Vets Honored

Invocation

Would you join me in an attitude of prayer:

Holy One, Known by various Names … and Loved in Many Ways,

Gathering within the perimeters of the Vermont Veterans Memorial Cemetery, we ask your Blessings upon this Morgan Horse, who becomes a welcome new addition to the lovely, bucolic Green Mountain landscape.

Here we find ourselves surrounded by graves and markers bearing names of defenders of our liberty... the “Band of Brothers…and Sisters” who served with valor ... who held the line .. for us and the ways of life we cherish in these United States. Help us sense the POWER of this “sacred ground” which holds them ... of which “Honor”, now becomes … an integral part. May we be mindful that here - among the spirits who have been and will be ….laid to rest - this bronze Morgan Horse … is in the BEST of company.

In this Memorial Circle, a silent horse… stands before us … and yet… is it? …. silent?

"How it is that animals understand things I do not know, but it is CERTAIN.... that they DO ... understand. Perhaps there is a LANGUAGE which is not MADE of words ... and EVERYthing in the world understands it. Perhaps there is a SOUL hidden in everything and it can ALWAYS speak, without EVEN making a sound …” ― Frances Hodgson Burnett

We pray, Oh God, that HONOR will speak … to those whose spirits rest here.. those buried here and those who some day will join them … letting them know that they are not forgotten but rather remembered … and loved, always.

May HONOR speak to those who come to this cemetery to say their ‘good-bye’s” … those whose lives because of this recent loss, have been turned asunder and racked with grief…

May those in mourning feel a kinship with this Morgan Horse… may they feel understood...because Honor too, is grieving ...

Honor ...with its own head bent low … and turned just so… eyes filled with sorrow,

Attentive and attuned to its Master symbolically lying at rest beneath the rough, natural quartz head stone … perhaps a uniformed member of the United States military who once rode high and proud upon its back...in battle….

the human being this Morgan horse loved…

and was loved BY….

May Honor speak with compassion to those who mourn here... we ask You Good Shepherd, who brings light to the dark - in the Valley of the Shadow.

A horse in a Veterans Cemetery?

Horses…. Part of Your intricate, interesting design… Creator of the Heavens and the Earth.

As this Morgan Horse, in this very place … reminds us …. Horses ... like the Soldier or Marine or Sailor riding upon their back, ALSO lost life and blood on fields of battle. They too, are worthy of respect… for service to our country: helping with transport, artillery, supply, and cavalry, and in more recent days … as healing companions in Equine Therapy to Wounded Warriors returning with trauma ….

Empower their efforts, Great Physician, we pray … for these horses, to heal and make whole again.

This sturdy, faithful, gentle, home-grown Morgan horse … whose breed was given birth in this state of Vermont…reminds us that it’s better to live and thrive in times of peace, as way back when … the farm and family named, fed and loved them. May Peace be the destiny to which we aspire:

We ask Oh God: for time of peace…

civil discourse to settle disputes…

respect and not fear – of ‘the other’.

May Honor standing in this Veteran’s Cemetery.. speak… for peace …. We pray, Dear Prince of Peace.

We offer gratitude and thanksgiving for the vision of the Vermont Legislature and the Vermont Arts Council, and for the talented, creative and gifted hands of the sculptor Karen Petersen.

We ask your richest Blessings upon this MORGAN HORSE, a horse to become known as “Honor”, grateful for the LIFE it has already given…

and we seek your BLESSINGS upon the spirits of the DECEASED that it will COMPANION,

and for the lives of the LIVING that it will COMFORT.

Use this Morgan Horse well, on this Sacred Ground… for the Inspiration and Enrichment of us All.

Blessed Be. Amen.