What began just after the Civil War as a day of remembrance for our country’s war dead sure has morphed and changed since the time of Lincoln.
Today, Memorial Day seems forever tied to backyard barbecues, swimming pools, and appliance sales. Yes, appliance sales. Ironically, here in metro New Orleans, at stores on Veterans Memorial Boulevard.
Yes, the last Monday of every May has now become the unofficial start to America’s summer. As the true meaning becomes lost along with the ashes of yesterday’s cookout.What needs to be remembered – and indeed commemorated on this day – is the Strength & Honor that drove America’s war dead down the path to becoming America’s war dead.
Thumbing through the pages of history it becomes very apparent. People come and go. Causes come and go. What is perceived as Right & Wrong comes and goes.
Strength & Honor are universal constants that do not.
Memorial Day has its roots in the late 1860s, shortly after the death of President Abraham Lincoln.
But ya know, when Abe was a little boy, you or I could have gone down to the French Market here in New Orleans… and purchased Shaquille O’Neal!
And, no, not to play on our basketball team.
What is Right and what is Wrong, indeed all man’s laws are founded and based on man’s myopia, his nearsightedness… on the ever-shifting sands of human perspective.
Universal Law, some would call Divine Law, works from another level altogether. And this is the level where Strength & Honor LIVE!Strength & Honor do not recognize skin color, nationality, culture, time or space… or even a uniform.
From ancient Greece through the Roman Empire, from Britain’s mastery of the world’s oceans to America (England, Junior) and her not-so-civil war… the dead have piled-up in the countless billions!
Causes, Empires, Cultures, Countries and what is perceived as Right & Wrong have shifted with the winds of change down through all the centuries.
Strength & Honor have not.
America’s heralded General Patton once remarked that “No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor bastard die for his country.”
On this Memorial Day weekend 2023 let’s you & I send up a prayer. A prayer to the Father – to what Napoleon Hill termed ‘Infinite Intelligence’ – to remove ‘bastard’, ‘war’, ‘death’ and ‘country’ from this equation.
And let me raise a glass, or possibly a leftover beer from your backyard barbecue, and propose a toast.
A toast – To Strength & Honor!
~ With respect & prayers from the new Jer-USA-lem, New Orleans,
Micheal G. Ziants
Airlift Productions ~ a Catalyst for Positive Change since 1984
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“Mike, thank you for 25 years of successfully teaching Algebra to children of color and students who were living in poverty. They aren’t living in poverty anymore thanks to you and the mathematical skills you gave them. They are doctors, engineers and scientists today.” ~ the late John R. Lee, Founder of the I CAN Learn Mathematics E-Learning System