Memorial Day from the Heart of L.A.

Picasso: Guernica

Memorial Day, of course, is not a liturgical feast. In my experience, the churches either ignore it or celebrate it in the most hideously nationalistic way. It had slipped off the radar at my current church long ago; if anyone thought about it at all, they would probably have said that they didn't want to give any impression of glorifying war. Being the nut for observances that I am, I proposed that we take another look at it. After all, most of the war dead are not actually war mongers--most have been motivated by a sincere desire to serve their country or more often by sheer compulsion. And almost every family has lost a member in warfare. My reasoning was that honoring the war dead did not imply endorsement of warfare; war is sadly enough a fact of life, and continues to claim victims, all of whom are somebody's daughter or son, sister or brother, wife or husband, etc., and in a time of war it seemed to me to be especially important to keep a human face on the mortality statistics.

I learned a few interesting things about the history of Memorial Day. For instance:

According to Professor David Blight of the Yale University History Department, the first memorial day was observed in 1865 by liberated slaves at the historic race track in Charleston. The site was a former Confederate prison camp as well as a mass grave for Union soldiers who had died while captive. A parade with thousands of freed blacks and Union soldiers was followed by patriotic singing and a picnic.

The first official Memorial Day observance in 1868 had a distinct element of reconciliation: held at Arlington National Cemetery, graves of Union and Confederate soldiers were decorated with flowers. The date was chosen specifically because it was not the anniversary of a battle.

In our typical way, we indigenized the holiday. Given that our congregation is about 2/3 immigrants, we almost had to. In the spirit of reconciliation implicit in the original official celebration, we extended the recognition to all war dead of any nation, including civilians. It has proved to be a very tender occasion for us. We learned for the first time, for example, that one of our elderly widows had lost her husband during WWII in the Canadian Air Force. A number of the dead soldiers we prayed for were Salvadoran para-military leaders--friends and relatives of our members--who had actually fought against the U.S. Our ritual moment last year was led by Col. Hayward Fong, a Chinese-American who served in WWII and who is one of our most respected and loved members, and Alba Luis, a young Mexican mother who was brought to us by a friend basically to hold the funeral for her son who had been killed in Iraq and has become an invaluable leader among the Spanish speakers. The two of them together at the podium almost eliminated the need for further words.

Not everyone will agree with what we have done. But I'm rather proud of it.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

--Laurence Binyon, from For the Fallen

Footnote to the Picasso painting, from Wikipedia:

A tapestry copy of Picasso's Guernica is displayed on the wall of the United Nations building in New York City, at the entrance to the Security Council room. It was placed there as a reminder of the horrors of war. Commissioned and donated by Nelson Rockefeller, it is not quite as monochromatic as the original, using several shades of brown. On February 5, 2003, in an official act of vandalism, a large blue curtain was placed to cover this work, so that it would not be visible in the background when Colin Powell and John Negroponte gave press conferences at the United Nations. On the following day, it was claimed that the curtain was placed there at the request of television news crews, who had complained that the wild lines and screaming figures made for a bad backdrop, and that a horse's hindquarters appeared just above the faces of any speakers. Diplomats, however, told journalists that the Bush Administration pressured UN officials to cover the tapestry, rather than have it in the background while Powell or other U.S. diplomats argued for war on Iraq.