Dear friends in Christ,

This past Sunday was saturated with the celebration of Pentecost, a baptism, and the commissioning of parishioners as Stephen Ministers. The awareness of Memorial Day Sunday got eclipsed. Yet the awareness of the day itself lingers. Who can forget those who died in war?

A typical way to acknowledge those who survived along with other veterans is to say, “Thank you for your service.” Most people mean it and want the recipient to feel seen and appreciated. Yet more is needed and called for. Gratitude, when it stops at a phrase, is not quite gratitude.

In these times, action is needed to reverse significant budget cuts and workforce reductions. Thousands of Veterans Administration employees have been let go. Clinics have reduced hours. Wait times for mental health appointments—already too long for a population with elevated rates of suicide and PTSD—have grown longer. Senator after senator has stood in chambers and named the irony plainly: we are willing to send young people to war, but apparently less willing to fund their care when they come home.

This is not a partisan issue. It is a moral one.

It is an issue of justice.

It is an issue of healing or the withholding of healing, making roadblocks to limit, curtail, or discourage thousands from getting what they are promised.

The church has been ambivalent about war and militarism. War is morally complex.

A Presbyterian minister and journalist, Chris Hedges, has addressed this head on in two books, War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning and The Greatest Evil Is War. Honoring those who served is not the same thing as baptizing every war they were sent to fight. We can hold both: a clear-eyed critique of the systems that deploy humans into violence, and an unambiguous commitment to those human beings themselves.

So here is a possibility. Today, this week, write to your elected officials about VA funding. Support local organizations—the Tucson Veterans Services offices, Southern Arizona VA Health Care System, or nonprofits like Old Pueblo Community Services—that are doing the on-the-ground work. If you have a veteran in your family or circle of friendship, ask them not just “how are you doing?” but “what do you need?”

Memory is both spiritual and liturgical. We practice it every time we enter into the Eucharist: “Do this for the remembrance of me.”

Remembering is not passive. It calls us forward into something.

May the memory of those who have served call us forward, this week and beyond, into something that makes gratitude known and experienced by those who receive.

Your fellow traveler,

—Richard