"What do you fear, my lady?"

Aragorn: You have some skill with a blade.
Eowyn: The women of this country learned long ago, those without swords can still die upon them. I fear neither death nor pain.
Aragorn: What do you fear, my lady?
Eowyn: A cage. To stay behind bars until use and old age accept them and all chance of valor has gone beyond recall or desire.

Living a life of "yes"

Why don’t we live adventurously? I wonder about that, sometimes. There are all these things we say we want to do—dreams we want to live—places we want to go—and yet we are conditioned to do none of them. If it’s not usually done, it must be wrong. We begin assuming the word “unusual” means “impossible.”

Traveling—learning new skills—doing something exciting—we have so much life we want to live and yet never consider we could perhaps do it if we actually tried. Having a “bucket list” becomes a silly stage in life, rather than life itself; it becomes yet another to-do list, and not an entire perspective.

But what if we were to live adventurously—to live in a state of “yes”—of, “let’s make that happen”—and not “I wish.” What a life! To use a horse term, we’d be “freed up,” our motivation there, our hands and feet and lives in total willingness. It seems it would be a key in traveling light and in living without baggage—in living in surrender.

It is in that life that miracles would become real, because we would be looking for them.

on Memorial Day

Today, on Memorial Day, the word “service” can become overused. We think of something over and done, given away and forgotten about, offered and then, somehow, completed. Perhaps, for a few, that is the way it is. Service is simply a contract, to be made and broken off like any other.

Yet for so many people, it is more than that: it is a covenant. It’s their commitment to America before the uniform is ever worn and before anyone even knows; it’s the sacrifice of changing everything in order to keep the greatest things the same; it’s the understanding that an individual can make a difference among the mass of a thousand. Such covenants are not broken; once made, these men and women serve America for the rest of their lives, long after the uniform has been hung up for the last time.

They have a vision, perhaps clearer than ours, of the glory of a greater land, a heavenly country, a city on a hill, and their longing for such a land is the fire that burns within them. Their covenant is an unconditional dedication that remains no matter how it is rejected and is an undying hope that lifts up when all else fails, because it is based on something deeper: an inherent knowledge within every human soul of honor, of hope, and of glory.

So, today, to my grandfather and my grandmother and to all in covenant service to America—thank you.