The Veterans

This was supposed to be my Veterans Day posting, but I didn’t get to it yesterday. I went, along with Tara, to Philoxenia (hospitality) 2006 at Vanderbilt Divinity School yesterday. It was the first seminary/divinity school visit for both of us. Patrick and Chasie are on their way back today from a week in Mississippi doing some recovery work with Presbyterian Disaster Assistance along with three other members from Second Pres. I’m getting ready now to head over to church for the stewardship breakfast, and thought I’d post now since I know my supervisor at the Campus, Mary Wilder, lives for my blog posts.

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This Wednesday at the Campus, I taught my first current events class. Of course, it being Wednesday, my first topic was the election results. Only two guys showed up, two guys who I knew fairly well but never really had a serious conversation with. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I had my printouts from CNN.com about the election results. The two guys and I started going through the article. I interruped to give some of the news that I had heard while I was on my lunch break—that the Senate race was down to just Virginia, and that Donald Rumsfeld had resigned—“WHAT? RUMSFELD RESIGNED?!?” That’s all it took to get a really good discussion going for the entire rest of the hour. We never really discussed the election results specifically, but I suppose that if this election is viewed as a referrendum on the administration’s policy in Iraq then we discussed what was at the core of last Tuesday’s victory for the Democrats.

It was interesting to see how the three of us viewed the war. The two men who came to class were veterans of the U.S. military, one having served in the Navy during the early 80s, while the other was in the Marines in the 1980s. They each had stories about their travels around the world and the situations they had been a part of. One of them was fully behind the Iraq war, and the other was completely opposed, although their positions didn’t fall neatly into Democrat-Republican molds. I found that I agreed with some of what each one said. It shouldn’t have been suprising to me that they knew as much as they did about the state of the world and international security, though sometimes after working with people who can’t function in everyday life and for whom taking a shower is a big accomplishment makes me pigeonhole everyone we serve in that way. We had a great conversation about war and what the US’s role in the world should be, and how the UN should interact. I told the two as we were leaving that I would call CNN to see if I could get a debate show booked for them.

Talking with these two gentlemen who had served their country reminded me just what a large percentage of our participants at the Campus are veterans. A third of homeless men in the U.S. are veterans. People come back from the horror of war, and are confronted with a world that does not understand what they have been to. Participation in war often leads to mental illness, alcoholism and drug use, which in turn lead to homelessness. This might even be furthered when the lifestyle back home is not altered in any meaningful way even though we are a country at war.

I know I have met homeless veterans who served in Korea, Vietnam and the first war with Iraq. This article from the Christian Science Monitor is about those veterans pushed out onto the streets after their service in Iraq. Let us remember the veterans among us, and whether or not we support the reasons they were sent to fight, that they are in need of the care of the society that they represent on the battlefield.

A PRAYER FOR VETERANS DAY from the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program

God of the ages, we thank you for all who have served in the armed forces of this country. Comfort those who grieve for those who gave the last full measure of devotion. Strengthen those who bear physical, emotional and spiritual wounds. Stand with those who provide care to them. Move us to reach out to sisters and brothers. Guide us to work for the day when no one needs to serve in the military. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.