A PRAYER FOR THE HUMAN FAMILY

Many years ago in the spirit of ‘I can do something crazier than you can’ a group of young men combined their efforts into pulling off the ultimate Halloween prank.

Late on the final day of October they broke into the local furniture store and with muffled snickers of joy and jubilant merriment they spent the bewitching hours switching all the price tags in the store.

The next morning the owners were greeted with price tags selling radios for ninety-nine cents and wastebaskets for five hundred dollars. Early shoppers gleefully picked out their longed for sofa which that morning was priced at three dollars and seventy nine cents. One elderly lady screamed she would never pay three hundred and twenty nine dollars for a plain old picture frame.

Although the young men gleefully watched through the big front windows of the store from across the street, the owners were left to bustle through the problems and toils created by what the young men thought was an evening of fun.
Those of us whose lives span multiple decades may be excused if oft times we become confused and frustrated by the value switching of our ‘up to date progressive modern day world.’

We are constantly observing standards being lowered in order to conform to performances.

We see actions which traditionally were considered to be evil now being identified as acceptable activities, illnesses or excusable character flaws.

We hear long held values being shouted down into the abyss of old fashioned silliness.

We stand in awe as all that was good in former generations is replaced by that which is currently deemed as pleasurable.

As we are inundated with changes which seem to increase in rapidity with each turning of the hour glass, we witness a generation involved in frequent judgments which become clouded by strange conflicts as old values collide with new concepts.

Although these introductory paragraphs could be a springboard into an endless array of subjects, today I want to use them to talk about what has happened to our holidays of commemoration. For many of the multiple generational group, value switching philosophies over the years have created curious moments of mixed wonderings, emotions, values and ideals.

How does a generation who grew up on war heroes learn to hate war?

How does a generation who has learned to enjoy and love peace learn to pay proper respect to those who have paid such high prices for that peace?

How does a nation properly honor the men and their life threatening deeds without glorifying the events of destruction and desolation?

If the day arrives when our fervent prayers for perpetual peace are answered and brothers and sisters throughout the lands live in love and unity and we war no more against the universal human family, I suspect in that day and in that way we will give the ultimate tribute to those millions who have laid down their lives in the quest for peace.