Return to Pyramid Lake

My car is loaded with sleeping bag, vacuum cleaner, bugdope, sunscreen, and canoe, and I'm off to Pyramid Lake, my personal heaven on earth.  It won't be all fun and relaxation, though, since I will be one of many volunteers helping to open Pyramid Life Center, a spiritual retreat center on the shores of one of the most beautiful lakes in the Adirondack wilderness.  I've been coming here since 1992, a year I count as pivotal for helping me try to live from the very center of my being, attempting to heal from the influences of our steeped-in-violence world.

While sweeping up mouse dirt and dead flies and making up beds, I'll be thinking of all the victims of so many wars, unending war, through all the years.  We honor the soldiers this weekend, acknowledging their sacrifices and their willingness to set their own desires aside to do their nations' bidding, right or wrong.  But let us also remember those millions and millions of noncombatants, their deaths always outnumbering those of soldiers by at least ten-to-one in every war, and for whom there will be no parades nor monuments raised in their memory this weekend.

This is my Memorial Day prayer:  Dear God, please bless us with leaders who recognize the sinfulness and futility of war.