A Terrible Haunting

I have told you a little about this haunting....haunted by loss. My own losses and others' losses...what kind of meaning is there in loss? What am I supposed to learn from those losses? What I am supposed to do about those losses?
I know from experience that in order to have any kind of answer to those questions I have to live in the grief of those losses and let the Spirit guide me through. Sometimes that is a slow process and sometimes I am impatient.
I have been haunted by the losses that come from war lately. Last week I dreamed twice about the war in Iraq. Both nights awakened at exactly the same time...4am. The first dream I am flying over Iraq and at first it is beautiful and pleasant. Children are playing. Flowers are blooming. Neighbors are chatting. I am flying high over the countryside. But then the dream slowly changes. There is more and more fighting and there are children dying and now I can't fly high over the countryside anymore. I am flying closer and closer to the destruction. The second dream happens in Abilene. I am in a parking lot full of cars and suddenly in the background there is gunfire and people shouting. Everyone is trying to drive out of the parking lot away from the gunfire but then we realize that missiles are coming straight for us at ground level. I yell to everyone to get down and we all lay flat on the ground. I don't witness any death this time but it is terrifying. The end of the dream is a huge piece of artwork....a city drawn hugely in orange and missiles pointing at the city and some kind of writing that says that we were targeted because George Bush is from Texas. Very terrifying.
These dreams haunted me for a couple of days. I hate war.

This week I have been reading a book that I gave to Lucy for her birthday. It is a Newberry Honor Book written in 1964. A historical novel about the Civil War titled Across Five Aprils and written by Irene Hunt. I don't think that it is coincidence that I am reading this book right now. I am going to type out some significant passages from the book....you tell me if you think that it is relevant.

Ed's Turner's boy, just eighteen and in the army only a few months, was in South Carolina. Ed brought the boy's letter down for Matt to read. In it the told of the burning of Columbia, of how the soldiers laughed as a great wind fanned the flames, of the loot carried off, of mirrors and pianos smashed, and of intimate family treasures scattered to the winds by men who seemed to have gone mad.
Ed's Turner's hands trembled as he returned the letter to its envelope.
"What is this goin' to do to an eighteen-year-old boy, Matt? Kin a lad come through weeks fo this kind of actions without becomin' a hardened man? Is human life goin' to be forever cheap to him and decency somethin' to mock at?"
"You and Mary hev larned him right from wrong, Ed."
"But they're bein' cheered on, Matt. Congress-the whole country-is happy with 'em; these boys air goin' to believe that they be heroes fer lootin' and burnin', fer laughin' at distress, fer smashin' the helpless without pity. In some ways Sammy is more of a child than yore Jeth here; he goes with the crowd without thinkin'. Mary and me has had to guard aginst that way of his."
Matt looked at his friend with troubled eyes; any words that he could think of seemed useless, worse than silence.