PTSD

This post is a follow-up to Dreams and could well have been titled Dreams II, More Dreams or some such thing. It is also intended as a tribute to the caring young women and men who try to make the world a better place by serving in the Armed Forces. If you missed the original Dreams post and would like to go back and read it you can still do that by clicking on the highlighted and underlined word.

As an aside, I would like to say a special “thank you” to Steve and one anonymous writer who contributed dreams of their own to that conversation. Others shared privately by email. Your dreams can still be added to either post and are still welcome.

On Sunday morning, on my way to one of our numerous CEM congregations, I was driving at just the right time to catch hour two of Michael Enright’s The Sunday Edition on CBC Radio One. Included in this segment of the show was a short, radio documentary on a young Canadian man who enlisted in the United States Marine Corps at the ripe old age of Seventeen. You can listen to the podcast of Jacob Davis Mendelow’s fascinating and enlightening story by clicking here.

For the benefit of those who cannot take time to listen to this podcast (you can also download it to your I-Pod or MP3 player for later), this is the story of a Canadian seventeen-year-old who wanted to make a difference. His goal was to make the world a better and safer place following the attacks of September 11, 2001. This report on Jake’s experience concerns his struggle after returning home from his second tour of duty in Iraq. He was both physically injured and “bouncing off the walls” with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. He now makes a difference by sharing his experience with others, particularly health professionals whose task it is to work with returning veterans with PTSD.

I was particularly interested in this documentary because of a young man in my own extended family. In addition to being a husband and father, Robb is a soldier in the Canadian Armed Forces. While he tells me he has never been formally diagnosed with PTSD, he had numerous (I am no longer sure if it was seven or ten) improvised explosive devices or IEDs blow up under his truck while serving in Afghanistan. At this point in his journey, about a year after returning from that tour, the net result is that he no longer sleeps, or at least no longer sleeps well or through the night. Will this be a life-long after-effect? Will other emotional scars yet emerge? We do not know.

The point of all this is a dream for our world when it is no longer necessary to send young women and men into situations where they will be subject to such soul-scarring and life-altering trauma and death. That is an audacious dream to be sure. It seems impossible and is certainly out of reach in my lifetime. Such a world would necessitate having found better ways to deal with many problems including poverty, aggression, and differences in ideology. Such a world is conceivable, however, and one we need to work toward. This is the ancient vision of prophets such as Ezekiel and Isaiah. It is a worthy dream.

They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. – Isaiah 2:4

Posted by Carman

Dreams

Lets dream out loud for a moment, shall we? What kind of a world do you dream of? Oh, I don’t mean dreams for a bigger house or more money in the bank; I am thinking of bigger dreams than that. I will go first to get us started. Lets see where this conversation takes us.

• I dream of a world that is safe for children; a world where they do not have to pick through garbage heaps looking for plastic or other bits of junk they can sell to recyclers in order to get food to eat.
• I dream of a world where every child has a roof over their head and a nice, clean, warm bed to sleep in; where they do not sleep in doorways, or cardboard boxes, or back alleys; where they do not wander the streets in fear.
• I dream of a world where children are not forced to become soldiers and taught to kill in order to stay alive themselves; where bombs do not fall on their homes at night or explode in the streets or marketplace during the day, where mommies and daddies, brothers and sisters always come home safely with all their limbs and parts intact.
• I dream of a world where children are free to play, and where play is an imitation of the healthy life they see around them; an imitation of caring mommies and daddies who themselves play and work to earn money to care for and provide for their children and others who depend on them.
• I dream of clean air for children to breathe, clean water for children to drink, and food that is not contaminated with pesticides, herbicides or growth hormones.
• I dream of a world where every child can go to school because there is a school for them to attend; a school that has paper and coloured pencils, books and teachers, and perhaps even computers that open windows onto the larger world of science and nature, mathematics and literature, God’s universe and beyond.
• I dream of a world where children are free to think about God and the miracles they see every day in the life that is around them; where they are free to wonder and contemplate what is, and what might be.
• All of this is a dream of a world where children themselves can dream, in a safe healthy environment, of all the great things they can and will do in God’s world.

For the most part, this dream is already a reality for my grandchildren and others where I live. It is not so for everyone. This is the dream we work for; a world of justice and peace, because we can’t have one without the other.

So that is my dream this morning. Now it is your turn. What kind of world do you dream of?

Posted by Carman

Day-dreaming

I recently participated in a workshop where we were invited to day-dream about our ideal church congregation. We were encouraged to visualize a church community, not as it is but as it could become in ten to twenty years. We were told not to worry about whether it was an actual congregation or an imaginary one; we were simply invited to picture the highest ideal of what that congregation might look like that we could possibly imagine.

Accordingly, in response to this instruction, some began to converse together, some began to think silently, and others began to write. I was in the latter group, and here is what I wrote.

¨ Congregation = Community

¨ Open 24/7 maybe?¨

Ideal – a centre of active, swirling energy

o Community based

§ Feeding the hungry

§ Counseling

§ Comforting, loving, accepting

§ Safe for children and youth

§ Fellowship for seniors

§ Sharing and being Jesus

I studied my list for a few moments, and came to a startling realization about what was missing. Was this an oversight? No, it simply wasn't there! I reflected on this for a few moments and then wrote in brackets at the bottom,

(note: Does not necessarily involve Sunday a.m. worship!)

It was an interesting and somewhat surprising exercise.

So let me invite you, dear reader, to do a little day-dreaming of your own. What would your ideal congregation look like? If you could start from scratch and grow a church over 20 years, what would you see? I have posted my thoughts here for all to see. Are you willing to share your ideal with the rest of us?

Posted by Carman

Out

Yesterday surely did feel like spring and today promises to be even more so! When the warm weather hits, it seems as if everything and everybody is out.

Friends are reporting that the world is full of critters, out from wherever they've been all winter. Bunnies in the garden, racoons, even possums are making their presence felt. I notice all the new mums with nice new strollers pushing babies, out for a proud spring walk. And toddlers taking first unsteady steps along the sidewalk under the watchful eye of a new dad. Poor kid is still bundled up in a pink snowsuit so that she can hardly walk, but nevertheless, clearly walking for the first time on her own--she's out too.

One of my neighbour's front lawn yesterday afternoon looked like a preschool parking lot, covered as it was with tricycles, scooters, strollers, red wagons and a couple of pint-sized two wheelers leaning on their training wheels. Clearly it's time to be out.

The fitness columnist in my local newspaper began his column yesterday with this line: it's the season when anything feels possible. Then he went on to speak of fitness and exercise goals. But the line about possibilities resonated for me.

Many of us have been on a vision quest for several months. We've been trying to get our ideas clarified, our goals set, our strategies in place. And now it's time to launch. Put those ideas and goals and strategies out there. Anything is possible, even the dreams of greatness!

Posted by Marion