spiritual resources for healing

War and Peace

A Sermon in Conjunction with Veterans Day

Preached at Hanover St. Presbyterian Church

By the Rev. Thomas C. Davis, III, Ph.D.

On November 12, 2000

 

Texts:

2 Chronicles 15: 1-15

Ephesians 2: 11-22

Mt. 5: 38-48

In conjunction with our nation’s celebration of Veterans’ Day, Hanover Street Presbyterian Church invites you this morning to remember and honor our war veterans.  Who are our war veterans?  Not just the combatants, both the dead and the surviving, but indeed anyone whom the scourge of war has injured in body, mind, or spirit.

Visitors to the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington D.C. sometimes leave handwritten notes or snapshots stuck in the crevices between the black granite slabs engraved with the names of husbands, brothers, lovers, and friends whom the war slew.  Laura Palmer, a childhood friend of my wife, Alice, and former Vietnam war correspondent, tracked down some of the loved ones who left these memorabilia, interviewed them, and compiled their lamentations in a book called Shrapnel in the Heart.  Laura did not fight in the war, but psychologically and spiritually she is a war veteran.  Likewise, the loved ones whom she interviewed are war veterans.  They did not fight; but war nonetheless scarred them.  

Today we honor and commiserate with veterans of war in this broad sense.  And, because we understand veterans of war as all persons killed or scarred by war, instead of just those combatants whose service we now remember in the glow of patriotism, my sermon this morning will not, I hope not even by the slightest implication, glorify war.  I mean to honor veterans, but not to glorify the wars in which they fought.  

It is mostly those who have not fought in wars who think that the horror of war can be justified by some glorious cause.   Those who have been trapped in the daily meat grinder of having to kill or be killed will tell you there is no glory in it.  So, beware patriotic sentimentality.  In truth, war is not glorious.  It is humanity’s paroxysm of rage.

After service today we will hear from combatants in World War II, both on the Allied and Axis sides, and combatants in the Vietnam War.  Unfortunately, we are too late to hear from combatants in the First World War.  Most have passed on.  Their oral history is lost.  It would have been instructive to hear from a survivor of the Battle of the Somme in France, for instance, where huge armies were arrayed in trenches not much more than a stone’s throw apart,  where 410,000 British, 190,000 French, and 500,000 Germans killed or maimed each other in a few days.  It would have been instructive, I think, because the wars we will have represented this afternoon, the Second World War and the Vietnam War, are remembered as good and bad wars, respectively.  World War II is regarded as America’s finest hour, a victory over the diabolical Fascist forces, whereas the Vietnam War is seen (most charitably), as a foreign relations mistake. Novelist James Jones, a U.S. Army veteran of World War II, wrote:

“If one is to believe the complete collections of [the servicemen’s newspapers] Yank  and Stars and Stripes, there were no bitter American soldiers in the whole of World War II.  Even the death shown (and one must show a little death, if one is doing a war) is generally “good” death, meaningful death, clean death.  All of this has given rise today to the idea, particularly among the veterans of the Vietnam War, that World War II should be thought of as a good war, a “pure” war.  (So strong still is our American firm and steadfast Puritan need for a “purity” in everything of value.)

It would be good, I say, to hear from World War I veterans, because, with hindsight many of them regarded the carnage in which they had participated as politically useless, neither morally pure nor glorious.  World War I British “dough boy” Herbert Read, in his poem, “To a Conscript of 1940,” imagines he is a soldier going off to the second world war when he meets a ghost of a soldier from the first:

A soldier passed me in the freshly fallen snow,

His footsteps muffled, his face unearthly gray;

And my heart gave a sudden leap

As I gazed on a ghost of five-and-twenty years ago.

I shouted Halt!  and my voice had the old accustom’d ring

And he obeyed it as it was obeyed in the shrouded days

When I too was one of an army of young men marching into the unknown.

He turned towards me and I said:

“I am one of those who went before you five-and-twenty years ago:

One of the many who never returned,

Of the many who returned and yet were dead.

We went where you are going, into the rain and the mud;

We fought as you will fight

With death and darkness and despair;

We gave what you will give–our brains and our blood.

