HI All,

Overthe past  week I have been touched by three events - all based in the ongoing tragedies of the wars.  The first was described in an article that several supporters of the Welcome Home Project sent to us about a small town in Central Oregon that described the community response to the injury in Iraq of one of the National Guardsmen that recently deployed. (http://www.oregonlive.com/living/index.ssf/2009/10/community_rallies_to_help_when.html)  Upon hearing of the injury to SPC Jeremy Jones the story describes how many many members of the community rallied in support of his mom, bringing her food, letters, offering help in many ways, etc.  It is very positive, given the circumstances, and shows how communities can become an important part of the lives of veterans and their families.  Hopefully this support will carry on when this young man comes home, perhaps disabled for life, his life and his family’s life certainly transformed for life. 

The second event was a conversation I had with a  woman named Danna, who founded Vietnamveteranwives.org (a great organization, by the way) who told me about how her community was responding to  the recent murder/suicide of a young couple by the husband, an Iraq vet suffering from severe PTSD.  This is, sadly, becoming a common enough story, but what usually goes un reported is how the local community around these tragedies is affected.  In this case Danna told me that the town had split - those on one side angrily of the opinion that Veterans are damaged and dangerous and what else should we expect.  The other side is apparently trying to see the event as a tragic outcome of the wars where PTSD needs education, treatment and awareness.  Community in conflict and she didn’t see how it was going to improve.

The third was an article by Brian Turner, Iraq Vet and amazing poet, in the NYTimes (http://homefires.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/20/to-bedlam-and-back/?scp=2&sq=home%20fires&st=cse).  In it he asks, “how do our veterans rejoin the life waiting for them back home? How do they rejoin the tribe once they’ve been to Bedlam? How do we help them so that they don’t feel as if they’re encased in glass, pinned to the walls as specimens in some museum-house of culture? It’s a difficult question to answer. I have trouble answering it myself. I think there’s a kind of medicine needed, not only for the veteran, but for all — even if we’re not aware of this need. Even if we’re not aware of the wound. I think we need to walk out beyond the lights of the village. We need to walk far beyond the trajectories of cannons, to take part in a ceremony capable of expressing what it is that war does to us all.”

In a way I find this hopeful because he puts his finger on the core question of how our country responds to war - how can we bring the wider community to understand that we are all being wounded by these wars, not just those who serve or who live with the men and women who return broken and confused.   All of us need the healing rituals and ceremonies that could bring us together in the pain and grief that is the aftermath of war.