Breathe. Just Breathe. A Prayer for the Week Ahead.

“Remember to breathe. It is after all, the secret of life.” --Gregory Maguire, “A Lion Among Men”

Breathe.  Air in. Air out. Repeat.

On the days in this life when I am feeling anxious, or feeling like the world is out control, or when I am wondering just where the heck God is and when is God showing up; those are the days I most need to remember to just breathe. And this is certainly a week I know that I MUST remember to breathe.

Just breathe.  Air in. Air out. Repeat.

Breathe and connect myself to this present moment, the only moment that is real.  Past is past, long gone, out of my hands and the future isn’t here yet, and though I far too often assume the worst of outcomes is coming, that story isn’t written yet.

Yes, absolutely in these fraught times, I need to do all I can as a person of faith, to work for God and hope and peace and justice and mercy, in my life, in our shared life as citizens and neighbors. Jesus calls me to push back against bullies who would hurt and hate. In a way my activism and my vote are akin to civic breathing. Community dies when we forget how to breathe with and for one another.  Community thrives when we remember we all share a common body, a commonwealth, common breath.   

So, I am reminding myself to just breathe today and then tomorrow too, and then on and on and on. Day by day. Minute by minute. Even second by second.

Breathe and listen for God’s spirit in my inhalation and exhalation.  Sometimes when I pray, I can be a bit verbose with God, get all wordy, ask all kinds of questions, even demanding, all kinds of answers. Then I can treat God as some kind of divine “room service” of sorts.   

But other times my best prayers are simply like breaths, offered straight up to heaven, and then in the quiet, I listen for the breath of God in response, I suppose, to return to me on earth. Trusting not so much in God’s absolute answers but more so trusting in God’s absolute presence. Having faith that God is right here in this world, right within me, and within you, and within our communities, and as close as, well...

A breath.

Breathe. 

A confession. At times in my adult life, I’ve struggled with actually forgetting how to breathe. Some call these episodes “panic” attacks. Then I can get anxious. Then I breathe faster. Then that makes me more worried. Then that makes me breathe even faster. Then that can lead to panic, feeling as if life is just closing in on me. Or that I am responsible for everything, everyone, forgetting God’s got this.

Then I have breathing amnesia somehow and so I have to learn again, be guided by someone, recall and practice how to breathe well. Calmly. Slowly.  Clearly. That’s a lesson I’ve had to learn, and remember, especially when things seem bleak, or when I am convinced that God has left the house and that I am all alone.

I can’t breathe because I am afraid. Or I can breathe and be courageous. 

“Be still and know that I am God…”  the psalmist wrote.  Could also be “Breathe and know that I am God.” I like that too. To see breathing itself as an act of faith and resistance, a declaration that no matter what, God is here, God is with and in us, and God will give us the spiritual tools, energy, and wisdom to do what we must do.  To fight the bad. To embody God’s common good.

But first, we have to breathe.

This is a big week for our nation and our world.  I am praying and hoping and working for an outcome in this election that reflects the goodness of God and the goodness of humanity.  It is not clear that this will be the reality.  It may not be clear the next day or even the next week.

So, God, just help me to breathe. This day. To just breathe.

Air in. Air out.

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.

 

    

Dare We Ask Our Leaders to Act With Decency and Honor? YES!

“Have you no sense of decency sir?” --Attorney Joseph Welch, 1954

You have to be of a certain age (old, like me) or a history geek (yup, that’s also me) to understand the momentousness of the question and accusation that Joseph Welch put to Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy, on June 9^th, 1954. 

“Have you no sense of decency, sir?”

The Oxford Languages Dictionary defines decency as, “behavior that conforms to standards of morality or respectability.” To treat others with decency means we show respect for people, strangers, and neighbors alike, and that we strive to be honest in all of our dealings. At our best, we try to treat others as we wish to be treated.

With decency. 

But in June 1954, decency was in short supply, when it came to the tirades, bluster, lies and cruelty of McCarthy. For four long years, beginning in 1950, McCarthy was a crusading, self-aggrandizing and oftentimes bullying leader in the drive to identify and remove communists from the United States government.  A climate of fear ruled our country then as the Cold War with the Soviet Union heated up. McCarthy claimed to have lists of hundreds of names of so-called subversives that he would soon unveil. The problem was that much of the time he had no names and instead used innuendo and half-truths to intimidate and attack his opponents.

