Veteran's Day: Dona Nobis Pacem

I posted last night about Williams Byrd's Mass for Four Voices, and we're singing the final movement, the Agnus Dei, in Vespers today as a prayer for peace on Veteran's Day. To me, that means peace in the world but also peace in the hearts, minds and bodies of soldiers who have suffered in ways about which people only recently are starting to care. I'll be singing for my great-grandfather, one of the first flying chaplains in WWI; my grandfather, an Air Force vet; and Tony and Anthony Mitchell--I haven't met Anthony (my boyfriend Gary's oldest brother) yet, but he's deployed to Korea right now. Prayers for his and every other soldier's safe return. I'll also be singing for people like my godfather, who left Westpoint after he decided he could not be in the military and be a Christian. I pray that people like him might be prophets of that great day when "they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more" (Isaiah 2:4). Dona nobis pacem.