We think we gave in vain.  The world was not renewed.

There was hope in the homestead and anger in the streets

But the old world was restored and we returned

To the dreary field and workshop and the immemorial feud of rich and poor.

Our victory was our defeat.  Power was retained where power had been misused.

And youth was left to sweep away the ashes that the fires had strewn beneath our feet.

But one thing we learned:  there is no glory in the deed

Until the soldier wears a badge of tarnished braid;

There are heroes who have heard the rally and have seen

The glitter of a garland round their head.

Theirs is the hollow victory.  They are deceived.

But you, my brother and my ghost, if you can go

Knowing that there is no reward, no certain use in all our sacrifice, then honor is reprieved.

To fight without hope is to fight with grace, the self reconstructed, the false heart repaired.

Then I turned with a smile, and he answered by salute

As we stood against the fretted hedge, which was like white lace.

Read’s poem speaks of a patriot’s false heart being repaired through disillusionment.  It is good for patriots to be disillusioned, for patriotism is often idolatrous.  Patriots often mingle love of God and love of country, making it nigh impossible for citizens to view their own nation’s actions critically.  So, to come to the realization that a war blessed by patriotism really hasn’t changed things very much; or worse, that it has brought about a worse state of affairs (which could rightfully be said of World War I), that certainly is enlightening.  It is indeed good for us to be so disillusioned.

But, I must say, I don’t agree with Read’s statement that “to fight without hope is to fight with grace.” That’s an overstatement.  To fight without the false hope which a chauvinistic patriotism instills, that alone cannot fit one to fight with grace.  I saw lots of G.I.’s in Vietnam fighting without hope of a positive outcome, without a shred of patriotism, but we certainly did not fight with grace.  We just slogged through, killed to stay alive, escaped the daily meat grinder “in one piece,” as they say, but came home like dead men walking.

To fight with grace–and here I am using the word, “fight,” in broad terms, to mean struggling against seemingly insurmountable odds–to fight with grace requires much hope.  Just slogging along, like the “dog face” G.I.s that James Jones wrote about as he described the “devolution of soldiers,”  weary automatons who got through hell by writing  themselves off as dead even before they entered battle, such fatalistic slogging cannot equip anyone to fight with grace.  Only hope can.  American fliers, shot down over North Vietnam in the late sixties, beaten and starved for six years as prisoners of war, could not have survived that experience without hope, hope of seeing their loved ones again, hope of living in peace.

This brings me to the second portion of my sermon, about war and peace. They are opposites, or so it would seem.  War occurs when conflict erupts into violence.  Peace, therefore, must be the absence of conflict, all quietness and rest.  However, understanding them in such abstract polarity is misleading.  

In this life at least, peace is not all quietness and rest.  Peace only appears as such in otherworldly dreams, like Isaiah’s peaceful kingdom, where the lion lies down with the lamb.  In this life peace always includes some degree of conflict, because conflict is inevitable, even in the most intimate of human relationships, such as marriage. Conflict will never be eradicated, because human beings have different and inevitably competing needs and desires. We can’t make conflict disappear, but we can learn to deal with our disagreements, even profound ones, without resorting to violence.  This requires a host of peace making skills and attitudes that we will never develop, however, if we seek to maintain peace solely by suppressing violent aggression with countervailing violence.

Despite the fact that I entered the ministry as a result of my wartime experience, distaste for war has not made me a pacifist.  I still believe that nations need to be prepared to fight wars, and that police forces need to be equipped to subdue aggressors.  But, if I could characterize these reactive forces as “peace-keeping” ones, let me add by contrast that my war experience has made me much more attentive to the need for peace making.  Peace keeping is subduing aggressors through violent means. Peace making is working very hard and consistently to diminish the conditions that contribute to anger and aggression in the first place.  

