Regret--what is "gret" and why should I ever re- it?

Do you ever play your least greatest hits back over and over again in your head?  You sit there in quiet contemplation about something else when all of a sudden you start remembering all that cringe-worthy shit you've ever done for absolutely no good reason other than to make yourself feel completely awful and ashamed?  My hindsight's been kicking my ass for about a week and I have no idea why other than a recent lupus flare kept me immobile with very little to do other than dig around in my head and blow dust off some stuff I should have set out for the garbage man to haul away.

Combine immobility with my natural introversion and viola!  We have weirdness in my gray matter.  Being an introvert makes me intensely prone to reflective thinking.  Usually this is productive for me, but not lately.  It's like I go rooting around in my noggin for an idea and WHAMMO!  This memory of something horrendous I did years ago jumps out at me like the Boogie Man.  What the hell is that about?  I've done a lot of work to move past those things and to live in the present because there's absolutely nothing I can do about the past and all that other healthy wellness advice that I truly do believe in. Yet, there it is.  Some random and not so complimentary or unsavory thing I did years ago looms.  It threatens to expose me like a blackmailer looking for some hush money.

What. The. Hell.

Then two things happened: 1) I got a massage from a friend and 2) I went to coffee with another friend.

Let me tell you about my friend the massage therapist. She's amazing.  Really.  I don't go out and chat and all that stuff with her that often because as I said--introvert.  OK, borderline recluse.  Anyway, she's got these liquid hazel brown eyes, naturally buoyant hair I would love to have, a killer dragonfly tattoo and we've had some fairly in-depth philosophical discussions that have helped me get out of ruts in the past. We visited back and forth a bit, got caught up and she basically massaged the crap out of my sore and achy muscles so that I promptly took a nap when I got home.  It was bliss.  I probably don't tell her enough how wonderful she is.  She really is fantastic.  She plays flute and she's always been drop dead talented.  I've never told her that I admire that about her, but I do.  I could never do that.  Her ability to play flute solo or with an ensemble is something you should experience some time.  As spaced out as I was after that massage, I started thinking about how awesome she is and couldn't help but smile.

Now for my coffee bud.  We've had an interestingly complicated friendship to say the least.  Way too much history to go into here.  She's a lot younger than me, but we also have a lot in common like a passion for the written word.  One thing I've always enjoyed about her is her zeal for life.  An opportunity presents itself and she goes for it.  She will pick herself up and move across country, which is something I have never done.  She's always struck me as someone who wants to experience everything this world has to offer and if it sucks, she's gonna go find something else to entertain her and the ugliness can just kiss her ass.  She's also dealt with way too much heartbreak and grief for someone her age.  Here she is in her prime and emotionally she's treading water.  At one point we were discussing her current relationship and she asked what I would do in that situation.  Before I had a chance to respond, she said, "You'd never be in this situation," to which I kind of scoffed.  After all the self-imposed regret montages I had endured the past week, I found that remark rather ironic.  My friend is in pain.  I know not how to help her other than to be here if she needs it.  I wish I knew exactly what to say to her to help her heal, but I don't.  I just know that the world is more interesting with her in it and I hope she knows that.

There you have it.  Two of the people I am blessed with knowing and calling friends.  These two women whether they know it or not brought me out of my head and back into life.  In the past, I've done rituals to cleanse and help me move on etc.  However, I am so fortunate to have these phenomenal women in my life and appreciating them for all their wondrous being worked better than a charm.  All of my friends are so important to me and yet I don't know that I tell them enough.  You see it doesn't matter who I was in the past.  I did some shit.  I learned from it.  I don't do that shit anymore because I figured out it wasn't who I was or who I wanted to be.  Despite that shit, these two people willingly seek me out for coffee or a movie.  For that, I am profoundly thankful.

And my Greatest Hits Regret Edition can suck it.

Lughnasadh

Post Lughnasadh Greetings to you all!

Per my usual, I spent this year's Lughnasadh up at the lake.  It was delightful as the full moon coincided with the sabbat.  Each of the 3 nights of the full moon I excitedly watched as the moon crept over the mountain before bathing the campground and lake in glorious and brilliant light.  I didn't even need the flashlight I took down to the lakeside the first night because the moon was that bright!  Breathtaking and wondrous.

