I want to respond
to the retired Marine
who watched Democratic Congressional Leaders
during the State of our crippled Union event,
disappointed at how their patriotism,
their loyalty to sacred sacrifices of soldiers
appears too tepid,
jaded,
ungrateful
as compared to more thunderous enthusiastic applause
and standing ovations of Republican Leaders.

I have noticed this too
both during various national bipartisan rhetorical events,
and also within my conscientious objector self,
And I wonder about my own hesitation
to celebrate military heroism,
as if this were an oxymoron,
like military peace intelligence.

For me,
such internal heart-warming applause
is chilled by my own half-empty embarrassment
that I have gone through my recent months and years
perhaps too full of willing tolerance
for moral assumptions too big to fail,
that we are OK to predatively place
other men and women,
regardless of culture or religion or nationality,
and their necessarily neglected children,
in harms toxically unnecessary way.

An heroic investment
far too expensive for developing healthy persons,
plants,
or planet.

This is not how we wisely invest
in sacred Earth’s climates
and healthing cultures.

My celebration of military heroes
remains perennially muted
by my unease about planting future threats
by paying springtime federal taxes
because I conscientiously object,
for spiritual experience
and religious belief reasons,
how large the mountainous percentage
invested in threat of death and dying
and paying ever-mounting interest
on past military industrialized deficit
overheating budgets.

Stolen from potential health
and well-being
of Earth’s future generations
spread throughout all Earth’s sacred residents
now terrified of upcoming ballistic climates.

I should have tried harder,
more conscientiously,
to invest in restoring ballasts of co-operative climates.

So, I intend no disrespect
for courage
and honor
and heroes
for those who have survived
violence and
fear and
anger and
greed and
political pretensions of Elitists
too old to fight themselves,
but just rightwinged enough
to invest in further armaments,
and thereby profit nicely.

I feel no disrespect
for those who have not survived
and will not survive,
much less thrive in pathological death-culture.

But nationalistic applause
and praying for God’s blessings on U.S. First and Last,
Right or Wrong,
feel consciousness unsettling
when I experience God’s applause
for love and peace
and not our hate and
fear and
anger and
violence against each other,
regardless of religion or
culture or
national origin
or gender
or color
or age,
born,
long gone,
or yet unborn.

I know God too omnipotent and omnipresent
to respect inhumane national apartheid boundaries.

Heroes
are those who have gone well past their patriotic duty
far beyond what anyone could honestly
and reasonably ask,
beyond what most of us might expect of ourselves,

Especially while those left behind
remain in free-markets
to profit off the tanks
and submarines
and rifles soldiers bravely carry,
bullets and bombs they aim,
often at the even more profitable investments
of these same 1% Elite,
regardless of International Conglomerate Status.

For those who are persuaded
what was asked
was itself a positive democracy protecting moral act,
standing ovations of buoyant applause
feel resoundly called for
from warmly celebrating hearts.

But, for those of us
who empathize with heroes both alive and dead
regardless of religion or culture or national origin,
who feel such violence reflects our own democracy protecting failures
to conscientiously love all sacred life sufficiently,
Such unmitigated happiness feels heart-wrenchingly wrong.

In face of such selfless investment
in violence and risk to healthy futures
for threatening death
and objectives of destruction,
we more likely bow our disinvested heads,
take a humbled knee,
silent in awe of such uncompelling bad-breathed ambiguity,

Yet not wanting to offend
against such sacred gifts
offered at an unacceptable cost
We never had the conscientious right to ask
another soul to pay.

I do not believe disrespect
is democratically intended
for lack of con-celebrating our violent history’s heroes;
but respectful listening grows more conscientiously compelling
for humility
of political and economic enablers,
co-investors like myself,
with guilt and shame about what others have paid
because we did not act sufficiently
for waging and investing peace,
Incarnating God’s love
for all Earth’s SacredTribes.