Countdowns

I just upgraded to Windows7, trying it out til its official release in October, or at least until I get home and invest in a new laptop since the one I have is getting old and beat up, especially with all the sand and dust here.

Since I am starting fresh on my computer, I was looking for a couple desktop gadgets to replace the ones I had used previously (weather, calendars, cpu monitor, etc.) and came across the "Blogger Buddy" which is a gadget that I can create new posts direct from my desktop and don't have to use my browser to post new posts. So I am trying it out.

I also have a few countdowns which I've got gadgets going for that are rather exciting, especially since there are 2 coming up rather quickly:

8 days, 9 hours, 27 minutes until the Promotion Board.
17 days, 1 hour, 27 minutes until my flight day for R&R!
and somewhere in the neighborhood of 114 days until we redeploy from Iraq.

I am anxiously making preparations for my R&R trip to London, Paris, and Rome, and definitely getting more excited every day!


Ok, I just wanted to share the excitement, but I better get back to studying! (or sleeping, as the case will hopefully be!)

The only problem I forsee of this gadget so far is that I can't post pictures through it. But otherwise, its pretty convenient! I like!

A Flower in the Desert

This article has not yet been published in the TFTB newsletter, and I'm not sure if it will be, but its my favorite article I've written so far. I am having trouble uploading pics to my blog, but if you are my friend on facebook, I have an entire album dedicated to this story. I will try to post a few pics on here later.

I’m an architecture nut. When I get to see old buildings, especially churches and monasteries, I love to explore every crack and crevice, trying to determine which rooms were used for what purpose, how people lived, and all that. And I take lots of pictures. Ask my grandmother who took me to Portugal a few years ago, and witnessed this as we toured countless churches and monasteries. I took about 1000 pictures in one week exploring only a small fraction of the country’s historic buildings. (see my facebook for all the good pics, there are 3 or 4 albums from that trip!) And only a handful of them actually had people in them. As I prepared for this deployment, CH F often asked me, are you bringing your camera? It’s not the greatest, but I brought it. Then I was issued a much nicer one to use throughout our travels, and I have definitely been putting it to good use. I had expected most pictures would be the standard group shots, and candid shots of soldiers doing crazy things or the Chaplain praying with groups getting ready to roll out on mission. I envisioned the backdrops would be the standard: dust, trash, and maybe some with the vehicles we drive out in. I know I’m not alone in that presumption, I mean, we’re in the desert, what else could there be here?

A couple months ago, CH F and I were traveling by Chinook to visit the guys in from one of our companies. Some dust kicked up along the way, and we ended up staying overnight at COS Marez and did not make it to visit our Soldiers. Since we were there, we looked up our comrades in our sister battalion, CH P and SGT D. They were surprised to see us, but offered to take some time that afternoon to show us around, and they insisted that we had to see “the monastery”. I was confused. Iraq is an Arabic country, what kind of monastery were we going to see on a FOB in the middle of the desert. Now, don’t get me wrong, I know that not all Iraqis are Muslim, and that before Desert Storm, there were some 1 million Christians throughout Iraq, but I was just not expecting to see a monastery in the middle of a military base.
As we made our way to the monastery, CH P and SGT D gave us a little background to the monastery, which I later did some research to remember the details. It was recognized for what it was shortly after the 101^st Airborne Division ousted the Iraqi Republican Guard from the area and had themselves taken up residence within the fortress-like ruins. One of the Division’s Chaplains recognized it as an ancient monastery, and after some research, discovered that it was Dair Mar Elia (the Monastery of Saint Elijah), the oldest Christian monastery in Iraq, with a history dating back to the 6^th century. It was built by Assyrian monks, but at some point it was taken over by Chaldean Catholic monks. It served as a residence and place of worship for about 11 centuries. The surrounding lands suggest that is was once a verdant pasture and the monks most likely harvested food to support themselves and the local community. Monastic communities follow this model even today, seeking to remain self-sufficient and offer the excess to their local communities. The monastery was thriving until 1743 when Persian invaders ordered the monks to leave. Probably 150 monks resided there at the time, and when they all refused to leave, the Persian leader had them slain, and nearly destroyed the buildings. It was used as a refugee center after World War I, and was incorporated into the Iraqi Republican Guard base in the 1970s. At that point, the monastery practically fell off the radar of the school of archaeology at the University of Mosul, and its history was left to the oral tradition of another local monastery, Al Qosh.

