Funeral Reading

Justin Wilson's funeral is Wednesday. Chris is in Florida with the family.

He will be reading something for the ceremony, a short piece by another Marine which he found appropriate. Those who know Chris know that speaking before a group is already pretty amazing. He has always been extremely reticent about such things. Well, that's one of the changes the Corps has brought out in him. He spoke at church after getting back from basic training, thanking everyone for their prayers - I was pretty stunned.

He posted he piece he is reading on his Facebook page. It includes the phrase "to kill for those who cannot kill" - that jumped out at me. My civilian, ex-liberal, evasive self reacted badly to that in the first instant. You're supposed to say defend those who cannot defend themselves, it sounds...well, nobler. My second thought was of course you have to think that way if you're a serviceman. They have to be artificially blunt, outside of the rules of usual discourse, to do their job. But reading Chesterton recently allowed me to think it through farther. It's not just artificially blunt for a soldier's purpose. It's the reality. When we think honestly about justice, we see that there are people who must be stopped from committing injustice. And if they won't stop, they have to be killed. Soldiers take on not only that risk, but that burden. They act on behalf of those who cannot, or dare not.

As I don't imagine people go back and keep up with comments sections here that often, I mention that Terri from Wheat Among Tares heard about Justin's death on the radio while she was down at her father's house in Florida. It gave her an eerie feeling to connect that radio story with the son of a blogger she follows in NH. It is eerie. The threads which connect us to each other in this life are surprising and odd.