Yet Another Flashback (YAF) - This One About War
So here is one more archive/benchmark - stated about three months BEFORE 9/11/01


Opening Words to All Souls Congregation on Sunday, May 27, 2001

This weekend, we, as a nation, remember those who have died in our wars. We, here at All Souls, also wrestle with questions concerning war’s necessity – is War sometimes justified? Some of us try to make sense out of the senseless horror that war inflicts upon the world. We try to come to grips with OUR part in these wars. We each search inside to try to formulate what our own response must be to the very existence of war … not only military conflicts, but also all the other wars of the mind, the body and the soul.

I grew up in Gary, Indiana in the 1950’s. Like most people from my generation, we had our A-bomb drills every week, when the air raid sirens would howl and all of us kids would dive under our school desks in the properly tucked posture. I remember, as a young boy, looking up every time an airplane flew over … hoping it wasn’t a Russian bomber (in INDIANA of all places). The McCarthy hysteria seemed to be particularly rampant in the Midwest. We kids were taught not to trust our neighbors - you never knew who might be a Commie intent on taking over the world.

Unlike others of my generation, however, as I said, I had the privilege of growing up in Gary, Indiana. The authorities were sure that the first place in the U.S. that the Russians were going to bomb would surely be our own precious steel mills. This fear reached such a great height that they – now I’m not fooling you here - they took every kid in the city and tattooed their blood type on the side of their torsos. I still have mine here as my own badge of living with all that hysteria. Think of it – isn’t all of this a hell of a way to raise innocent kids?

Sometime in the mid-1960s, I came to realize that war, for me, had no redeeming value. Yet, when I found a job as a young Biomedical Engineer at the Naval Submarine Medical Research Lab across the river, I started what eventually was a 31 year career working for, of all things, the Navy. I still didn’t believe in war, so I rationalized this internal conflict by focusing on the fact that my research would save submariners and divers from injury or death. Nevertheless, my heart remembered – every day of those 31 years – that, because of my own efforts, those same submariners and divers could then return to fighting sooner and, oh by the way, do a much better job at it. Even as I stand here in front of you now, I am still wrestling with this.

Let me be very clear on one point. Being at one Naval station for 31 years meant that I worked with literally hundreds of submariners, divers and medical personnel as they rotated through our lab. Most of these men and women were the brightest, most dedicated and professional people that one could want in critical or demanding situations. I am proud to have been able to work alongside them and, over the years, several of them have become my best friends.

Nevertheless, these fine people are there to fight wars. The world’s leaders sometimes seem all too eager to rattle sabers and draw lines in the sand, instead of trying to find peaceful and constructive ways to solve the problems that bring on wars. I said earlier that I am still wrestling with my own participation in the war efforts for all those years, but I do know one thing for certain. Wars, whether they are military conflicts or waged in our own streets or are fought in our own hearts – wars are the final breakdown of a sickness that hasn’t been properly diagnosed or treated. At the end of the day, there are no winners in war – there are only the survivors who pick up the pieces and move on.

Today I ask each of you to honor friends and strangers who have fallen in all the various struggles of Life, while searching our souls yet again for answers.