WIsh I Had Read It 30 Minutes Earlier

Today is Veterans' Day. In recent weeks as Beverly has been gone on retreats and "keeping the grandkids" gigs, I have rented dvds of the miniseries "Band of Brothers." It is the true story of a group of soldiers from one of the most honored units in American history. They fought at D-Day, through France, and held their line in the Battle of the Bulge. They secured Hitler's fortress mansion at the close of the war.

Something that really struck me was at the end, one of the soldiers became very depressed and despondent because he HAD survived. There was something within him that felt guilty because he was going home. It was very moving.

We owe these men and women so much!

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I wish I had read this exerpt yesterday BEFORE I had posted my blog. I struggle between a fleshly response to terrorism, etc -- and a Christlike response. This is from M. Scott Peck:

I cannot be any more specific about the methodology of love than to quote these words of an old priest who spent many years in the battle: "There are dozens of ways to deal with evil and several ways to conquer it. All of them are facets of the truth that the only ultimate way to conquer evil is to let it be smothered within a willing, living human being. When it is absorbed there like blood in a sponge or a spear into one's heart, it loses its power and goes no further."

The healing of evil -- scientifically or otherwise -- can be accomplished only by the love of individuals. A willing sacrifice is required . . . I do not know how this occurs. But I know that it does . . . Whenever this happens there is a slight shift in the balance of power in the world.

We ourselves in recent history have seen this truth embodied in Martin Luther King, Jr, Nelson Mandela, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

This from Philip Yancey: "The cross redefines God as One who was willing to relinquish power for the sake of love. Jesus became, in Dorothy Solle's phrase, "God's ultimate disarmament." Power, no matter how well-intentioned, tends to cause suffering. Love, being vulnerable, absorbs it. In a point of convergence on a hill called Calvary, God renounced the one for the sake of the other."