It’s fall there too, in Australia, though seasonally it has no resemblance to the clear metaphors for death we experience here. Such a gloomy time November is, especially in Vancouver, with days barely long enough to catch your breath after coffee, and a grey blanket of cloud obscuring the sun on all but its most energetically defiant days. It’s wet, and miserable, and much of the green has died for the year.

And then there’s the US. The US celebrates Memorial Day in May, with the onrush of coming summer. People are gardening, or preparing their boats for the hot, vibrant days to come. Brave children swim in the still chilly northern lakes.

And then, just a matter of weeks later, the nation celebrates the 4th of July, the day independence was declared, an independence won years later through costly, bloody battle. It’s a day of parades, and gaudy flags, baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and japanese cars. There are soldiers and guns and ammo, and fireworks while the Star Spangled Banner is sung, again and again. Singing about a desperate battle in which the author wished for no more hope than that shreds of tattered material still dangled from the flag pole while all around him, mayhem ensued, men killed and were murdered when the bombs burst on their targets and the glare of the rockets signalled only incoming ordnance.

Lest we forget, yes.

I can’t encounter these days, nor think of them, without being reminded of Mark Twain’s War Prayer…

http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/making/warprayer.html

The days I would prefer to remember are the days on which soldiers chose not to fight, and the days leaders chose not to send them to their deaths.

Weapons are the tools of violence;
all decent men detest them.

Weapons are the tools of fear;
a decent man will avoid them
except in the direst necessity
and, if compelled, will use them
only with the utmost restraint.
Peace is his highest value.
If the peace has been shattered,
how can he be content?
His enemies are not demons,
but human beings like himself.
He doesn’t wish them personal harm.
Nor does he rejoice in victory.
How could he rejoice in victory
and delight in the slaughter of men?

He enters a battle gravely,
with sorrow and with great compassion,
as if he were attending a funeral.

     ~ Lao Tse :: Dao de Jing, Chap. 31
       Stephen Mitchell (trans.)