

“If we can overcome anger and violence, America will overcome anger and violence. If we can believe and demonstrate that love is better than hate, America will do away with hatred and with arrogance and fear. If we can be persuaded that right makes might more than might makes right, then America will rely less on its… weapons, and even alter its policies. Do we believe in truth and goodwill and the oneness of humanity more than we believe in falsehood and retaliation and war?…”

The second reading this morning is a poem by Thomas Hardy titled “The Son’s Portrait.” It should be noted that to an Englishman like Hardy, a “lumber-shop” does not sell wood, a “lumber-shop” sells junk, or more politely, antiques:

I walked the streets of a market town,
    And came to a lumber-shop,
Which I had known ere I met the frown
        Of fate and fortune,
    And habit led me to stop.

In burrowing mid this chattel and that,
    High, low, or edgewise thrown,
I lit upon something lying flat —
        A fly-specked portrait,
    Framed. ‘Twas my dead son’s own.

“That photo? . . . A lady — I know not whence —
    Sold it me, Ma’am, one day,
With more. You can have it for eighteen-pence:
        The picture’s nothing;
    It’s but for the frame you pay.”

He had given it her in their heyday shine,
    When she wedded him, long her wooer:
And then he was sent to the front-trench-line,
        And fell there fighting;
    And she took a new bridegroom to her.

I bought the gift she had held so light,
    And buried it — as ’twere he. —
Well, well! Such things are trifling, quite,
        But when one’s lonely
    How cruel they can be!

Sermon

Tomorrow is Memorial Day; or, to use the original name, Decoration Day. It began as a day to remember the Union soldiers who had died during the Civil War, who had died to end the horrendous institution of slavery. And it is instructive for us today to recall how, exactly, Memorial Day began.

According to David Blight, a professor of history and black studies at Yale University, Memorial Day was first celebrated in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1865. The city of Charleston had been evacuated, and the only non-combatants remaining in the city were African Americans who could not get out. The last months of the Civil War saw Charleston bombarded by Union gunboats; and the Confederate Army had established a prison camp on the site of a race course. Two hundred and fifty-seven Union soldiers died in that prison camp, and their bodies were unceremoniously dumped into a mass grave as the Confederate army retreated.

In April, 1865, the African Americans remaining in Charleston decided that those dead Union soldiers deserved a proper burial. And so they worked to create a proper gravesite for the Union dead buried in that mass grave. African American carpenters built a good, solid fence around the new grave yard. African American laborers worked to convert the old race course into a restful and beautiful place. At last, they disinterred the bodies of the dead Union soldiers, and placed them respectfully into individual graves.

By the end of April, the work was done. To officially open the new grave yard, the African American community organized a parade. Some ten thousand people showed up to march in that parade, beginning with African American schoolchildren who were finally being taught in free school, and ordinary adult African American citizens. White Americans were also invited to join the parade; invitations were extended to some nearby Union regiments, and to a number of white abolitionists. All these people gathered in the new graveyard. They listened to preachers. They honored the dead. They sang songs like “America the Beautiful,” and “John Brown’s Body,” and old spirituals. And at last they settled down to picnic lunches, while they watched the Union regiments drilling in what used to be the infield of the old race course.

That’s how the very first Memorial Day was celebrated. Professor David Blight says, “This was the first Memorial Day. Black Charlestonians had given birth to an American tradition. By their labor, their words, their songs, and their solemn parade of roses and lilacs and marching feet on their former masters’ race course, they had created the Independence Day of the Second American Revolution.” [Commonplace, vol. 1, no. 4, July, 2001; American Antiquarian Society/ Florida State University History Department.]

I tell you this story by way of introducing the idea that Memorial Day, or Decoration Day, is more than just a long weekend to begin the official summer season, more than just a convenient excuse for a three-day weekend. And I tell you this story by way of demonstrating to you that Memorial Day celebrations should not be ceded to the self-proclaimed patriots who glorify war. Memorial Day is a day to show respect for those who have died in battle; it is a day to show proper respect for graves and gravesites. Memorial Day is not a military holiday; it is a day organized by ordinary citizens. So it is that Memorial Day has become more than a military holiday; it has become a day to remember and to honor all our dead.

