our vets and suicide - where the personal is political

On Thursday, April 4, 2013, I had the privilege of interviewing one of my clients for Storycorps http://storycorps.org/ (weekly broadcasts can be heard on NPR's Morning Edition).  She is the surviving mother of an Iraq war vet and has given me permission to write a bit about this in my blog.  Her son committed suicide last year.  Because of his mother, at least part of this young man's story will now be archived at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.  I know she wishes he were here to tell his own story.   He was a loving, generous, sensitive, handsome young man who struggled with addiction, depression, and PTSD.

Because of my work with his mom, I tend to think of their story as personal, rather than political.  But in the course of my experience as her 'interviewer', I heard their story in a new way.  I heard another thread in the fabric of the story - the ongoing failure of the military, the government, and in some ways the governed, to adequately support our service men and women both while they are active duty and when they come home after deployment.

If you have not read this editorial in Sunday's editorial section of the New York Times, you must.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/07/opinion/sunday/wars-on-drugs.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
As many of us know already, last year, more active duty soldiers died as a result of suicide than have died in combat.  

According to Richard Friedman, who wrote the piece,  "Worse, according to data not reported on until now, the military evidently responded to stress that afflicts soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan primarily by drugging soldiers on the front lines. Data that I have obtained directly from Tricare Management Activity, the division of the Department of Defense that manages health care services for the military, shows that there has been a giant, 682 percent increase in the number of psychoactive drugs — antipsychotics, sedatives, stimulants and mood stabilizers — prescribed to our troops between 2005 and 2011. That’s right. A nearly 700 percent increase — despite a steady reduction in combat troop levels since 2008"

Friedman posits that they are being used as sedatives and to treat PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder).  And, he raises concerns about the efficacy of the drugs used - are they being used for their FDA approved purpose?  Do we know what effect these drugs such as, Topamax, Neurontin and Lyrica, Valium, and Klonopin, will have on our soldiers in the long run?

We've heard it said that the mark of a civilized society is the way it treats its most vulnerable members.  It's strange to think about soldiers as vulnerable members of our society, but I believe they are.  They are often young.  They are asked to give up their own autonomy in the stated purpose of defending our freedom and democracy.  This is vulnerability to me and I am deeply dismayed at the gaps in our system.

A lot of people have a hard time believing in God, because they can't explain it.  What can I tell my kids about God, they think, because I don't know what I'd say.  Well, I have a hard time believing in war.  I have a hard time explaining war to my kids.

I would like to say, in all sincerity, no matter how naive, that I hope one day war and violence will not be used as a solution to conflict.  Until then,  I hope to do my part to help close the gaps in a system that emotionally and psychologically wounds the human beings who are tasked with the unexplainable.

Angels with A**holes and God in a Google Search

I’ve written before about my professor, Reverend Beverly Asbury, Chaplain from Vanderbilt University, circa 1990s.  He was my Religious Studies professor in undergraduate school and I adore him.  I probably can’t measure the influence he’s had on me since I met him when I was 19 or 20 years old. One of his bits of wisdom, probably an offhand comment on his part, but something that made a profound impact on me was when he said, ‘You know, we humans are ALL just angels with assholes.’ 

I’ve found that to be one of the truest statements I’ve ever heard.  Each of us has potential to be an angel of mercy and compassion, a symbol of hope, an act of love and giving.  Yet, each of us is bound by our humanity.  We are bodies.  Sometimes we are full of shit.  We are transcendent and just pretty regular at the same time. 

I am learning something about myself and in the end, maybe I just want to put it in words, because that’s what I like to do.  In my life, I have witnessed selfless kindness, unimaginable courage, creative compassion, love overcoming fear (not to mention overcoming rules), and humanity enduring with humor and love even in the face of such horror as the Holocaust. 

And I believe that when you see other people, you have the opportunity to see the ‘angel’ in them.  The holy in them.  If there’s holy in us, I feel that there is holy out there, too.  That’s just what I believe.  Somewhat along the lines of Albert Einstein, who said,  “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”

So, for me, as I get older, one of the intrinsic pieces of my own ‘mental and emotional health,’ as I summarize in my ‘ google bio’, is my spiritual life.  When we talk about spirituality, nothing is more frustrating that the limitation of words, but let me give it a try.  Even as a little kid, I had lots of questions about God – “How could God always have been there?  What came before God?”  My mom even invited the minister over for dinner to talk with me about it (a terrible explanation – ‘take it on faith’, was what I was told.)  Other questions – “why should I want to be a good person, just to go to heaven?  Is that really being a good person, if I just want some reward?”  And I took religious studies classes in college.  Death and Dying classes when they were offered.  So, maybe it’s no surprise that this is where I am today.

Maybe you have an inkling that you’d like to pay more attention to your spiritual life?  If you do, found or been recommended a number of online resources that create access to information, ideas, and community and I thought you might like to take a look too.  I hope you find this helpful:

 

Spirituality and Practice -  www.spiritualityandpractice.com  - can range from pop to academic, but pretty straight up and diverse theology.  I look at it every day and am amazed as the breadth and depth of information, inspiration and continuing education opportunities.

  

Patheos –  www.patheos.com  If you want to get an unfiltered universe of every type of belief/opinion/pop culture blog community this is where to go.  Every group from Pagan to Evangelical Christian from Muslim to Unitarian Universalist is well represented here and there is no editorial filter or preference.  You may not like or agree with everything you read, but everyone is welcome here.

Belief -  www.globalpost.com/globalpost-blogs/belief  -  This is part of Global Post – an American online newsource that focuses on global news.  This page is where religion and news intersect, primarily through current news events.

On Being with Krista Tippett -  www.onbeing.org Her public radio show is available on podcast here.  Diverse and thoughtful, a broad-ranging understanding of spirituality that encompasses science as well as belief.

Daily om -   www.dailyom.com:  kind of new-agey/Buddhist writing.  Something to think about in small nuggets.