As a combatant I discovered that once you have entered into the insanity of war, there is no way out but through.  You cannot choose to love your enemy once you and he have set about to kill one another, because if you let down your guard, if you decide even for one day to opt out of the diabolical game, you risk be killed yourself.  No, if you want the freedom to love your enemy with some control over the risk involved, you must do it in the stage before peace keeping.  You must do it in the peace making stage.  You must do everything you can to promote understanding.  You must do everything you can to promote forgiveness and reconciliation.  You must become pro-active in kindness, doing good to those who are not kind to you.  Perhaps if more people had been working on peace making instead of peace keeping Hitler would never have risen to power.  Peace making would not have tolerated the anti-Semitism which became integral to Nazi ideology.  Peace making would not have allowed the punitive treaty of Versailles, which led to resentment in Germany, resentment upon which the Brown Shirts capitalized.  

Alas, though, I can not make Jesus’ radical love reasonable.  It is, in fact, not reasonable, according to the world’s way of reckoning.  He did not say love your enemies only in the first stage, the peace making stage, and if that fails, then you can resort to peace keeping:  “Praise God, and pass the ammunition!”  No, he said, “Love your enemies.” Period!  

A spiritual admirer said to William Penn that he was having trouble accepting Penn’s radical devotion to non-violence.  The aspiring one  said he was trying to follow Penn’s way, but he still had to wear a sword.  “Very well then,” said Penn, “wear it as long as you can.” This was a gentle way of saying that the teaching of Jesus Christ, and the example of Jesus’ choosing the cross instead of waging war against his enemies moves you and me to take off our own swords, and leave them off.  I’m still wearing mine, though I want to be like Jesus.  I wonder when I won’t be able to wear my sword any longer?

— TCDavis

The following is a sermon I preached on the eve of Memorial Day, May 28th, 2017 entitled “Remember Those in Prison.”  It highlights some similar challenges faced by veterans returning from war and citizens returning from prison.  Communities of faith can help ease the transition for both groups.

Texts:

Psalm 34: 4-8

I sought the Lord, and he answered me, and delivered me from all of my fears.  Look to Him and be radiant; so your faces will never be ashamed. This poor soul cried and was heard by the Lord, and was saved from every trouble. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him, and delivers them. O taste and see that the Lord is good; happy are those who take refuge in Him.

Hebrews 13: 1-3

Let mutual love continue.  Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.  Remember those who are in prison as though you were in prison with them; and those who are being tortured as though you yourself were being tortured.

…………………………………………………………

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, as a veteran I am grateful for this opportunity to bring a message to you on the eve of Memorial Day, the annual commemoration to honor all those who have died in the service of our country.  

My wife and I just returned from my 50th college reunion, the class of 1967.  That was the year that the Vietnam war was ramping up, and guys graduating with me were facing the draft with dread.  Many like me joined the Navy to avoid being drafted into the infantry.  I figured in the Navy I would be assigned to a ship, and wouldn’t have to touch foot in Vietnam.  For many Navy enlistees that was so, but not for me.  I ended up in the “brown water Navy,” living ashore with South Vietnamese sailors and their families, and all too often stepping into the bush to see what traces we could find of our enemy, the Viet Cong.  

Hunting for human beings to kill them is nasty and scary business.  It can do bad things to your nerves and your conscience.  I arrived in “the Nam” in January of 1970.  By April I was pretty well cooked.  There were just four Americans at Coastal Group 34’s compound, and one day my  other buddies went up river for supplies, leaving me alone to monitor the radio.  In idle hours I did a lot of reading, partly for entertainment but also for consolation.  I was seeking and questioning.  In one of her paperbacks Catherine Marshall encouraged her readers to invite Jesus into their hearts.  Don’t think anything will happen?  Try it, she urged.  What have you got to lose? She assured me that the helping spirit spoken of in John’s Gospel would come if I asked.  So, I prayed, “Jesus, I don’t know if you’re for real, but if you are, I could sure use some help here!”  Jesus did come, pronto!  The spirit of Jesus filled my mind and heart, and I wasn’t afraid anymore.  In fact, I felt great joy, joy and peace like I’d never known before.  The words of this morning’s psalm tell what happened:

I sought the Lord, and he answered me,

and delivered me from all of my fears.

Look to Him and be radiant. . . .

O taste and see that the Lord is good;

happy are those who take refuge in Him.

