According to a recent biographer, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. was the most illustrious figure in the history of American jurisprudence-Johnnie Cochran notwithstanding. Holmes was also one of the most influential public figures in the Twentieth Century. For thirty years, from 1902 to 1932, the Harvard-trained Holmes' brilliant intellect held sway over the United States Supreme Court, where he became known as the Great Dissenter. As a young man, Holmes served with distinction as a soldier, surviving three wounds and rising to the rank of Captain in the Twentieth Massachusetts Infantry. One of his most famous speeches was delivered on Memorial Day, 1884. It was titled, "In Our Youth Our Hearts Were Touched With Fire." In it, Holmes answers a young man who had asked why people still observed Memorial Day. Holmes responds:
To the indifferent inquirer who asks why Memorial Day is still kept up we may answer, it celebrates and solemnly reaffirms from year to year a national act of enthusiasm and faith. It embodies in the most impressive form our belief that to act with enthusiasm and faith is the condition of acting greatly. To fight out a war, you must believe something and want something with all your might. So must you do to carry anything else to an end worth reaching. More than that, you must be willing to commit yourself to a course, perhaps a long and hard one, without being able to foresee exactly where you will come out. All that is required of you is that you should go somewhither as hard as ever you can. The rest belongs to fate. One may fall-at the beginning of the charge or at the top of the earthworks; but in no other way can we reach the rewards of victory.
When we meet thuswe also know very well that, if we would be worthy of the past, we must find new fields for action or thought, and make for ourselves new careers.
But, nevertheless, the generation that carried on the war has been set apart by its experience. Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing. While we are permitted to scorn nothing but indifference, and do not pretend to undervalue the worldly rewards of ambition, we have seen with our own eyes, beyond and above the gold fields, the snowy heights of honor, and it is for us to bear the report to those who come after us. Above all, we have learned that whether we accept from Fortune a spade, and look downward and dig, or from Aspiration an axe and rope to scale the ice, the one and only success which is ours to command is to bring to our work a mighty heart.
On this Sunday before Veterans Day, we pause to honor the members of this congregation who, over the generations on fields of battle, brought to their work a deep faith and a mighty heart. We have no record of service from either the First World War or the Korean War. But, as the plaques displayed in the vestibule today illustrate, at least 140 members of All Souls Church-mostly men but a few women as well-served in World War II. There were sergeants and seamen, medics and submarine commanders, aviators and intelligence officers, privates and lieutenants and majors, coxswains and yeomen and colonels.
Four men died in the war: Jacques Rodney Eisner, Frazier Curtis, Adolf Paul Constantin Schramm, Jr., and James Freeman Curtis, Jr. They died, as the inscription on the plaque notes, "that freedom may live." The enlarged photograph in the vestibule shows the chancel here at All Souls on Anniversary Sunday, November 10, 1946. In the photograph, a two-tone banner hangs from the high pulpit, on which is fixed 140 stars-4 gold stars to honor those who died, and 136 blue stars to honor those who served and survived.
According to our records, only one All Souls member fought and died in Vietnam. His name was Eugene Shumbris, and a tracing of his name on the wall at the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial in Washington, D.C. is also on display in the vestibule today.
The legacy of the people who fought our nation's wars, facing as they did the terrors of tyranny and the horrors of Holocaust, reminds us that life is a profound and passionate thing. Most of those who served believed something and carried it through to the end. We owe them a debt of gratitude and honor for the freedom and prosperity which they preserved for us, and it is that debt which we ponder here today. But as Holmes noted more than a century and a quarter ago, if we are to be worthy of the past, we must find for ourselves new fields for action or thought, and make for ourselves new careers.
For almost all of us, that new field of action will not be the battlefield. As Lewis Lapham pointed out recently in a scathing Harper's Magazine editorial, making a war these days is a lot like making a movie. For example, when Slobodan Milosevic failed to respond to polite diplomacy-"Please stop killing Albanians in Kosovo"-the generals of NATO undertook to spell out their message in the block letters of high explosives. The problem was that Milosevic didn't take the hint, which presented the NATO commanders with a quandary. They are mostly in the communications business, not in the business of waging a war. They know how to organize impressive publicity campaigns using aircraft carriers as visual aids and how to simulate combat on state-of-the-art computer screens, but those projects should not be confused with the Normandy landing or the Tet offensive, or any other battle in which soldiers run the risk of being killed.
The American officials at NATO are particularly adamant about the point. American troops are simply too precious to send into what Madeleine Albright calls "non-permissive environments." Thus, if any dying is to be done, Lapham concludes on behalf of the generals, it is best left to the civilians who live in those non-permissive environments. They are good at it, and also much practiced. As usual, Lapham is both cynical and right. Whereas in the First World Wars, ninety percent of the casualties were soldiers on the battlefield, mostly dying a hero's death for causes they mostly believed were worth giving their lives to, today ninety percent of war casualties are not soldiers at all, but civilians, mostly women and children.
