And there it is, the midnight stroke. All is quiet in my apartment, the air conditioner rumbling like a supply truck on a distant highway. A low battery in one of my smoke detectors is sporadically reminding me that my nine volt battery, just like everything else that inhabits this world, seems to have a shelf life shorter than I – and I daresay we – would prefer. I am sitting, unfamously and without any great decor, surrounded by blessings, tucked quietly away in a free man’s home, in a free man’s country.

I decided to begin this bit at midnight, in the wee hours of Memorial Day.

I am thinking of our soldiers.

A soldier’s life takes many forms. It begins in a personal moment of choice, of unique self-reflection, a simple decision to gather up one’s mortality and place it decidedly, significantly closer to the possibility of danger. It can’t be easy, even for one who has grown up expecting to take a post in our military. For the ones with husbands, wives, daughters, sons, and the myriad of wonderful blessings that enrich our lives, it must be harder still.

That moment of decision doesn’t come cheaply for the one who makes it, nor the ones who are affected by its cost. They go, setting off for a place where experienced, unwavering soldiers teach them in rough, tender fashion that they are just one of a many Few. They are taught that the unit is greater than the man. They are also taught to care for one another, and in their commitment to common purpose they can collectively survive. They are broken down, to be built back together. Some break down with greater ease than others. Some lag behind. Some even fall.

The realities for a soldier can seem barbaric to those who sit under the quiet, happy regime of an air-conditioned home. The fear of combat, capture, or death are things the man who types his words into a void can not himself understand. To those that do know, to those men and women who have tasted and seen such things, it is a badge of honor. It is a history, being lived both in the glorious past, the unheralded moment, and the unseen future, which is always unknown but in which they wrap their flesh, their blood, and their hope.

I fear sometimes that I cannot fully realize just what it is that I owe these men and women. I fear that it isn’t possible for me to relate, to empathize, or even to understand. I wonder if these brave soldiers know that. I wonder if they realize that those who live under the safety of their sacrifice don’t know what to give in response, and I wonder what to say when I see one of them.

We live now in a world where opinions buzz about our heads like an expanding cloud of angry gnats, swirling, shifting, changing, growing louder and more malicious, impervious to our attempts to deter them. These ideas and thoughts and bits of information come at us without agenda, and without filter. News of the world screams into our ears on a daily basis, and there’s not one story that isn’t immediately encased in a thousand opinions, coloring and confusing our hearts to make out what’s real, and what isn’t. Americans are having a harder and harder time understanding who it is that they are.

Surely one of the most frightening aspects of life is when something unstoppable attacks without seeming purpose, without a clear agenda against which we can defend ourselves. Our soldiers, the thousands upon thousands of those who now and still defend our shores, they know it best. They now know, each day and night, far from the lights and hearths of home, the terror of dishonorable combat, of an enemy who kills simply to kill, and does so without mercy.

Our soldiers stand in between us and danger, and they do it on our behalf. Is there something more sobering than this? Would that there were a way for me, this one citizen, to send a message to all mothers of fallen sons and daughters and say thank you. A small consolation, to be sure, but I must believe that a small truth is just as useful as a large one.

As the Greatest Generation fades quietly into a good history that was built on their backs, we must continue to remind each other of the gift we are given and the responsibility we then therefore have because of it. We must continue to take hold of those moments of patriotic unity, for surely they are becoming more rare with each new day, making them all the more precious to those fortunate enough to find them.

So today, we make our own moment.

To the men and women who left their last breaths on foreign fields:

You are stars. All of you. The brave, the unlucky, the intelligent and simple-minded. The champions of our cause and the reluctant wonderers who may not have always found purpose in uniform. The fathers of sons and the sons of fathers, the fresh-faced recruits and the grizzled old warriors. The ones who sharpened the blade of an advance and the ones whose supply convoy came under surprise attack. To the pilots who soared on our shoulders and to the seamen who slipped through the deep, you are not forgotten, though your names might not be all known to each one of us. To the radiomen who held their posts under fire and the nurses who hold lives together with compassion and quickness, you are our champions. Your steadfast hearts make ours quicken, even now.

Today is not a day to question why. Today is a day to stand in respect and reverence for the gift that you have given us. Today, for us, is possible because of what you did, for us, yesterday. We fail on a daily basis to remember why it is that we are able to bicker and debate over a vote, or worship as we please, or to write and say that which we feel is right. You, with your life, laid one more brick on the altar of freedom, giving it further strength and reminding us that liberty costs. Like anything worth having, it requires much of those that would have it, and since you cannot now stand with us, we stand for you.

Your lives make ours better. May it be said that at the end our of days, we held some to some similar measure, and lived with warrior-souls, aware of our debts and committed forever to the idea of continuing the honor that has gone before us, to light our way, and,

with rockets red glare,

let us not go quietly into that dark night.