A GOOD DAY TO DIE

 
          This Monday, 11-11-24, is Veterans’ Day.  It is a day we honor all those who serve or who have served in the armed forces of our country.  This is distinct from Memorial Day, marked to commemorate those who have died in their service.
 
          Nevertheless, we should remember that the original name of this day was “Armistice Day”—the final end of the “war to end all wars,” World War I.  Sadly, of course, it wasn’t…
 
          That war was a horror unlike others known previously, with terrifying weapons of mass destruction (as they were then)—machine guns, mustard gas, aerial battles, trench-warfare standoffs…  People like JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis, combatants in France, were scarred (or formed) for life by their experiences.  I have no doubt that the details of Lord of the Rings were colored in part by Tolkien’s experiences in what Lewis (quoting Shakespeare’s Henry V) called “the vasty fields of France.”  
 
          Other literary remembrances of those times are familiar:  John McCrae’s poem “In Flanders Fields”; “Hap” and “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfrid Owen.  You can find them easily enough, online.
 
          We think of our times, too often, as “the worst of times.”  We are far too narcissistic.  What of the times of the first waves of the Black Death in the 14^th century?   What of the horrible wars of religion (the “30 Years’ War”)?  What of World War II, atomic bombs, the Shoah?  What of the genocide in Rwanda?  Our times may be bad; they are not “the worst of times.”  Not even the French Revolution and Reign of Terror, horrifying as that was (and marked by the phrase in Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities), was “the worst of times.”  All that matters is that these are our times—what will we do, as individuals, as a nation, as a world?
 
          I turn back to Tolkien and LOTR.  As Frodo and Sam (and Gollum) are crawling up Mt Doom to destroy the One Ring, Frodo sleeps while Sam guards him.  And here is the narrative description of that scene:
          Far above…in the West the night-sky was still dim and pale.  There, peeping among the cloud-wrack…Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while.  The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him.  For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow itself was only a small and passing thing:  there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.
 
          I know the old saying: if you can see light at the end of the tunnel, you’re still in the tunnel!  But you can see the light.  It is the light of the world, Jesus Christ, and it is a light that NO darkness can extinguish.   
 
          This week let’s remember all those who serve and have served, and let’s commit to making sure the light of Christ reaches every corner of our own individual worlds:  friends, family, fellow-workers, and chance encounters.  How badly do we need this Light!!