What Sacrifice Do We Give

If you ask a thousand people you will get a varied response about what Christmas means.  Most of them will miss the most basic truth.  The life of Jesus Christ was about sacrifice.  Being born for the purpose of dying.  Not dying to get away, not to end pain, for other people who would lie, kill and steal in the name of that sacrifice.  A god became flesh to die for people who would spit on his image, place him in a jar of urine.  This is what he was born for.  And so I wonder if I ever have given anything to my fellow man.

In the non-biblical sense, I know others that have given of themselves.  My grandfather, a marine corp drill instructor, served in the late 1940's and ran cargo planes to Japan.  My brother's best friend joined the Corp and never left it.  My best friend joined the Navy and tracked the sounds made by waves slapping against the sides of abandoned rubber ducks.  (Sorry, Jones, I can't compliment you.)  My fiancee's mother met her husband in the Air Force working inside of mountains so that they could withstand nuclear blasts and the occasional Shwarzenegger film.  Jay Dudley lost his brother to the service.

I've never served.  When I was in high school I wanted to go to the Air Force Academy, but I was too lazy to try for a sponsorship.  I've had opportunities since then, and I've never jumped to do them.  I saw a poem lately about the Arlington cemetery and I was struck by the line:

"Sleep well my brothers, know the line has held"

Have I held the line?  No.  And I have not given myself to a cause.  Christopher Jones never stepped foot on a boat, and he faced death every time he went up in a plane.  Cecil Girard never had to fight in World War II but he knew any time he flew he could die and any man he trained would face the same fate.  Jean-Paul Courville has faced bullets and bombs.  Jay's brother died in service.  I face a pen and ink as my enemy.  I'm too old to give what they have.

At this time of year I try to remember how much those who serve have given us.  It's part of what God gave us.  A child who would die for our sins, give us the chance to be reborn.  A kid who died in a training accident.  A man who risked every day to be the best marine.  A tracker who hunted threats to our coasts. A father who raised a wonderful mother and trained men of honor.

If I believe in a thing, how can I be quiet when the only cost I face is words, not death?  I thank each man and woman for their service and even if they weren't thinking of the sacrifice, the essential fact that they made it.  I am humbled by them and hope that any part of my life or my actions might make them proud of what they have done.

Well, I Suppose I Could Try

I can't say I haven't been able to write since I last posted on this blog, because that's not entirely true.  When a person on a beach sees a 100 foot tsunami, they run.  Make it 1000 feet tall and many will just stare, not understanding how it is even possible.  That's how I have felt in the past months.  I had hoped for a conservative victory in the elections, despite the fact that even if the Republican candidate won, it wouldn't be a conservative.  The libertarian in me had pretty much given up hope the second Ron Paul essentially said Iran would play nice as long as we did.  But a wave of illogic swept across the voting populace in a manner I'm not sure I've ever seen before or even been aware of historically.  A society in which information is readily available, especially to the younger members, voted against information.  An ex-girlfriend of mine said, after the election, that she was proud to live in a country that considered women equal.  This woman had been convinced that somehow Mitt Romney was going to slap chains on chicks, which would have made for a hell of a bumper sticker.  What's the point of arguing if the reaction to 2+2=4 is you're a racist?  So I felt lost.  I knew Romney was going to lose months before the final bell tolled.  I'm not claiming prescience by any stretch, I just had a gut feeling, like that moment before the other car hits you.  And I couldn't stop it, so I stood on the shore, watching, dumbfounded, as the wave came in, towering over me while blotting out even sunlight.  The movie "Contagion" shows the breakdown of society.  They got it wrong, the people voted for looting.

But I found a little hope.  I looked back through some things, messages.  I found a message from a friend who mentioned that her husband had been talking about me with her.  How they thought it was great that I could make the argument and back it up.  I got a message from the only woman who could ever have a chance at tempting me away from my fiancee telling me I had no idea how amazing I am.  I remembered the fiancee who disagrees with me on everything political (but can hold a conversation requiring every sentence to include a pun based on a science fiction author's name) telling me that she loves me in part because I challenge her.  And I think that hope isn't dead yet.  Every tsunami washes back out to sea.

So, rather than giving up, I'm going to try to write more often.  I'm going to try and fight against the illogical push of the modern left in the only way I know how.  I may have a grand total of three consistent readers (which I may have lost during my layoff), but at least I'll be able to say I tried.

In the meantime, Merry Christmas to all.  May the sunshine of a new day bring the light of truth and information to the darkness of a democracy in decline.  And may I always be humble enough to know that I have room to learn.