And yet, if I lift my thought and imagination beyond our idyllic setting and the two of us, my contentment vanishes. Truth told, I am enormously dissatisfied with the state of our nation, our world, and the ways I have handled that discontent.

How can I be satisfied living in proximity to the violence, death, and insanity of a war zone? Make no mistake, though many Americans find a way to ignore it, we are all living in a time and place of war that is touching and directing each and every one of us.

My wife and I are just back from visiting our 39-year-old son and his family (German born wife, first-grade twin boys, and third-grade daughter). They live in a Midwestern manufacturing town of about 30,000 people.

On one day of our visit, I went with my son to look at the possibility of replacing their overhead garage doors. The dealer gave us a generous amount of information – including the names and addresses of several homes where we might see some installations of the type of door my son was considering. We left the dealer and drove to one of the homes on the list.

As we pulled close we saw a woman and her two children working in the yard. We stopped, walked over to the woman, and my son told her his name and that we were interested in her garage door installation. With a big smile, the woman said she would be happy to show us. Then she took a long second look at my son and, with the words tumbling out, said, “I know who you are – you are going to Iraq with the National Guard aren’t you – I saw the article and pictures in the paper – I so hope and pray you won’t have to go.”

Our son graduated from the Naval Academy and performed his required service that included a part of the first Gulf War. With the end of the “cold war” draw down in the size of the Navy, he decided to go back to school for an MBA in international business. This move led to work in Germany and a beautiful German wife. When they moved to the Midwest, several of his business contacts in town were members of the National Guard.

From his experience and discussion with these men and women, our son came to believe that the Guard needed experienced officers to provide leadership during this period of extreme stress and repeated deployments for the Guard. He joined the Guard two years ago despite the fact that he has been strongly opposed to the intervention in Iraq from the very beginning. The woman’s response was based upon a recent article in the local newspaper. The impetus for the article was the release of the news that almost 4,000 of the state’s National Guard were now scheduled to deploy to Iraq in early 2008. Our son was one of the individuals featured in the article.

Our moral convictions are for the most part beliefs concerning how to conduct our relationships with our fellow human beings, what we believe is harmful or beneficial in living with other people. Sociologist and theologian Peter Berger suggests that our moral judgments are rooted in, dependent upon, cognitive perceptions. No matter what code of ethics or code of normative prescriptions one subscribes to, if the cognitive perceptions are missing or distorted, the code will not be plausible and will not appear to pertain. Berger writes that it is a mistake to think that conscience says, “do this” or “don’t do that” – rather conscience alerts us to look at what we are doing, to pay attention and really see what is happening.

In the first instance of a moral offense by one human being against another recounted in the Hebrew Bible, the murder of Abel by his brother Cain, God addresses Cain in just this mode. God did not say, “You disobeyed the commandment not to commit murder.” What God did say was “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground.” In other words: “Look at this!”

I want to suggest that my son, his father, and his “garage door” neighbor have all had a cognitive shift in perception. My son is focused upon his family and his troops, fully aware that they are now at risk. He knows that each must be prepared as well as possible for what lies ahead and believes that it is his responsibility to lead the preparation.

That friendly neighbor suddenly saw a man whose place in the community she knew and respected heading off to a savage and brutal war. Her face registered the emotion she was feeling, the nearness of the experience now thrust upon her.

The father, yours truly, has believed from the first that this war was an ill-founded intervention likely to have dire consequences for the Middle East, for Iraq, and for the safety and prestige of the United States. All of those fears, and even more, have been realized, but I now realize that I have been unseeing, passive, and complacent. I look at my son and his family and now know, in a way I could never imagine, the pain and terror this war is creating for thousands of families in Iraq and in our nation.

We are now in the fifth year of what has become a civil war whose outcome is out of American control. Our President has never asked the Nation to fight this war. What have we done? We have not mobilized militarily or economically to fight a protracted major conflict. We have not adopted a serious energy policy to reduce our dependence on oil. No change in tactics or “surges” in the military will make any difference. We have created a training and recruitment ground for terrorists that is giving birth to a whole future generation of eager recruits.

As the dean of conservative commentators, William F. Buckley Jr., wrote in the latest issue of the National Review: “It is simply untrue that we are making decisive progress in Iraq.”

Look at how much blood is crying to God from the ground in Iraq. We should leave now.

Am I satisfied or contented? NO! My hope is that this discontentment will be a source of energy and creativity as I search for ways to lend my voice to the growing dismay of our citizens.

None of us should be satisfied with where we are now.