By 1954 the country was beginning to tire of McCarthy’s narcissistic showmanship. That June, McCarthy led nationally televised hearings about his charge that there were communists in the United States Army. Boston lawyer Joseph Welch represented the Army. McCarthy decided to name on TV a colleague of Welch’s and accuse that young lawyer of subversion. Such a charge would doom the young man’s career and ruin his reputation. It was a despicable thing to do. But McCarthy pushed ahead. That’s when Welch asked his famous question.

From the United States Senate website, “As an amazed television audience looked on, Welch responded with the immortal lines that ultimately ended McCarthy's career: ‘Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness.’ When McCarthy tried to continue his attack, Welch angrily interrupted, ‘Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?’"

Welch’s confrontation with the bully McCarthy brings to mind the indecent, mean, and callous ways that one national political candidate speaks about anyone who opposes him or his policies in any way. Yes, it our former President who wants to reoccupy the Oval Office.

A note: this isn’t about partisanship. I’m not a big fan of 45’s ideology. But neither was I a fan of, say, either George Bush senior or Ronald Reagan, and their policies. But I do have respect and even admiration for the decent, honorable, and often kind ways, in how they performed as commanders in chief. They carried themselves well as presidents and human beings. They spoke about their opponents not as the enemy or as subversives to be jailed or a threat to be despised, no. They worked across the aisle to find common ground. They made no veiled or direct threats of violence against anyone who dared to confront them. They actually laughed at themselves and their humanity.

But the one who names towers and hotels after himself? In the past eight years how we as Americans talk about one another and treat each other: its devolved and been cheapened. On the campaign trail but also in many public settings. School Committee meetings. Legislative bodies. Main Street even. That’s his legacy. This is not a red state or blue state issue, or Dems versus the GOP. It is about simple human decency and asking a legitimate question: does the ex-reality TV star ever show any decency in his politics? Or compassion? Mercy? Humility? Restraint of pen and tongue?

He has sullied and changed how we as citizens talk about and to each other, and how our candidates and office holders carry themselves. He has dragged our political and civic discourse down into the mud. We are all now splattered with the stain of his hyperbolic and mean-spirited rhetoric.

So…our ex-President retweets a tweet on X that used pornographic descriptions of sexual acts to defame Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton. Did he really just share that with his followers? He mocked a disabled reporter in a speech as the crowd laughed and cheered. How can someone be that heartless, that cruel? He claims Kamala Harris wasn’t Black until she decided she was Black.  I’m speechless. He’s decided that God saved him from assassination so he could save America. Must be great to know the mind of God. 

I write as a Christian pastor who has worked my whole career to build community in my small corner of Creation, and I am heartbroken at how divided the community called America has become since 2016.  I write because I love our country. I want to see it lifted up again, not torn apart more, nor torn down with negativity and the politics of grievance and menace.  

It is past time for all of us as citizens to call out the indecent and yes, despicable ways he’s tarnished and tarred, our public discourse. It’s time to just say, “No more. Please.” And to remember again Welch’s indictment from seventy years ago. It still rings true.

“Have you no decency sir?”

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.

As Summer Fades...Gratitude and Melancholy.

“The summer night is like a perfection of thought.”    --Wallace Stevens, “The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm”

Yes, I know it is still three weeks away and yes, I know some folks get really peeved when I name this time of year as the unofficial end of summer, but…. every late August the feelings for me are always the same. Maybe for you too. 

We experience and want to offer gratitude to God for summer and all of the gifts it offers. We experience melancholy, at the passing of one season into another and all the gifts going away.

Summer thanksgiving?

For me that list is so, so long. Sleeping late and no alarm clock. Hot dogs that snap with one bite at the ballpark and cheering on a homerun as a pale-yellow moon rises over center field. Eating supper under the stars with good, good friends. Something off the grill and fresh tomatoes and corn from the garden. Riding my bike on a balmy evening well past 7:30 as the sun seems so reluctant to finally set. That first day of vacation and how the time that lies ahead seems to stretch on for so long. Finding postcards on a road trip to send back home to mom. “Having a great time. Miss you!”