As for the sabbat itself, I woke that morning and did the typical camping morning routine of hygiene and coffee before sitting down to ponder the deeper meanings of Lughnasadh.  If you don't know, this happens to be the first harvest of the sabbats and it is in essence the Wiccan thanksgiving.  You can read more about the Celtic God Lugh who lends his name to the sabbat here or on the festival itself at this entry.

I spent some time talking with my husband about what the sabbat means and reflecting on what we felt was going well this past year.  Some time after that I composed a list of what I believed improved over the last year and what still needs to get moving.  This is one of the suggested methods to reflect on your own personal harvest.  Pleasantly I noted that my list of "Needs More Time" was far shorter than my "Wow This Is Awesome."

• I am extremely grateful that for the first time in several years my husband got to camp with me the whole week of our vacation.  For the last few years, he's either been there for a few nights or not at all. 
• I am also grateful for my husband having found a job that does not require him to travel for weeks or months at a time.
• This summer I received an offer for a part time online tutoring job which along with my regular job and my husband's job means that we will be free of some major debt by this time next year.  Whew!  The end is near.
• I received a bailout of my very own this year as well which will absolve me of a portion of my student loan debt. This makes it that much easier to pay off that previously mentioned debt.
• I am reading even more than I used to if that is possible. I am reading a large variety of books as well, which is what I had hoped for this year.  For example, I read Stranger in a Strange Land while camping.  I can cross that off my "Classics to be Read" list.
• I am more fit than I have been in a long time and I have maintained my weight loss and lifestyle changes that helped me get back into single digit clothing.  You should see my arms.  Seriously--I cannot believe how fantastic they look.  They are strong and lovely and still feminine.  
• We have the most amazing garden that is providing an abundance of vegetables for the winter.  I wanted to devote more time to the garden and it has paid off in spades!
• I continue to be more honest and open with my parents and other people about myself.  I am a major introvert and a very private person, but I set a goal to be more open and to answer as honestly as possible any questions about my beliefs.  So far, so good.
• My husband and I remain close physically, emotionally, and philosophically.  I cannot tell you how much I value the fact that even when no one else seems to get it, he does.  
• Bellydance remains my creative and performance outlet.  I have been at it for about 5 years now and it still amazes me to watch my fellow dancers develop their abilities.  I love the camaraderie and the opportunities I have had because of this artistic expression.  I set out to go to a national bellydance festival this year and viola!  I will be doing that in about a month.  

Not a bad harvest eh?  Therefore, I was moved to write my own Lughnasadh words of celebration.  

Radiant Sun,

Through your warmth our garden thrives.

As your time each day wanes, 

We thank you for your bounty

And wish you safe journey

Toward winter's embrace.

Gentle Moon, 

Remind us of life's cycle.

As your lover weakens,

We thank you for these lessons.

Content in your presence,

And joyful harvest.

Grant us your wisdom with every bite,

Sow within us nature's rhythm with every sip,

I am thankful.

To Have and To Hold

Greetings to you all.  Hopefully you are well and enjoying the summer.  As always, many weddings have come and gone this season and more will follow. For now though, I must discuss an unfortunate wedding-related event that recently consumed my thoughts: chauvinism. 

Let me set the scene:

A young woman and her mother sit close together planning the twenty-two year old’s wedding which will happen in about a month.  Much to accomplish on the pre-wedding to-do list for these two women who busily attend to each item on the list.  As they discuss the decorations and the menu and the song list, the mother lovingly offers this pearl of marital wisdom to her daughter:

“Honey, when you marry you will follow your husband’s family’s set of traditions.  On holidays, you will go to his family or you will follow their traditions in your own home.  When I married your father, we celebrated with his family as you know.  It wasn’t until your father’s parents both passed that we spent a holiday with my parents.  This is what you will do when you marry.”

