winter in july

i pride myself on being so self-aware..
and this extends to awareness about other things going on in the world --
poverty, war, you know, things that the rest of the world is concerned with.

this week, the horror of war and its aftermath - like an insidious disease that slowly eats at one's body and soul - hit me in the face four different ways.

washington post online reported june as the deadliest month for american soldiers in afghanistan.

i was listening to the reports of iraq war veterans and the atrocities they not only witnessed, but participated in. that was yesterday early evening. i was driving and the road became blurry when i listened to a soldier describe other soldiers stomp on a body where rigor mortis had already set in, in order to get it into the truck. he said the image was seared into his memory forever and through his sharing, it seared itself into mine as well.

later that night, the evening news highlighted a soldier who was a victim of ptsd. the family talked about how the illness manifested itself in the young hispanic male. he turned on himself, his stepfather, there was bloodshed, and in the end, he lost his life. the image i'll remember from this is his mother sitting at their dining table looking at pictures and the distortion of her face as grief and anguish took over.

lastly, just an hour ago, i saw a rerun of lara logan on the daily show. the straightforward way she discussed iraq and afghanistan and the american way of jumping on the next bandwagon, forgetting the 5+ years we've been involved in perpetrating violence in other parts of the world...

my heart is aching for people who are so closely impacted by war. compassion and hospitality, the need to be loved - all parts of what distinguishes us from animals, simple organisms, and plants - are no longer present. i'm afraid we really are losing our humanity.