What’s on your summer ‘thank you God!’ list? Have you started to write it out yet, pray it up to God yet?  It may be time.  Labor Day will be here before we know it. And a return to school.  And increasing energy at work for many of us. And shorts and dock shoes that go back into the closet as fall jackets are retrieved.  And the cabin is locked up until next year, after one final BBQ blowout.

Summer melancholy?

Looking at the assembled loved ones in the photo from the July family reunion and knowing that the next time we gather there will more than likely be a few old souls that have passed on to heaven and a few new baby souls to take their place in our clan and the world.  By this time, the Red Sox baseball team that teased us all season has begun their September swoon and fall fade. Wait until next summer! Right?

Nothing and no one lasts forever, not even a summer that always seems to feel so endless to me in May, as the flowers blossom in full and the trees bloom beautifully and the sun rises hot in the sky, and it all begins again.  And then before we know it, September knocks on the door and we remember again that summer is finite. 

But by my calendar we’ve still got about a week left until summer starts to depart.  So, have one final soft serve ice cream and risk a brain freeze. Take a plunge into the pool or the ocean then lean into the warmth of the sun on your back as you huddle under a soft fluffy towel.  Sit out on the back deck and read that book you’ve been hoping to read all summer and read it far into the night, as the crickets chirp away in a summer symphony.  Get the last of the sweet corn and the ruby red tomatoes at the farm stand and dig right in.  Don’t spare the butter or the salt. Take a long walk with a friend at dusk and talk about everything and talk about nothing and just be with each other.

Then lift your eyes up and look to the Creator of summer, the one who paints pink sunsets and gives voice to the robins at the feeder, the power that raises a blue moon in an August sky. The spirit that invites us all to enjoy summer and the other seasons too.

It’s almost goodbye. Thanks again God for a great summer. We’ll miss it. Please make sure and bring it back again next year.

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.

 

 

    

      

 

To Make a Difference, Find Hope, and Fight Cancer. RIDE ON!

“I have found that it is the small everyday deed of ordinary folks that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love.”     --J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

It’s just a bicycle after all.

Just a two wheeled conveyance, to get me from point A to point B and under my own power too.  It’s got two pedals, twenty-four gears, two jet black tires and sleek levers on the handlebars for shifting up or down. There’s a granny gear for a big hill and a speedy gear for when you get to fly like the wind down a long winding road. Throw in a water bottle or two and a spare tube, maybe a banana in the back pocket of your bike shirt, and that is about it.  Oh, almost forgot. A helmet to keep the rider safe.

You’d think that such a humble contraption couldn’t do much good, not in a world changing way, not in this oh so complicated and huge and often broken place called earth that we all call home. 

I mean what’s a bike up against poverty or war, or violent political rhetoric or all the ‘isms that so hurt God’s children, hurt you, hurt me, hurt everyone? What can one bike do, or perhaps a group of bikes, a team of bikes, maybe even several thousand bikes…what can all those cyclists and bicycles do?

A lot of good, it turns out. A bike can actually carry much hope, and love too, and compassion. 

You see, every year since 1980, tens of thousands of cyclists from around the country and world have ridden in the Pan Mass Challenge (PMC). The PMC is a two-day charity bike ride that for more than forty years, has raised funds for Boston’s world class cancer care institute and hospital, the Dana Farber.  This year the PMC will surpass $1 billion raised to help find a cure, so that one day we might actually make cancer history.

I am blessed to be a PMC’er, have been for fifteen years, and am on a church team of seven amazing fellow riders.  In total more than 5,000 of us will be riding this weekend, through eastern Massachusetts, with many of us biking all the way to P’town on the tip of the Cape.

So, if you find yourself on the roads and byways of the Bay State this coming Saturday and Sunday, you may just see some of these do-gooders, these world changers, these cyclists who just want to work and share some kindness, and work for the dream that we will one day beat cancer once and for all. Beat the disease that takes the lives of more than 600,000 Americans each year. Those folks are our loved ones. Our neighbors. Our friends. The amazing scientists and doctors and helping staff at Dana Farber have come so far in their work. But there is still much to do and many miles to go.