Our society has a tendency to gloss over unpleasant details. We are relentlessly optimistic. It is good to be optimistic, but it is not so good to be relentlessly optimistic to the point where we rewrite history to take out all the unpleasant parts. Our society calls the Second World War the “Good War,” optimistically glossing over the bad bits like all the ordinary citizens who were killed and wounded. Our society mentions the First World War, conveniently forgetting that while it was called “The War To End All Wars,” it was really only the beginning of a century of wars. We think back with a certain fondness to the good old Civil War, passing lightly over the unpleasant fact that while the Civil War ended chattel slavery, it did not end the oppression and exploitation of African Americans. In other words, we have a tendency to conveniently forget unpleasant facts.

We’re not unlike the unnamed war widow in the poem by Thomas Hardy. She had had a long engagement with a young man; at last they wed;

    “And then he was sent to the front-trench-line,
        And fell there fighting;
    And she took a new bridegroom to her.”

That war widow found a new husband, which is understandable. Perhaps it wasn’t understandable to the young man’s mother, but we can understand the need to get on with life. But when that war widow sold off her husbands’ photograph, it sounds as if she was trying to forget inconvenient facts. Yes, we can understand the impulse that made her sell the photograph. It can sometimes seem easier to push the dead out of our memories, to get rid of everything that reminds us of them, so that we don’t have to think about anyone who has died. In particular, we don’t want to have to think about anyone who has died in a war. If we have to remember those who died in war, then we might also have to remember that we bear at least some responsibility for all the wars our country wages. It’s easier to just sell off the old photographs, so that we don’t have to remember. And yet, when we hear about the war widow who did just that, in Thomas Hardy’s poem, I don’t feel comfortable with the idea. It sounds a little bit cold-blooded. I would have liked it better if she had tucked the photograph up in the attic, or at least respectfully burned it.

On the other hand, what are we to make of the narrator of the poem, the woman who is the mother of the young man who died in the front-trench-lines? She buys the portrait of her dead son, and that we can fully understand; I know I would want to rescue it from a junk shop myself. But then to bury the portrait; that seems to place an undue importance on an unimportant thing. I don’t feel comfortable with that idea, either.

Too often, our celebrations of Memorial Day go to one or the other of these extremes. At one extreme, many people completely ignore the true meaning of Memorial Day. Of course celebration and picnicking ought to be a part of any observance of Memorial Day. Back in May, 1865, the citizens of Charleston, South Carolina, observed the very first Memorial Day with celebration and picnicking. They celebrated the end of war, and more than that they celebrated the freedom of African Americans. They had picnics, too. But they didn’t ignore the deeper meaning of the day; rather, they balanced the celebration and the picnicking with a consciousness of the importance of the holiday.

At the other extreme, we find a small number of people who use Memorial Day to glorify war, glorify militarism, and gloss over the unpleasant realities of past and present wars. It should be clear that these people pervert the meaning of Memorial Day as much as the people who completely ignore the deeper meaning of the day. Memorial Day isn’t a day to glorify war, it is a day to recognize and honor those persons who died in war; originally, it was a day to honor gravesites, and to remember and honor the individuals who have died.

I want to propose a middle ground between these two extremes. Memorial Day isn’t just a frivolous holiday, a day to go on vacation and spend money; and Memorial Day isn’t a day to glorify war. It’s a day to honor the dead. We honor those who died in military service, but Memorial Day has grown larger than that. It’s a day to honor the sacrifices of those who fought and worked for the greater good.

That should not be a controversial proposal to adopt, though it will be a difficult proposal to adopt. We face so much pressure to think of Memorial Day merely as nothing more than the holiday which is the official start of summertime, that it will take some effort to remember to set aside time to honor our dead. All of us here are honoring the true intent of Memorial Day, because by coming here to church we are treating Memorial Day as more than just another three day weekend.

And I would like to propose that one way we can honor our dead, in this age of increasing intensity in warfare, is to commit ourselves to putting an end to war. In our first reading this morning, Dana Greeley wrote, “War is insanity in this day and age. It is total destructiveness; it is total immorality; it is total waste. The end of war should be our goal today.” Perhaps the best way to honor our dead soldiers is to end warfare altogether.

For at least a couple of thousand years, people have argued about whether we should expend our efforts trying to end war completely; or whether we should accept that war is inevitable, and that we should instead work to place acceptable limits on war. Followers of Jesus of Nazareth, followers of Gotama Buddha, followers of those religious prophets who proclaim that our highest moral purpose should be love of our fellow human beings — many of these people have maintained that we must put an end to war. But other high-minded people have taken the pragmatic view that we have not yet ended war, we are not likely to end war, and therefore we have to work within those realistic limits.

