Lawrence Winters (Larry Winters) -- Making and Un-making of a Marine

Lawrence Winters (Larry Winters) -- Making and Un-making of a Marine: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"

Long Time Gone

It's been a while sense I have have blogged there have been many things pulling my attention. Most of them veterans related. I have been speaking to vet group and doing workshop of my own as well as educating my self at others. It has become more clear to me lately that what is missing in the healing equation for vets when the come home with PTSD or some other war related wound is that society has no idea how to deal with them. There is no issue in the all of mankind that is bigger than war. It boils right down to the fact that war is about life death and lots of pain and we are to small to be able to encompass such a huge frightening thing as war so we stick out small ostrich head with our ipod earplugs into the softest pile of sand we can find and hope when we pull it back up the vets will have gone away. Problem is that they don't, they are still there and infact the have begun to infect all of us with their pain. The missing peice is a way to see the war issue from a larger perspective then we have. In order to generate any hope in the conditions of war and the afteraffects of war we need to have a vantage point of the soul, higher self, or God view or we remain stuck in the trenches looking at each other with hate and rage and hoplessness. The chaplin has become a pivital role in the miliatary and their job is to get men stabalized so they can return to battle. What a job this has to be for consious men and woman to ask their fellow human beings to offer up their lives for causes that have become so complicated that no one seems to understand them.

Just a few thougth that have been stirring would love to have some feed back.

Larry

There are a number of new UTube's on my website

My Webmaster has really put a lot of hard work into getting some very interesting UTube shows on the website makingandunmaking.com. I'd love for you to check them out and to give comment. There are many valuable links and a good deal of important information on the site look at it carefully.

Be well

Larry

So You Support the Troops and Not the War

OK, let's think about this for a few minutes. You say you support the troops but not the war. Have I got that right? Great! I thought that's what you said. So let me just make sure I understand what that means; support the troops, that is.

I was once a troop during the Vietnam War, and I would have seen support as you showing up for me. You would have honored me when I was sent to war to risk my life to keep you safe. You would have followed the war as it progressed to see where I was and how I was doing. You would have written me letters and prayed for my safety. You would have welcomed me home when I got back. And you would have thanked me from the bottom of your heart for standing between you and the enemy.

You then would have asked me what I needed, and how was my health. You would have wanted to know what you could do to repay me for the effort that I put in to keep our country safe. Your primary interest would have been for my welfare. You would have wanted to comfort me from my battlefield fears; you would have asked if you could pay for my medical bills; you would have helped my family when I was gone; and, you would have told me that you honored me for my sacrifice. You would have asked me for forgiveness for not going yourself and you would have offered forgiveness for the killing I did in your name. That must be what you mean when you say you support the troops?

Hey where are you going we just started this conversation? Come on back I want to hear about why you don't support the war.

Larry Winters

These two poems are a must read

If You Are Lucky in This Life

If you are lucky in this life
A window will appear on a battlefield between two armies.

And when the soldiers look into the window
They don't see their enemies
They see themselves as children.

And they stop fighting
And go home and go to sleep.
When they wake up, the land is well again.



By Cameron Penny,
who was a 4th grader in a Michigan school when he wrote this poem.
The poem was originally published in 2001.


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Hopi Elders Speak

by The Elders, Hopi Nation, Oraibi, Arizona



We have been telling the people that this is the Eleventh Hour
Now we must go back and tell the people this is The Hour

And there are things to be considered:

Where are you living?
What are you doing?
Are you in right relation?
Where is your water?
Know your garden.

It is time to speak your truth.

Create your community.
Be good to each other.

And do not look outside yourself for the leader.
This could be a good time!

There is a river flowing now very fast
It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid.
They will try to hold on to the shore.
They will feel they are being torn apart and they will suffer greatly.

Know the river has its destination.

The Elders say we must let go of the shore, and push off and into the river, keep our eyes open, and our head above the water.

See who is in there with you and Celebrate.

At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally.
Least of all, ourselves.

For the moment that we do, our spiritual growth and journey comes to a halt.

The time of the lone wolf is over.

Gather yourselves!

Banish the word "struggle" from your attitude and your vocabulary.

All that you do now must be done in a sacred manner
And in celebration.
"We are the ones we have been waiting for...."

Doumentary Body of War

Everyone needs to understand what War does to an individual soldier watch this new Documentary by Phil Donahue and Ellen Spiro “Body of War” when it comes to you. http://www.bodyofwar.com

http://www.woodstockfilmfestival.com. I’d love your feed back on my

blog site makingandunmaking.blogspot.com

Larry

Penumbra

Penumbra

by
Larry Winters

A tangle of branches poked at the gunmetal sky. The cold a blade held against the exposed flesh of Simon's forehead. The thirty below temperature made the windblown trees rattle at octaves he'd never heard before. When Simon started walking, the snow squealed under his boots like he was crushing small rodents. The hair in his nostrils froze and ice was caked on the outside of the scarf he'd tied over his face. Simon had seen no one on Mountain Rest Road for miles. The two houses he'd passed had lights on but no one was outside; there were no kids playing in the new snow; the cars in the driveways still had snow on them. Standing alone under the night sky, the darkness was his.

