My Sunday Ritual

Every Sunday morning while Jack's in the tub, I watch This Week with George Stephanopoulos--interesting political interviews, lively round table discussion about current affairs, all with an overall sense of trying to get to the core of things without being divisive.

One segment of the show--In Memorium--has become a ritual for me. Each week, In Memorium includes a list of the names of US service men and women who died in Iraq. Each week, I make a point of reading each of those names and thanking them in my heart for their sacrifice.

I have never been able to understand why we invaded Iraq. From the beginning I felt uncomfortable with the single-mindedness of our government, which seemed to lack an understanding of human nature. The only thing that gave me a glimmer of hope that we were on some sort of "correct" course was when Colin Powell-a man I would have gladly voted for if he had run for president--addressed the United Nations. I thought maybe the government really did have some substantial knowledge or insight the rest of us didn't have. Hmph.

It's not just lost lives that weigh on us. A couple of years ago, a man came into the bookstore with his daughter. His wife had asked him to pick up a book for a friend of hers. He was having trouble remembering what the book was, and I said he was welcome to use the phone to call his wife. He said that would be impossible because she was stationed in Iraq. I asked him how long she'd been there, and he said ten months. I looked at the little girl, who could not have been more than a year old, and my heart ached because she didn't know her mother and her mother didn't know her.

Regardless of whether invading Iraq was right or wrong or somewhere in between, what's done is done, and our job now is to find the best solution and move forward. I have to remain optimistic that it will all get sorted out, hopefully for the better. I have to remain optimistic because if all of these lives (American, Iraqi, British, etc) have been lost or changed forever in vain, what will that mean to us? To our humanity?