Real Change News | Rev, Lang: Go to the graves

April 15, 2009
Vol: 16 No: 18

Rev. Rich Lang

Rev, Lang: Go to the graves

by: Rev. Rich Lang

Like it? Share it!

On Sun., April 19, thousands of tombstones will dot the landscape around Green Lake. Veterans For Peace and Evergreen Peace & Justice Community are bringing the Arlington Northwest Memorial Display and Vigil into our city. For most of us, the reality of war doesn’t directly impact our lives until we come face to face with its cost. One cost, of course, is the death of a loved one. Another cost, one that we are mostly oblivious to is the military budget that wrecks our economy.

The Display and Vigil brings the war a symbolic step closer into our direct consciousness as we see each grave of those who died in Iraq. It is a tribute to fallen comrades who have been slaughtered on behalf of a truly ungrateful nation that will neither question the moral vision of our leaders, nor become animated enough to become a force more powerful than the corporate interests that find war intoxicating.

The tombstones are set up as a liturgy that invites we the people to reflect upon who we have become. What kind of people will sacrifice their own children so that a few will prosper obscenely while eradicating another nation’s culture, resources and habitat? What kind of people let their leaders torture, rob and rape in their name? What kind of people focus so intently on denial of any wrongdoing, while continuing to affirm their good intentions and moral rectitude? What kind of people are so cruel and unrelenting in their thirst for blood?

The display and vigil is a blunt statement of simplicity in a culture blinded by the complexities of non-stop, ever-repeating political propaganda. The statement is the same as God’s question to Cain in the garden: “ What have you done? Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the grave.” And Cain — that is, we the people — responds, “ I don’t know. Am I my brother’s keeper?”

Go and look upon the graves and ponder your responsibility. Go and look and ask yourself why you sleep well at night while your brother’s blood, your sister’s blood, oozes out from underneath the tomb with a plea for help. Go and look and wonder at the death of your character, the withering of your moral capacity, the atrophy of what was once a spine of courage.

Go and look at the graves and weep for that which has been done in our name, and then weep again for that which will yet be done in our name. Unless we stop them and learn war no more. Unless the power of our nonviolent persistence wears down and wears out the forces that wear down and wear out the world with war.

Go to the graves and grieve, go and answer God’s question, go and learn anew how to support our troops.

----