Honoring Our Veterans!

We Are All One!
We are living during a time where we have forgotten we are all one. We all have muscles, bones, organs, tissues, blood and we come in different colored packages. We also have different ideas. We have to find ways to connect through our similar beliefs and learn through our dissimilar beliefs. We also have to challenge our fears and ask ourselves are they grounded in reality or not. We have a golden rule that I still think works and is well said by Karen Armstrong.

Karen Armstrong, a world-religions expert who emphasizes the golden rule and compassion, wins a TED award which she uses to launch the Charter for Compassion. Her acceptance speech urges: “If we don’t manage to implement the golden rule globally so that we treat all peoples as though they were as important as ourselves, I doubt that we’ll have a viable world to hand on to the next generation.

Honoring Our Veteransr
So how can we change “It’s different, I am afraid of it/I don’t like it?” We need to find answers and maybe we can get some of those answers from our veterans. We can listen to our veteran’s stories about how they connected as they fought for and with people they had never met, people who had different ideas about living, different religious beliefs, different customs, different histories, and people who came in different packages. I would imagine war teaches lessons fast. Are we giving our veterans a place to tell their stories, speak about the lessons they learned, the connections they made, and who they are as a result of being deployed? One idea suggested is for a community to organize a gathering with its citizens non-veterans and veterans. The non-veterans listen, and the veterans tell their stories about war. These stories hopefully will include their lessons, the gifts, the horrors, the good, bad and ugly of their experiences. Remember we are there to listen and have compassion. Judgments not welcome.

Continue reading here: https://www.recovery.org/pro/articles/honoring-our-veterans/