I cannot express to you my outrage and my disbelief upon hearing this true to life story happening in today’s world.  First of all, why does the husband’s family tradition take priority?  In a marriage, the two people should decide together what their plans will be.  Saying that the woman should submit to the man’s way of doing things cuts off any discussion or relationship building between these two young people.  It deepens the notion that men rule the household and women have no authority or voice beyond what the man grants.  Secondly, just because the mom decided in her marriage to handle it this way does not mean that the daughter should follow.  Now, if the bride-to-be and husband-to-be decide together that this is how their marriage should be, then I cannot argue that because they made that decision together.  I think it’s wrong and I think it’s harmful to them as well as to any children who are then raised in this belief, but it thankfully is not my marriage.  Despite the fact that I believe in a couple’s right to live with this marital structure, perpetuating this kind of chauvinism in families does little to move us forward as a land of equality.

Now what does this have to do with Wicca or paganism?  Well, the above situation transpired between a devoutly Catholic mother and her daughter.  No surprise that chauvinism would be present in this family since their religion teaches gender hierarchy through excluding women from being priests and the recent attack on American nuns, right?  They also have a creation myth based on the idea that women are the reason humans fell from grace.  This isn’t a harsh on Catholics post, so I will stop there, but it is necessary to understand the full situation so we can then look at the pagan perspective in comparison.

In Wicca, the Lord and the Lady are frequently seen as equals.  In some popular creation myths, the Lady comes first and when the Lord shows up in the plot, there’s no shame or guilt or fall from grace to support either gender being superior.  The Lord and Lady each see to different elements of life on earth.  They walk in love sharing this world in a beautiful balance.  Their relationship myth shows a respect for one another and a unity of purpose for their life together.  Under this model for marriage each participant is valued and appreciated.  The married couple moves through life mutually choosing celebrations and traditions as a couple.  As a couple they discuss, they create, and at times they argue, but they build a life together based on mutual esteem and love.  Neither party makes the other feel lesser or like his/her opinions have no merit because the other party has superiority or dominion over the other. 

This is what the Wiccan creation myth teaches about marriage.  It is beautiful.  It is respect.  It is divinely inspired unity.

Therefore why on earth would anyone ever willingly give up his/her own self-determination just because he/she got married?  That makes no sense to me whatsoever.  It seems to demean the beauty of marriage.  It reduces the woman to chattel that live in the father’s home for so long and then get traded to the husband. If that’s not just backwards thinking I don’t know what is. Frankly, I want no part of it.  Thankfully, my husband doesn’t either.

To Sit in Solemn Silence

I adore camping.  I am incredibly fortunate to live in a state rife with opportunities for the camping minded to escape the press of city life.  Recently, my husband and I made our first pilgrimage into the wilderness to spend an extended weekend in the woods.  I went to the woods to think deliberately about a question posed by a favorite author of mine who asked that we discuss the difference/similarity of religion and magic. 

This was my intention.

This is not what happened.

As I sat in my comfy camp chair with a low flame campfire casting a tangerine glow on the surrounding ground, I observed a sliver of light peeking through the towering pines.  I knew that we’d planned this trip during the days leading up to the full moon, but oh my!  How breathtaking to witness the moon gaining her girth in a setting removed from all electric power.  As I sat there in quiet contemplation, I actually started weeping.  The light of the moon cast a shadow as I walked away from the firelight.  The bold brilliance caught me off-guard.  For the last few months, it’s been cloudy around the full moon.  We were deprived the joy of witnessing the supermoon even!  This waxing moon however demanded my attention as it made its gentle path across the heavens.  My mind enrapt attention failed to register how anyone could possibly not be moved by such observation.  It occurred to me that pre-industrial age humans must have been awed watching this glowing orb as it changed each night and journeyed across the sky.  How could they not?  Is it any wonder that they created stories about this mysterious object that at times appeared in the daylight and at others not at all?  What a wondrous moment of solitude gazing at a simple rock radiating splendor.  I was stupefied.

Each night I eagerly awaited the moon’s return to see how it had changed from the previous night.  The magnificence enthralled and calmed me.  It caused me to ponder other ideas and to sit in reflective quietude.