The crucial point that Dana Greeley made back in 1975 was that the stakes are now so high that we must end war, not only for moral reasons, but for pragmatic reasons. In the days of the Civil War, you could argue that there was no other option but to go to war; if we wanted to move our country beyond our dependence on slavery, war seemed inevitable. The costs of the Civil War, the bloodiest war our country has ever fought in, the costs were very high indeed. But today, war has become incredibly more costly, incredibly more destructive. The invention of atomic bombs and missiles which can carry those bombs to any point on the globe now mean that one war could conceivably end all or most human life on Earth. Even without atomic weaponry, the wars of the past three decades or so have involved a huge loss of life among non-combatants; the careful limitations on war that the pragmatists had worked so hard to implement are no longer being observed. Technology has also led to the development of additional weapons of mass destruction — the chemical weapons which were used in the First World War, the new biological and radioactive weapons of mass destruction — and these weapons of mass destruction also upset the pragmatists’ careful limitations on war. In today’s world, the costs of war have gotten so high that I believe we can no longer consider war to be an acceptable answer.

I’m sure some of you will disagree with my views. Further, I’m quite aware that I don’t have the final answer to the problem of warfare. But this I believe:– that as the technology of war has evolved, so we must evolve our moral beings. We are awed by all the high technology our country has been able to use to prosecute the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. We should be awed far more by our growing ability to negotiate non-military solutions to world conflicts. Rather than expending so much time and money on improving our military technology, the more important task is to continue to improve our moral beings, with the goal of evolving so far that we no longer need to use our military technology.

Therefore, I believe that a proper observance of Memorial Day would have us going back to the original observance of Memorial Day, back in 1865 in Charleston, South Carolina. Let us recall what about that original observance of Memorial Day we should continue in our own observances.

The African American originators of Memorial Day had a parade with military regiments — but in that parade, the military regiments were outnumbered by the ordinary citizens. Such a parade represents our ideals of the democracy for which all our wars have been fought. In a democracy, we honor the ordinary citizen above all; just as we honor the rule of law above military might. And such a parade would also represent our religious ideals. In our religious tradition, we honor the inherent worth and dignity of each person more than we honor the mass mind of the military regiment; and we honor the forces of love and respect which bind us together more than we honor military might.

Those originators of Memorial Day spent time honoring their dead. We should continue to do this today. We can honor those who die in military service, even if we happen to disagree with the principles of the war in which they were killed. And we can honor those people who may have fought for truth and justice using non-violent means, people like Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mahatma Ghandi. We can honor all our dead on Memorial Day, reflecting on how that which was good in them can live on in us.

Those originators of Memorial Day spent part of their day listening to preaching and political speeches. I believe that we should continue this part of the original Memorial Day. The art of public speaking, and the art of listening to public speaking, are necessary for democracy. Democracy does not proceed by having one person, or small group of persons, imposing their will on everyone else. Democracy thrives when we can debate, openly and in public and face-to-face, the crucial issues of our day. Democracy thrives when we can listen to others and learn their wants and needs, when we can see them as people just like ourselves. Whereas sitting in front of the television set, conducting opinion polls, and expensive advertisements tear at the fabric of democracy. And from a religious point of view, we consider the art of speaking and of listening to be necessary to the practice of our religion. Our religion does not proceed by having one person, or small group of persons, imposing their will on everyone else. Our religion thrives when we can talk openly and in person about the most important moral and ethical and religious issues. Our religion thrives when we listen to one another and learn to love one another as we love ourselves. In our religious tradition, sermons are the center of our worship services, because we believe so strongly in the power of the word to change us for the better.

And finally, those originators of Memorial Day, back in 1865, ended with a picnic. We should continue that tradition today. After we honor our dead, we should celebrate life. After we listen to formal speeches and sermons, we should indulge in the joy of casual conversation over a shared meal. That first Memorial Day was a time to honor the dead, but it was also a time to celebrate the return of peace. At last, the citizens of Charleston, South Carolina, no longer lived in fear of war and violence and destruction. They recognized that it was a time of celebration.

As it was at that first Memorial Day picnic, so may it be today. Even though we remain entangled in a war that is seemingly without end, we work towards ending warfare. We can celebrate democracy, even as we commit ourselves to re-energizing our democratic principles and practices. We can celebrate our hard-won freedoms, even as we commit ourselves to ongoing improvement of our moral beings that will allow us to build an even better world in the years to come.