Front Lawn Gardens
One way not to forget to take your digital camera on a trip is not to leave home. This memorial day I spent at home. Actually, home is a good place to be when we remember veterans, some who never made it home.
This picture is the start of my latest home model garden, a front lawn vegetable garden. It does not look like much now but the rain garden in the background did not even exist at this time last year. Look at it now.
Gardens and wars do not mix, but today we do not remember wars, past and present, but the men and women who served in the military. We may oppose the wars of late, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, but we can still honor the veterans of these wars. These wars may have been fought over honor, oil or greed but that is not the fault of the men and woman serving in the armed forces. We may doubt the wars but cannot doubt the men and women who prepared for and fought them.
Today working around the house and in the garden I felt sad. I felt sad for those, like one of the young men I knew in youth ministry, killed in wars. I felt sad for all those who died, and their families, and all who have suffered injuries of the mind and body. There are too many veterans who wander our streets homeless, hurt and uncared for.
These memories on Memorial Day renew my commitment to oppose unjust wars, wars not of self defense, wars that lead only to more wars. We need to Teach War No More. Instead, our schools should teach home gardening, Growing Renewable Affordable Food (G.R.A.F.).
To stop wars and to start growing we need look not to government officials but to ourselves. Like my friend Lorenzo Rosebaugh or like Dorothy Day we need only look to ourselves to stop unjust wars. Like the civil rights movement and discrimination, war will stop when we say no, and refuse to fight and fund wars.
As we work on this we have our veterans to look to. They did what they thought was the “right thing” according to their consciences even though it often meant putting their lives at risk.
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