Like feeling the hand of God

While the following article discusses football, the part of the Warrior Ethos reminded me of a conversation I had a few days ago. While discussing the difference between regular military and the citizen soldiers, I seemed to have shocked someone who is considered an expert but never stopped to think about what makes all of us different. It is what is within our souls.

There are many parts within our soul making us into what people see within us. Some of us are giving and caring while others are greedy and selfish. Even the greedy and selfish can take care of their own families but the others tend to look at the needs of others outside their families. Some of us are brave and will stand up to people who appear to be stronger, others will back away. Some of us have it within us to be willing to not only risk our own lives for the sake of others, but kill them. Some do not have it within them to be able to kill to save but will if they are forced to. In other words, they would rather not even think about it.

That is the biggest difference between the citizen soldiers and the firefighters when compared to those who enter into the regular military and the police force.

The people who enter into the military have it within them to not only risk their lives but to take the lives of others, just as the people who enter into the police force. While many will have problems after traumatic events and develop PTSD, the rates are lower than the other group. They have it in the front of their minds that as a warrior, they will have to kill someone at some time and they train for it. The basis is the need to be of service but the awareness of taking a life is active.

The people who enter into the National Guards and fire departments have it within them to risk their lives for the sake of others, but they never think of having to take a life. While they train to do it in the National Guards, this was not something active in their decision to enter into the Guards. The thought is trapped in the back of their minds. The bravery is on equal level to that of a warrior as well as their sense of duty, but what else comes with war is not on an equal level.

When the National Guards and Reservist come home, they are expected to return to their normal lives but they are ill prepared to deal with what came home with them.

This article about football mentions the Warrior Ethos and this applies to the regular military as well as to the citizen soldiers. The difference is that while a football team is putting their bodies on the line being tackled with force, the baseball players put their bodies on the line in a different way, just as the basketball players in yet another way. It is what we all have within us, what we came onto this earth to do and contribute that leads us in different directions.

The Hand of God is always there to guide all of us if we use what He has prepared us to do. He is also there to help us if we were faced with doing what He did not intend for us to have to do.

For those who feel as if God has turned His back on them, please watch PTSD Not God's Judgment. It's on the side bar of this blog under My Videos.

Senior Chaplain Kathie Costos
International Fellowship of Chaplains
Namguardianangel@aol.com
http://www.namguardianangel.org/
http://www.woundedtimes.blogspot.com/
"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of early wars were treated and appreciated by our nation." - George Washington

Like feeling the hand of God
Sydney Morning Herald - Sydney,New South Wales,Australia
It is the warrior drive and the warrior ethos that are resurrected in modern football. The team becomes a band of blood brothers, men who assemble together to undertake dangerous exploits under conditions of duress and threat. The experience creates strong bonds of companionship - ones that often last for life, and certainly long after the team has disbanded. Students who were members of teams wrote unselfconsciously, in a similar vein to returned soldiers, about their attachment to their mates.

The warrior ethos, stressing courage, tenacity, and self-sacrifice for the higher good of the collectivity, carries over directly into football with, of course, the one great difference that the greatest sacrifice of all is not asked for. What is involved is "manliness", with its deepest roots, whatever the humanist niceties of modern civilisation, in the war hero. These roots do not seem to wither.

Indeed, I had students who added, without prompting, that if there were a war they and their team-mates would be the first to volunteer, and that, because of their collective morale, they would make an excellent unit. Football shows the young the working of key values in situations of high emotional and physical duress. It shows them what it means to be a hero, and what is shameful.
click link for the rest of this