Quoting Clint Eastwood This Memorial Day
So we’re charged to remember and esteem these departed men and women in uniform, who they were and what they did; at least once yearly, with speeches and parades and television specials, sure. But beyond that, and far more meaningfully, by celebrating life – the ones we’re still free to enjoy and explore, in part, because of them; and the sacred principle of human life itself which they died preserving.
Their sacrifice has laid upon us and every future generation a holy obligation to cherish life wherever it makes a showing: in the womb, the rehab center, the prison cell, the nursing home. Packaged as broad-shouldered, lantern-jawed celebrities, statuesque beauties, giants of commerce or industry; or as “nobodies” who don’t strike us as having a whole lot to contribute to society – it all remains human life. Never to be treated, in any fashion, cavalierly.
A needed refresher for my fellow law-and-order-boosting, second-amendment-treasuring colleagues: sometimes bad guys do have to die, no doubt; sometimes they draw the ultimate penalty upon themselves because of their lawless choices. But the killing of another man, any man for any reason, is never a trivial matter.
Chortling about “exterminating” the “scum”, the “monsters”, the “psychos” quite scurrilously misses the point: slaying a fellow human being, even the worst of them under the most preeminently justifiable circumstances, never ceases being a regrettable necessity, at best. In a fallen world, taking the life of another made, in some measure, in God’s image is always nothing shy of the gravest of exigencies.
How serious a matter is it? For over two centuries, multitudes of Americans have spilled their blood affirming the immeasurable value of the the liberty-rooted lives of their countrymen.
It endures “a he — of a thing killin’ a man”. Particularly when he falls – letting go of all of it – while fighting for me.
We hold these in our hearts and, prayerfully, reverence life in their names, this day and everyday.