“Thus, for the people living today in the forests of the Piraparana`, the entire natural world is saturated with meaning and cosmological significance.  Every rock and animals are but distinct physical manifestations of the same essential spiritual essence.” Page 79, Wade Davis The Wayfinders

I recently finished reading The Wayfinders  for this month’s book club discussion.  In the book he describes different cultures that have amazing creation myth stories that influence every aspect of their lives.  Because of views like the one in the above passage, these humans would never think to kill another living thing without permission from their deities.  They kill for livelihood and they kill with reverence. 

“Meat is not the right of the hunter but a gift from the spirit world.  To kill without permission is to risk death by a spirit guardian…” page 81

This view applies to plants as well as animals.  As a result, these tribes develop a method to manage what resources they have so as not to live out of balance with the natural world.  They observe what is around them and create beautiful stories of their origins and what will happen should they offend the cosmic rules they establish.  They respect the world around them as a living, breathing entity worthy of respect and care and at times caution.  Reading this book reminded me of my own natural world ponderings around the fire.  The beauty of the world around us was and is awe-inspiring.  Learning to live in a world while recalling that it is indeed finite should give anyone pause.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t.  For example the campground neighbors we had one night were not what I would describe as those who see the earth as having anything spiritual about it.  These individuals, when given the need to pack up, opted to chop down a young birch tree to retrieve their hanging lantern when they could have cut the rope instead.  This is not to say that I haven’t made my mistakes interacting with nature mind you, but it shocked me that chopping the tree was preferable to cutting the rope. 

Furthermore, in Davis’ book he describes the atrocities of imperialism and assimilation of cultures.  We are all familiar with what was done to the tribes of North American Indians or the Aborigines of Australia.  However, it is still happening.  These humans who have survived according to their beliefs and cultures are still fighting the march of progress as it encroaches closer to their world.  Instead of learning from the past, Western development continues on both small and large scale to grab all it can and squeeze the stone until it bleeds.  I’m left asking what will sate this progress? What will it take to stop civilization from taking just because it can? 

Wonder.  I have concluded that when we lose that sense of wonder about nature is when we lose that last bit of innocence.  When we no longer gaze at the moon and feel moved by its beauty we move into a realm where it becomes easier to consume without thought.  We begin to objectify our surroundings and eventually that leads to a lack of respect for humans who don’t.  Clearly it is absurd to a rational mind to think that the milk of life from the Amazon mother flows in the river.  Therefore let rational people build a dam or cut down the trees on the banks or fish for that one species that is so tasty or even let’s just take these savages and move them to a location where we can educate them so they don’t have to live like this any longer. 

I value science and progress.  I love my Nook that allows me to read any book I want and also surf the internet.  I like having a truck so when the winter winds and storms blow I don’t have to walk through it to get to work.  However, I hope I never lose the sense of wonder that moved me to weep as I reveled in the moonlight.

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant.  We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift.” Albert Einstein

Summer Solstice

Litha is the longest day of the year when the sun is at his full might.  Therefore fire imagery is strong on this day.  A bonfire again is common.  Fire purifies the woe and the discord and gives warmth to life.  Common herbs are lavender (personal favorite), chamomile, and vervain.  Harvesting herbs on this night and drying them by the bonfire is said to increase potency in the herbs for magical workings.  White is a common color as is gold for the sun.  Many who use mirrors for magical dealings will cleanse and then absorb the midsummer magic into the mirrors for future use as well.  Summer fruits of course provide the menu—cherries, apricots, and plums for example are tasty at any time this day.  My ritual bowl was brimming with them.

In the past I have performed full blown rituals, rituals outside, simplified rituals at a campground as well as shared rituals with friends in the backyard which entailed burning packets of summer herbs while pouring all of the negativity I felt at the time into the little packet and watching it get cleansed by the fire.  There are many possibilities, but I must say I really enjoy being outside for this ritual rather than in the basement where most of my rituals occur.  Being in a short season for outdoor rituals area Litha is typically one of those celebrations that I relish the opportunity to be outside making merry.  I would really have preferred to be out of town for solstice--somewhere in the mountains.  Alas!  I have workshops all week and couldn't get out of city limits this year.

