Remembering - Missoula City Cemetery, Missoula, Montana

Thankful for the many who secure and defend freedom in this world, and even more for the One Who gives freedom of our soul.

"Most people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise ... If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world....

Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same."  

- C.S. Lewis (1898-1963), from Mere Christianity, pp. 135-137

On Memorial Day - Missoula, Montana

"137* years later, Memorial Day remains one of America's most cherished patriotic observances. The spirit of this day has not changed - it remains a day to honor those who died defending our freedom and democracy." 

-  Doc Hastings

(*Now 148 years later, according to this site's history of the day.)

Lilacs For Remembrance - Missoula, Montana

"When lilacs last in the door-yard bloom’d,  
And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,  
I mourn’d—and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring...
  
Comrades mine, and I in the midst, and their memory ever I
   keep—for the dead I loved so well;
For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands...and this for
   his dear sake;  
Lilac and star and bird, twined with the chant of my soul,  
There in the fragrant pines, and the cedars dusk and dim."

- from "When Lilacs Last In The Dooryard Bloomed" by Walt Whitman

Red Poppies - Bud and Bloom, Hamilton, Montana

“The most wasted of all days is one without laughter. “ - e.e. cummings

On this Memorial Day in the United States, I offer a sincere thank you to all serving in our Armed Forces for guarding our freedom, without which laughter is scarce.