Mike Lotzer U.S. Army Chaplain (CPT) - Gifts for Veterans

Mike Lotzer served as a U.S. Army Chaplain from 2004-2012 and now serves as the Lead Teaching Pastor of Faith Covenant Church in Burnsville, MN.

The Minnesota Humanities Center has given Minnesota Veterans a profound gift—four in fact. Through the Veterans’ Voices program, I have received four life-giving gifts including: acceptance, self-awareness, hope for civility, and a desire to see more Veterans leverage their pain in order to flourish more as human beings. Allow me to elaborate briefly:

1. Stereotypes about Veterans are being challenged. Consequently I feel accepted on a deeper level. Veterans who feel lumped together and accepted by society find it difficult to flourish after military service. Of course, this is not unique to Veterans. Human beings seem hard-wired with a need to be accurately known and generously accepted—or, if not accepted, at least valued. If the gift of acceptance and/or the value of Veterans as individual people continues to play out on a broader scale, Veterans will contribute more to human flourishing. Why is that the case? They will start to flourish themselves, and are we or are we not people who have been trained to lead in the worst conditions imaginable? Accepted and secure individual leaders who have been trained to navigate unknowns and adversity will be a game-changer in our present culture.
2. Veterans are being invited to share our stories and reflect carefully on our past—resulting in greater self-awareness. This is a gift that keeps on giving to the Veteran and society. I sense that Veterans who lack self-awareness are perhaps more at risk of simply blending into the background than many others in society—we were trained to blend in by the way; note the uniform. Self-awareness comes, in large part, when we are invited to share our true stories with others. This endeavor is pushing individual Veterans to courageously articulate and live out their unique vocation and identity based on their unique past and that, I suspect, will only help our society and fellow human beings. Why? Consider this: Innovation, lasting solutions, timely progress, and saving partnerships all seem to require some of the same ingredients. Among those common ingredients appears to be—self-aware and resilient people.
3. The initiative has reminded me that many people do, in fact, have an innate longing to relate with civility and warmth amidst diversity. This is a true gift to anyone who has witnessed the prolonged and radical absence of civility. Some of the people who witness that professionally are called ‘members of the military.’ What they witness is called war. Prideful cynicism is a common side affect of prolonged exposure to a lack of civility and warmth—at least that is what my heart, therapist, and experience tells me. As a coping mechanism, cynical disbelief and apathy towards the common good is a dependable way of regulating painful memories and internal hurts. Yet cynical apathy towards the possibility of a more civil and warm society will certainly produce some kind of result of which I cannot pretend to know. What I do know, however, is that cynical and apathetic Veterans will certainly not help to produce a warm and civil society.
4. The initiative has urged me not to waste the painful parts of my story by either underplaying them or overplaying them. Something strange happens when you are out of the military for a few years and suddenly find yourself honored among Vets of multiple eras. You notice the universal tendency to feel awkward in relaying your painful experiences. I’ve watched Veterans who I deployed with to the same combat zone exaggerate about the chaos and carnage they witnessed. I think they believed every word they spoke. I’ve also watched soldiers and Military families, who I know well, completely underplay the chaos and the carnage of what I know they experienced. Why is this so common? As humans we seem almost universally uncertain when it comes to knowing what we are to do with the most painful parts of our story. The process of accepting the Veterans Voices Award this year has pushed me to consider that perhaps I am to accurately recognize my painful chapters in the military and then promptly leverage them for the common good of humanity. This is a gift indeed. This world needs less under and over-playing of Military trauma and much, much, more leveraging of that trauma for the flourishing of all people. Consider that the greatest pains in all of our life may be uniquely designed to serve as the launch-pad of our greatest contributions to the common good of all people.

The Minnesota Humanities Center helped me to seek out the common good in people and remember what connects us rather than what divides us. For that I say thank you.

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Ryan Else - How will the humanities help lead America toward a brighter future?

Ryan is an attorney and proudly served as a member of the historic 2-135 Infantry Battalion of the Minnesota Army National Guard. Ryan carries this experience over to his civilian professional practice by advocating for veterans in the justice system. Ryan is an associate attorney at the law office of Brockton D. Hunter, P.A.; co-editor and co-author of a legal treatise entitled The Attorney’s Guide to Defending Veterans in Criminal Court; and the executive director of the Veterans Defense Project, a non-profit aimed at promoting the effective legal representation of veterans charged with criminal offenses.