If I am inside though, I will use a green candle for the Goddess and gold candle for the God on my altar as well as either a white or a gold cloth.  Outdoors though, I cut way back on the accoutrement.  The idea is the same however—asking that the God cleanse what isn’t currently working and thank the Goddess for her continued energy to propel forward what is working.

Blazing God, I feel the fire of your passion burning in all life.
Mother Goddess I see the earth full to bursting with the fruit of your bounty.
On this night of unequaled magic
Fires flame to their zenith in the Lord and Lady’s combined joy.

This is when I would place the summer herbs into the white packet and tie it with a red ribbon.  On the paper used as an envelope I would write what I see going well and what needs a bit of cleansing.

Midsummer fire burning bright
Take these items from my life and world
Purify them in the Lord’s fervent light.


Midsummer fire glowing sight
Take these items from my life and world
Nourish them to the Lady’s delight.

Simple feast and thanks then close.

Please Allow Me to Introduce My Brain

I apologize for not posting for a few weeks.  I fully intended to do so.  However my mind prefers to continually race at unearthly speeds thereby devouring so much information that at times it overwhelms me.  Consequently, I have been at a loss of where to begin.  That said, I’ll say the crux of this post plainly.

I don’t believe in God.

The story that kicked off this most recent introspection on faith happened to be about a Mormon woman whose husband told her quietly before bed that he no longer believed.  This deeply moving article provided a different perspective for me.  I have read countless stories about Catholics who no longer believe, but this was the first by a Mormon that I have read.  The tone of the article touched me to my core.    Her tale reflects what is so often overlooked or disregarded—we disbelievers spend a great deal of time pondering this notion.  It does not just occur.  We reflect, we pray, we consider, we study and ultimately we use the magnificent lump of grey matter in our skulls to reason out what we truly believe about spirituality and our place in the universe. We can reach a conclusion that may not agree with everything that we’ve been taught to believe up to that point, but we made the choice for ourselves and guess what?  We can do it peacefully without condemning or harassing others who still believe.  As we close the door on the church we’ve always known, we also open doors to new kinds of equally valuable relationships.

What astonished me the most this week involved the number of articles that described clergy men and women who are leaving their faiths and discovering comfort in some of those new and valuable relationships.  If people who have dedicated their lives to delivering God’s message can find themselves doubting to the point they describe themselves as atheist—what does that say about the state of faith in America?  This is the flipside to that coin that keeps getting thrown around when policy decisions run up against religion.  The Clergy Project provides a much needed network of support for these people who find themselves ostracized and threatened and suddenly without security of home and finance.  In the CNN article, Dewitt raises an interesting point: he’s still ministering, just a little differently than he used to.  How beautiful is that?  It acknowledges that his ministering changed over time as his understanding and belief changed, but he’s still ministering to people in need.  Clearly we can still be compassionate and loving counselors to one another even without deferring to a supreme being.  The Clergy Project started with about 52 members last year.  It now lists 285 on its homepage.  With the coverage it has been receiving, I bet it continues to grow.  The clergy men and women are fortunate to have this connection and I hope that it continues to assist them.  Each story I’ve read lately includes a common thread beyond the loss of faith; they include a lack of animosity toward the religion they leave—even toward the members of their congregation who threaten them.

