How amazingly appropriate that I drew this card on Memorial Day!  The card is full of violent imagery – blood cover axe heads, disembodied limbs, brilliant, vivid primary colors and wooden staves explode off the card.  There is a cross hovering in the air that speaks of sacrifice and dying in order to be reborn.  The first reaction I had when seeing this card is that it looks like a war scene.  On Memorial Day nothing could feel more right in response to my question.

So I want to honor all those who have sacrificed their lives in defense of this country.  Whether I believed in the reasons behind the wars or not these people died.  The rightness or wrongness of the politics behind the battles is irrelevant.  My family has had several ancestors who served in the military but many did not see action.  Of those only one of those was actually killed in battle on D-Day and is buried in France.

I think in this day and age, when so much of war craft is driven by technology, we lose sight of the human cost of war.  With the attention on drone strikes and bombs that can be delivered from a distance like a video game, it can be easy to forget there are actual troops on the ground who are in constant danger.  How much more difficult does everything become when the people we claim to be helping resent us and work against us?  I’m not taking any sides in that issue I simply want to take some time to acknowledge the sacrifices made by those soldiers who have died in service to this country.

Today is more than just an official day off from work.  It is a day to take some time and remember those who died in war; those who sacrificed everything in defense of this country.  We can call them heroes but that won’t bring them back.  We should never lose sight of just how ugly and brutal war is and that there is always a human cost regardless of which side wins.  I want to honor and remember those who serve and maybe pour some wine for those who will never come home.