DIKKON EBERHART
  • Home
  • About Me
  • My Books
  • Listen
  • The Longer View
    • GOD
    • WRITING
    • LIFE
  • Subscription
  • Calendar
  • Crosswalk & Bible Study Tools Articles

Monumental Difference

10/19/2017

10 Comments

 
Picture
Dikkon Eberhart




​Brooklyn, New York. 

 
The Grand Army Plaza and its triumphal Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial Arch.  (1892)
 


You stand before the arch and gaze eighty feet up at its magnitude and at its bronze figures of martial success displayed against the sky.  You may be swept, as I was, with the gratefulness which the Arch’s creators felt at the salvation of our national Union, coming as the result of our Civil War. 
 
That conflict had cost our national Union—that is, the United States—blood and treasure on a massive scale.  However, the war was finished; when the Arch was unveiled in 1892, Appomattox had occurred twenty-seven years before. 
 
No longer was the South divided from the North; the threat of a fractured commonwealth had been averted.  Brother, at least figuratively, was back together again with brother. 
 


For a moment then, standing as I was before that 19th century Arch in my 21st century day, I was struck by how mighty our great-great-grandfathers and grandmothers in the 19th century thought national and human aspiration to be. 
 
They honored victory on the battlefield.
 
The Civil War was worthy, it their view, of elaborate sculpture.   
 
They erected an elaborate Arch at a central crossroad of their town—topped by rearing war horses, shouting warriors, and ringing lances. 
 
 
 
 

The Civil War occurred during the 1860s.  During the 1960s, my generation had its own military adventure, which occurred in Vietnam. 
 
What did my generation do to honor its adventure and its dead? 
 
 
 
 

Monuments are the way we as cultures memorialize our sacrifices. 
Observe the difference, then and now.
 
In Washington, D.C., we created “The Wall.”  
 
It’s made of black stone.  It looks as though it is partly buried into the earth.  On it there are names, and names, and names. 
 
There is no decoration.  There is nothing majestic about this monument. 
 
Visitors looking for the name of a deceased warrior are provided nothing which shows that the warrior’s sacrifice was about anything of importance. 
 
“The Wall” shows that the persons bearing these names existed once upon a time; then they didn’t.  That’s all.  We stare at the names as they march toward death. 
 
“Nothing to see here, folks,” this sculpture seems to say, “nothing to honor.  Move along, please.” 
 
 
 
 

This cultural and artistic indifference reminds me of a remark by a prominent American politician when questioned about the death of American soldiers in a recent skirmish in North Africa.  “What difference, at this point, does it make?”
 
 
 
 
 
On the other hand, some readers may remember the name of poet Rupert Brooke, who wrote from the trenches of World War One before he was killed in 1915. 
 
A memorable poem of his, “The Soldier,” is tied to the same consciousness that erected the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial Arch and would not have understood “The Wall” in Washington, D.C., nor the remark by the politician. 
 
The initial lines of Brooke’s “The Soldier” read--
 
          If I should die, think only this of me:
          That there’s some corner of a foreign field
          That is forever England. 
 
 
 
 

A sentiment such as Brooke’s could still be written during World War One but not for Vietnam (and the sentiment could still bring tears to the eyes of my mother when she quoted it to me often during my childhood).  What a romantic ideal!
 
 
 
 

Since time immemorial, war used gloriously to be between one man and another.  Sword to sword. 

 
Our Civil War was one of the first wars in which machines began to appear—machine guns.  Mechanized war was a new idea.  By World War One, about a half century later, soldiers were less dominant and machines ever more ascending.  But Brooke could invigorate The Great War’s mechanized slaughter with our humane pining for grandeur. 
 
By the time of the Vietnam War, about another half century later, machines dominated everything.  Warfare evolution has continued—our future wars may be fought between machine and machine…with no humans involved. 
 
 
 
 
In terms of the number of human casualties, that trend may be good.  But it is dry.  It is passionless.  It is cold. 
 
Humans, as we have reason to know (it’s written right there in that Holy Book)—humans are made in the image of God.  
 
 
 
Humans are hot, not cold. 
 
Machines are not made in the image of God.  Machines are made in the image of man.    
 
Machines are not made with our human tension and awful joy of choice.  Machines do what they are told to do without awe.  
 
A future war fought by machine against machine, will be a spiritless war.  It will be a dry war.  There will be a no-meaning war.  Observers will build neither Soldier’s and Sailor’s Memorial Arch II nor The Wall II in that war’s memory.
 
 
 
 
We would be better off to bring the spirit of God back into our awareness during battle.  As warriors for Him, we would be better off to long that there should be a corner in some foreign evil field that is forever…God.   
 
That’s a war worth fighting and combatants worth honoring.
 
 


10 Comments
Nikki Sullivan
10/20/2017 11:27:38 am

Good piece! I know the controversy surrounding the Vietnam Memorial; no statues, no sculptures and no fountains. Yet to me the two times I've stood before this stark memorial I could feel the reality of this harsh lonely war. Seeing each name I embraced what was truly lost in that conflict!
What other war memorial has every single name of the person whose life was loss. As I stood there last month a woman in our group wanted to find her uncle. She did. It was touching. So for me the Vietnam Memorial brings life to lifeless granite.

