A Cup of Conversation – July 2014

Memorial Day afternoon a man driving down Oregon Street suffered a cardiac arrest then plowed into the face of GoodBean Jacksonville but not before crushing table and chairs just outside the entrance. The one hundred fifty-five year old solid brick pillar absorbed the car’s massive blow. Only by the grace of God was there no one seated at the tables because life today would look completely different for many people in this small town. Over the past twenty-four years I’ve seen folks sitting there thousands of times including entire families with little ones joyfully devouring cinnamon rolls and spilling hot chocolate like evening bathwater out of a tub. As a long-time merchant, I’ve grown used to unexpected phone calls which are exclusively bad but that particular call would have been too much for me.
The truth is, life is fragile. Every day should be memorial, but it is not. Most of us could agree on how much time is spilled out upon the sidewalks of taking life for granted. Only when something’s taken away, do we understand its value. Health, wealth, and youth are fickle lovers. They always leave when we least expect and leave us breathless when they go. Maybe life is better lived preparing for them to come and go? Joy is the only emotion impervious to life-change but it takes discipline to acquire and requires belief in something far greater than oneself. Ungrounded joy is a form of happiness, an emotion which rarely outlives the common housefly. Life is so much more.
Once a year we celebrate a day of memorial honoring our brave who gave everything in service to this country. We owe them far more than we can ever pay. I wonder what they would say to the question of how we can really honor ultimate sacrifice. I think the screenwriter of Saving Private Ryan got it right when Tom Hank’s last breath was spent telling Matt Damon to earn this. Contemporary Hollywood does have its moments. Isn’t life much more than the minimum spent covering our own bases? Earn this must mean the privilege to live free, not the right. It is a privilege paid for by the literal life-blood of someone else.
We are all flesh and blood Americans. Let us live everyday with joy, making the conscious effort to acknowledge great blessings of life and liberty, first endowed by the Creator and sealed again and again through the blood of our fallen. We do this by the act of remembering. The nation’s first, middle and last generations knew this but it’s just not cool in an easy-freedom pop-culture. This virtue should never go out of date because blessings taken for granted take wings. If you’re over 50, you’re probably nodding in agreement because painful loss has already visited your doorstep. Nothing lasts forever except what is selflessly given. Everything else is subject to change in a literal heartbeat. If you don’t believe me just ask the fifty-four year old man who had the massive coronary. Last we heard he survived and thank Goodness for that… Be good not bitter.