An act of love

Now before anyone gets any "funny" ideas about what I am writing about, it is a completely platonic act of love that I am referring to.

Tonight, I watched about 70 people stand out in 10 degree cold (-10 F with the windchill factor) honoring local veterans—living and dead—for their service. About 20 or so of them were lighting luminary bags. There were 754 of them carefully laid out with each veterans name, branch of service and war they were a part of listed on the bags. Each was carefully and thoughtfully hand-written in a beautiful script.

In the photo accompanying this post is a few of the people lighting the bags and just a small portion of the bags themselves. It was a very moving ceremony which I was covering for the newspaper.

A couple of my dear friends who are part of our local Veterans of Foreign Wars Auxiliary headed the project which they referred to as "an act of love."

This was all done by volunteers who not only volunteered their time to the project, but also financial resources for the bags, the sand, the candles and the lighters.

I do not love the idea of war. I know that people all over the globe have been effected by war. I know that sometimes "we" fight "you" based on beliefs or because of some ideal. We don't hate each other. We are all citizens of this world and when I think about honoring the veterans who lived and died. I think of their sacrifice not to fight in wars, but to keep peace in our world.

This act of love will be remembered by those of us who attended it and if I do a good job with my photos and my story-telling, the people who didn't attend will also have a sense of the act of love that took place.

Best wishes,
Karin :)