for whit and lindsay.

instead of writing the three papers i have due, ive been thumbing through vera britain's diary from world war I. pathetically, this is a normal late night activity for me. i cant get enough of this war. maybe because ive experienced what its like to have the hope and innocence of your soul crushed when you lose a person you love, to experience what its like to be forever changed by one event, just as the very fabric of the world was changed by this first enormous war, never to return to its state of innocence. they marched off singing, and they never came back, young boys with futures, with wives, with girlfriends, with beating hearts stilled by gunshots. i feel like i can hear the silence of the night, after the battle was over, when bodies lay unmoving and the stars came out. i stumbled across this passage in which vera describes losing her fiancee roland in battle and i wanted to share, because i think it is beautiful, and because i know it is true:

"perhaps one can never rise to the heights until one has gone down into the depths--such depths as I have known of late. Perhaps I shall one day rise, and be worthier of him who in his life both in peace and in war, and in his death on the fields of France, showed me the 'way more plain.' At any rate, if I do face danger and suffering with some measure of heroism, it will be because I have learnt through him that love is supreme, that love is stronger than death and the fear of death."

through watching my mom suffer, i learned those things too vera. i know without the depths we would never learn to rise. some of my most favorite people are going through those depths right now. but i know they too saw someone they love face suffering with heroism, with courage, and with faith, and that they will rise to the heights one day because they have to experience the depths right now. somehow there is beauty in the suffering and a strengthening of the soul, a sweetness that assures me we are all part of something much bigger than we even know. love is supreme, and stronger than death. stronger than fear. i might not know a lot of things, but that is one thing i am sure of, because it is a force much more powerful and real than us all, knitting hearts together around the world and connecting us to the living and the dead, those that have come before and those that are to come. hallelujah.