From my experience exploring monasteries in Europe, the tradition was to have a fortress like outer wall to prevent invasion and persecution from the outside community, and offer peace and privacy for the monks as they went through their daily routines of prayer and work. What remains of Saint Elijah Monastery shows that it was built according to the same concept. While the monks themselves did not withstand the invasion of the Persians, what remains of the monastery has withstood being in the center of a major battle in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. As the US assaulted the Iraqi Republican Guard, they fired a missile at one of the Iraqis’ Russian tanks, blowing the turret off the top and into the side wall of the monastery’s chapel. The outside of the wall suffered damage, but the point of impact is not even noticeable from within the chapel itself. In fact, the chapel is almost the only large room of the monastery that is still mostly intact. The Scriptorium’s roof has collapsed in, and all the smaller cells have cracks in the ceilings. Even the Abbot’s office is missing parts of its ceiling. The only major damage to the chapel itself is a large crack where the ceiling is beginning to separate from the wall above the sanctuary and looters have come through and taken most of the priceless artifacts from it.

Visiting the monastery, I loved every minute, poking into all the rooms, trying to guess what its purpose would have been, kitchen, refectory, observatory, bedroom “cell”, etc, discussing the history of monasticism, and taking pictures. Lots of pictures. As I sit back and reflect on my experience there, I can’t help but equate this monastery to an ancient story told by Loki, a member of the Sioux nation, of a flower in the desert:

“There was a young flower in the desert where all was dry and sad looking...It was growing by itself...enjoying every day...and saying to the sun "When shall I be grown up"? And the sun would say "Be patient"---Each time I touch you, you grow a little"...And she was so pleased. Because she would have a chance to bring beauty to this corner of sand...And this is all she wanted to do---bring a little bit of beauty to this world. One day the hunter came by---and stepped on her.---She was going to die---and she felt so sad. Not because she was dying ---but because she would not have a chance to bring a little bit of beauty to this corner of the desert. The Great Spirit saw her, and was listening.---Indeed, he said ...She should be living...And he reached down and touched her---and gave her life. And she grew up to be a beautiful flower...and this corner of the desert became so beautiful because of her.”

Each week the chaplains offer tours of the monastery to those interested, as an opportunity for Soldiers to put a human face on Iraq, to help encourage respect for the Iraqi people as they see tangible evidence of the history and traditions of this country. Saint Elijah Monastery is that flower in the desert for each of these Soldiers, displaying the beauty of its history and tradition even from within its ruins. As we pass through the walls, we are able to envision the monks living there, listen to their stories whispered through the walls. We can walk away from our visit with a deeper appreciation for the beauty that has been poured out on this monastery and the surrounding countryside, and a hope for a brighter future in this war-torn country.

Games for the Soul

Ok, I'm gonna be posting these all out of order as I find them...

