Remembering Today

No words can ever do today justice, so mine are few--except to say that you, dear families and souls, are not forgotten. Thirteen or fifty or a thousand years can't erase the significance or their worth.

My feelings now more than ever echo those of past years, particularly last year:

THE ACHE
There is an inexpressible ache for it in our world-

Etched into the walls of our nations
Into the stark white of headstones
And the cold steel of ebony bracelets
Written into the stories of our hearts

Our hearts so weighted
Weighted with grief and limping forward on the shoulder of hope
Waiting
Waiting for the day when other nations
Will also collapse at the foot of our graves in tears
Run their fingers along the names etched in the walls
Offer an embrace so telling that no language barrier could cloud its meaning

Waiting
For the day when we as a nation will deign to do the same
When our tears will water their soil
When our ears will open to their stories of torment and suffering
When we will emerge as the co-carrier of burdens
When we will be the ones to dig ourselves out of the chasm of unjust injury
So we might unveil the most formidable task, the greatest need of all:

To build the Everest of Healing
A towering mountain of love and forgiveness
That will dwarf the charred remains of empires’ constructed elitism
That will break through the clouds, spilling the warmth of sunlight on our uplifted faces
As our faces and our hearts together behold one, single, monumental, unified goal-

To carry each other to the summit where we can stand as one,
Planting the flag of all nations, made from the patchwork us
Where it can flutter freely in its place in the heavens-
Whispering the word as it floats softly down to earth…

Lifting the smoke from the ruins
Resting atop the walls etched with grief
Wrapping its hope around those folded over the headstones
Strengthening the ragged sinews with each aching beat of our hearts
And covering the world with its unwavering promise of redemption:

“Peace.”



-M.C. H.

...and my prayers echo that of the prayer of St. Francis:

Lord make me an instrument of your peace
Where there is hatred,
Let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is error, truth;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
And where there is sadness, Joy.

O Divine Master grant that I may not so much
Seek to be consoled
As to console;
To be understood,as to understand;
To be loved, as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

--       --       --

May perpetual light shine upon them, and may the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace--today and every day.