Soul Food: Week of April 21, 2024

“Soul Food” is a regularly updated calendar of meditations sometimes questioning conventional wisdom & often suggesting eternal values …

Sunday-Saturday: Love of God, country & spouse. 160 yrs ago, Major Sullivan Ballou of Rhode Island died of wounds sustained in the 1stBattle of Bull Run, Manassas, Va. Two weeks earlier he penned this transcendental love letter as featured in Ken Burns’ “The Civil War”:

“My dear Sarah, the indications are very strong that we shall move in a few days … Lest I should not be able to write again, I feel impelled to write a few lines which will fall under your eye when I shall be no more … Not my will but thine O God be done. If it is necessary that I should fall on the battlefield for my country, I am ready. I have no misgivings about, or lack of confidence in the cause in which I am engaged … I know how strongly American Civilization now leans on the triumph of the Government & how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood & sufferings of the Revolution …

“Sarah, my love for you is deathless, it seems to bind me with mighty cables that nothing but Omnipotence could break. And yet my love of Country comes over me like a strong wind & bears me irresistibly on with all those chains, to the battlefield … But O Sarah! If the dead can come back to this earth & flit unseen around those they loved, I shall always be near you … & if there be a soft breeze upon your cheek, it shall be my breath, or if the cool air fans your throbbing temple, it shall be my spirit passing by. Sarah, do not mourn me dead … for we shall meet again.”

Davd Soul