On this year’s 81st Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, Jews remember their own Pork Chop Hill. Six million were exterminated and the survivors went back to the land of their ancestors. They made gardens in the desert and became defenders of life.
Let’s go Barry. I’m in the process of reading the Old Testament cover to cover, and am midway through Leviticus. The fight is an ancient one, and along with much pain is an incredible amount of beauty.
Nature provided us with life, so the least we can do to repay for this immense gift is to pay attention to the multitudes of beings and gifts she gave us along with it! Good reminder to stay aware and not fall into mindless routines and digital distraction.
After reading a couple of Sam’s essays, one might think he is saying you need to have a combat experience to be fully alive. After the pleasure of reading almost all of Sam’s essays, I believe he is always talking about the importance of finding a path (and there are probably about ten of ‘em) to discovering the deep truth of what Joseph Campbell says here:
“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.”
Keep on banging that drum, Sam! So many of us have fallen asleep in our modern cocooned life. We are all on the hero’s journey.
“Take good care of our Pork Chop.” Of course, they said that. That hill, covered in the lives and blood of their friends and buddies, was as much a part of them as their hearts and souls. Hallowed ground. Sacred ground.
That line stayed with me: “Take good care of our Pork Chop.”
There’s something almost unbearable in that kind of attachment, not to the hill itself, but to what was lived and lost on it. I think what you’re pointing to with the “Combat Sabbath” is real in a very specific sense. When everything unnecessary falls away, something in perception sharpens, and people meet each other differently. Not abstractly, not ideologically, but at the level of immediate presence. Where I find myself hesitating is in what comes after that. Not the observation, but the implication, because it’s one thing to say that extreme conditions reveal something essential. It’s another to suggest that without them we lose access to it. I’m not sure the clarity found there belongs to war itself, or to what war removes.
That sentence on the wall feels less like love for the hill, and more like a trace of human continuity in a place designed to erase it. Which makes it more significant, not less, but also more tragic.
The question it leaves me with isn’t whether war can produce meaning. It clearly can. It’s whether we can reach that level of presence without needing to be stripped down by force.
On this year’s 81st Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, Jews remember their own Pork Chop Hill. Six million were exterminated and the survivors went back to the land of their ancestors. They made gardens in the desert and became defenders of life.
Let’s go Barry. I’m in the process of reading the Old Testament cover to cover, and am midway through Leviticus. The fight is an ancient one, and along with much pain is an incredible amount of beauty.
“They made gardens in the desert”
True, both literally and metaphorically. Thanks Barry.
Nature provided us with life, so the least we can do to repay for this immense gift is to pay attention to the multitudes of beings and gifts she gave us along with it! Good reminder to stay aware and not fall into mindless routines and digital distraction.
Well said. It is a worthwhile intentional practice. To the comment you made in your Note, we can use it now more than ever.
After reading a couple of Sam’s essays, one might think he is saying you need to have a combat experience to be fully alive. After the pleasure of reading almost all of Sam’s essays, I believe he is always talking about the importance of finding a path (and there are probably about ten of ‘em) to discovering the deep truth of what Joseph Campbell says here:
“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.”
Keep on banging that drum, Sam! So many of us have fallen asleep in our modern cocooned life. We are all on the hero’s journey.
“Take good care of our Pork Chop.” Of course, they said that. That hill, covered in the lives and blood of their friends and buddies, was as much a part of them as their hearts and souls. Hallowed ground. Sacred ground.
Thanks, Sam.
That line stayed with me: “Take good care of our Pork Chop.”
There’s something almost unbearable in that kind of attachment, not to the hill itself, but to what was lived and lost on it. I think what you’re pointing to with the “Combat Sabbath” is real in a very specific sense. When everything unnecessary falls away, something in perception sharpens, and people meet each other differently. Not abstractly, not ideologically, but at the level of immediate presence. Where I find myself hesitating is in what comes after that. Not the observation, but the implication, because it’s one thing to say that extreme conditions reveal something essential. It’s another to suggest that without them we lose access to it. I’m not sure the clarity found there belongs to war itself, or to what war removes.
That sentence on the wall feels less like love for the hill, and more like a trace of human continuity in a place designed to erase it. Which makes it more significant, not less, but also more tragic.
The question it leaves me with isn’t whether war can produce meaning. It clearly can. It’s whether we can reach that level of presence without needing to be stripped down by force.
That, to me, is the harder Sabbath.
Well said, Sara. I wrote my comment before seeing yours, and I think we’re on the same wavelength.
:)) is always nice to share opinions.