Memorial Day: Many Are the Mysteries

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On this Memorial Day do we remember what should not have been?

Only the West’s soul is more scarred than its landscape.

Do we still mourn the lost, do we treat the wounds, do we rub the scars with oil?

Do the children of the children lost still weep for the embraces that might have been?

Is the love lost lost to winners and losers alike?

Is there healing in the heart of humanity when tens of millions are cut down and their youth extinguished?

Many are the mysteries of human history.

Why are we so gifted in cruelty and destruction?

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa…

This reflection was first published here in May 2014.

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The featured image is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

W. Winston Elliott III is Editor-in-Chief of The Imaginative Conservative and President of The Free Enterprise Institute. Additionally, Mr. Elliott is Visiting Professor of Liberal Arts in the Honors College of Houston Christian University, and member of the Board of Rosary College. He earned his Master of Arts in Liberal Arts from St. John’s College, Master of Arts in Theology from the University of St. Thomas (Houston), and Master of Business Administration, with Honors, from the University of Houston.