Why do I ride?

I ride for the people I love who are either sick with or have been taken by cancer. I ride for uncles and aunts and mentors and church members young and old and friends and cousins. I ride because I need to be amongst big-hearted people who actually sacrifice and work for a cause greater than self alone, and for the common good. When people work together like this, anything is possible. When people don’t or can’t work thus, well, nothing is possible. Not really.

So, here’s a suggestion. Put down your device that is trying to preach to you a litany of bad news and instead look out on the road for the bearers of some good news. Very good news.  For me and my fellow PMC riders: we can use something as simple as a bike to save lives. We can pedal and reassure a cancer patient that they are not forgotten, that they are in fact, loved. We can ride and remind the world that each of us can do good, lots of good, in our corner of the world.

All we have to do is decide to make a difference. For nothing, nothing is more powerful than a community that commits to come together and then build a new world, just one act of goodness at a time.

God knows we could all use some goodness and good news. 

RIDE ON!    

(Donations can be made at pmc.org)

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.

 

America's Political Leaders: How Old Will We Go? Stay Tuned.

“It is a paradox of democratic politics that only those willing to walk away from power deserve to be entrusted with it in the first place.” –Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe

Should I stay or should I go?

That is the question all of us face as we age.  We’ve worked for many years in a career or calling and then the day comes when we just know it our is time to go. To retire. To find new work. To pursue new passions and pastimes. We realize that where once our body was young enough, agile enough, limber enough to do this or that, well…one day we just can’t do it anymore.  So, we adapt. We find a new sport to embrace.  Think pickle ball instead of tennis.   

The point is simple and clear: we all “age out” in this life. Age out of pursuits, careers, sports, day to day activities. That’s ok. That’s normal. Then if we are wise, humble, and realistic, we let go and go on to whatever is our next chapter.

We know. “Yes—it is time for me to go.”

That is, I guess, unless you are Joe Biden (81) or Donald Trump (78) or Senators Mitch McConnell (82), or Chuck Grassley (91) or Bernie Sanders (82), or Representatives Nancy Pelosi (84) or Grace Napolitano (87). I hope when I am 78 or 81 that I’ll have the stamina and intellectual acuity needed for high office, though I’d never want those jobs. But even if I could do it, should I do it? Or maybe when you get to be that old you step aside and make room for the next generation to serve. Welcome and support those amazing and very ready younger folks to lead our land and bring their new ideas and visions to governance.  

President John F. Kennedy said, “The torch has been passed to a new generation!” But my generation and older—we just can’t seem to let go. If you watched Biden’s “deer in the headlights” debate performance or have ever watched Trump get on the crazy train at one of his rallies or watched as he fell asleep during his recent trial, it’s easy to see that each man is diminished by age. They are “less than,” physically and mentally.

Yet still, they stay.   

Reminds me of a personal sports hero who stuck around the game too long. Carl Yastrzemski played left field for the Boston Red Sox from 1961 to 1983. He was fast in the field and on the bases. He could dive for a ball and elegantly scoop it up for an out. He could smash the ball over the green monster with ease. And then he aged and lost a step and had to give up playing left field for first base and then designated hitter.

I remember watching him play his last year. Like a lion in winter, he gave it his all, but Yaz just did not have it anymore. Reflexes. Strength. Agility. Stamina. These had waned, which is natural for a professional athlete in their forties.

Just as it is natural for a politician in their late seventies or early eighties or beyond to lose a step or two or three. To have trouble retrieving information. To struggle with your energy, and the ability to stay awake, focused, sharp. Yet right now an entire generation of political leaders can’t or won’t see how much they’ve faded.

So, they stay.  To wreak vengeance on those whom they think wronged them. To make sure that their legacy is secure. To hang on to power. To enjoy the elixir of influence. To be a king or queen maker. It’s sad that Trump and Biden and so many other elected leaders don’t know when to exit the stage. Yet, the real risk is that their obstinacy hurts our democracy and blocks the next generation from taking their rightful place in leadership.   

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a President and Congressional leaders who came of age not during World War II and the years after but instead, who grew up in the sixties, seventies, or eighties? So, so much has changed in this world in the past half century. Yet, our choices for president are two men who grew up using dial landline phones, listening to eight track tapes and watching Lawrence Welk on network TV!  Seriously, can’t we please just elect someone who is not yet eligible for Social Security?  

