07/04/2014
This 4th of July, I honor all those who have served our country with honor, especially those heroes who gave or were willing to give their lives to provide and preserve our liberties and freedoms. We lost one such American hero this week in Louis Zamperini. I honor his life and all those who served our country as he did. Thank you for service and the sacrifices of your families. I love this country. I am humbly proud to be an American. I believe America was founded by brave god fearing men and women who believed in divine providence and were willing offer their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor. Many, like Louis Zamperini, have likewise demonstrated they are willing to give their all for the liberty and freedoms we have inherited at their expense. God bless America and long may she wave!
For Louis and those great ones like him who delivered and preserved our liberties and freedoms.
When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.
When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.
When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.
Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance,
fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance
of dark, cold
caves.
And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.
― Maya Angelou
