I woke up on Memorial Day in Bowman, North Dakota, at a motel just across the road from the local cemetery. If the desert is a place of weeping, then a cemetery is certainly a desert.
I decided to take my normal morning walk around the cemetery. People were busy putting up flags and placing flowers on graves. I know from my own experience with grieving that space and a sense of privacy are important in cemeteries, and so I tried not to walk too closely to anyone. I saw one older woman place flowers on a mound of dirt—no grass, the earth hadn’t settled yet, no gravestone—her loss was very recent.
For such a small town the cemetery seemed immense. That gave me a real sense of history, a reminder of not just what Bowman, N.D. is today, but what it has been. All the people who have been a part of the history of that community. One more reminder that who each of is today is based on countless people who blessed us through their lives.
Memorial Day has a kind of strange, dual emphasis. It’s primary purpose is to honor United States men and women who have died in military service to our country, going back to the American Civil War. It is a reminder of the ways in which war is truly a desert experience, and the sense of loss and grief it leaves behind. Memorial Day is a time of honor and thanksgiving for those willing to risk their lives for others.
In an unofficial, cultural way Memorial Day has also become a time for all people to honor those they have lost to death. Death, from whatever cause, and in whatever situation, is a desert experience.
There are no politics in cemeteries. It doesn’t matter whether the war was considered just or unjust by theologians and ethicists, successful or unsuccessful by generals or politicians. It doesn’t matter why or how someone died, whether by natural cause, accident, suicide, or an act of violence. Every grave is of equal value and significance, just as every life is of equal value and significance to God.
Cemeteries have the possibility of moving us from desert to mountaintop to union. We weep over our loved ones now gone, we reflect on the wonderful things we have learned and received from them, and we end up feeling a kind of strange, paradoxical, mysterious union with them and with God that transcends time and place and space.
A cemetery would not be a bad place to start each day. It reminds us of the grace and love in which we walk each day because of those who have gone before us, it reminds us of the importance of whatever vocation to which we have been called, and it reminds us of the deep meaning of the day we have just been given, because the destiny of each of us is a cemetery some place on our way to the Kingdom of God.
I decided to take my normal morning walk around the cemetery. People were busy putting up flags and placing flowers on graves. I know from my own experience with grieving that space and a sense of privacy are important in cemeteries, and so I tried not to walk too closely to anyone. I saw one older woman place flowers on a mound of dirt—no grass, the earth hadn’t settled yet, no gravestone—her loss was very recent.
For such a small town the cemetery seemed immense. That gave me a real sense of history, a reminder of not just what Bowman, N.D. is today, but what it has been. All the people who have been a part of the history of that community. One more reminder that who each of is today is based on countless people who blessed us through their lives.
Memorial Day has a kind of strange, dual emphasis. It’s primary purpose is to honor United States men and women who have died in military service to our country, going back to the American Civil War. It is a reminder of the ways in which war is truly a desert experience, and the sense of loss and grief it leaves behind. Memorial Day is a time of honor and thanksgiving for those willing to risk their lives for others.
In an unofficial, cultural way Memorial Day has also become a time for all people to honor those they have lost to death. Death, from whatever cause, and in whatever situation, is a desert experience.
There are no politics in cemeteries. It doesn’t matter whether the war was considered just or unjust by theologians and ethicists, successful or unsuccessful by generals or politicians. It doesn’t matter why or how someone died, whether by natural cause, accident, suicide, or an act of violence. Every grave is of equal value and significance, just as every life is of equal value and significance to God.
Cemeteries have the possibility of moving us from desert to mountaintop to union. We weep over our loved ones now gone, we reflect on the wonderful things we have learned and received from them, and we end up feeling a kind of strange, paradoxical, mysterious union with them and with God that transcends time and place and space.
A cemetery would not be a bad place to start each day. It reminds us of the grace and love in which we walk each day because of those who have gone before us, it reminds us of the importance of whatever vocation to which we have been called, and it reminds us of the deep meaning of the day we have just been given, because the destiny of each of us is a cemetery some place on our way to the Kingdom of God.
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