The lack of animosity suggests to me that these people truly spent time deep in contemplation about their beliefs and therefore reached peace in their decision.  I too am at that point.  While it would be easy for me to cite the priest abuse scandal or the Vatican’s war on nuns as reasons for anger and be perfectly justified in that outrage, I tend not to take that tack.  Don’t get me wrong—both of those situations are horrifying to me, but I can forgive them and be completely thankful that I do not recognize the infallibility of the Pope.  That lump of grey matter in my skull tells me holding on to anger about these situations would serve no purpose.  While these two situations appall me and revolt me, they are not the only reasons why I will not describe myself as Catholic.  Greta Christina posted a fantastic article about the topten reasons she doesn’t believe in God and I tend to agree with the article wholeheartedly. I’ve read a couple of articles from Big Think lately about how we continue to discover consciousness as part of the brain, not a soul gifted us by God.  Through MRIs and photon emission computed topography now we know that prayer and meditation and speaking in tongues affect the brain in very specific ways—it alters our consciousness.  If someone wants to call that evidence of God moving through them, fine. However I do not.  When I am deep in meditation or visualization I know I am tapping into a part of my brain that apparently is dedicated specifically for this purpose and it produces some amazing sensations and experiences. To me though, it’s not some supernatural supreme entity saying “Hi!” It’s my brain doing something that takes a lot of practice to do.  It feels amazing and euphoric and it benefits my health and well being therefore I do it.  It’s no wonder that humans created all these amazing lush stories to explain this effect.  It’s no wonder we created fantastical myths to explain the world around us and all of its beauty.  Yet now we know other explanations exist.  There are no turtles supporting the world.  There is no Mount Olympus where Zeus rules all.  There are no demons at the core of our planet; it’s made of our original Earthly core and a gigantic Mars-sized pseudo planet that hit Earth a really long time ago causing both Earth’s axis tilt and the formation of the moon.

My husband and I also recently began watching Carl Sagan’s Cosmos on Netflix.  I love a little brain stimulation about the universe and he likens it to Mr. Rogers in space.  In one of the early episodes they show an experiment that uses just the essential, basic gases like helium being squirted into a glass container and guess what happens?  Given enough time those gases combine to create the primordial sludge of life.  Hmm…ponderous is it not?  Allow that brown goo some more time and those little bacteria etc. will begin the process of evolution.  I do not believe in Adam and Eve.  It’s a lovely tale, but it’s not how things happened.

I’m sure you might be wondering how I can call myself a solitary Wiccan given this perspective.  Surely there must be a different label that better fits.  Well, believe it or not paganism and specifically for me Wicca fit the best in my understanding of the universe so far.  Granted I am heavily influenced by the works of cosmology like Carl Sagan and I disregard a lot of dogma that some schools of Wicca insist upon.  There's that lump of grey matter at work again.  You see, from studying the universe I have learned the moon was part of earth.  Now it’s not and without it, our planet would wobble around worse than a bowl full of jelly.  Our climate would be uncontrollable and we’d probably die soon after the moon goes away.  The moon stabilizes this beautiful planet.  It controls the tides so our land masses are not almost completely submerged by water.  It provides the gravity we need to stay on just the right tilt to the sun.  The sun also exerts a little gravitational pull to keep us in the sweet spot.  Thanks to this lovely balance life as we know it exists.  Pagans got this part right—the sun and moon help us thrive.  Without either one, we’d perish.  I believe in the power of nature and that magical thinking is enough.  

In Harm's Way

I’ve been grappling with how to put my thoughts into words for this post all weekend.  This topic is one that I don’t take lightly and one that weighs on my conscience heavily.  You see, today is Memorial Day.

Last week my mom asked if we were interested in doing anything for Memorial Day as in a barbecue or family dinner.  I declined citing my regularly scheduled Monday night classes.  Of course, that’s only part of the reason I wouldn’t want a barbecue.

Memorial Day was one of those holidays growing up that I never fully understood I suppose.  There was innocence to it.  It meant that I didn’t have school and that school in fact was almost out for the summer.  In high school it meant that there would be an invitation for us band members to play at the cemetery.  It meant that we would hopefully have decent weather for all the events that would be scheduled for outdoors as the summer season kicked off its shoes and basked in the light of the sun.

But that’s not what it’s really about.

This photo blog appeared in my news stream this morning.  These photographs bring gravity to the day for me.  They show people.  Soldiers yes, but people first and foremost.  People who, for the most part, had no choice but to go into military service thanks to the draft.  Some of course volunteered readily I am sure.  All of them did what was their duty according to the expectation of the time.  However, these pictures ask us to look beyond the idealized and romanticized concept of the hero soldier and to see the human in the fatigues.  The human who chanced to meet Marilyn Monroe, the human who stared down the bell of a sousaphone and was not deafened, the human in a moment of solitude taking a whack at the golf ball in the open air and the humans finding time for a bit normalcy in video games in a place that in no way represents what we here in America see on a normal day.  However, for those in the military, these images represent stolen moments of calm amongst otherwise horrific and impossible situations.

