Soul Food
Michele Marr
o7 “He shall judge between the nations and rebuke many people; They
shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning
hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they
learn war any more.” Isaiah 2:4
f7
In 1957 my sister and I lived in Quantico, Virginia, a stone’s throw
from Washington D.C. One of my favorite Brownie camera snapshots is of my
sister and I, taken in front of the Washington Monument.
In the photo, my sister is wearing the unaware and contented look of
the 2-year-old she was then. She doesn’t remember being there. I’m
wearing five-and-dime shades, a sun hat and have a bubble gum bubble
hanging from my lips. I was crazy about D.C.
We were the daughters of a US Marine. To me, the District of Columbia
embodied all our father lived and sometimes nearly died for. It was a
sacred place.
Franklin Roosevelt once said, “Those who have long enjoyed such
privileges as we enjoy, forget in time that men have died to win them.”
Maybe that’s what compels us sometimes to press peace on those for
whom the privileges of liberty are still a dream.
Early in April, I was in D.C. with my sister again. I was there for a
conference. Tammy met me there with her son Remy.
The place is breathtaking in the springtime. The cherry trees were in
full bloom. Their fragrance and color, and the painterly color of
hyacinths, tulips, forsythia and pansies, astonished us everywhere went.
So did the monuments and memorials that venerate our nation’s greatest
statesmen and its martyrs. In stony silence they bear witness to
centuries of sacrifice and ask us to remember.
My sister is an ardent Democrat. She has little use for our current
man in the White House. I am a registered -- if often reluctant --
Republican. I think “Dubya” has risen to the challenge of his office.
My sister is a relentless pacifist. Years ago she told me that she
would move to Canada before she would ever let her son go to war. I am
not a warmonger. But sometimes I have to concede that war is the lesser
of two evils.
While Christians are called to live in peace, inasmuch as it is
possible, it’s hard to make an unconditional case against war from
scripture. There is a time for everything, a time for war as well as a
time for peace, says Ecclesiastes. The often-quoted prophecy of peace
that Isaiah spoke comes hand in hand with God’s judgment.
I had to wonder how it would be to walk with my sister, considering
our differences, among Washington’s shrines to our commander in chiefs
and war dead.
We visited the Statue of Iwo Jima at night. In its soft illumination
we read the list inscribed around its base -- all the conflicts Marines
have died in since 1798. My sister was amazed at the number, nearly two
dozen, of them.
We walked the length of the somber wall of the Vietnam War Veterans
Memorial. Tammy was stunned to learn that the war began in 1959. I lost
my first friend to the war when my sister was only 9.
At the Korean War Veterans Memorial we moved alongside the bronze,
life-size statues. The haunting faces of 19 soldiers look out from
beneath their helmets. In foul-weather gear they appear to make their way
through either the darkest night or the densest fog. Their distant gazes
look beyond yours. I stood with them and wished I had made this
pilgrimage with my father.
“It feels so strange to stand here,” I said to my sister, “and to know
that this is what Daddy was doing when I was born.”
Her answer was a wistful smile and a nod of the head.
Then Remy, still looking out at the soldiers said, “That’s weird.
Weird and really interesting.”
At 13 he seems to appreciate the sacrifice these men and women made to
secure his freedom. And I suspect, though it might break his mother’s
heart, that he would follow them.
So far, thank God, his is a time of peace.
* MICHELE MARR is a freelance writer and graphic designer from
Huntington Beach. She has been interested in religion and ethics for as
long as she can remember. She can be reached at o7
michele@soulfoodfiles.com.f7
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