The picture shows most of us who processed on March 14, with a banner which we hung on the fence while we processed. The banner was made by Nathanael Kooperkamp, the son of our rector Earl Kooperkamp, and says "The Episcopal Church: Praying for Peace Since 1789." I don't know the names of three of the people in the picture, so I won't identify anyone except me -- I'm the guy in the brown jacket standing next to the banner.
I was not able to get to the procession on either March 7 or March 19. Today is Holy Saturday and I hope to observe it by joining at noon in River to River -- people joining hands across 14th Street to protest the Iraq war.
Forty years ago the United States was engaged in another war -- in Vietnam. I was not politically conscious then. At St. Mary's we talked about the civil rights movement, but we didn't talk about the war.
I was very interested in what was going on at the Metroplitan Opera. For example, on April 1, 1967, the Met broadcast the new opera "Mourning Becomes Electra;" on April 4, Martin Luther King delivered his speech "A Time to Break Silence" at Riverside Church. I was excited by the opera and completely unconscious of the speech.
Even the events of the spring of 1968 didn't wake me up. I was shocked by the assassinations of Martin Luther King on April 4, 1968 and of Robert F. Kennedy on June 6 the same year. But while I remained strongly stirred by the civil rights movements, I still held to the unexamined belief that we live in a good country. We don't do bad things. We don't engage in unjust wars. So the war could not be a wrong thing. I don't think like that any more.
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St. Mary's is a small church and we haven't done a full fledged Easter Vigil in a few years. But we will do a vigil at 6 AM on Easter, complete with new fire, Exsultet, and Paschal candle. I'm going to try to be there.
The peace of the Lord be always with you.
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