At least 115 soldiers killed themselves last year, up from 102 the previous year, the Army said yesterday.
Nearly a third of them died at the battlefront, 32 in Iraq and four in Afghanistan. But 26 percent had never been deployed to either conflict.
Hardcover: 224 pages
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company (August 1, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0316066303
ISBN-13: 978-0316066303
Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
Available from Amazon
I started to read this book because the author was coming to the annual fire chaplains retreat/meeting. I bought it and then it sat on my to be read pile for about a month or so before I started to read it. When I began, I could not put it down. This book is wonderful and if you are in the helping professions you need to read this book.
Kate Braestrup is the chaplain for the Maine Warden Service and she takes you thorough many of the cases that she deals with on a regular basis. The hitch in the story is that she lost her husband, a Maine State Trooper, in a car accident and went to seminary after the funeral. She is a Unitarian Universilist Minister and ministers to her flock as well as her family is ways that go beyond description.
She does an amazing job weaving her story in with stories of rescue missions and search and rescue missions as well as riding along with the Wardens as they do their job on a day to day basis all while caring for her young family.
The book does not end but is in fact a continuing story that really does not have an end. As a fire chaplain I find many things in this book that I can relate too but one does not need to be a chaplain to understand where she is coming from and what she is all about. She is all about helping people regardless of their faith orientation. She is what it means to be a chaplain. The book is an easy read and would be great for beach reading this summer.
I also had the opportunity to hear her speak and tell the stories first hand and she is truly an amazing person and writer. I highly recommend her book.
The U.S. military reported 13,891 new PTSD cases in 2007, up from 9,549 in 2006. In the past five years, more than 38,000 PTSD cases have been documented among U.S. military personnel, mostly among the Army and Marines.
Longer, multiple tours of combat duty ordered by the Bush administration received blame for the trend, although experts also said that the military is doing a better job of identifying individuals with PTSD.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently ordered a policy change that allows soldiers to seek help for PTSD without jeopardizing their military careers.
A Rand Corp. study estimated that 18.5 percent of military personnel serving in Iraq and Afghanistan showed signs of PTSD or depression.
Episode #21 of the Facing East podcast is now online.
“It’s just the sickness. I can’t get rid of it. It just keeps coming back,” said Bouffanie, 27, who was pregnant with her now 15-month-old daughter, Lexi, while living in the trailer. “I’m just like, Oh God, I wish like this would stop.’ If I had known it would get her sick, I wouldn’t have stayed in the trailer for so long.”
The girl, diagnosed with severe asthma, must inhale medicine from a breathing device.
The seminary, Andover Newton Theological School, is joining the Massachusetts Bible Society in establishing a media center that will also coach pastors on creating better websites and podcasts, train seminarians on the liturgical uses of video, and offer material on biblical interpretation to congregations and clergy around the country.
The two venerable organizations – Andover Newton says it is the oldest graduate theological institution in the nation, while the Massachusetts Bible Society has been distributing Bibles for 199 years – are trying to reinvent themselves for the modern era.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, expressing “deep concern,” said the United Nations will investigate the allegations that its peacekeepers are involved in the abuse.
The report, based on field research in southern Sudan, Ivory Coast, and Haiti, describes a litany of sexual crimes committed by peacekeepers and relief workers against children as young as 6.
It said some children were denied food aid unless they granted sexual favors; others were forced to have sex or to take part in child pornography; many more were subjected to improper touching or kissing.
At the consecration of the Queen of Peace parish church in Timisoara on May 25, Orthodox Metropolitan Nicolae Corneanu of Banat asked to share Communion. The Orthodox metropolitan approached the altar and received the Eucharist from his own hand.
Romanian Catholic Bishop Alexandru Mesian of Lugoj was the celebrant of the Divine Liturgy in the Byzantine Catholic church; Archbishop Francisco-Javier Lozano, the apostolic nuncio to Romania, was also present.
Although Orthodox and Catholic bishops often join in ecumenical services, and occasionally participate in each other’s liturgical ceremonies, they do not share Communion– an indication of the breach in ecclesial communion between the Orthodox churches and the Holy See. In Romania, tensions between the Orthodox Church and the Eastern-rite Romanian Catholic Church have been pronounced, adding to the surprise created by Metropolitan Corneanu’s action.
With some Orthodox believers outraged by the metropolitan’s sharing Communion with Catholic bishops, the Orthodox Patriarchate of Romania issued a statement saying that at the next meeting of the Orthodox synod, in July, Metropolitan Corneanu “may be asked to give an appropriate explanation” for his action.
The statement from the Orthodox patriarchate went on to say that ecumenical relations with the Catholic Church, “already quite fragile, cannot be helped, but are rather complicated,” by sharing in Communion.
Metropolitan Corneanu– who was one of the first Orthodox bishops to admit that he had cooperated with the secret police under the Communist regime– has a record of friendship with Romanian Catholics. He was among the few Orthodox leaders prepared to return church properties that had been seized by the Communist government from Catholic ownership in 1948 and handed over to Orthodox control.
Memorial Day was started as Decoration Day after the Civil War since everyone in the country was affected by this war in one way or another. 620,000 died in that war and was the war where more Americans have been lost in history.
25,000 dead in the Revolutionary War
20,000 in the War of 1812
116,000 in World War I (the war to end all wars)
105,000 in World War II
36,000 in the Korean War (the forgotten war, thanks Dad for serving)
58,000 in Vietnam
300 in the first Gulf War
506 in Afghanistan (thanks Mike we miss you!)
Those are the ones that this day is for! Those are the ones we should remember! It is not about hamburgers and hot dogs and beer. It is about remembrance. On the POW/MIA flag is the statement We Will Never Forget! Well it seems we have forgotten, or some of us have.
I found this prayer in the Air Force Prayer Book and thought I would reprint it here if you want to use it to pray:
O God our strength and redeemer, by your leading our ancestors brought forth on this continent a great nation, born of faith and struggle, dedicated to liberty and freedom, characterized by justice and courage, and committed to promotion of the common good. A changing world continually challenges these time-honored values, proving the temper of their metal in American lives. In such moments, we seek your blessing, O Father. Enable us through the maze of temptations by lesser gods. Prosper each initiative for human freedom, for peace and justice in our land, and for the common good of our global village. Refresh us in eternal values, and inspire our hearts and lives to fulfill the potential you’ve placed in each one of us. Amen.
The tradition is to pause at 3pm and remember those who have gone before. I will ask all my readers to do just that.