Strong.Women.Marines

My older son is a Marine officer serving in Afghanistan. Because we live in a rural area with a newspaper that provides little coverage of the war and our troops, he sends me newspaper articles from a wide range of world newspapers. The articles are compiled by the unit's public affairs officer a couple of times a week and give broad perspectives on all services activities.
An article this week provided a report on a powerful activity by Women Marines.And it speaks to the power of women's relationships! These small groups of specifically selected and trained Marines are tasked with talking with Afghan women to determine their health needs. The ultimate goal of this communication is to establish health clinics for the Afghan women and their families. An underlying premise of this effort is that though Afghan women are not seen publically very often, they have a great deal of information about the activities in their villages.Doesn't that ring true for you in your "village?"It is about establishing relationships and "winning the hearts and minds" of the villagers. There are many obstacles to this goal. The husbands determine to which wives the Women Marines are allowed to talk. In this report the only interpretor allowed was a male family member of the Afghan women. The accuracy of his translation was questionable.
Very interestingly the Afghan women did not initially want to talk about health care needs. They wanted to talk about safety. What will happen when the American troops leave? They expressed fear that the Taliban will return and kill their families. The Women Marines said after this first rather frustrating visit, the goal is to establish relationships with the Afghan women.
Worldwide building strong relationships is how we heal and grow!Grow in our own lives and grow in world peace.

sacred roles

Remember the excitement and the anxiety of the first day of school each year? Now consider those emotions in the context of moving to a large urban high school from a southern town where you have lived all your life. My two granddaughters had this experience this week---and it was not good. They are in different schools. They ate lunch alone. They were ignored by the other kids all caught up in their own excitement and anxiety.

And their mother and I have been in very frequent email contact-commiserating and praying for them--and for each other.I want the girls (and their mother) to know they are not alone---that God is with them as they walk through those new hallways and classes. That is what Kathleen Norris is talking about in "Quotidian Mysteries" when she talks about sacred roles. She says that by framing our everyday tasks as sacred we feel God's presence in walking through our "hallways." Our roles as mothers, spouses, friends, cooks, chauffers, laundress, cheerleader, counselors etc. etc. etc.become sacred when we are able to bring them into our relationship with God. Our role as a recovering woman becomes active and alive in an ogoing conversation and relationship with God.

What roles are you active in today? How can you begin to think of them as sacred?
In what ways is this gift of recovery sacred?