Happy indeed!  Fast forward now to January of ‘71.  I made it home in one piece,  but for almost fifty years I’ve been unpacking that year that changed my life.  The journey hasn’t been all happy.  Oh, for a few years I seemed to be doing O.K., getting through seminary, starting to raise a family, trying to forget my warrior past.  But warriors find they can’t forget their past. You can’t move forward as a peacemaker unless you own the part of you that once bared its fangs.  

It isn’t easy coming home from war.  Your nervous system is wound tight! Your brain and body are programmed for self-protection.  You’re on automatic pilot.  The slightest provocation can set you off, and you can’t figure out where the anger’s coming from.  It’s in your body, not just your mind.  A warrior’s anger is pent up energy that kept him  alive in the ‘Nam, or Iraq, or Afghanistan, but it’s totally dysfunctional when he or she tries to come home and behave like a normal citizen.

For a long time our armed services have not realized that it takes time to transition from battle consciousness to civilian consciousness.  Signing discharge papers may make you a civilian in the blink of an eye legally , but not existentially. To cross over from warring to peaceful conduct takes time.  Going through a rite of passage also helps.  Like the one practiced by Lakota warriors.

When Lakota Sioux got close to their villages after being on the war path they were not allowed to cross over right away.  Villages tended to be built beside a stream, and the warriors needed to keep that stream between them and their families for a while, because they were still charged with explosive energy and they could be dangerous.  Their spirits needed time to heal.  First, they removed their war paint.  Then they went through a cleansing ceremony for mind and body in a sweat lodge.  Then, when their spirits were ready, they put on backpacks filled with heavy rocks and they crossed the stream into their villages.  There, members of their families took out the rocks one by one and carried them into their teepees.  These rocks symbolized the burdens of war.  The people of their village were owning the warring they had done by taking the burdens off their backs and carrying them into their own dwellings.  That doesn’t happen much in our society.  Our warriors go off to fight for us, but as a nation we don’t own the things they did, killing for our sake.  And so, they keep on carrying those burdens; and they can weigh mighty heavily on a conscience, sometimes heavy enough to make one want to die.

What kind of burdens, you may wonder.  Well, burdens from having to do something in a contest for survival that makes your soul ache. Like killing a civilian who got in the way.  Or having to shoot a child wielding a gun.  Or failing to save a buddy.  Or getting coordinates wrong and bombarding a buddy by mistake.  Or surviving a firefight when a buddy to the right or left of you did not.  Or –yes this happens sometimes –killing an enemy and recognizing as you stare at his body:  that could just as easily be you lying there.  So, you experience a strange compassion mixed with a faint dose of guilt that can swell inside over the years.  Movies and video games portray killing as a heroic adventure , but when you get into the business of hunting and being hunted you may find it becomes banal and numbing; or else, intoxicating, because it summons a natural stimulant, adrenaline.  I’ve known warriors hooked on adrenaline.  Adrenaline is great for staying on high alert, which is what’s needed in a war zone.  But what do you do to come down?  When you get home you are expected to come down, chill out.  Some warriors can’t.  They’re still wound very tight. They can’t sleep, and that makes them grumpy and morose.  They have nightmares, maybe even flashbacks.  They try to calm down with booze.  That affects their judgment.  Drinking or drugging begins to make them very hard to live with.  Marriages fail, relationships crumble.  Under the influence, veterans sometimes do really stupid stuff, criminal even, and they get arrested and incarcerated.  

This brings us to our key verse for this morning:  “Remember those In prison, as though you were in prison with them.” This has become a mission statement for hundreds of prison ministries across our country.  I belong to one, New Beginnings-Next Step, which welcomes former prisoners home.  We meet on Saturday afternoons at the Friends Meeting House.  We help returning citizens to find a job and housing, We help them to feed and clothe themselves.  But maybe the most important thing we do is provide a place where it’s safe to be open and honest, and where you won’t be labeled weak for showing compassion.  

Compassion abounds at New Beginnings-Next Step, and this is a blessing, for many hurts are shared there.  Hurts of regret for mistakes made that cost years of separation from sons and daughters.  Hurts from years of struggling for respect and self-respect.  Hurts from addictions.  Hurts from being poor in a society that prizes material riches.  

