My son and I attended the Anzac Day parade and memorial service on the hill in our village today. Moving. There are big questions about our culture’s mix of the military and the ecclesiastical, but they can wait for another day.

This song, first sung to me by my friend Ben in NYC, was in the back of my mind the whole morning. Even more moving. I have friends in the armed forces of Australia and New Zealand, some of them implausibly young people back from truly dangerous duty overseas who are scarred from the experience in ways I’ll never understand. I’m grateful they made it back alive.

I offer my heartfelt sympathies to the families of the airmen killed today. What a tragedy.