In the past several weeks, I have participated in memorial services for Sylvia Underwood, George Wright, and Weldon Scheel. All three services were powerful and moving, each one filled with celebration and mourning, laughter and tears.
I find memorial services to be deeply meaningful rituals. In them, we lift up the unique qualities and accomplishments of a person's life by sharing personal memories and stories--often humorous ones, by displaying photographs of the person with family and friends doing their favorite things in their favorite places, and with readings of scripture and poetry or performances of special music. Though occurring after death, memorial services celebrate the sacredness of human life, and they move us to give thanks for particular human lives.
Memorial services allow us to announce: Sylvia was here. George was here. Weldon was here.
We knew them. We loved them. We held them in our arms. For a brief moment in God's vast infinitude of time and space, we shared the sacred gift of human life in the same time and place.
They mattered to us. Sylvia, George and Weldon--they made a difference in our lives. They contributed something of value to our lives. Our lives would not have been the same without them.
They are irreplaceable. One of a kind. Unique. And we will never forget them.
One of the most powerful memorials I have ever attended was the final public viewing of the entire AIDS quilt in Washington DC. You recall that the AIDS quilt consisted of thousands of individual 10-foot square panels that the family members, partners, and friends of men and women who died of AIDS constructed. Each panel was a labor of love. A work of art. Each panel featured photographs, drawings, writings, mementos, and personal belongings--everything from teddy bears to baseball hats. Each panel told the story of a particular human life, the story of a person who for a moment lived, and loved, and died on this earth.
The final public viewing of the entire quilt stretched the length of several football fields. I spent an entire afternoon walking amongst the panels, and I only saw _ of them. I was stunned, awestruck, and left speechless by the enormous size of the quilt, and by the beauty of each individual panel. Thousands of people walked up and down the walkways between the panels, but it was completely silent. It was sacred ground.
Another powerful memorial for me is the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington DC, with its 58, 248 names etched into the wall. Most of the names represent the lives of young men in their late teens and twenties. Each one a living, breathing person who left behind loved ones who will never forget them. Again, sacred space.
I remember watching on television part of the memorial service commemorating the 9-11 attack on the World Trade Center, and hearing people read off the names of every single person killed in the Twin Towers. Each name a unique person with their own story.
Every week, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer displays photographs of the US service men and women killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Each one a human life. A son or daughter. Brother or sister. Father or mother. Each one irreplaceable.
I am grateful that the News Hour displays these photographs, and that it does so in a solemn, dignified manner, because it disturbs me that our government resists acknowledging the death toll of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan--US citizens, but more specifically, Iraqi and Afghani citizens.
A part of me can understand this resistance from a strategic point of view, but from a deeper human and spiritual point of view, the non-recognition of their deaths troubles me. It seems to me that the non-recognition of their deaths is an indignity and final affront committed against their lives. It is as if we are saying, they weren't really here to begin with. They didn't really matter. We won't miss them. And we certainly didn't love them.
This non-recognition of human life lost is not an oversight but a deliberate policy, and we can trace it back to the first war in Iraq. In an article in Christian Century (January 10, 2006), Donald Shriver Jr. describes how in March 1991, a demographer in the Department of Commerce named Beth Dupont investigated the number of Iraqi deaths and came to the number 158,000. The DOC immediately fired her for releasing this figure, not because it was wrong, but because they didn't want the issue of Iraqi deaths raised or discussed in public.
In December 2003, an Iraqi Minister of Health official proposed counting the number of Iraqi dead in the second war. The Pentagon ordered him not to count the Iraqi dead. General Peter Pace, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said focusing on the number of Iraqis killed would take the focus off US success in its mission.
More recently, President Bush cited the figure 30,000 Iraqis killed. The White House later added there is no official US estimate of Iraqi deaths and that the President based his number on media estimates. Some estimates place the number of Iraqi dead at 100,000.
30,000...100,000...158,000...numbers can numb us. Joseph Stalin said, "The death of one person is a tragedy. The death of a million is a statistic."
30,000...158,000...can we wrap our heads and hearts around thousands of individual human lives? Or do they all just blur together as an impersonal numbing statistic?
Is it possible for us to say, we didn't know them or hold them in our arms, but for a brief moment in God's vast infinitude of time and space, we shared the sacred gift of human life on this planet with them?
Can we acknowledge that their lives mattered? That they made a difference in someone's life? They contributed something of value to someone's life? Someone's life would not have been the same without them?
Can we recognize that each one of these 30,000 or 158,000 Iraqi people were irreplaceable, one of a kind, unique individuals.
Or will we just forget about them, and pretend they never existed in the first place?
I would suggest that it does our spirits harm to just forget these Iraqi people and to pretend they never existed in the first place. For the sake of our own humanity, we must do a better job as individuals and as a nation recognizing these people who once lived and are now dead because of our nation's direct involvement in their lives. I would suggest that a slow, careful, receptive reading of Psalm 139 can help us wrap our heads and hearts around these 30,000 or 158,000 unique, irreplaceable human lives.
Psalm 139 expresses God's intimate knowledge of one particular human being, but it is really a Psalm for each and every human being on this planet.
Lord, you have examined me and you know me.
You know me at rest and in action;
You discern my thoughts...
You trace my journeying and my resting places...
There is not a word I speak, but you, Lord, know all about it.
You keep close guard behind and before me, and place your hand upon me.
Knowledge so wonderful is beyond my grasp...
Where can I escape from your spirit, where flee from your presence...
You know me through and through.
Perhaps Americans need to remember that 30,000 human lives, 158,000 living, breathing, unique, irreplaceable lives were lives that God knew and cherished through and through.
God knew every single one of these 30,000 and 158,000 lives at rest and in action.
God discerned the thoughts of each and every one, and heard every single word they ever spoke.
God was present with each one every second of their lives.
God was present when their hearts first started beating in the womb.
God was there when the first breath of life entered their lungs.
God was there for their every moment of joy and suffering.
God was there when the bullet, the rocket, the mine, the bomb, the fire, the crashing car, or the collapsing building snuffed the life out of them.
God knew the fear and terror in their hearts and minds during their last moments on earth as this was occurring to them.
God heard their final prayers.
And God was there to receive them and comfort them in death.
Perhaps we need to remember that 30,000 lives, 158,000 lives, 6,000,000 lives are not a statistic for God. Each one of those lives is precious in God's sight. Each has a special place in God's heart.
In his Christian Century article, Shriver describes how Germans are now far more sensitive than Americans are to the human cost of war. Germans have begun to revise their war memorials to include the deaths they not only suffered in war, but the deaths they inflicted on others during those wars. Shriver encourages Christians in the United States to follow the German example by lifting up the names and memories of not only US personnel killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, but to memorialize the Iraqis and Afghanis killed in the continuing human tragedy of warfare.
So this morning, I'd simply like to observe a moment of silence to honor the memories of every single person who has lost their life in the wars in which our nation is involved.
A moment of silence to remember that each and every one of these people was precious in the sight of God.
That each and every one of these people was known and loved by other people in this world.
That each and every one of these people was unique and irreplaceable, that each and every one mattered to someone else in this world, and that each and every one is now gone.
