Celestial Lands The Religious Crossroads of Politics, Power, and Theology

Tag Archives: Ptsd

How Can You “Come Home” When You Are Homeless? — 2011 Veteran’s Day Reflection

When I reflect on the few years after “coming home” from Bosnia, the years before some friends and a veteran counselor helped me to “get my head back on straight”, I realize that I had more than my share of luck.  I was lucky to be in a university that Read more →

Returning Home, Warriorship, and the Society for Creative Anachronism

The morning after I came home from serving as a Peacekeeper in Bosnia, a friend knocked on my door at some early hour. I wanted to sleep in, but he had another plan. There was something we absolutely had to go do, something he had become involved in that he Read more →

My Reticence to Support UU Congregational Outreach to Veterans

Every few weeks I get an email or a call from someone in leadership of one of our Unitarian Universalist congregations asking how they can set up an outreach program to military veterans, servicemembers, and families. For a long while, I would send them the information I have on the Read more →

Why I Don’t Carry or Handle Firearms Anymore

Among the topics that I have written about over the past two years, I doubt any of them have been more sensitive or personal to me than this one, and I come at it with more than a little trepidation. It is possible that some (including those on the Ministerial Read more →

Heroic Repression

Recently I have been thinking about American culture around military issues these last six years since the beginning of combat operations in Iraq. Specifically, I have been thinking about what it means to be a hero, and why some segments of American culture have attempted to make “heroes” of every Read more →