Please note that this is the first notice I am doing about the next veterans event. Please spread the word about this event, please come, please support our veterans. And for both those in this local area and those who are not, please visit the Mosaic website: http://www.mosaicvoices.org/. Thank you. Many blessings ~ Molly
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A Welcome Home Ceremony
November 11th, 2008 ~ 6 PM
First Unitarian Church
1011 SW 12th Ave Portland, OR
~ Everyone Welcome ~
November 11th, 2008 ~ 6 PM
First Unitarian Church
1011 SW 12th Ave Portland, OR
~ Everyone Welcome ~
Join veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and their families in a Veterans Day gathering that brings together veterans and the community to help heal the distance between the warriors and those they protect and bridge the gaps between war and peace, trauma and renewal, pain and understanding. This event involves a community conversation that moves beyond the politics and goes deeper than the rhetoric of war; it requires courage and is too-often avoided. It begins with tragedy and loss, the aftermath of any war, and requires the language of poetry and story as well as the dignity of ceremony.
Join author Michael Meade, veterans, and their families for an evening of poetry, stories, and cogent commentary on the realities of war and the difficulties found upon return. Healing only happens where and when the burdens of war can be shared by the greater community. A public gathering allows citizens to become compassionate witnesses to the stories of war and the need for conscious and genuine acts of witnessing and welcoming. As one of the veterans put it in a poem: "Can we create a village as strong as a war?"
A Welcome Home Ceremony and Voices of Veterans will draw upon intensive work with veterans that begins in a five day retreat that focuses upon healing from the effects of combat and dealing with the post-traumatic stresses that follow exposure to modern warfare. The retreat will be facilitated by author Michael Meade, a Vietnam era veteran, noted mythologist, author, and storyteller, along with experts in the field of trauma recovery.
The suffering and sacrifice of veterans must be acknowledged at a genuine human level just as quality medical treatments must reflect the nature of physical wounds. A genuine rite of return for veterans involves an open and compassionate community that fully acknowledges the courage and the wounds of those who return from battle as well as fully grieves those whose lives ended in the unforgiving fields of war. Excerpted from Michael Meade's introduction to the new book of poems by veterans and their families: Voices of Vets, A Bridge Back to the World.
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