Simon had things to think about. He'd been struggling all last night and the whole day with what happened during yesterday's afternoon nap. He felt desperate to sort out the vision that had come before him. If his mother was still alive, she might have been able to explain what it all meant; but she'd died on Christmas day two years ago. She would have had some idea what the specter standing before him was, and why it smelled like someone had peeled an apple in the room when it left.

Simon had rubbed his eyes with the backs of his hands, but it was still there, a soldier in battle gear. A bolt action rifle hung over one shoulder, mud on his knees, a bandoleer of rounds draped across his chest. Simon had blurted out, "What the Hell are you doing here?"

The soldier stared at him and said, in a cockney accent, "They sent me to look for a tree, a Christmas tree."

"Who sent you?"

"The sergeant did! We got three men who've been gassed. They won't see Christmas tomorrow?

"Come on man. I know it's Christmas tomorrow, but you're talking like there's a war in my backyard."

"I need a tree now!"

Running his hand through his hair, Simon asked, "Do you know where you are?"

"Verdun!"

"No, man, for God's sake, you're in New Paltz NY. It's 2007 and it's the coldest day in 100 years."

"Listen, I don't have time for your jokes, there's a war going on. Have you seen anything green, I've got to bring something back for these men?"

"Wait here a minute." Simon got up from his chair tugged his coat on and went to the garage. Taking the handsaw off the hook, he ambled through the frigid air into the back yard to the edge of the forest. With a few powerful stokes he cut down a scrawny white pine about three feet tall. Shaking the snow from its limbs he carried it back to the house.

When he walked into the living room there was no one there. Where the soldier had stood there was a pool of water and some clumps of mud. He looked at the tiny tree in his hands and walked to the back door and tossed it into the snow bank, writing the whole thing off to a dream. Sitting back down in his comfortable chair, he pulled the blanket up to his shoulders. As he was dozing off a sharp knock on the back door startled him. He heard the door open and, "Thank ye, good man, may God bless ye, he sure as hell has forgotten the likes of us this Christmas."

Throwing off the blanket, Simon leaped up and ran to the back door, the tree was gone; there were his footprints and another set leading towards the mountains.

This must have been the tenth time he had let this remembrance run through his mind. He was now in a section of road where there were no houses and he cast his eyes to the heavens searching. Before his mom died she'd pointed up at the night sky and told him, "I'll be looking down on you, so don't get yourself in trouble. When you look at the stars on a clear night one of them will be me." He didn't think much about this because she'd always been weird, but he let his eyes hunt the winking stars.

Suddenly he smelt apples again. He then remembered his mother telling him how his grandfather couldn't eat apples, because it reminded him of the smell of gas in World War I. Looking towards the mountain he saw a penumbra surrounding the Mohonk Tower. There were flashes coming from the far side of the mountain like heat lighting in the clouds or heavy artillery blasts. He lifted the ear flap of his hat and thought he heard distant rumbling.

He thought being in the cold would clear his confusion, but it was growing worse. Something inside him knew that his mom was watching. He remembered one cold winter when she told him, "When it gets really bitter cold strange things can happen with how we experience time." Looking straight into his eyes, she said, "You've heard how the sounds of whales travel a single layer of molecules in the ocean water and can be heard hundreds of miles away. Something like that can happen when it gets really cold. Eskimos know about this, when it gets down to a certain temperature they can tell when something important is happening to a family member miles away." He remembered making a joke and saying, "Yeah they make a cell phone call."

She smirked and said, "That's not what I'm talking about. Why don't you open to what's right in front of you? There is so much more for you to know only if you would allow it. Stop trying to fix everything and just be. Another thing you should know is that time can become so condensed from the cold that the past and present can become frozen together. History and present day get pressed so close they blend into one another."

"Right Ma, you mean after you die if it's really cold, I might get a chance to see you again?" He was trying to make another joke, but suddenly felt bad that he'd mentioned her dying."

"Maybe," She'd whispered.

Simon wondered if that was what was happening now. Was the apple smell from deadly gas lingering on the soldier clothes? Was history and present forced together by the chilling temperatures? Should he be paying more attention to the fact that his country was fighting in two wars right now, and that men and women were going to spend tomorrow's Christmas day like the soldier who'd stood in his living room?

Looking back at his footprints he knew it was time to turn back towards home. Warm in his jacket, he now understood all that his mother had wanted him to.