This is my first Post done from my iPhone. My laptop is In The repair shop. Bear with me. My fingers are fat and the keyboard sooooo skinny. Today is veterans day. I almost forgot cept the bank was closed when I went to do some business. My dad was a submariner in WW II and in our family today we have one young man flying in the Air Force and another captain in Army in Iraq, along with his new bride. I’m very conflicted and saddened by war, nonetheless I’d like to take this special day to commend the men and women who are willing to lay down their lives to defend our country. The people who decide whether to engage in war or not are not the ones we honor on this day. Those folks often make life altering decisions based on information only known to them. My dad went to war to protect his young family from the enemy of his day, the Nazis, just as Bill and Sarah and Grant are engaged in military operations today against the hArder-to-define enemy of the war America is engaged in today, fighting religious extremists.
The name of enemies may change. The way we figt our wars change. But war is war. And the people who are out there protecting us and making it possible for us back home to have our freedoms, our pleasures, our uncountable opportunities — they are the soldiers, sailors, pilots and support personel of our Armed Forces. They are the ones who might get killed to defend our way of life. I may cringe at the thought of war, as I’m sure many of them do, and pray that one day soon our world will come together in ways that we can accept each others differences instead of killing for ours to be embraced; yes I can hold those thoughts most dear yet at the same time take the time and effort to thank each and every soldier I run into in my day. And today I’d like to thank every man and woman, young or old , in active service , retired, or passed on as mu own dAd is, for doing what you do or have done—-for all of us who cherish freedom.

My typing is belabored but I hope you feel my heartfelt sentiment: I deeply love and respect the warriors who defend the human right to be free. Like the bAganad Gita expresses: it’s the spiritual duty of all to slay evil. When evil has been rightly identified it is, according to the yogic scripture, as the Gita says, to defend the path of rigteousness, even if brother must slay brother, or cousin slays cousin in Battle. It’s a difficult concept and one I spent a lot of time grappling g with after the cataclysmic events of 9/11, but today, as both a citizon of America and someone who considers themSelf a spiritual warioor— willing to lay down my own life to defend the rights of the individual over being forced to live under a totalitRian regime— today I lift my hat and offer praises to all our Vets: past, present, and future.
In Light, your
lordflea