12/07/10 REMEMBRANCE

GOLDEN SUN
SILVER WATERS

Tuesday, 8:45 AM. 12 degrees, up some from earlier. The wind is W, calm. The sky is now mostly clear and the barometer is up. The sun is golden and the waters silver, altogether a rather beautiful morning. Lucky and I both seem on the mend, although he still isn’t eating.
The attack on Pearl Harbor occurred when I was but a little child, so I don’t remember much about it. I remember more about the war as I grew along with it, and I certainly remember its last days, its end and the years immediately after quite well. I went to a Lutheran grade school, and remember seeing a poster someone placed on the Bulletin board that said, “Remember Pearl Harbor,” and the Pastor’s reaction to it, which I have never forgotten; “Children, if you never forget, you can never forgive, and Christians are told to forgive.” I have never forgotten that brief lesson. Perhaps there are even terrible things we should try to forget, at least over time, so that we may eventually forgive, so that our culture is not doomed to centuries and even millenia of self destructive hate and vengeance.
I just finished President George W. Bush’s new book of remembrances, “Decision Points.” It is not overtly political, but much more of a personal memoir, and a basic primer on decision making. Our decisions, good and bad, start with those that are most basic; deciding who we are and what we stand for, as all subsequent decisions build upon these basics. Then there are the questions of who the decision maker surrounds himself (or herself) with and who he is influenced by, and how much information he needs to make a decision, and when to make it. Was the decision made with confidence and therefore kept intact. Where does the buck stop after the decision is made. It is a comfortably quick read for a complex subject, its language is plain and well laced with gentle humor. I recommend it, regardless of one’s politics.