One of my favorite American presidency stories is the amazing tale of the deaths of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Both men died just five hours apart on the same providential day: July 4^th, 1826.  Adams was 90 and Jefferson, 83. When those former presidents began their terms of office Adams was 61 and Jefferson 54. Spring chickens in comparison to our current geriatric presidential choices.

Trump, Biden, McConnell, Pelosi, et al: it’s time to take well-earned retirements. Go back home. Play with your grandkids and watch them grow up. Golf. Take afternoon naps. Try painting or cross stitch, or pickle ball! Write a memoir. Return to reality TV.

To stay or to go? Go. Please.  Just go.  It’s time.

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.

  

Lighten Up! The World Needs Illumination. And Light. And Love.

Life is a lot more interesting if you are interested in the people and the places around you. So, illuminate your little patch of ground, the people that you know, the things that you want to commemorate. Light them up with your art, with your music, with your writing, with whatever it is that you do.”              --Alan Moore, author “V for Vendetta” et al

Lighten up.

That was the wise advice my spiritual director gave me on one of my more downhearted, deadly serious, “chicken little the sky is falling” kind of days.  Can’t remember what I was worrying about, or griping about; what person I was anxious to please or what part of my work I was kvetching about. What in this world, with all its brokenness and beauty, I was complaining about.

The point is—I was living without light. Living unilluminated. Being shady in a way, shadow filled. Pigpen from Charlie Brown comics walks around with perpetual dirt clouds surrounding him.  If I am not careful, I can walk around with perpetual dark clouds surrounding me, huge gray puffy clouds threatening to rain on my parade, on your parade too, if I am not careful.

Thus, my need for light and illumination and to just lighten up. And to remember this sage wisdom every day.  I need the light. We all need the light just to see better, to see more, to see clearly now that the rain is gone, and it just might be a bright sunny day, in the words of a beautiful song.

Thank goodness this week contains the exact day when our supply of natural light is at its peak for the year. On our summer solstice, the sun came up at 5:10 am and didn’t go back down until 8:26 pm.  So much sunlight for so long, longer than any other day of the year. Yes, on June 21^st we will start “losing” sunlight in these parts of the world but let’s not talk about that yet, ok?

Let’s talk about summer light.

The light that allows us to watch a Little League baseball game on a balmy June evening, cheering for all those young players as they round the bases so earnestly. Summer light allows us to enjoy an after-dinner ice cream cone at Dairy Queen or some other local creamery. To stand in line with our fellow frozen treat aficionados as the sun hangs around and nothing tastes better than a cone on a still bright night, right? Summer light gifts us with a long bike ride after work, or nine holes post the office, or maybe a quick sail, or just a walk with the dog.

We need that light. Need to be the light too. God’s light. A love light.

Lately I’ve been paying attention to the people in my life and world who bring light into the lives of other people for no other reason that to just do good and be God’s good in a world that always threatens to go all dim.  Like the person in the drive-thru line at DD’s who paid for the coffee of the person behind them. It’s true. It happened. Someone actually did that for me once. That lightened me up! Or how about folks who treat a brow beaten clerk behind the counter with kindness and care, saying a sincere and kind “Thank you!” and maybe even leaving an unexpectedly generous tip.

That’s sure to brighten someone’s day.

Or think of the rare politician, the civic leader who brings out the light and the goodness in the people she serves. That’s what great leaders always do: they bring out the light in others.  Bad leaders always evoke the worst, appeal to the darkest of human impulses, and are only interested in light if it shines on them. What an illuminated world it could be if folks threw out all those shadowy leaders and instead lifted up those who embody light.

Light. Love. Peace. Joy. Hope.

Funny thing about light is that the more you share with others, the lighter our own lives become.  We lighten up and laugh and don’t take ourselves too seriously and it gives permission for other folks to lighten up too. Jesus was right when he said to his students, “You are the light of the world!”

We all have the light within. The question is….do we see it? See and give thanks to the creator of all illumination for our own light, then share it with others? Everybody needs the light.  Needs illumination. Needs to remember that each human life matters, that if one light, just one life is threatened, all the lights are threatened.

