The Ragged Edge of Night

by Olivia Hawker

The women and children hold bunches of wild daisies, gathered from the hedgerows and smiling like hope in their hands.

The children dart away. They organize themselves into a game of Katz und Maus without any discussion of the matter, with the instinct for play all young creatures possess.

Nothing but resolve and comfort in the knowledge that this was what the Lord intended; this was his next calling.

He can’t run as well now—that’s the price of aging—but the longing for freedom and the innocence of play is no less powerful. He thinks, Lord, I have done what you asked. I have gone where you sent me. Now make me good at my work—better

We celebrate the man who bristles with arms, who paves for himself a path of violence. But there are other men, other lives, other ways for a man to be. What of the teachers and the priests? What of doctors and artists, who heal and create where other men destroy? What of our fathers? And how do I tell them, he wonders, that the soldiers they revere sweat beneath their helmets and wake screaming in the night?

He must show these boys, entrusted to his care, that there are more rewards to be found in mercy and love than in mindless fighting and killing. We gain more by emulating Christ than his persecutors.

The children play—or try to play; the discordant honks and feeble squeals would be enough to make them laugh all over again, but a serious air has fallen over the classroom. They are doing their earnest best to learn, every one of them. And this is like nothing they’ve ever done before. Rapt in the development of this new skill—what will be a new skill, with practice—they are committed, serious, as children seldom are. Those who are not playing encourage the others. They applaud each other’s first attempts at C and A and G. A sense of cooperation forms, trust and camaraderie forming fresh new buds. Someday, those buds will open, flowering into reliance and unity, the magical forces that bind a music group together.