Battlefields and Playgrounds

After a day of laundry and reading, I started out to Phoenixville this evening to play volleyball (or so I thought). When I arrived at the YMCA I learned that my game had been cancelled. This was exceedingly frustrating both because of the time I wasted driving all the way out there, and also because gas is so ridiculously expensive. Still, there was really nothing I could do about the lost time and gas, so I hopped back in my little Volvo and headed back towards home. Driving down the winding roads of some of the Philadelphia suburbs' most beautiful and historic communities my frustration began to wane as I allowed myself to enjoy the peaceful solitude of a Sunday drive on a summer evening. Soon thereafter I reached Valley Forge, and the battlefield's national park. Though relatively close to my new home here in Philadelphia, I had yet to visit the battlefield, and I realized that it had actually been many years since I'd visited any of America's great battlefields. Driving through the once-battlefield now-national park I was struck by the way that the site of such utter violence and destruction, heartache and tears has become one of our nation's truest signs of humanity's best intentions. People running, walking, sitting, sleeping - Americans interacting with nature and with history, smiles on their faces they turn this place - once the throws of one of the longest and deadliest wars in our nation's history - into a beacon of peace, and respite. Perhaps it is because today is the anniversary of the attacks of 9.11.01 that I am both awed and perplexed by our capacity as humans to return symbols of death to oases of life. Perhaps it is because we have entered into the month of Elul with it's emphasis on teshuvah that this image, of how time and intention can heal the widest wounds, pierces my soul so deeply. Whatever the reason I found this experience to be so compelling, I leave it now for you to consider - How much teshuvah? How much tefillah? How much tzedakah does it take to turn out battlefields to playgrounds?