Redeeming the past

In the center of the frame, between a rough wood-plank fence in the front and a green forest backed by blue mountaintops in the rear, is the cornfield at Antietam - the site of a fierce Civil War battle and the single bloodiest day in American history. — Cornfield at Antietam

I visited this cornfield in 2011. I stood for quite some time, imagining my great-great-grandfather Lorenzo, as a 19-year-old, fighting here, on “the bloodiest day in American History,” September 17, 1862.

More than 25,000 soldiers fought in and around the Cornfield. By 9:30 a.m. thousands of them lay dead and dying. Confederate Gen. John Bell Hood wrote: “It was here that I witnessed the most terrible clash of arms, by far, that has occurred during the war.”
Antietam, Tour Stop 4 – The Cornfield, nhs.gov

We can’t undo the past.
But we can repeat the past.
Indeed, we do repeat it –
until we take the hard look back
and make the courageous changes needed
to redeem the past.