I Have Been To Places of Great Death

I have been to places of great death: walking the battlefield at Gettysburg, as a lusty young man of no firm belief who stepped between the great rocks of Devil's Den and felt his soul shudder as though he had been a soldier there, and died in fear a long, long time ago. I taught my tongue to the gentle Khmers as civil war raged and the killing fields were being sown-- I left before the heartless murdering began, the killing of over a million: teachers and students, doctors and peasants, the old, the young, each with a photo taken before dying, their images taped to classroom walls. And when I visited Hiroshima, now myself chastened by death's touch, and knowing my soul real, knowing of meaning absolute and of unseen forces working good or ill, as I stood at the first ground zero, I once again shuddered to feel the pull of madness (though I knew not if it was my own or some remains of that evil which brought the fire and brimstone of a world wide war...). But by then I knew I could pray, and so opened my desperate heart and sought His mercy. Suddenly I saw a sort of angel who took me from that place of insanity, healing me while we wandered by the beauty of the Inland Sea as my storm calmed and left me, never to return.... I have been to places of great death, and I have felt death's cold, careless hands. Yet now I know what death itself fears: the Light, the light eternal which carries souls beyond time itself, like the winds of a Love exceeding all understanding.