Lighten up.

I’m trying. And you? Will you be the light today? 

Happy summer solstice!

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.

 

 

 

      

D-Day Eighty Years Later: Could We Make Such a Sacrifice?

The American citizen soldiers…didn’t want to live in a world in which wrong prevailed. So, they fought, and won, and all of us, living and yet to be born, must be profoundly grateful.” --Stephen Ambrose, "D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of WWII"

“I see the bodies, John, when I fall asleep and dream. It makes me afraid to close my eyes.”

That’s what Jack told me when I visited him in the hospital several years ago, after he suffered a fall. He was in his late eighties then, with wisps of white hair atop his head, and sharp and clear blue eyes, which looked at me so intently, as I took his hand and listened.

“I was the pilot of a landing craft on D-Day,” he said. “Omaha Beach. I was in charge of a boat that brought troops from the ships to the shores of the beach.”

June 6, 1944: eighty years ago, this week. D-Day was the spearhead of Operation Overlord, the largest amphibious assault ever assembled. Men like Jack piloted 5,000 LSTs (Landing Ship, Tank) to drop 132,000 American, British, and Canadian troops on beaches along the French coast, in Normandy.  Allied planes flew 14,000 sorties to support the landings and 7,000 naval vessels waited offshore. That day the goal was clear and simple: to take back Europe from Hitler and fascism, and to rescue millions of people held under the rule of a murderous despot.

Yet even with the unfathomably huge scale of the battle, that day and that war, as always, was finally personal, up close, unforgettable to those who fought.  People like Jack who in his late teens signed up for the Navy right after Pearl Harbor in 1941. Like so many people then, Jack just knew it was his duty as a citizen to do his part and to help win the war.

On the second day of the invasion after the beach had been largely secured, Jack was still bringing troops and supplies ashore. As he steered his ship through the waters, hundreds of bodies floated on the surface all around his vessel, bobbing up and down, banging against the sides of landing craft. They were soldiers who had been killed in the first wave of landings.

Jack could not escape this awful memory. He told me he had not thought about it for many years, until his nights in the hospital, when, for some reason, it all came back to him. The dead. His feeling of helplessness, that he could not bring any of them back to life. Survivor’s guilt that he was still alive while they were gone forever.

I’m remembering Jack this week, as our world marks the 80^th anniversary of D-Day. It symbolizes and sums up in a way, the personal and collective sacrifice of millions of Americans, who overseas and at home, sacrificed time, and comfort, and loved ones and limbs and lives, for a cause so much greater than self alone.

Of course, there are no morally “clean” wars or wartimes. Millions of innocents died on both sides. In 1944 racism was the norm in our country, so Blacks served in segregated outfits and were denied certain roles in the military. Japanese Americans were held in detention camps, even though they had lived here for generations. Women worked in the factories until wars’ end when most were summarily laid off to make room for returning men.   

Yet for all the ways America struggled to live up to its professed ideals, even still, it is amazing to consider just what so many in Jack’s generation did. Gave up. Fought for. Lost in that war. The haunting memories that would not go away, even after so many decades. 

I’ve come to know many veterans like Jack. Ken, who scaled the bluffs on Normandy beach. Ann, who served as a nurse in the WAVES, the women’s reserve force of the Navy.  Murray, who met his wife Jessie, in London, when he was just 19; he survived Normandy as an infantry man. I’ve never heard any of them say that they regretted what they did, the service they offered to a nation and world in need.

We are living in strange times, eight decades later, with such weird and troubling contrasts between then and now. An ex-president again vying for the highest office in the land has unashamedly called soldiers and prisoners of war, “losers” and “suckers.” We lack any collective understanding about the necessity for communal sacrifice. It makes me wonder…could we do what Jack did? Do we have that civic strength?

I’d like to believe that we still do, that Jack’s example of serving a greater good, and the common good…it still is in our American DNA. I have to believe that, as a citizen and a neighbor, someone who still loves this place we call home, even for all its sins and excesses and mistakes.  

So, thank you, Jack, for your service. We must never forget it. May God help us all, to do our part, if and when the call goes out.  

To serve. To give. To sacrifice.        

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.