Today is Memorial Day in the United States. A day where we remember and honor those that have died while serving in the U.S. armed forces.
I plan to continue the tradition I started last year. Rather than have a regular post, I’m asking people to take a moment and reflect and think about what we complain about regularly and how that right to complain was bought by the people that served and came before us. Then spend the time with your loved ones and be thankful. This is more important now than ever.
For those that want to read more, following are two of the most moving texts I have ever read. The first was a speech read on a great battlefield, and while the author (Abraham Lincoln) didn’t think his words would last, it may well be one of the most powerful and remembered American speeches ever. The other is a poem by John McCrae. According to conventional wisdom, other soldiers retrieved the poem after McCrae, initially dissatisfied with his work, discarded it. I am glad they did.
The Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln
“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
In Flanders Fields
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
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