I joined New Beginnings-Next Step about the time that I started another organization to help people coming home, the Interfaith Veterans’ Workgroup.  As I sat with the returning citizens in New Beginnings-Next Step I was also reading about post traumatic stress in veterans.  I began to realize that the two populations face similar challenges coming home.

 One challenge they have in common is leaving a regimented culture where belonging was a given.  Returning home, a soldier or returning citizen reenters a society where belonging is not a given, a society marked instead by radical individualism, one might even say, selfishness.  Coming home to such a society, you need to work hard at belonging.  It requires a deliberate self-investment.  

A second challenge that returning citizens and returning veterans may share is controlling their anger.  I haven’t done a scientific study, but I’ll bet that many returning citizens and soldiers were traumatized before they went to war or got involved in crime.  Trauma is cumulative.  Soldiers who were traumatized as children carry that burden with them into war; and then, making war heaps more trauma upon them. Being traumatized can make a person angry, because as I said before, anger is self-protective energy. If it is not expressed at the time of the trauma it gets stored in the body and the mind; and  when the burden of accumulated anger gets too heavy to bear, a person can lose control, explode.  Living with an out-of control angry person can be unbearable, so some returning citizens and some returning veterans have difficulty maintaining loving relationships.  

Finally, here’s the last similarity I observed between returning citizens and returning veterans:  Living in a dangerous environment can either numb you, or give you a full bodied experience of being alive! A returning citizen remarked that she mustn’t return to “the hood,” because old acquaintances  there might suck her back into bad habits.  However almost within the same breath she confessed that she missed the excitement of her old neighborhood, and the good feeling she had of belonging there. Likewise, listen to what Vietnam veteran Robert Jost writes as he remembers what it was like walking point, that is, being the guy in the platoon who marched in front of everyone else, and therefore was the most likely in the column to first come upon the enemy, an enemy perhaps lying in wait.

On Point

He walks

Out of a village gate at night

Past the bunkers, looks

Out on the narrow road

And sees the possibility

Of death.  And he doesn’t care.

For the past months he hasn’t

Slept much and he scarcely feels.

He’s getting short, but there’s little

At home.  He’s got few illusions.

“The World”:  It’s hard,

There’s little compassion,

And they won’t understand.  No,

Life is here.  On point he can feel.

Fear and the threat of death

Exhilarate him.  He’s been

Scarred and scared and numb

For months.  But on point

He can really feel.

There’s people behind him

who depend on him

And he’s good and he cares,

Though he doesn’t know

Them well.  He guesses it’s

Love and walks

Out that narrow road and

He’s alive

For one more night.

Remember those in prison.  Why have I chosen that verse for the title of this sermon on the eve of Memorial Day, the day we honor those who have died in the service of our country?  Because some veterans even after they come home are in prison.  If not a prison made with bricks and stones, then a prison made of memories that won’t go away and won’t let them rest.  Memories that may lead them to add their names to the list of war dead.  Returning veterans and returning citizens have stories to tell.  Sharing them helps warriors heal.  In his poem, Jost says that folks back home won’t understand.  They won’t have compassion.   They don’t want to hear real war stories.  That’s what he thinks.  A lot of returning vets think that way.  But the returning citizens in New Beginnings-Next Step will give you a different view.  One said to the volunteer staff who mostly sit and listen, “We don’t know why you love us, but it’s clear you do.  Thanks for being with us!”

From the outset the veterans in the Interfaith Veterans Workgroup decided to invite friends and family members of veterans to join us.  Since our mission is to help veterans adjust to a civilian society, it makes sense to include non-veterans in our circle of listening.  For too long veterans have kept the burdens of war on their own backs, thinking that they mustn’t divulge the things they have done or failed to do that plague their consciences.  They probably think they’re protecting the innocent that way.  They’re trying to protect the image that their loved ones had of them before they left for war.  But, for the sake of wounded warriors and for the sake of their loved ones, this intention must be abandoned.  The truth must be faced.  Warrior wisdom must be shared.  Otherwise the homeland will continue unenlightened and naive, ill equipped to bring veterans home.

