Thursday, November 11, 2010

Veteran's Day

Happy Veteran's Day to you all. How do we feel about Veteran's Day? On the one hand, as my minister said this week to me, our society is overly-militarized, focusing on military solutions and glamorizing violence far more than we should.

On the other hand, we live in a society where the majority of people expect life to be easy for them, involving few sacrifices, and those sacrifices and "dirty jobs" are often done by a few, underprivileged folks. We leave a small number to shoulder a burden that would be so much better shared by us all.

And so, thank you to everyone who takes up a burden, who doesn't ask "who?" when they see a job that needs to be done. Our military are made up of volunteers, men and women who chose to raise their hand and swear an oath, go to training and be yelled at and "broken down", and build lives that could be interrupted by war at any time. And then war has interrupted those lives, and sent those men and women into harms way - physical, emotional, social, and spiritual harm.

Thank you to all who serve, whatever cause you serve. Thank you to all who volunteer. Thank you to all who sacrifice.



Deployment

Saying goodbye to Daddy for over a year, 2004.

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