Extraordinary Courage to Live One's Life Out is Required

Journey’s end, victory 1945


Words surely not escaping her,
That dying, not living, is due,
The martyr whispers to herself:
“Thy calm be mine, Lord."

“And not the stillness of my youth,
When dried eyed, I once stated
A valiant desire to overcome
The dread of my life ending."

A soldier they say knows for him,
When other survivors chide sore,
That of him more living is required:
“Moving on takes utmost valor."

"I now must redefine valor
As living life as life requires.
If I otherwise limit valor’s use,
Futile will be a comrade’s death."

And so we too journey onward
By way of inns and taverns
In which the talk of the place
Is of war’s end and a trite peace.

Someone must pay the costs,
Others redeem the prize.
One claims the laurel wreath
Which crowns the victor’s head.

Hitler at the end of his Reich
Safe for the moment in his hole
Puts his pistol to his mouth
And silences his dictator.

And to whom does solace fall
In the ruins of Berlin and Tokyo
If not in the camps in which lie
The brutalized, the maimed, the live.

To a blind and palsied crone,
Adrift at life's end, marooned,
Left with no family or friends,
As her lips quiver in thanks.

Holding her, skin withered,
Tendons bare on bone, rank,
In a harshness of unkind light,
For us, life, like peace, grows dear.


by Richard J. Hilber.

Published by Fairmount Avenue UMC
in its 2012 Advent Meditation Reader.