Games For the Soul
Task Force Trailblazer Newsletter #13 June 26, 2009

David McKay once said, “The most important of life‟s battles is the one we fight daily in the silent chambers of the soul.” For the past several months, Big Army and the Chaplain‟s Corps have been taking great strides to help soldiers be victorious in this very battle because it has be-come clear that soldiers who are not able to take care of the battles within themselves and their families will not be effective on the physical battlefields of war. The TFTB Religious Support Team is entirely committed to helping every soldier in TFTB win this very battle within themselves. By now, every soldier here most likely knows who we are, and that we are here for them and care for them. Our mission goes a lot farther than making sure that soldiers have the religious support they need to practice whatever faith they choose to follow. We are also here for soldiers who are struggling with the stresses of being here, being away from family and friends. A lot of that is seen through our ministry of presence and through one-on-one counseling with the Chaplain. But we also take a step further to try to offer opportunities for soldiers to decompress, such as the movie nights that were discussed in a previous newsletter. We also host “game nights” once a month, offering a space for officers, NCOs, and junior enlisted to level the playing field for a couple hours and decompress from their individual stressors and just try to enjoy the moment. We have several games here in Lahmann Hall; board games, card games, trivia games, and several others, but it seems that Monopoly and Phase 10 have become the battalion favorites. I'm not surprised at the choices, as these were also among the favorites of my friends in college when we needed a chance to decompress from all of our studying and paper writing. Although we have not had swarms of people attending these game nights like some of our movie nights, I'm sure that those who do come would admit that they enjoy themselves. It may not seem like stress relief as we are playing a simple game of Phase 10 and jovial threats are made across the table from someone who needed just one more card to finish her phase when someone else “phased out” and ended the round, leaving her a phase behind and 70 points ahead. Or when we just can't seem to get through the first phase while everyone else is racing towards the 10th phase. And then there's the frustration of the monopoly game where we build up Boardwalk and Park Place only to have our opponents land on “Luxury Tax” every time they come to that side of the board. But in the end, no matter who wins, or how many times our turns were strategically skipped just because we were winning, we are all smiling and unconcerned with having lost our fortunes just because we landed on Boardwalk one too many times. For a moment, we are not worrying about whatever stresses we have going on at work. And then, when it's all said and done, and we wake up to the daily rituals of our jobs, we have a little bit more of a fighting chance in that battle within the silent chambers of our soul.

Half-Way Home

Welp, I just realized that its been about 4 months since I touched my blog, but upon encouragement from a fellow 56M, I've decided to make the effort to get back into posting. Who knows, maybe this will help me relieve a little stress and get through the rest of our deployment. We are just past the half-way mark, actually, we're almost to the 2/3 mark :), but I'm going to start my new posts with some of the articles I've written for/published in our Battalion newsletter, so those on my email list have probably already read most of these, except the ones that haven't been published, but for those who haven't, here they are, beginning with the second one since I don't currently have access to the first on this computer.

Chaplain’s Message
TFTB Newsletter #6 March 8, 2009
From the earliest of times, having a place to gather has been critical to members of any faith community. In Genesis, Jacob recognized the presence of God in the place where he was, saying, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven.” He set up a memorial at the place, saying, “this memorial pillar I have set up will become a place for worshipping God” (Genesis 28:17,22). In the Gospel, we read of the time Jesus was separated from Mary and Joseph and they finally found him in the Temple speaking with the elders. He responded to their cries of joy at finding him, “Did you not know that I had to be in my Father’s House?” (Luke 2:49) Even as we have come to this place, the Sappers before us recognized the need for a gathering place. They decided to build a multipurpose hall with a pri-mary purpose in mind for it: to house a Chapel for themselves and those that would follow them to use as a place of worship, a place for joyful praises and thanksgiving, and a place for quiet refuge amidst the storms of war. This hall is known as Lahmann Hall, named for one of the Sapper Eagles’ own, CPL Johnathan Lahmann, a combat engineer who was killed in action in December 2007. It is military tradition to name build-ings, ships, hospitals and posts after a service member who has made the ultimate sacrifice for their country to honor them and as a reminder of who and what we are fighting for. 326th Engineer Battalion saw fit to honor their brother in the naming of this hall, so that CPL Lahmann’s memory will live on here even as they have gone home to their loved ones. As we gather together in Lahmann Hall each Sunday for worship, and bible studies during the week, we honor his memory while rejoicing in knowing that this truly is the House of God, and His Presence is known to all who seek it here.