Daily Lesson for May 30, 2016

Today's Daily Lesson is in honor of Memorial Day and comes from Walt Whitman's Civil War-inspired poem "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd":

I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them,
And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them,
I saw the debris and debris of all the slain soldiers of the war,
But I saw they were not as was thought,
They themselves were fully at rest, they suffer’d not,
The living remain’d and suffer’d, the mother suffer’d,
And the wife and the child and the musing comrade suffer’d,
And the armies that remain’d suffer’d.

Last night Second Baptist hosted our fourth annual Memorial Day Service.  Memorial Day is a time for remembering the cost of war and for honoring those who have paid its terrible price -- either with their own lives or the life of someone they love. Each year several Gold Star families come and share the stories of their sons and daughters. At the conclusion of last night's service I was approached by two Gold Star parents -- a mother of a daughter lost in Kuwait 2014 and the father of a son killed in Baghdad in 2008.  Each of them broke down in tears, one almost collapsing into my arms.

There is still so much pain for these families. While there is nothing we can do to take that pain away, they tell me that others being willing to be present helps them to bear it. Remembrance helps them to bear it. The knowledge that somebody cares helps them to bear it.

Whitman's words are fitting. Those who have given their lives in service of our country are now at rest. They no longer suffer. But the mothers and fathers and children and musing comrades still suffer.  The armies which remain still suffer.

If there is one thing we can do to appropriately honor this Memorial Day it would be to pledge ourselves to get to know one Gold Star family this year. It would be to get to know their names, see their pictures, and hear their story. To come and be near to their pain.

We remember the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. This year it would be good if we would make he unknown soldier known, and his or her family known, and their suffering known.

We cannot take away the wounds; but we can touch them, and we can tend them, and we can wash them with the ancient healing balms we call compassion and remembrance.