A Better Way

Over the weekend, I watched the 1946 classic film, "The Best Years of Our Lives."  My screenwriter friend tells me it is one of top 25 movies of all time.  I could see that.  The acting was good. Character development was powerful. It was a heavy drama sprinkled with appropriate humor.  The story was compelling. 

The movie shared the challenges of three World War II veterans as they attempted to adjust to "normal" life after coming home.  The banker finds it difficult to be as cold and calculating in making loan decisions as he was before the war. The athlete adjusts to life without hands. The decorated officer of the threesome struggles to find work, and when he finally gets the job, it is in the same drug store where he had been a "soda jerk" before the war, still doing the same job. 

In the movie, we had a happy ending as all three of the protagonists resolved their inner conflicts to go on to what we assume will be normal lives. But, I grew up with a WWII vet who, by all appearances, was "normal," but he was never able to be emotionally available to his children.  He resolved emotional crises in the only way he knew: throw money at it and surely that would solve the feelings.

The movie reminded me of the thousands of Vietnam veterans of my generation that came home empty shells of the men who went to war.  Almost every day carries a story of similar adjustment challenges of our war fighters from Iraq and Afghanistan, even as we flirt with another intervention.

It would be easy to point to recent wars, which the media have covered so closely, and think they were different, but World War I wasn't much different.  As an undergraduate, I poured over poetry from WWI veterans Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen.  I was drawn in a mesmerizing way by them into my own grandfather's life.  He was never the same when he returned from "The War to End All Wars," as they called WWI at the time.  We might call it Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD) now.  They called it "shell shock."  He spent most of 25 years sitting in a catatonic state in a mental hospital, hardly eating, rarely blinking, and starring into space. 

The thing is that there are stories about veterans of the U. S. Civil War, who were never the same. In fact, if we go back to ancient literature, the vagaries of war have proven timeless themes.  The classic Greek drama Lysistrata relates the story of women maneuvering to get their men back from a long war. 

The senseless emptying of our men (and now women) every generation has been heavy on my heart as the news has been peppered with tales of one conflict after another around the globe, be it street warfare in Ferguson, thousands who have lost their homes in Gaza, or the beheading of a journalist who unwittingly become a pawn in a war in Syria as he sought to bring to people around the world. 

The victims of war aren't only those left on the battlefield, but in my family it was my father's father who was absent for his son and my father who was physically present but going through the motions of life.  There are countless others across generations who have been robbed of the fullness that the men in their lives might have brought.  What will it take for us to learn the spiritual lessons of war.

There used to be a bumper sticker that admonished, "If you want peace, work for justice."  I don't know that there is a simple formula for peace, but I truly believe that within each of us lies the potential for peace. We can bring more peace and justice into the world by making a difference within each of our spheres of influence today, tomorrow, and each day of our lives.

Freedom Isn't Free

Today is Veterans' Day.  Since arriving in Washington 7 years ago, I've used the holiday to visit one (or more) of the memorials to the veterans of our various wars.  This year a friend joined me to visit several.  First the World War II Memorial, remembering the contribution of my father.  Then we moved on to the Vietnam War Memorial where my friend marked the two tours that her father spent in that war.  Next we moved to the Korean War Memorial. 

The Korean War has been called the forgotten war, sandwiched as it was between WWII and Vietnam, and technically a war that continues today. I always find the Korean Memorial eerily poignant.  The life-sized soldiers are a ghostly white, and etched images on its own black wall come and go, almost like ghosts. 

Today I noticed something new.  In large letters etched in the black marble were the words, "Freedom Is Not Free."  An aging soldier offered remarks to a small assembled crowd, saying early on "War is hell."

 

As I'd moved from one war memorial to another, I'd kept thinking, there really has to be a better way to resolve our differences than in the blood of young men and now women. On the rim of a fountain in front of "Freedom Is Not Free" were US and United Nations casualty numbers. When I came home, I looked up more figures. Casualty estimates vary widely, but in the range of 1 million service personnel were killed on both sides. A total of 2.5 million civilian deaths and injuries were reported.  Still missing from UN forces are 470,000.  This from a war we hardly talk about.

 

The truth is the casualties of our wars are much greater than these and numbers from other wars would indicate.  Before heading out for our walk this morning, I'd listened to part of a program on the Diane Rehm Show about Veterans Treatment Courts. (http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2013-11-11/veterans-treatment-courts.)  These are special courts for veterans who had no criminal records before the war they went  to turned them into criminals.

 

What does this have to do with my spiritual journey? My friend, a woman in her 50s, and myself, a woman in my 60s, also carry the scars of our fathers' wars.  After visiting the memorials, we talked about our scars.  The men who came home to our households were never emotionally available to their daughters (or sons either.)  Whatever the experience of "war is hell" was for our fathers, they could not talk about it and repressed their emotions.  In order to put away the ugly feelings, my father was forced to repress the good ones as well. Although I am sure my father loved me a lot, he could not show it.

 

But, you see, this is not the whole story about my father's wounds of war.  His father, a veteran of World War I, probably suffered from what we call PTSD (Post Traumatic Shock Disorder) today.  Back then, they said he was "shell shocked" as many WWI vets were at the first exposure to modern warfare.  He was institutionalized for almost 30 years, unavailable at all for his son--my father--or us, his grandchildren.

 

The result is that I grew up and am now growing old unable to get close to people. (10/12/13)  I am unable to receive love and be taken care of. (11/8/13) Neither my friend nor I ever went to war or experienced the horrors that our fathers did, yet we are casualties, carrying multi-generational wounds. All over the world there are casualties of war--people who went to war and came home forever changed and people that never went to war. 

 

The other thing that this has to do with my spiritual journey is being conscious.  I feel like a different person than I was this morning.  Touched by the sacrifices and even more moved by the magnitude.  I don't ever again want to forget what is doing on at spots all over the world even as I write.  I don't ever want to forget that even though there isn't much I can do, I must do what I can to connect us.  If ever there was a day when my fervent belief in the need to connect with people heart to heart, it was this one.  I must start with myself, dropping the walls of my heart to let love out and perhaps more importantly to let love in.