"They only did what they ought to have done". I heard someone say this at a Remembrance Day service today and it has really stuck with me. I've been recalling the words over and over, thinking about all those people over the course of history who died, on one side of the other, for the cause of freedom. I think about the fear those young soldiers must have felt as they were sent blindly to their deaths in the trenches and front lines of the World Wars, and I wonder at what moves today's armed forces. What is that feeling in their hearts and souls that is big enough, brave enough to drive them to do what they do, even knowing what we know about war today. The men and women who go into the battle fields today are not as ignorant or blind to the realities of war as they once were, and still they go. And I wonder what separates those that have that feeling from those of us who do not.
"They only did what they ought to have done."
Hearing this phrase today me feel very small because of all the things I ought to do that I have never and may never do, and it made them seem very big because of all the things they have done, and will either continue to do, or will never do again because they no longer can. And they are big. And I am small. And today is about remembering that because their bigness has brought us this:
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| PEACE, from a kindergartners point of view. |
A couple of photos from the Remembrance Day service we attended downtown today.
They are only doing what they ought to do.
To those of you with that feeling I say, thank you.
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