Brothers and sisters , I want you to know that communities of faith are pretty much an untapped resource in helping veterans share their warrior wisdom in order to become teaching elders in a culture of peace.  Sorely burdened veterans suffer from “moral injury.” Communities of faith are uniquely equipped to help veterans heal from moral injury.  Sacred scriptures contain abundant resources for peacemaking.  Communities of faith have rituals of forgiveness, and they can inspire and  collaborate in service projects that give veterans an opportunity to create a different future.  The past cannot be undone, true, but a different future can be shaped.  The letter to the Hebrews admonishes us, “Remember those in prison as though you were in prison with them.”  Church, I trust we are up to that challenge.  Thanks be to that same spirit that visited me in 1970, a sacred advocate that is with us always.

 

 

 

 

Happy are the peacemakers.  That’s what I’ve discovered in my own life, and it’s the subject of the following sermon which I preached at a church that has shared its chapel with the Interfaith Veterans’ Workgroup.  Thanks, Presbyterian Church of the Covenant in Wilmington, Delaware, for caring for returning veterans, and for your vision in interfaith peacemaking.

Happy are the Peacemakers

Text: Matthew 5:9 “Happy are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.”

Good morning, brothers and sisters in Christ. Your pastor and my neighbor, Edwin, said that you would be covering the Beatitudes at the end of April, and that suits me just fine, because the text he suggested for this morning is the seventh Beatitude, “Happy are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.”

As you read in my bio, I’m an interfaith peacemaker, commissioned as such in 2011 by our presbytery. When I asked the Committee on Ministry to commission me they said, “What’s an interfaith peacemaker?” I told them I was feeling a call of the Holy Spirit to act as an ambassador to other nearby faith communities, to Muslims, and Jews, and Bahais, and Sikhs, and Buddhists, and so on. After hosting interfaith suppers when I was pastor of Hanover Church I felt called to make more interfaith friends, and work with them on projects to promote the common good. After 9-11 my sense of a call to interfaith peacemaking grew stronger, for I foresaw that some citizens would be afraid of Muslims. Love casts out fear, so I have made a special effort to make friends among Muslims. My wife and I have become prayer partners with a young Muslim Turkish couple who are studying at the University of Delaware. We pray for each other daily, and meet for meals and sight seeing.

Interfaith peacemaking is bearing good fruit in Delaware. In March, when the Jewish Community Center in Wilmington received bomb threats a crowd of more than 500 people rallied to show support, including Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, and Hindus. And yesterday, when Muslims gathered at the State House in Dover to show their love for and allegiance to the United States, again there were many persons present from other traditions.

Jesus said, “Happy are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.” Peacemaking isn’t just about stopping wars once they start. In a much broader sense peacemaking is about removing the social conditions that increase tensions that may eventually lead to violent conflict. So, many kinds of justice work are forms of peacemaking, for instance, protecting our soil and water and air, and making good health care and affordable housing available to all, and preventing hunger. Because our society is so diverse in terms of religion–indeed, America is the most religiously diverse nation on earth– peacemaking is done best through interfaith cooperation.

When people hear about IVW, the Interfaith Veterans’ Workgroup which I convened in October of 2015, they often ask, “Why interfaith?” What’s that got to do with helping veterans? Friends, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and in many other hot spots have become holy wars, fueled by perverse religious ideology. If we are to care ably for the veterans returning from those wars, we must work together, across faith lines. If we are to prevent plotters from using perverse religious ideology to recruit home-grown suicide bombers, we must work together, across faith lines. And if we are to heal veterans from the soul-wounds that warring inflicts, we must do this together, across faith lines, because our veterans come from diverse faith traditions.

You may be curious why a pastor should be so interested in helping veterans. Well, because I am one. I became a pastor because I met Jesus when I was patrolling for Viet Cong in the Mekong Delta. I had my belly full of warring, setting ambushes especially. Those felt like murder. I prayed to Jesus for help, and his spirit filled me with joy and peace, and my fear of dying or being captured disappeared. “Whether we live or whether we die,” the Apostle Paul wrote, “we are in Christ.” That wasn’t just something I read in the Bible. I experienced Christ with me, Christ in me. So I wrote home that if I lived I wanted to study religion when I returned. That new course saved me from a lot of suffering which many veterans endured coming home from Vietnam.

