Memorial Day 2022

MatthewHoh Recovery, Spirituality, War and Conflict, , , , ,

I spoke to the Community Church of Boston yesterday as to the purpose of Memorial Day. Along with my remarks on that topic, I answered questions on Ukraine, the flag, Junior ROTC, the lasting effects of war, and whether the Roman Eagle was present at the Sermon on the Mount (spoiler: it wasn’t).

I referenced a section of Walt Whitman’s When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d in my talk to the Community Church of Boston:

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.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45480/when-lilacs-last-in-the-dooryard-bloomd

This poem informed this essay I wrote a few years back on combat veteran suicides and moral injury: https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/11/08/and-the-armies-that-remained-sufferd-veterans-moral-injury-and-suicide/

A simple summation of my thoughts for Memorial Day: At home only the dead have seen the end of war, as has long been said and understood, while overseas the wars, and their attendant suffering, continue. For what purpose, other than greed and megalomania, I cannot say.

6 thoughts on “Memorial Day 2022”

  1. Thank you for this powerful statement, Matt. If you can find anything useful to you in this old column of mine,or any of the columns in my book you once recommended, please feel free to use it. Bless. Is War a Racket? An Honored Marine General Said “Yes!” – Clyde Fitch Report

    The Vital Realities for 2020 and Beyond: Writings on Water Wars, Nuclear Devastation, Endless War, Economic Revolution, and Surveillance Versus Freedom – Kindle edition by Armbrust, Roger. Politics & Social Sciences Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

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    | | | | The Vital Realities for 2020 and Beyond: Writings on Water Wars, Nuclear…

    This collection of writings by journalist Roger Armbrust focuses on national and international public policy con… |

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  2. thank you. Douglas McArthur once quoted Plato: “only he dead have seen the end of war: and George Carlin “the world isn’t going away…we are”

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