Greetings from LSA Anaconda, Balad, Iraq
I am finally here. We've known our mission for six months now and yesterday, 11 JUL 2007, it finally got started. I am looking forward to it. Having a mission, something to do, and people to care for, will make this time go a little easier. Knowing that God will do some amazing things through me over the next 14 months and 2 weeks (yes, I've already done some counting down) will set me free.
It's been a whirlwind the last couple of days. We arrived close to midnight on the 11th and I was fortunate to get my housing early. I was in bed and asleep by 0100. In spite of the late night, I was up and at it early that morning, sitting in on the daily Battle Update Brief (BUB) at 0830. Then it was a full day of following my predecessor as he showed me the different areas and yards that he covered and introduced me to some of the senior chaplains on the LSA and so many other things. The day flew by and the next I knew, it was 1700. But my day wasn't over.
While in my future office, I saw a hockey stick. I asked why someone would have a hockey stick in the desert. The young SGT who's leaving soon said, "We play floor hockey two nights a week; do you play?" I haven't played floor hockey since college but I played a bit of roller hockey on vicarage. Still, what else do I have to do. So, at 2000, I grabbed a stick and tried to remember how to put the biscuit in the basket. Well, we use a ball, but you know what I mean. We played for 2 hour straight (with rotating lines, of course) and I was dead tired at the end. It was hard enough to play 12 years ago but now, with the spare tire I keep carrying, it's even harder. Still, it was a great time and something I look forward to doing throughout the year.
I have much more to tell but no time to tell it. Just know that I am where I am supposed to be and getting ready to get at it.
It's been a whirlwind the last couple of days. We arrived close to midnight on the 11th and I was fortunate to get my housing early. I was in bed and asleep by 0100. In spite of the late night, I was up and at it early that morning, sitting in on the daily Battle Update Brief (BUB) at 0830. Then it was a full day of following my predecessor as he showed me the different areas and yards that he covered and introduced me to some of the senior chaplains on the LSA and so many other things. The day flew by and the next I knew, it was 1700. But my day wasn't over.
While in my future office, I saw a hockey stick. I asked why someone would have a hockey stick in the desert. The young SGT who's leaving soon said, "We play floor hockey two nights a week; do you play?" I haven't played floor hockey since college but I played a bit of roller hockey on vicarage. Still, what else do I have to do. So, at 2000, I grabbed a stick and tried to remember how to put the biscuit in the basket. Well, we use a ball, but you know what I mean. We played for 2 hour straight (with rotating lines, of course) and I was dead tired at the end. It was hard enough to play 12 years ago but now, with the spare tire I keep carrying, it's even harder. Still, it was a great time and something I look forward to doing throughout the year.
I have much more to tell but no time to tell it. Just know that I am where I am supposed to be and getting ready to get at it.
4 Comments:
Glad you're finally there. We've already been praying for you.
Good to hear you're getting settled in.
This comment has been removed by the author.
Hi... ran across your blog, and thought you might like this. God bless ya man. Stay safe.
Easter in Wartime.
I couldn't quite make the Sunrise service. It's hard to fit into a day schedule when you work nights. It ended working out, though. So I am here, instead, at the evening service on my compound, sitting in a canvas tent with wooden floors, singing praise songs projected slightly askew onto canvas. I look to my left, and there is a gunner,
to my right is a navigator. Two rows ahead, a doctor, two back, a
lawyer. We are Latino, White, Black, Asian, men and women, and we are all here together. There are no racial reconciliation seminars here, but by necessity and by choice, we are one tonight.
We lucky few, we band of brothers? Perhaps. Once more into the breach, certainly. But it is not Saint Crispin's day, and we need no
King Henry to lead us. We are here because we choose to be. And we
choose to be here together. So in the bond of arms and honor, we are
brothers and sisters.
But in this tent, we are twice brothers and sisters. All of us under this roof share in the blood of Christ, and we may be called to shed it together. We are the house of the Centurion, the Christian
community at war. I cannot help but recall Dietrich Bonhoeffer's
experiences in Life Together. I wonder if the great minister and
pacifist would approve. In his younger years, with his head full of Karl Barth, probably not. But maybe the full-grown Bonhoeffer,
co-conspirator in Admiral Canaris' plot to kill Hitler, might understand.
A week ago, Palm Sunday, I was able to get to the morning worship
service. And there I see a number of TCNs, third country nationals,
who work on the base. Many of them were from African countries. We
praised God together. 'Peace be with you' takes on a much more
immediate meaning here. I think of how they, too, are separated from
their families. I pray that God would comfort them, and that I would keep them safe, along with my charges.
