Memorial Day 2010

[tbw]

While a great many people go to the cemeteries to honor those who have fallen or passed, I think it fair to point out something on this auspicious day that most do not think of. and there was one who can put it into far better words than I can - and did:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon 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 so dedicated, can long endure. We are met here on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it 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 can never forget what they did here.

It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they have, thus far, so nobly carried on. 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 here gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

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Indeed very few men or women remember these hallowed words. But I think it worthy to well remember that last paragraph of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. And it begins... "It is for us, the living..."

[joewiggs]

Thanks so much for re-printing this memorial message. Every citizen should commit these eternal words to their hearts and soul. What a great President, what a great man!

[tbw]

Thank you Joe.

I think for me it comes down to a level of understanding what memorial day means. And in a certain sense, perhaps what it doesn’t mean. I think we forget that - that day is really for “the living”, a fact that Lincoln knew all to well and brought out in his address. And just how much or little, we as ‘living’ beings could or could not do to really ‘honor’ the fallen. His address brought out those things that we are incapable of doing, no matter how noble the effort, no matter how honorable the thought. “We cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow, we cannot, even in the larger sense, dedicate ’that ground upon which they fell or were to be buried upon.’ We simply do not have the power to do it. It isn’t our honor to give.

He said of the living that all we can do, all the poor power granted us, because of our equality, is that we could never forget their sacrifices, and that they should not have died in vain, that they gave their lives that this nation and its people might live.

Today, many try to warp and twist the meaning of the word ‘honor’ into various things which the equality of man was never intended or permitted to do. It goes beyond the propriety of “the word”. Some stand high upon their self made pulpits and in false doctrines preach and teach what they cannot give, nor what cannot possibly be given as Lincoln outlined in his address. The very word “honor” has been so twisted in its meaning that we come to believe by those who cherish their own thoughts about it, that we can and should extend this to the living, that we can consecrate, we can hallow, we can dedicate ourselves to the living who have or are serving. We cannot, just as Lincoln so poignantly pointed out, that we could not do it for either the living or the dead.

This “equality of man” is largely forgotten today. And while some pompous people, try as they might insert into their lingo the very word traitor as a substitute for someone who has served, whether living or dead, it does not in their own words ’honor’ that person, and further brings shame upon their own altars of baseness in which all should be. It opens doors and avenues to those who can now travel through to the promised land. They have no more mountains to climb, no more vile serpents to conquer, no more waste lands to traverse. For now, “all” should not be so “honored” be made clear and the equality of man preserved.

[joewiggs]

The strange thing is that the older i get the more my appreciation for these hero's grows. we are generally self centered when we are young thinking that we shall live forever. We we face our own mortality we appreciate those who have gone on before us and more importantly, how they departed. God bless each and everyone of them.