The greatest threat to our nation lies inside us all: the inability to see the humanity in those who are different from or in conflict with us. We are a strong nation of people who have proven a nearly absolute ability to defend against external threats, but, we are hurting ourselves at a greater rate than an enemy has ever been able. To illustrate that point, as most of us know, in 2001 we lost 2,977 Americans in the largest attack on American soil by an external threat in over a century. According to the Centers for Disease Control; however, for the most recent year with data, we killed each other 16,238 times in 2011 and another 38,285 Americans killed themselves that year.

Right or wrong, we have felt the need to militarize our police force, indicating that we now view ourselves as a danger matching the threats abroad. The problem goes beyond violence. Political divisiveness has peaked at a point where hatred and fear of each other dominate over working together to improve our physical infrastructure, schools, health care, or for any other constructive purpose. We are clearly failing to appreciate the humanity in each other, as this xenophobia leads to the dehumanization of each other necessary for such violence and hatred.

We need a reminder of our common humanity, the fact that despite our differences we all want the same thing out of the American experience—a safe place to live, raise families, express ourselves freely, and excel in our individual and collective pursuits of happiness. We need reminded reminder that we have more in common with each other than we have differences. We need to see that when we dehumanize a person different from ourselves we are extinguishing the same relationships and consciousness that we hold sacred in our own lives.

The humanities—defined as the study of human culture—force us to recognize these commonalities in one another. Whether it is a play that confronts the civilian population with the difficulties faced by returning combat Veterans or a children’s book that tells the story of a foreign community or culture, the stories are those that make us human. It is very difficult to hate those you recognize as human. They are stories that transcend any specific culture because they are the stories of family, trauma, pain, community, sport, faith, and other universal commonalities. The details change from culture to culture or experience to experience, but the themes are essential to us all.

Once we find common values, we face our differences not as threats but as diverse assets we all bring to the American experience. If we are to overcome the divisiveness we face, we must find common ground and unite around the unique diversity that makes up the United States. To do that, we must first get to know each other’s stories and the humanities can serve as our collective storyteller.

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The Minnesota Humanities Center Blog will be taking a break next week for Thanksgiving. Blog posts will resume on Thursday, December 4. Have a happy and safe holiday weekend.

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Rose McGee - How will the Humanities help lead America toward a brighter future?

Rose McGee

Rose McGee is a Program Officer – Omaha Public Schools - at the Minnesota Humanities Center and the author of the new book Story Circle Stories.

…By Listening. By Listening. By Listening. By Sharing. By Sharing. By Sharing.

One of the basic applications of storytelling is to repeat a key statement three times. This allows the person telling or sharing to place emphasis on the main point which in turn helps the listener grasp the significant value of that being spoken. Our work here at the Minnesota Humanities Center is centered in story and by convening in circle. The circle connects and holds truth accountable among each and every participant in a way that also reinforces a strong sense of respect. Innately, being in circle formation generates effective repetitive narratives as each one listens and shares and listens and shares and listens and shares.

Being authentic and humble are critical traits for moving effectively and creatively into the future. People of the Akan Region of Ghana, West Africa often use the sankofa bird to illustrate a powerful lesson. The sankofa’s head is turned backwards while holding an egg in her mouth. Our learning from such a powerful image is to reflect on the past while in the present in order to step forward with wisdom and confidence into the future. This can be done by intentionally listening to stories from each other with the utmost respect. To be effective, negativity such as egos or entitlement must park themselves outside of a story circle. Everyone sits at the same level and should be able to look into each other’s eyes as sharing and listening occur. This evokes Respect. Respect. Respect.

So much chaos, acts of violence, and mistrust stomp around in our society. Racism is a ‘Boogie Man’ that lurks about, yet few are comfortable speaking out against it. When story circles convene around the topic of race, participants have a chance to get the ugly matter off their chests - whatever that means. A respectful story circle allows that story to be told without placing judgment on the teller. When a Veteran returns home in pain and traumatized from the assignment or sadly, from the mistreatment once having returned home, the circle allows the soldiers to talk about it, release it in a safe place, and somehow regain peace. Youth as well as the elderly who convene in story circles are able to feel as though someone really cares about their thoughts, their questions, and their dreams simply by listening to their stories.

Absent narratives are all around us in many shades, shapes, dialects, on reservations, in urban streets, in nursing homes, in schools, hospitals, in wars, in our homes, the workplace, corporations, the rich, the poor, the lonely. We walk among the silenced voices, and we sit next to them in public places. For a brighter future, an invitation into story circles must be extended to all. Invitation. Invitation. Invitation.

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