We had our last military draft in the United States in 1973 – the year before I graduated from high school. The young men in the classes ahead of me in high school all had to think about the draft when they were looking at their futures. It might be hard for young people today to imagine what that must have been like.

Memorial Day is a somber day. I think about all the young lives lost in wars. As a mother, I think about all the other mothers whose children didn’t return from wars, and my heart breaks.

Memorial Day is a day to remember the lives lost in war. And, for me, it’s a day to reaffirm my commitment to peace.

“Bloodshed, war, and oppression belong to the darker ages, and shall be relegated to oblivion.”
– Mary Baker Eddy (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 285)

At the Bow cemetery this morning…