Matters of conscience

Jeanne at Body and Soul has a good piece on words and actions and how we recognize moral clarity. It is not always clear which actions are "brave" versus "cowardly" when we speak of abstractions (and I am reminded of the great scene in Tim O'Brian's The Things They Carried in which he sits on a boat just off the Canadian coast and faces up to what it would mean to go to war or to refuse to go to war). We all have to keep our eyes open for moments when principle and reality meet in the flesh.