September 2010 Philadelphia Chapter of Pax Christi U.S.A.

The Whisper of Hope

Over the last several years, I have spent a lot of time listening, learning, reading, to understand as much as I can about the experiences of combat veterans, and how it is for them when they come home. In the faces and stories, I have glimpsed something of the terrible cost of war, and the wounds of body, mind, and spirit that may persist for a lifetime if unaddressed, and even beyond. Indeed, there are children and even grandchildren of veterans who unknowingly bear scars from wars that ended before they were born. We cannot begin to reckon the cost to the people who live where wars are fought, or those we send to fight, let alone for the rest of us. Perhaps that’s why these lines I recently read, in a book called “The Rule of Four”, stopped me in my tracks: “Hope...which whispered from Pandora's Box only after all the other plagues and sorrows had escaped, is the best and last of all things. Without it there is only time.” Indeed, the effort to understand the experience of veterans has been a little like opening a Pandora’s Box. Often there seems no end to the “plagues and sorrows” war lets loose. The challenge is not to catalogue the ills, but to hear the whisper of hope.

The heart of what I have learned, especially in my efforts to support young men and women returning from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, is that war, and healing from war, are both profoundly communal events. In our fragmented world, this truth is easily missed. Unless we know a person serving in the war, it can seem to have little to do with us. Our media helps that myth along. We hear that “an explosion killed eight troops in Afghanistan yesterday”, and that is the extent of the story. No names or ages, no faces, no hometowns, unless--as I was told by a media-connected person-- there is “a local tie”. This is nonsense. Those who serve in a war do so at the behest of a President and a Congress, which represent all of us. They commit to serve a nation not a neighborhood. There is a “local tie” to every one. When we obscure the humanity of the individuals involved in the wars, we deny something of our own humanity, our connection to one another, and our responsibility for what we ask of those who serve. Such denial makes war seem less terrible than it is, and that is costly. If there is time to report the latest celebrity DUI, surely there is room to acknowledge those who have died because we sent them to war. When I see our indifference, I am tempted to lose heart. Where is the whisper of hope, I wonder, which is another way of saying “Where is God in all this?”

One whisper of hope for me comes from the many veterans I have met who return from combat with a deep commitment to service, to helping others, and to healing. It is common to hear that they are seeking careers in nursing, medicine, law enforcement, teaching. One said, “I want work that allows me to be with people in their worst times, because I know I can do that.” From the experience of tending to the wounded, military and civilian, some find a calling in emergency medicine or other health care professions. Another veteran insists on volunteer work, in addition to his job, family, and college courses. “I like to give to the community”, he says. There is an orphanage in Baghdad founded by one of the veterans of the early days of the Iraq war. Over and over again I have heard, “I used to think making a lot of money was the important thing. I don’t think that anymore.” Having experienced the worst that people can do to one another, they work towards the best that people can do and be for one another. I hear a whisper of hope in that.

For other combat veterans, the experiences of war cut so deep that they turn inward, feeling a profound sense of disconnection from the world here at home. The high rates of depression, suicide, and even post-traumatic stress disorder, have to do not only with the struggles of an individual but with the effects of our society’s collective ignorance and denial of the realities of what it is to serve in war. Books like Edward Tick’s “War and the Soul” or Jonathan Shay’s “Ulysses in America”, are among those that can help us civilians to better understand the long process of psychological and spiritual homecoming.

Veterans are rightly cautious in talking about their experiences except perhaps with one another, but sometimes the pain is visible whether they name it or not. At such moments, all political rhetoric turns to dust. I know that I have played a part in the chaos and the loss, as I believe we all have. I have no easy answers. One thing I can do is be present and witness to the complexity and grief. It is the only way I know to affirm my trust that the isolation and alienation so many feel on coming home from war does not have to last forever. A wise man once told me, “You cannot give a person hope. You can only live hope in their vicinity and maybe it catches. The miracle is, sometimes it does.” Others have lived hope in my vicinity and that is miracle enough to keep me going.

We discuss neither religion nor politics, the veterans and I. That is not my role. Yet this work has stretched my faith, and deepened my understanding of what it means to be a citizen. I still have much to learn about all of it, and how to listen for hope in the midst of terrible troubles. The hope I listen for is the contagious hope that Jesus lived in our vicinity, hope grounded in trust that God is with us, even in the worst of times. The only way to hear that hope amidst the “sorrows and plagues” of the world is to face them, and the only way to face them is together.

Ann Marie Donohue

Ann Marie is a teacher, psychologist and veteran’s advocate…

Woodcut: Robert McGovern