When my father ran off to the war, he was a teenager. Idealistic. Full of adventure. A poet boy.

When he came back from the war, he was a man. Broken. Angry. Hardened.

He was not alone.

War is not pretty. It is not easy. It is not an adventure. Yet, when I see photos of my father and the other young men who journeyed far from home eager to quell the Nazi advance and bring peace to a troubled world, I do not see fear in their eyes. I do not see ‘the ugly’.

I see the belief they were going off to fight for freedom, or as a commentator on the radio called it, “the good war”. For many of those young men who headed off with their heads held high and their beliefs strong, it was a fight to the death.

For men like my father, it was a war that left them troubled and angry, isolated and silent. It was a war that left them fighting for peace from the memories of the battles they could not leave behind, just like they could not leave their brothers lying lost on the battlefields of foreign soils.

Today, as I do every Remembrance Day, I shall stand with hundreds of others and honour the boys and men who never came home and those who did after sacrificing so much. I shall lay my poppy at the feet of the unknown soldier who graces Memorial Park in the downtown core and as I lay it down, I shall raise my eyes up to the sky and pledge to my father that I will not ‘make war no more’.  Not in my heart. Not in my life. Not in my world.

My father left this world many years ago carrying with him the poet boy who never came back from war. The boy who sometimes, in the silence that the man who became my father held onto to forget all that he had witnessed, appeared in letters he wrote, or poems he sent when we lived an ocean apart. It was in those notes I felt the loss of the poet boy my father kept hidden behind his anger and his silence.

To honour the sacrifice of his youth and the man he might have become had war not stolen the boy, and the sacrifices of so many young boys who fought so that we could have our freedom today, I must pledge to ‘make war no more’. And in that pledge, commit to the peaceful path; the path of Love. It is the only way I know to honour the many who lost their lives to war.

If we could all put down our arms of war and open our arms to embrace one another in Love, then perhaps this troubled world will find the peace and harmony for which they fought so hard.

In letting the guns fall silent, we must let nothing separate us from taking a step towards one another so that we can stand, arm in arm, and make peace amongst all humankind.

Namaste.

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When my daughters were young, we listened to this song over and over as we drove to the coast. It is a powerful anthem for peace.

I cannot know what it feels like to walk in your skin, different than mine, walking on the same streets where I pass freely
To feel the shame of having your body slammed by words of condemnation or sexual connotations fit for no one. Words that fall on you like acid rain as you pass by
Or experience the barb of the slurs you’ve heard slung at you like daggers to your soul screaming at you to go back to where you belong, that place where death stalked your every breath and fear was your constant companion

I cannot know your journey.

I cannot know the terror of gun-toting wild-eyed men invading your village and burning your home and stealing your children and raping you as an act of war
Or the hunger that gnaws at your bones as your children cling to your sides begging for food when your hands, and your belly, are empty
Or the deep all-consuming grief of burying your sons and daughters beneath the blood-red soils that claimed their lives because others coveted the land you love

I cannot know your story.

I cannot see the courage it took to trust strangers with what little money you had as you and your children huddled in a boat to take a perilous journey across seas you could not know for sure any of you would survive
Or feel the faith you had no choice but to hold onto as you lay beneath the mud that covered your home as you waited for rescue or death, whichever came first, to embrace you

I cannot know your tragedies.

I can stop minimizing the shame of those who sling words that make your walk a hellish passage where dignity lies struggling for breath beneath every step you take
I can stop judging you for our differences, shaming you for your lack of means, blaming you for your situation
I can stop condemning you for leaving your war-torn lands or storm-ravaged towns far away to seek refuge here to become my neighbours on this land where I live but do not own. This land that is not our land but everyone’s land, for no one can completely own something that is part of everything that is this planet upon which we walk.

I can acknowledge your journey is different than mine. That I do not know what you know but can learn from you how to be courageous, brave, kind, even in the face of fear.

I can start believing you without insisting you repeat your story again and again.

I can start listening to your story and honouring it as your truth so that all our truth has room to breathe in freedom.

And I can let go of my judgements so that together we can find a more peaceful path to living side by side on this planet spinning through space where each of us is searching for our place to belong. This planet all 7 billion of us call our home.

I can do this. I know I can because I am learning from you what it means to be human.

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There are mornings, like this one, where the muse awakens and writes her way into being heard, seen, known.

I am grateful on these mornings when I let go of my agenda, my ‘knowing’ of what I will write and give her full reign.