“Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.”

— Martin Luther King

Yesterday, as I was getting my oil changed, the attendant and I struck up a conversation. As we talked about the fluffy snow flakes that were covering the street in front us, he casually mentioned that he spent the last big Portland snow storm in Iraq.

He had been stationed in Bagdad where he said it rained constantly. Not at all consistent with the image of the Iraqi desert I had.

He didn’t say much more as we finished up, but I did ask him one more thing,

“Do the letters from back home matter? I’ve been writing to a soldier through the Adopt-A-Soldier program, but I don’t know if they’re being read or not. I’m not sure I should keep writing.”

He paused in thought for a moment. “They matter. When I was in Iraq, I got some letters from strangers,” he said. “When I got back home we had a funeral for a friend. Outside the funeral there were protesters yelling at us. It was just wrong.”

“Yeah, those letters matter,” he concluded. “They matter because it tells us someone back home cares.”

Today, I mailed a letter to a soldier. Martin Luther King’s dream of peace won’t be realized until they all come home.