Glory, Glory, Glory

(Signs of the Times is a work of fiction based on true events. Views expressed are the author’s own. Viewer discretion is advised.)

What is glory?

Is it pressing the button that sends the missile that strikes the tail rotor of a helicopter? Is it watching the invader fall from the sky and crash in the fallow field? Is it shouting at the top of your lungs as the smokestack rises? Maybe that’s too gnarly.

Is glory dying for an idea? Dying to preserve something? Dying for your brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers? Is glory laying down your life for the abstract? Freedom. Sovereignty. Nation.

Is it buying groceries and rounding up to the nearest buck for a refugee fund? Is that glory? What about laying flowers at the base of a flagpole? Adding that same flag on your social media handles? Boy, that’s gutsy.

Is it writing about war? Is it telling someone else’s story? Is glory fictionalizing hell and making monsters, heroes? Murderers, relatable? An entire people, entertainment? Man, I don’t know glory.

Is it saying the word fifty times as fast as you can until it sounds like nothing — until it starts to sound like gory, gory, gory, gory — Is that glory? Until it just sounds like glugging and chugging, filling yourself with anything to be whole?

Can it be the sunrise over the thawing plains, quarter-moon mist rising to meet the day?

What about the burrowing owl gazing at you with yellow eyes at dusk? What about stillness on a lake, seeing the whole reflection of the world upside-down in crystal clear waters?

The birth of a child.

Her first steps.

The time your child’s lips took shape and air moved past her straining vocal cords and you heard your true name spoken and you knew, just maybe, you’d be eternal, forever.

And you smiled and she smiled back.

Is this glory?