Now Americans find themselves in the longest series of military conflicts in our nation’s history. Servicemen and women are serving multiple tours, some fighting house to house. Our armed forces until very recently have not properly understood the need for re-training warriors for civilian life when they de-enlist.  Warriors manage to survive in hostile environments by quick and automatic responses that have been drilled into their bodies and brains. A warrior doesn’t become a peaceful civilian again by just signing some papers. The adjustment requires a reverse training, a calming of the mind and body. And, the transition calls for some kind of ritual, I believe, a rite of passage marking the warrior’s homecoming. Marching bands won’t do. Such hoorah fails to recognize some warriors’ lingering anguish. The communities to which they return must receive them back conscientiously, showing that they own what the warriors have done in their names.

When Sioux warriors returned from the war path they were not allowed to return immediately to their villages. They had to stay apart for a while, because their spirits needed time to heal.   In the meantime the villagers felt it was not safe for them to return.  After the time of waiting was over the warriors put rocks in backpacks and carried those into their village. The villagers then took the rocks out of their packs and carried them into their own teepees. By this ritual they showed that they owned the burdens the warriors were bringing home. We need something like that for our returning veterans. A spiritual rite of passage would help to relieve the burdens on their consciences, which are sometimes so heavy that veterans take their own lives. About twenty veterans each day do that, driven in part by the unbearable symptoms of a nervous system ramped up for aggression, and a soul burdened by deeds which they think are so horrible that they can’t be shared with loved ones. People of faith, this must change! It isn’t just our warriors who need re-training. We do too.

When I decided, with some Vietnam vet friends and some Quaker friends, to see what we could do to prevent veteran suicide I wasn’t content just with raising public awareness about the twenty a day figure. Citizens are doing all kinds of things to wake people up to the problem, and that’s good, of course. Walk twenty miles to raise money for this or that agency. Bicycle twenty miles. Do twenty push-ups. It seems to me that the public is well aware of the problem now, but the suicide rate is holding, and it’s getting even worse for women. I doubt we’ll make progress until we understand better what causes veterans to be so depressed that they can’t abide living anymore.

There’s quite a buzz on the Internet about PTSD symptoms: hypervigilance, flashbacks, nightmares, anger, and more. And there are many mind-body treatments being tried to reduce these symptoms, such as mindfulness meditation, yoga, Reike, and healing touch. The term, “moral injury,” though, is not as well known as PTSD; and this is unfortunate because moral injury, a wound to the conscience which I mentioned earlier, is very likely a chief factor in the high suicide rate among veterans.

There is a Christian psychiatrist in Georgia, Dr. Nagy Youssef, who is researching how religious faith may help veterans get unburdened from the sack of rocks they carry home from war. This makes sense, right? Think about our own faith, rich with conscience-healing practices of confession, prayer, and penance. We are still at the pioneering stage in PTSD research. Nevertheless I think it’s fair to say that communities of faith have a very important role in helping veterans come home to share their warrior wisdom. I am partly convinced by my own experience that by doing so veterans can take on with utter sincerity a new role: that of peacemaker.

Jesus said, “Happy are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.”” What did Jesus pack into that phrase, children of God? Jesus called God Abba, “Daddy.” What does it feel like to be a Daddy’s child? I brought a yardstick. I’m on the short side, five foot six, but many Americans are nearly twice as tall as this yardstick. Can you remember when you were half your height, and you were holding the hand of a loving parent or caregiver. You felt safe in that care, didn’t you? You felt loved, right? Well, I think Jesus was appealing to this common experience. He was indicating that when we become peacemakers we fall in step with God’s walk, grasping the hand of someone much greater than we. And when we have hold of that hand, no matter what happens to us along the way, that caring hand won’t let us go. And that makes us very happy indeed!

— Rev. Tom Davis, President of IVW