Remembrance of Things Present
A nation is the material embodiment of its beliefs, those things it holds closest and most central to what it is and who its people are. In this nation the soul of those beliefs are crystallized in a handful of documents explaining what that is and why. Much of that substance is contained in a single work, the Declaration of Independence, written mostly by Thomas Jefferson over a couple weeks one June, 231 years ago. But beyond those founding principles there is a history of sacrifice by successive generations, a history equally critical to our own survival and to that of our Republic. So when we’ve set aside a day each year to honor those who’ve given their lives in defense of those values, it’s a day to reflect both on the sacrifices they’ve made, and on the values and the history that have helped make us who we are, individually and together. We hope many of you will join in appreciative remembrance of all these things this Memorial Day.
To those and to the families of those who’ve given their lives in military service in our nation’s behalf, our debt is of course inestimable. To those at risk now, in places and for reasons no one should be asked to serve, we wish you once again, Godspeed home. And this year in addition to honoring those who’ve died in military service, we propose that we add in our prayers the memory of all those who’ve given their lives in America’s own internal struggles for liberty and justice. It’s easy to forget them, perhaps because we now take so much for granted the outcomes of their sacrifices. But those who’ve fought over the past century for women’s suffrage, for organized labor, and for racial, economic, and social justice among other things, they’re American heroes too. And perhaps because patriotism is the love and respect for what makes one’s country what it is, we think it’s time to remember them as well. Because patriotism is measured truest by the risks we’re willing to take to protect the future, the present, and the past we all share and justifiably treasure. And it isn’t just our soldiers in uniform that have taken those risks and paid the price, it’s many of us who’ve loved and fought for our country, and that have helped make and keep it what it is.
To the family of Trooper David Brinkerhoff, lost to them doing his job of trying to keep us safe, we wish peace and the hope of the theme of this offering, reconciliation. No process we imagine, is harder to reconcile than the loss of those now gone, with the good their passing helped serve. And yet that reconciliation is as necessary as it is painful, as we somehow move forward firmly rooted in what we’ve been through. That hope of reconciliation of course, is the origin of our Memorial Day traditions, which began almost as a spontaneous response to a gruesome civil war in our not-so-distant past. And even as the news brings us daily reminders of similar conflicts happening now, the ironic juxtaposition between what we think of as our regional problems and the life and death struggles encompassing much of our world only underscores the simple fact we’ve much to be grateful for.
Here of course the world we wake to now is good and rich and the days are cool and blue and the landscape bathed in shifting translucent greens. Our gardens are come to life, the songbirds are everywhere and the caterpillars it seems have moved on. We sift the soil with our hands and spades, trim back where life’s exuberance has overgrown our aesthetic, and sort flats of flowers for just the right ones and carefully tuck in their roots. We reset walls the frost has shifted, stand new buildings in the earth and resurrect old ones, and frame our lives for the seasons to come. Each of these things is a sacred act, binding us to a future and a past we share with our families and with the wider family of our community. This is as it should be, and as we pray it always will be.
On a sad note, we do need to touch briefly on yet another tragedy involving some of our young people, cars, and possibly alcohol. What we know is that Andrew Dean-Lipson is dead, at least one other person injured, and the sadness coursing through the whole of the Onteora community is palpably intense. To Andrew’s family and friends, our hearts go out to you.
Please, everyone. Let’s be safe. Watch it out there along Route 28 and our other high-speed, sometimes high-volume roads. Let someone else drive if that might be smarter. And let’s all just try and slow down a little. It’s part of why we all live here to begin with.
BP