Thursday, July 5, 2007

Caring for the emotional and physical wounds of wars

Conflicting feelings of pain and gratitude still linger as I reflect upon a recent journey to Texas to visit with chaplains at two two Veterans Affairs hospitals --one in Waco and the other in Temple--and one at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio:

--Pain for U.S. military service personnel who have been severely wounded in Iraq or in Afghanistan and still others from service prior to those two wars. I saw one young man, still healing from severe body and facial burns plus amputation, eating lunch in the dinning facility at Brooke Army and chatting with some fellow patients. I later saw him determinedly wheeling himself out the door and across the street back to the special, brand new Center for the Intrepid rehabilitation center where he, along with a host of others, spend many hours each week trying to prepare and figure out how to move forward into some kind of hopeful life.

--Gratitude for the VA and military hospital staffs who, with great compassion and expertise, faithfully assist veterans--young and old--to find some meaning, joy and hope in bodies and minds racked with damage and hurt; gratitude for New York real estate developer Arnold Fisher, who has invested his own time, energy, influence and millions of dollars into his family's Fisher House Foundation which provides housing at all major U.S. military medical facilities for family members who are visiting their wounded loved ones or for veterans returning for out-patient care. At Brooke Army Medical Center Mr. Fisher spearheaded a project allowing private donations (instead of government monies) to design and construct the Center for the Intrepid (CFI), a state-of-the-art rehabilitation center at Brooke.

--Gratitude for chaplains, especially our own Episcopal Church chaplain-priests at those three facilities --VA Chaplains Tom Rardin and Mark Wilburn in Waco and Temple, and Army Chaplain Phil Kochenburger in San Antonio--each with a heart and mind for caring for those struggling to find spiritual as well as medical support through the maze of coping and recovery.

Yes, I know that the odd mixture of pain and gratitude, not unlike like fear and love, are the stuff of life. Yet it all comes with such strong, in-your-face ambiguity when we see them in the faces of the scores of veterans and their loved ones who have been impacted by the violence of wars.

Oh dear God, how we pray for the peace of Jerusalem -- and Sudan, and Iraq, and Afghanistan, and all other places that need healing that only comes when God is allowed to save all our souls -- Muslims, Christians and Jews alike -- from hatred and power grabbing.

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