Salute for Veteran

At what I hope and pray to be my last funeral or memorial service for awhile today, I was asked by my friend Ella to take a picture of the military gun salute at the burial spot for her husband, Joseph, a veteran. I lined up my camera but when the first shots were fired in the air I was startled and moved the camera and lost the shot. However, they fired a few more times and these times I was ready for the loud noise.

Today on radio I heard a story about a person who revisited their home town of Flint, Michigan to wake up to gun fire at night in what was once was a peaceful middle class neighborhood. Soldiers and civilians in war zones like Iraq, Afghanistan and now Pakistan are constantly scared by loud noise of guns, planes or bombs. These noises mean danger.

A friend sent me an article today about a “worm grunter” who makes a sound like a mole in the ground that causes worms to flee to the surface so he capture them and sell them to anglers for fish bait. Even worms fear certain noises.

The gun shots and worm grunter makes me more aware of how we live in a noisy world. Many sounds do not scare us or worms but they do affect us. Silence, the absence of sound, is rare these days. Often, even if it is quiet to our ears our minds are noisy with lots of thoughts. True silence of mind, body and soul is getting harder and harder to achieve.

Working in the garden today is was relatively quiet. There is the normal city noise in the background and the birds do chirp, but for the most part it is relatively quiet. This is at least in my neighborhood where gun shots are extremely rare and which is not in the midst of war zone.

I also notice that garden work focuses my mind. I do not have many wandering thoughts when working in the garden. Silence is another reason to build a garden.

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