This one has been bubbling ever since Tom got me a copy of “Four Way Street” by Crosby Stills Nash and Young and I heard this wonderful little song that ends the album. The lyrics go like this: find the cost of freedom buried in the ground, Mother Earth will swallow you, lay your body down…and then it repeats…all a capella. I’m going to finish this one up later today or tomorrow…but it’s going to be about the most poignant way that the cost of freedom is measured. I’ll try to not be political because that will minimize the overwhelming meaning of that sacrifice.

I have all kinds of thoughts and fragments of ideas running through my head right now from the current sacrifices being made by our military but also of Martin Luther King, the Kennedy Brothers, the four Kent State students, and the many who gave their lives during the civil rights struggle trying to make this country a better place. But I’m having trouble making sense of the fragments; to make something cogent from the feelings that come whenever I hear that song. I will keep trying because I think it’s important for all of us as Americans to make sure these sacrifices were not made in vain; that they are not used as props for political gain or to divide us…maybe we can use the universality of this great gift to help us understand that we are all still Americans no matter what the issues are that some use to tear us apart.