"When your children ask in times to come,’What do these stones mean to you?’ then you shall tell them that the waters of the Jordan were cut off in front of the ark of the covenant of God. So these stones shall be to the Israelites a memorial forever."  Joshua 4:6-7

I was driving with my oldest son yesterday when we passed by Fort Snelling National Cemetery. The miles of white gravestones undulated off into the distance while countless American Flags,both large and small, blew in the Memorial Day wind. We could see the cars lined up on the narrow roads, people dotted the cemetery grounds standing in front of the simple, clean white stones remembering those they loved who had been lost to war and death. Fort Snelling on any day is an awe-inspiring and, to me, a sobering scene. On Memorial Day it seemed even more so.

Watching all this I realized I was filled with a kind of strange ambivalence. The Memorial Day of my childhood was always marked by the visit to the cemetery complete with a flag ceremony and the playing of the hauntingly sad sound of Taps. But yesterday there was no cemetery to visit. The cemeteries where I have family and friends buried are not here in this place. I knew that my family would be putting flowers on th graves of my father, my uncles, my grandmother and grandfather but I was not there to participate.

Memorial Day also causes me to reflect on the cost of war. My father fought in World War II, and while he never talked about it much, it is a war that seems easier to make sense of , if that is ever true, than the one in which we are engaged today. After we observed the scene at Fort Snelling, I remarked to my son that for many of my teenage years, supper time was accompanied by the grainy black and white footage of the Viet Nam War. Periodically we would see the coffins unloaded from planes draped in the United States flag. It was a war that was very real to my generation, we consumed it with our evening meal.

After the Israelites have traveled through the wilderness,the writer of Joshua asks: ‘When your children ask in times to come,"What do these stones mean to you?"’ The stones marked the place they were to remember as holy….. the place where they knew the Sacred to be present and acting in their lives…..a memorial forever.

I do not know the stories that were being played out yesterday as people gathered around the white gravestones of those who served in wars our country has waged over the last decades. I can only imagine their pain, their broken hearts, their despair, their future dreams cut short. My prayers are with them. But I am sure that one thing each family asks of us is, no matter our feelings of wars past or present, is that we honor the memory of those they loved….children, grandchildren, sons, daughters, parents, all….forever…and that we teach our children to do the same.