IF WE CAN TRANSPLANT HEARTS

Carter House, in Franklin Tennessee. 

Just another historic site listed in the tourist information. 

Just a place to spend a few hours on a holiday Friday afternoon.

 

The American Civil War is of little interest to me. 

So why do I hang on, unable to rush away?

Why am I asking questions of a tour guide who is clearly trying to leave?

The sun has bade me shed my sweater.   

So why does my blood run chilled in my veins?

 

Can it be because I stand in a farmyard where more than 8,500 soldiers died on Nov. 30 1864?

Or because their young Todd carter, away for more than three years, died only a few yards away from his home?

Or because a family cowered in their basement while the battle raged above?

Or because the buildings on this site are riddled with holes from thousands of bullets fired 142 years ago?

Or because I cannot imagine what it must have been like to leave that basement when the bullets had ceased to fly and walk upon the bodies of the dead and dying?

Or because the carters’ 288-acre cotton farm operated using the labour of 28 slaves, People bought and sold, people without a choice, people who had no future unless something happened to change things?

 

How audacious it must have been to hope that things could change!

How utterly devastating it must have been to pay the price of the coming change!

One hundred and forty-two years later there is evidence that enormous changes do happen.

 

If we can divert flood waters,

If we can go to the moon,

If we can transplant hearts,

If we can talk to people on the other side of the world,

Then maybe--just maybe—we can figure out how to conquer human oppression without fighting bloody wars.