Blue skies Towers Pentagon Planes Crashing Burning Running Black skies Police Firefighters Chaplains Rescuing Rolling Falling Disbelief Weeping Surviving Not surviving Empty skies Remembering Revenging Devils Heroes Justice Glory Freedom. Thank you.
The world is a remarkable place, full of people who love life, who love their children, and, free or oppressed, love liberty. But the world is also a perilous place, contaminated by a few envious villains who covet power, who rage at the thought that people come and go without their leave, and who revel in death; whose malevolent ideologies the forces of freedom—even to last breath and last drop of blood—must resist. All evil is worthy of defiance—and all virtue is worthy of all sacrifice.
The Hebrews taught that when people are free, they are rich, and that to save a single life is to save the whole world. Today we are rich and we are safe by the intervention of men and women who risked all—to save a world—your world.
Today we salute the firefighters, police officers and resolute civilians who esteemed the lives of OTHERS as of greater worth than their own, who did not expect to be heroes, yet they did The Greater Work, and were buried in smoldering ruin.
Today, we salute all men and women in uniform—who stand—and sometimes fall—guarding our inalienable human liberty; the sentries of our children’s futures: soldiers-in-arms, firefighters, police officers, who fight in far away places, and who stand here with us—among us—daily risking life to save life to save…the world. This is the cause of freedom.
Though you may not know their names, remember their sacrifice, give thanks for their vigilance, and follow their courage…
Blessings,
—j
Jay McCarl 