Soul Food

Michele Marr

o7 “He shall judge between the nations and rebuke many people; They

shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning

hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they

learn war any more.” Isaiah 2:4

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In 1957 my sister and I lived in Quantico, Virginia, a stone’s throw

from Washington D.C. One of my favorite Brownie camera snapshots is of my

sister and I, taken in front of the Washington Monument.

In the photo, my sister is wearing the unaware and contented look of

the 2-year-old she was then. She doesn’t remember being there. I’m

wearing five-and-dime shades, a sun hat and have a bubble gum bubble

hanging from my lips. I was crazy about D.C.

We were the daughters of a US Marine. To me, the District of Columbia

embodied all our father lived and sometimes nearly died for. It was a

sacred place.

Franklin Roosevelt once said, “Those who have long enjoyed such

privileges as we enjoy, forget in time that men have died to win them.”

Maybe that’s what compels us sometimes to press peace on those for

whom the privileges of liberty are still a dream.

Early in April, I was in D.C. with my sister again. I was there for a

conference. Tammy met me there with her son Remy.

The place is breathtaking in the springtime. The cherry trees were in

full bloom. Their fragrance and color, and the painterly color of

hyacinths, tulips, forsythia and pansies, astonished us everywhere went.

So did the monuments and memorials that venerate our nation’s greatest

statesmen and its martyrs. In stony silence they bear witness to

centuries of sacrifice and ask us to remember.

My sister is an ardent Democrat. She has little use for our current

man in the White House. I am a registered -- if often reluctant --

Republican. I think “Dubya” has risen to the challenge of his office.

My sister is a relentless pacifist. Years ago she told me that she

would move to Canada before she would ever let her son go to war. I am

not a warmonger. But sometimes I have to concede that war is the lesser

of two evils.

While Christians are called to live in peace, inasmuch as it is

possible, it’s hard to make an unconditional case against war from

scripture. There is a time for everything, a time for war as well as a

time for peace, says Ecclesiastes. The often-quoted prophecy of peace

that Isaiah spoke comes hand in hand with God’s judgment.

I had to wonder how it would be to walk with my sister, considering

our differences, among Washington’s shrines to our commander in chiefs

and war dead.

We visited the Statue of Iwo Jima at night. In its soft illumination

we read the list inscribed around its base -- all the conflicts Marines

have died in since 1798. My sister was amazed at the number, nearly two

dozen, of them.

We walked the length of the somber wall of the Vietnam War Veterans

Memorial. Tammy was stunned to learn that the war began in 1959. I lost

my first friend to the war when my sister was only 9.

At the Korean War Veterans Memorial we moved alongside the bronze,

life-size statues. The haunting faces of 19 soldiers look out from

beneath their helmets. In foul-weather gear they appear to make their way

through either the darkest night or the densest fog. Their distant gazes

look beyond yours. I stood with them and wished I had made this

pilgrimage with my father.

“It feels so strange to stand here,” I said to my sister, “and to know

that this is what Daddy was doing when I was born.”

Her answer was a wistful smile and a nod of the head.

Then Remy, still looking out at the soldiers said, “That’s weird.

Weird and really interesting.”

At 13 he seems to appreciate the sacrifice these men and women made to

secure his freedom. And I suspect, though it might break his mother’s

heart, that he would follow them.

So far, thank God, his is a time of peace.

* MICHELE MARR is a freelance writer and graphic designer from

Huntington Beach. She has been interested in religion and ethics for as

long as she can remember. She can be reached at o7

[email protected]