The loudest and most sustained applause that came in response to President Obama's recent State of the Union speech was directed at a much-wounded soldier seated next to Michelle Obama in the House gallery.

A young man of great promise, he was nearly killed during his 10th posting to Afghanistan and is struggling to recover that he might return to full-time military service -- or as the president put it, to continue in service to his country. Who would not stand and applaud such determination?

That said, the concept of serving one's country extends beyond the military, though that form of service seems now to be the most exalted. Subconsciously on the part of many Americans who may recall how soldiers and Marines were sometimes treated upon their return from Vietnam, the revival of appreciation for the uniform may be an atoning compensation for that disrespect.

When I was of draftable age, there was no draft. Some years later, I let it be known publicly in a column for what was then a major American newspaper that I would go to Somalia with our troops as a chaplain if the military would have me. It wouldn't, and that was the end of it.

I wanted to be known as one willing to serve my country. That urge came, I think, from the endless haranguing I endured during my participation in the civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s. I cannot count the number of instances when I was asked, "Were you ever in the service?" When I had to answer, "No," my argument or point of view was automatically devalued.

It got worse when, as a parish priest, I would stress the biblical mandate of peace and nonviolence in my homilies.

That I had from time to time put myself at risk as a foot soldier in civil rights work or in protesting the Vietnam war was never seen as "serving my country." Rather the opposite, in fact. Protesting the war and working on behalf of full recognition of people of color or those of the LGBT community were and still are considered by many to be signs of disloyalty to national values.

In what ways other than donning the uniform of one of the military services can one be perceived as serving one's country. And what is "one's country"?

Richard Rorty, who was a bright light in the American community of philosophers during the second half of the 20th century, said one's country -- in this case, America -- remains to be "achieved," and that one serves it by contributing to its achievement.*

Rorty located the touchstone of true American democracy in the works of Walt Whitman, which, perhaps especially in his Democratic Vistas, passionately advocates a national hope, the realization of which must be pursued actively rather than awaited passively. That democracy, said Rorty, has everything to do with economic and social justice. Therefore (and here he quotes Whitman) "its history remains unwritten because that history has yet to be enacted."

By those lights, one can serve his or her country by working for what democracy is meant to fashion: widespread and permanent economic and social equity, both of which are to be, by the nature of democracy itself, distributive.

Thus those summa, magna et cum laude college graduates who spurn the offers of cushy Wall Street berths for teaching assignments in inner-city schools are serving their country by helping its children achieve an education worthy of a democratic nation. Youths and elders alike who become AmeriCorp VISTA volunteers likewise are serving their country by helping to achieve its higher goals.

Withal, it is not unpatriotic to acknowledge that America's good is not quite yet crowned with brotherhood or that its every flaw is far from mended. It is unpatriotic not to acknowledge that those who preach and practice a gender-blind brotherhood, that those whose needles and thread are daily employed in mending the rents in the national fabric are serving their country, often under trying circumstances.

Few outside the Episcopal Church and those who remain among the sisters and brothers who met as Freedom Riders or elsewhere in the civil rights struggle will recognize the name Jonathon Myrick Daniels. He served his country as much as any soldier who died on any battlefield.

In 1965, Daniels was a seminarian at what was then known as Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. With others, he heeded the call of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to come to Alabama. While there, Daniels and several of his fellow protestors were jailed briefly. Soon after their release, they encountered a gun-toting white man. Daniels stepped in front of a fellow protestor, a 16-year-old African American woman, to shield her just as the man leveled his gun. Daniels was shot and killed instantly.

Daniels was serving his country that day in August of 1965, helping it to achieve itself. I could imagine him sitting next to Michelle Obama in the House gallery the other night, another American hero being applauded. These words of John Milton could have been written about Daniels and others like him: Who best / Bear his milde yoak, they serve him best.**

To achieve our country is to serve it, even as those called to advance the imperatives of economic and social justice have worked and are even now working to fulfill the promise of democracy, even as did the many times-brave soldier who took the well-deserved ovation during the State of the Union speech. Heroes all.

* Rorty, Richard. Achieving Our Country. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. 1998