A friend of mine who is in the military and who has served multiple tours in the Middle East posted this snippet from The Blaze.  My friend and his military buddies of course were offended by the pundits’ discussion.  Unfortunately, I think my friend’s emotional gut reaction of how he sees himself and his fellow service members interfered with his hearing the actual discussion.  The pundits aren’t trying to insult the individuals.  They aren’t trying to demean in any way the job the military personnel are commanded to do.  It seems to me that these pundits are attempting a conversation on the efficacy of a policy that is tossing about a word that bears a tremendous force: hero.  For them, the panel members on this show, the word hero is losing its significance because the nation has been in sustained conflicts for its longest period in our history.  Our national policy has become one of war and devastation for the service members as well as the civilians.  The constant din of the War Machine numbs us to the actuality of the war itself.  The pundits may not be expressing themselves very well and my friend and other military personnel may not listen beyond the notion that these talking heads are reluctant to use the word hero to describe the military, but the point is important.  We’ve been doing this war thing so long that we are becoming desensitized to what it all means.  We’ve created countless heroes; so many that the word itself no longer holds the impact or meaning that it once did.  We lack the words to describe the countless deaths of soldiers both on foreign soil and at home.  We lack an accurate word for a man whose vehicle is blown up as he drives along a desert road.  We lack an accurate word for the woman hit by a stray bullet.  We lack a word for human lost in despair from all that still toils inside even though the tour of duty ended.  Hero used to connote something, but because of the constancy of overseas entanglements we run the risk of losing that meaning.  Perpetuating the hero archetype seems to lead to condoning the act of war—condoning the act of putting soldiers and civilians alike in positions of intolerable cruelty where they lose their humanity bit by bit.

Think I’m wrong?  Recently a top military officer unleashed a firestorm for calling the suicides by military personnel selfish.  I used to think that suicide was selfish.  It was one way I could keep myself from committing suicide because to me, I didn’t want to be selfish.  I didn’t think of myself as selfish.  Somehow, I don’t think the military men and women thought of themselves as selfish either.  I find it difficult to believe that these individuals would have thought about suicide if they had not first been in a position of war. I cannot fathom the torturous moments these people endured both in war and at home.  I know my cousin returned home from the first Iraqi war changed.  Not only did he display symptoms of the nebulous Gulf War Syndrome, but his wife would frequently find him shaking uncontrollably under the bed.  Sometimes he’d scream out in his sleep.  A friend of mine struggles to maintain his every day life after serving in the current Middle East conflict.  His Post Traumatic Stress impedes his ability to live a life of quiet contentment.  It disrupts his family’s sense of unity.  He is forever a changed man.  Numerous stories exist about the human cost of war.  These real stories run counter to the idealized hero soldier we who never go to war want to believe in so deeply.  They question that iconic coming home and feeling safe once again in the knowledge that what was achieved served a greater purpose and all is right now that the soldier is home.  These men and women have lived through an ordeal none can fully appreciate unless we’ve been there ourselves.  The image of hero is changing. 

I suppose that is what is so devastating.  We want to hold up these individuals for the duty they have performed.  We want to celebrate them for doing something few of us want to do.  We want them to know on the one hand we value them and that we  remember, but what do we really remember?  If we knew all about PTSD and suicide rates of soldiers would we be so cavalier about allowing our elected officials to send more humans into battle and think that a parade and a “thank you” now and then is enough?  Calling them heroes—is that enough to somehow be ok with the fallout?  I cannot help but think we as humans must evolve to another form of settling our conflicts because if we keep going to war we will never fully remember what that means. 

Humans are resilient.  Humans are resourceful.  Humans are capable of fantastic feats of compassion, empathy, creation and cooperation.  When I remember our military on this day, it is with sincere gratitude and hope that their ultimate sacrifice will one day no longer be necessary.