Reply
Joan Fernandez
10/20/2017 04:03:22 pm

I, too, felt really emotional upon visiting the Vietnam War memorial. I remember starting at one end of the wall and gradually walking The sidewalk slopes downward and the list of names grows longer. I felt the enormity of loss for each individual life. For me both types of memorials honor those who perished. Thank you for your thought-provoking piece, Dikkon

Reply
Dikkon
10/21/2017 05:56:22 pm

Dear Joan, thank you for this illustrative response. I could feel your sorrow as you walked along the names as they more and more filled the space. I liked your sensitivity, though, as you gave credit to the impact of each style. I'm glad to have you as a reader--what fun it was during the MM to become acquainted with our group!

Dikkon
10/21/2017 05:49:49 pm

Thank you, Nikki, for your thoughtful response. I can be touched by The Wall also--I have a few college pals who died in Vietnam--but, especially after I became a Christian, I have been suspicious of changes in art's manner that seem to strip away from the piece of art that which most closely would have tied it to God, had that stripping not occurred. Possibly my personal taste is just too stodgy for the present moment. But I think art that is utilitarian and mechanical (as I judge The Wall to be) limits its ability to lift humans above our human ordinariness and closer to the divine realm. Which is one of the purposes of art, as I deem it.

Reply
floyd link
10/21/2017 01:57:42 pm

I tend to appreciate traditional art and monuments. I think the Vietnam Monument is one of contemporary values.

It's hard to measure the heart of it's creator, but I get your point. The world has lost much of its value for a life, a soul created by God.

I admire intricacies in art. A thick slab of polished stone doesn't have the same effect on my soul.

As someone who designs homes, I feel the exact same way. Something stark and cold and streamlined takes less skill to design and construct and seems to fight against the grain of an old soul.

In the end the war is for Truth. It's always been good against evil. Glad I know the end of the story.

You can always be counted on to deliver a thought provoking post.

Reply
Dikkon
10/21/2017 06:00:25 pm

You're a kind friend, Floyd! Sometimes I think I miss the mark, and no one will respond. But then they do, and that refreshes me for the creation of the next one.

I'm glad you added your designer's perspective. Right on point. And your second-to-last paragraph captures precisely what I believe as well. Bless you.

Reply
Mary Langer Thompson
10/21/2017 06:11:11 pm

Hi, Dikkon, I've visited the travelling wall 3 times and the real wall once. It's amazing to me, how moving a name is. Because I met my husband one week before he went to Vietnam, it takes my breath away to know he escaped having his name on that wall. I bought a sign that says, "I Touched the Wall--it touched me."

Reply
Dikkon
10/25/2017 05:09:43 pm

Dear Mary, thank you for this reflection. I am moved by your words. You write prose the way a poet ought to. I am touched.

Reply
Betty Draper link
10/25/2017 02:45:53 pm

We are not into visiting monuments so much since we served the Lord overseas in the battle for souls. I would not tear any monument down but if I don't get to see another one I will not feel like I have lost out. People have taken the place of monuments for my husband and I. I would rather sit with a widow of any war and hear her heart, or with parents, or children who have lost someone they love. I visited my mother grave for the first time since she died and wondered how I would do so I went by myself. It was a hard sight for me to see her grave all covered with mud hours after she was buried. I seen it in my mind for months. So to visit her grave this past week and see a little grass on top of the mount gave me a smile. I felt no need to touch her stone, no need to cry. The only need I felt was to thank Him for her salvation. We were home for a nephew who killed himself, who now is buried in the same graveyard my Mom ia. His Mom and Dad decided to have their headstone moved to an areas that his grave would fit into...that spoke volumes to me. I was able to voice my wonder at their strength and give some extra hugs. I am against taking down any monument for it is history and we need reminders to keep us humble and hopefully drive us to our knees before the captain of our army. It is a heart given to God that is the best monument, that can give out grace and it can be given back by a monument built by the hands of God. Loved this piece...it caused me to think deeper and be brave enough to risk misunderstanding of what I have written. I always pray those who read will read through grace...

Reply
Dikkon
10/25/2017 05:17:51 pm

Dear Betty,

"It is a heart given to God that is the best monument." Whew! Good sentence.

With you, I believe this is so.

My piece related to the changing styles which artists use, and which our culture honors and pays for...and about what those styles say to me. I lean more heavily upon the ornamental than upon the plain, but others lean differently. Blessings to them. The main thing is to lean upon the Lord.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    October 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    January 2017
    February 2015
    February 2014
    January 2014

    RSS Feed

Copyright © 2020 Dikkon Eberhart
Website Design by Michelle Gill

Photography by Alexander Rose Photography, LLC
​
Additional images used from pixabay.com.
  • Home
  • About Me
  • My Books
  • Listen
  • The Longer View
    • GOD
    • WRITING
    • LIFE
  • Subscription
  • Calendar
  • Crosswalk & Bible Study Tools Articles