Our debt to the heroic men and valiant women in the service of our country can never be repaid. They have earned our undying gratitude. America will never forget their sacrifices. Harry Truman delivered those remarks to the United States Armed Forces, as the new President in the aftermath of his predecessor Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s death.    World War II was still raging, and Truman was sending a message of resilience to his troops…assurance that their sacrifices would always be remembered.   Have we?   Remembered?   And is that enough?   Sixteen million Americans fought in uniform in World War II. They were mostly still boys in their late teens… about 10 million were drafted, and 6 million voluntarily enlisted.   They’d already lived through the Great Depression, before being sent to root out the seeds of hatred planted across Europe by a formerly homeless street painter turned anti-Semite.   The Greatest Generation is what we call them now. Only around 100,000 of those veterans are left, dying at a rate of about 130 a day.    We’re losing them.   Maybe we already have another Greatest Generation somewhere out there, who instead of turning to their screens are turning to their neighbors. Who instead of trying to divide us are trying to unite us in what we hold common and dear. Who instead of fighting the fickle battles of culture are fighting the real wars against violent aggressors.   Maybe you’re one of them, embodying the greatest traits of our veterans. You don’t have to fight a war to live with honor.   But today is Veterans’ Day. And I’m remembering those who have honorably served in the military… including the grandfather I never met, who identified his comrades by their teeth after the bombing at Pearl Harbor, which served as the Greatest Generation’s combat invitation into World War II.   Truman closed that 1945 broadcast to the Armed Forces with one of Abraham Lincoln’s great missives.   With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up our nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan–to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.   In other words, we must do more.   Remembering is a start, but it isn’t enough.

Small fish drifted past the orange Garibaldi hovering a few yards below my dangling feet.

I didn’t know what the small fish were called. Names shouldn’t matter, but I guess they do matter, especially if that name is God.

A lot happens at the behest of that name.

I meditated on the slow current beneath me while I waited for a wave.

God is fickle, isn’t it?

The name, I mean.

Fickle, because the meaning changes depending on which side you’ve taken. 

There were a lot of surfers this morning, on all different types of boards. Longboards, shortboards, standup paddle boards. The standup guys were catching every wave, thanks to the competitive advantage found in leverage, furious paddling, and huge boards. Everybody else was just kind of floating around, in some kind of us vs. them purgatory.

A small swell rose on the horizon, and I paddled further out in the hopes of escaping one of the standup guys. I felt a touch of frustration in my gut as I dug deeper with my arms and the standup guy pawed with increasingly ferocity at the ocean surface. These paddle-battles were not why I was in the water. I was here for those small fish and the Garibaldi under my feet. I was here for the salt on my skin, the sun on the back of my neck. I was here for connection in a world of separation.

I was not here for us vs. them.

And so, I backed off, letting my arms fall motionless into the ocean as my board slowed to a lilting drift, until small fish drifted past the orange Garibaldi hovering a few yards below my dangling feet.

I didn’t know what the small fish were called.

But they were swimming in God.