I just finished reading a compilation of C.S. Lewis' personal letters. Hard reading, but quite fascinating to crawl around inside his head. I was particularly intrigued, given the circumstances, by his letters
about going off to war. It strikes me that he faced the same chlorine
and machineguns that are now arrayed against us. War seemed to pull him away from God. The inhumanity of it all eroded his faith in a Creator. It seems to have the opposite effect on me. The inhumanity of it all shows me how tremendously important our humanity is. To steal a phrase from Switchfoot, the shadow proves the sunlight.
Each of us has reasons that brought us here. I can only speak to my own. Perhaps I still have something of the dreamer that pulls me here. If Middle-Earth has its Rangers of the North, then I will find a place with the Rangers of Mogadishu. If Han Solo has his Millennium Falcon, then I'll find an airplane with a couple of tricks up its sleeve, but probably one you need to kick sometimes to get it to work. But it is not some childhood fairy-tale that brings me here. I believe in what we are trying to do here. Seeing it unfiltered, seeing the reality of it all only serves to clarify things in my mind. There are people here who need us still. They may need us to be
smarter and subtler, but they need us nonetheless. But there is
something even deeper. I think Black Hawk Down says it the best: we came here for each other.
Do not think me a fool. I am not some gullible victim of propaganda. I can wield my Kennedy School degree, analyzing the near-infinite policy considerations for this conflict. I can recount both sides' reasons why we should be or should not be there. I know things are complicated. But I am old enough to know, or perhaps young enough not to have forgotten, that some things are still simple. We have lost so much to our steamrollers of deconstruction, reducing and paving away all of our myths. But myths exist to remind us of the simple things.
And one of those simple things is justice.
I now understand what King David meant when he said that he loved the Law of God. David was a warrior. He would not stand to see a giant stand and mock the Most High. So he used what power he had, strengthened by the Almighty, to cast down that giant. It is a
mockery of the Laws of God for men to use precious children as
camouflage for a car bomb. Insofar as I am able, I will fight men
such as these. Blessed be the name of the Lord, who trains my hands
for war.
I know the counterarguments, I know the objections. 'If we weren't
here none of this would have happened.' Perhaps. And if the woman had not been there, perhaps the man would not have eaten the fruit. And if the serpent had not been there, perhaps the woman would not have fallen. And if God hadn't had the audacity to place humanity above the angels, perhaps the Enemy would not have fallen. At least that's what we tell ourselves. I no longer buy it. It is true that all actions exist in context, and that almost all actions are a mix of a great many things. But no amount of Verstehen can ever convince me that it is ever okay to gas a marketplace full of innocents. I have
been blessed with the power to do something about it. So I will.
Justice is not the only simple thing: Love is simple. And on this
side of the fall, it is wrapped in war. Christ stands in testament to
this: we must fight through hell for love on this side of the fall,
for all the forces of hell oppose all forms of love and
reconciliation. Ultimately, we must fight through hell for each
other. Christ arms us to do so, for He has conquered hell. But the
fight is never without casualties… the Cross speaks to this clearer
than I ever could. Suffering and sacrifice must always accompany
love. It looks clean and linear in some systematic theology textbook.
But seeing it is the difference between The Problem of Pain and A
Grief Observed. I heard a man die across the radios a few nights ago. It all happened too quickly to do anything about it. That man is a hero. I refuse to believe that his death was meaningless. He died; fighting for a people who were not his own, in a land that was not his own, training and equipping those people to fight for their land. It is then appropriate that he died alongside those men he trained. 'There is no greater love than this, that a man lays down his life for his friends.' I am honored to be counted amongst men such as these.
I cannot help but think back to the discussions over lattes, the
pressed suits and the policy experts, the sophomores who felt
compelled to throw their hands up and stop traffic. And then, I think of J., my classmate from the Academy. His wife sits a few rows ahead of me in church back home. He gave his life a few years back in much the same way. He loved Jesus, I know that much. And I'll see him again, I have no doubt.
J. chose to go. He understood love. He understood that it was worth fighting for. I choose to believe in a world that Cantabrigia told me no longer existed, a world of valor, of myth, of honor. A world of
heroes. So I leave behind the artfully carved benches on the banks of the Charles; instead, I choose a pilot's chair overlooking the Tigris and the Euphrates. Instead of philosopher's quotes carved into marble, I choose plywood painted with the words of the great prophet Isaiah: 'Who shall I send, and who will go for us?… Here am I, send me.' I am honored to be sent.
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