There are no easy answers to the moral morass of modern day foreign affairs, especially in places such as Rwanda, Bosnia and Kosovo. Yet I firmly believe that there is no such thing as innocent bystanding, even if it's not always-or ever-clear how we should weigh in.
But we are still left with Oliver Wendell Holmes' exhortation ringing in our ears. The generation that carried on the war has shown us, by the fire in their hearts and the courage in their actions, that life is a profound and passionate thing. And if we would be worthy of the past, we must find new fields for action or thought, and make for ourselves new careers. If acting with passion and faith is the condition of acting greatly, in what do we passionately believe? What do we want with all our might, so much so that we are willing to commit ourselves to a course, perhaps a long and hard one, without being able to foresee exactly where we will come out?
In other words, even if we sometimes think there is nothing in this world worth giving up our lives for, that doesn't mean there is nothing worth giving our lives to. Mighty-hearted people still abound, even off the battlefield, people who have the courage to give their lives to something bigger than their own hopes and dreams.
Jeffrey Wigand, for example, has given his life to keeping children from smoking. The $300,000 a year tobacco company executive quit his job to testify against his former employer, then started a foundation called Smoke-Free-Kids to teach children about the dangers of smoking. He now makes $30,000 a year and works harder than he has ever worked in his life. Would he do it again? "Yes," he says without hesitation, "I am at peace with myself."
Aung San Suu Kyi has given her life to the democracy movement in Myanmar. San Suu Kyi was two years old when her father, then the leader of the democratic opposition in Burma, was assassinated in 1947. After attending school in England, San Suu Kyi returned to Burma-now Myanmar-in 1988 to care for her aging mother. While there, she witnessed first hand the slaughter of protesters by the military and the brutality of the military ruler. So she co-founded the National League for Democracy, which won 80% of the parliamentary seats that were open in 1990. But the military rulers refused to honor the election results and placed San Suu Kyi under house arrest, where she was held incommunicado for five years. She won the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, and was released in 1995.
Which is not to say that we need to win Nobel Peace Prizes to make a difference. There are heroes much closer to home. Marian Wright Edelman told us about one of them several weeks ago. Her name is Jean Thompson, and she has given her life to the children she teaches-kids like Teddy Staller. Teddy was a boy who was unattractive. He often was dirty, his hair often unkempt and uncombed, he didn't pay attention in class, he smelled on some days. He just was unattractive, and Jean Thompson didn't like him. Jean looked at Teddy's record and in first grade it said: "Teddy is a good boy, he shows promise in his work and attitude, but he has a poor home situation." Second grade: "Teddy is falling behind in his work, he's too serious, his mother is terminally ill." Third grade: "His mother died this year. His father shows no interest, and he needs help." Fourth grade: "Teddy's in deep waters, in need of psychiatric help, and is totally withdrawn."
Christmas came and all the children brought Jean Thompson nicely wrapped presents. Teddy's came in an old paper bag with a rubber band around it. All of the children began to giggle, but she had the good sense to open it up and take out an old rhinestone bracelet with some of the pieces missing and put it on her arm and hold it up and say, "Boys and girls isn't this pretty." Taking their cue from the teacher, they calmed down and agreed. She then took out a nearly empty bottle of perfume and dabbed a little bit on and said "Doesn't it smell good!"
At the end of the day, all of the children went home except Teddy, who stopped by her desk and said, "Ms. Thompson that was my mother's bracelet, and it looks real pretty on you and you smell just like her." When Teddy left, Jean Thompson got down on her knees and she asked God to forgive her, and she committed herself to helping the children who were falling behind, particularly Teddy, and she did. She tutored him, and by the end of the year he caught with most of the children and surpassed some.
Several years later she got a letter: "Dear Ms. Thompson, I'm graduating from high school, wanted you to be the first to know. Love, Teddy." Four years later she got another note: "Dear Ms. Thompson, Wanted you to be the first to know the university has not been easy but I liked it. Love, Teddy Staller." And four years later she got still another note: Dear Ms. Thompson, as of today I am Theodore J. Staller, MD. How about that! Wanted you to be the first to know. I am going to get married in July and I want you to come sit where my mother would have sat because you're the only family I have. Dad died last year." And she went and she sat where his mother should have sat.
You and I may not be called to give up our lives for some worthy cause. But that doesn't mean we are not called to give our lives to some worthy purpose. Teddy Staller is worth giving our lives to. The freedom of people to live and believe as they choose is worth giving our lives to. Children who grow up healthy and whole are worth giving our lives to. Life is a profound and passionate thing. If we are to be worthy of our past, worthy heirs of those who served courageously and died gallantly, you and I too must give our lives-passionately and profoundly-to whatever fire that touches our hearts. Copyright AllSouls 1999.