|
“D-Day”
I love this time of year. It is a kind of patriotic sandwich of a season. We just celebrated Memorial Day. Now we remember D-Day. In a few days we will celebrate Independence Day. I think the reason I get so soggy around the gizzard at times like this is that I have had to celebrate these days alone while in other countries several times. There's nothing quite like the sight of an American flag flapping gently in the breeze outside and American consulate in some foreign land when I am in a patriotic frame of mind. Especially when the minds of all around me are on other things. It invariably causes me to want to stand on a stump alongside a busy street and shout: “Friends, I'd like to say a few good words about America!” I have enough sense to refrain from such a thing. Instead, I just try to do what you do in such a circumstance; I try to be the best American abroad I can be.
Of all the places in the world where my patriotic emotions overflow, the Normandy American Cemetery on the bluff above Omaha Beach is the most powerful for me. An easy drive from the port city of Bayeaux, France the cemetery seems suddenly to appear from among the small villages dotting the countryside. Nothing can quite prepare a visitor for the exquisitely manicured site. Memorial marble stands silent witness to the hallowed ground. But the stunning dignity of the 9387 white, Vermont marble crosses aligned with amazing precision cause your breath to catch in your throat. It is an open-air sanctuary where visitors stroll, oblivious to time, reading names and dates of those whose bodies lie buried there. Peering down on the beach from the heights, now quiet except for the gentle tides, one contemplates the heights of heroism the patriots attained on June 6, 1944 and days following. It stirs in me the kind of emotions for America that I feel for my dearest family and friends. I only know to call it love.
There is poetry in such moments. I remember these words of John F. Kennedy: “When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.” That's what I hope for in this patriotic season--a cleansing, poetic meditation on what in us is true, just, noble and pure. Walt Whitman said, “The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it.” I hope for less bombast and more poetry in our national discourse. Give me a lot less political gamesmanship and a lot more common cause this time.
This a time for pulling together in the America we love. One of the saddest things an American leader ever said was by Herbert Hoover: “I'm the only person of distinction who has ever had a depression named for him.” I hope and pray that a year from now we will have achieved a level of national unity and maturity that will engulf our national leaders in such honor and gratitude that no comment so sad will cross the minds of our people any more.
I'm back now at the Normandy American Cemetery for one last look. General Colin Powell once said: ”Over the years, the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not return.” When we are at our best, God blesses America. Now let us bless God!
|
