I've just been thinking about my four years in the army and, as far as I knew there was nothing remotely like CLF and its new military ministry. Of course CLF was one of the first on the scene (read my previous post), but I was four years in the army and heard from a variety of chaplains (so many hours a month - or maybe a year - of required religious indoctrination), mostly Catholic monks for some reason, and I never (not ever) heard from a chaplain that could be described as religiously liberal - certainly no UU ministers. Maybe we were blessed with all the monks because of our post in southern German, but more probably it was because of the Catholic church dedicating resources in reaching out to our service men and women. WUWT?
Some of the monks were amazingly engaging. Mostly young (weren't we all?), mostly intelligent (it seems they were all Jesuits, but that could be my sometimes-less-than-accurate-memory) and full of stories and parables that somehow seemed relevant. We also had the protestants, also mostly young, but not so apparently intelligent (well, that's probably not fair, but they certainly did not come across as well educated as the monks) and with a less palpable story-line. Time slowed to an oatmeal crawl with those guys. Whatever they were originally protesting about, it all sounded main-stream nonsense (these prejudices clearly reflect my own calvinist upbringing). (If you want a defense of Calvinism, you might want to visit the Calvinist Corner.)
As UUs we need not go into the world and preach the gospel (however liberal the teachings), but, as it seems to me, we might be more open to supporting folks that need someone (who may or may not know us or even want to know us that well) to lend a listening ear, or an occasional bowl of porridge.
All I am saying is give our military folks a little return on their time serving us (it doesn't really matter if their reasons for joining the army, navy, air force, marines or coast guard had little expectation of sacrifice). I promise you, they sacrificed.
