Greetings,

On what far distant wind rides the cry of a lost one? Where shall we hear this small cry?  Will we be awakened by this cry or shall it pass unheeded, faintly, hopelessly into lost remembrance? What man would turn his ear away from a lost child?

Hear then the kind of words which might be carried on these far traveling winds. Sense the reaching out from so far away to your heart, asking you to hear. Asking you to grant a pause and a listen to catch these faint words...can you hear? Listen very closely...can you hear?

I can sense the dawn and light of day though I have not seen the sun in long long days. There are no windows here where I am kept. I can feel the warmth of the day only if I remember what it was like. The time here has allowed me to make a deal with myself to stay alive. I can go outside my prison and beyond the grasp of my captors if I remember what it was like, what it is, to be free. I must remember very hard sometimes to push this place away. In the end my captors hold only my body as my spirit, my soul, and my mind are not theirs to take now. I have made a deal with memories.

If I remember real hard I am telling a dirty joke to Cindy Lou Skinner and the Youth Group Preacher catches us. We run and laugh and later I kissed her in the parking lot. My body, I understand is lying in a small dark place, hungry and cold and frequently sick but with all my heart and all my soul and all my thoughts I am WITH Cindy Lou.

When I decide it is Sunday I remember an afternoon ballgame with Pop at the new stadium and watching my favorite player Ted Klusewski, smack a baseball 423 feet over the wall for a homer. This is where I AM though my physical self is chained to a wall in a remote cave in the rugged Iranian mountains.

If I am sick and the crap they give me to eat turns my stomach I remember scrounging around till I found three pop bottles and then taking them to Ed's Grocery and getting a nickel candy bar that was the best tasting thing I'd  ever imagine. I am eating that sticky, melty candy bar right now. it's delicious.

I can remember myself out of my prison and my pain and even my loneliness. If you looked upon me with your own eyes you would see a wraith of a man in a bamboo cage just outside a little ville near the Cambodian border, or maybe a dirty soldier with his arms tied behind his back surrounded by terrorists with rifles, you may see a soldier dragged away in the freezing predawn hours  on a frosted hillside in Korea, or a starving soldier marching up a dusty Philippine road escorted by bayonet wielding Imperial Japanese soldiers, or perhaps you would see me chained in a room with a gun at my head or a knife at my throat but that's just what you would SEE.

I'm not in there.

I'm trying to talk Bobby out of that set of glass pack mufflers for a three month old battery and a date with my sister.

.......BUT.....

Sometimes I wonder, when I am remembering,...  is anyone else remembering too? People that know me, people that love me, are they remembering me? Do they know what happened to me and where I have gone and how do they remember me? Do my comrades talk about me, ask about me, wonder about me, pray about me? Do their hearts soar too to remembrances' places where I have passed and touched their lives in passing. Do they pause and reflect back on me and know me as I was?

And sometimes I wonder, when I am remembering,...is anyone seeking me, looking for where I have gone and who has seized me? Do they  search the faces in crowds, do they ask others along the way if they have seen me? Have they given my picture to strangers and asked "have you seen him? he is lost."

And sometimes I cry when I am remembering because it is easy to believe that I am forgotten. Sometimes I ask myself if everyone has given up looking because they think I am dead? But I don't ask that too often because that releases the demons: doubt and despair.

So I remember and I pray that someday while soaring out of my captivity that I shall meet someone who is remembering me too and maybe together we can remember so hard that these bars, or these chains, or this bamboo cage, will burst asunder and I will again see freedom for my body as well as my spirit, but we will both need to remember very very hard to make this real. With only two such remembrances we must resign ourselves to remembering very very hard for a long long time to make this real.

So I remember and I pray too that someday while soaring outside my bonds that I shall meet a group... a host..., no a LEGION of someones who are also remembering ME AND ALL THOSE LIKE ME who huddle in dark rooms, damp distant caves, jungle hells in forgotten places waiting to be remembered back to what is real and what is free. And when that day finally comes, and we all remember very very hard we shall bend back the bars, shatter the chains, and break the bamboo and all of us will be able to see freedom, all the loved ones and friends and family members shall once again be free in body and in mind, but only if we all remember very very hard.

No man is ever rescued by wishes, no man is ever saved by empty mention. We strive here, we who are captured, to pray and remember...and to trust. The deal that I mentioned before that I made with my memories? Well, that is fueled by hope and trust and so long as there is fuel to make this "lamp" shine, it will et me remember and leave these ropes and guards behind me. Trust that I am remembered hard enough to make me free and hope that it happens soon.

And most of all....I remember to pray for the POWs and MIAs wherever you are tonight and I pray that my prayer will touch each with a tiny place where it kindles hope in them too.