Visiting your area

Readers,

I'm returning home next month and I will begin planning visits in the towns and cities where my column runs.

I'll be looking to tell my stories in churches, hospitals, civic organizations, schools, etc. In the past, it has worked very well for organizations to host me as an outreach event to the public. The local newspaper do a great job promoting their own columnist. So, If you know of a place that would like to host me as a guest speaker, please let me know.

See column below

Blessings!


March 28, 2009


Cost of vengeance isn't cheap

BY NORRIS BURKES
FOR FLORIDA TODAY

-- The helicopters heading toward the emergency department at our hospital were filled with urgent hope. They knew all wounded arriving to Balad had a 98 percent chance of seeing their families again.

The first person off the helicopter was a young lieutenant who walked to the nurse's station where I was standing. Mistaking me for someone in charge, he urged me to look after his three buddies.

Then he raised his bloodied hand and added, "I think I've got a bullet wound, too." I shot a wide-eyed look to the chief nurse who began prepping the lieutenant for surgery.

As the lieutenant was prepped, he explained that the soldiers on the incoming stretchers were part of the platoon he'd been with for the past 15 months.

Across the room from the lieutenant, the staff worked feverishly to keep these soldiers together and make them part of our 98 percent survivor rate.

Clothes were cut off. IV's were inserted. Chest compressions made.

However, within just a few minutes, the more experienced doctors were stepping back from the litters and staring at their own bloody boots.

"Chap!" summoned the doctor from the far bay of the trauma room. Arriving bedside, I looked down at the young Army corporal staring up at me. "We've pronounced," the doctor said. "You want to say a few words?"

I prayed a quick prayer as someone else called out, "We need you over here too, chap!" I crossed the room to another bay to see the staff covering a 31-year-old soldier with a sheet.

Not knowing yet what faiths were represented, I shouted to my chaplain assistant to call our priest and rabbi.

Meanwhile, competing pleas were coming from the bedside of an Army private as well as from the bedside of their interpreter.

They were all dead.

Short sobs could be heard over the deafening silence that had enveloped the room like one of our dust storms. All I could hear was the snapping sound of elastic gloves being removed in disgust as each team simultaneously realized the three soldiers were dead on arrival.

There was nothing anybody could do except don more gloves and help the incoming patient administration team. My assistant and I joined the team, where we checked the dog tags for the religious preference we'd need for the memorial service called the Fallen Warrior Ceremony.

Then, our team went though the pockets of these young men. Coins, pens and papers were pulled from their pockets. Patches were stripped from the uniforms.

Then a gasp was heard as an airman removed pictures of a soldier's wife standing with two small children. More tears.

"Are you alright?" I asked the bleary eyed airman.

"Yes," she lied.

The rabbi and the priest walked among the trauma staff to lay hands on the heaving shoulders of young servicemembers who found this incident too horrendous for words.

Soon I walked to the table where the young lieutenant sat shaking his head and making nervous twitches at the confirmation his team members were all dead.

Well, not all of them. The lieutenant survived. So did his sergeant.

He explained how his platoon was surprised by the enemy as they searched a house. In the return fire, the two surviving members killed the insurgents who had killed their comrades.

"We got the SOB's," he told me in language soldiers often hide from their chaplain. "They were some bad guys. They were torturing women and children. We paid a terrible price, but we got the SOB's."

I nodded in sympathetic agreement, both to his assessment of the price and the vengeance of the swift reply.

Later that night, I clinched my fists with holy rage as I recalled a Bible verse: Vengeance is mine, says the Lord.

And I was grateful that vengeance did not belong to me.

The best and worst Times of my deployment in Iraq

BY NORRIS BURKES
FLORIDA TODAY

Many of you have asked me to list the superlative adjectives that best describe my deployment in Iraq. OK, you likely didn't know you were asking for "Superlative Adjectives," but here's my list anyway.

Finest

Several weeks ago, my editors volunteered to print a list of items needed in our Airman Ministry Center called Troy's Place.

Athena Tickner, manager of Troy's Place, reports receiving "hundreds of boxes!"

She writes, "Your column has generated not just stock (our stockroom runneth over), but most importantly, friendships. Nothing we have ever done has generated this sort of response."

Your personal letters were given to me separated from the package and many of them did not contain a reply address. Therefore, it won't be possible for me to personally reply. However, Troy's Place will send a confirmation from the mailing receipt.

(FYI: You can continue to address packages to me long after I've gone, but please consult the Web site before mailing: www.troysplace.org.)

Kids of Iraq is another place needing our blessings: http://kidsofiraq.org/

Most awful

If it seems that our hospital at Joint Base Balad is 24/7 traumas, it's not. It's often extremely uneventful for long periods of time -- until interrupted by moments of sheer terror.

The most awful event occurred recently when three soldiers arrived in our ER.

In just a few minutes of controlled chaos, clothes were torn off and chest compressions were made by desperate technicians. However, the more experienced doctors stepped back from the litters -- staring at their bloody boots.

The room filled with a deafening silence as if it had been covered with the same white sheet that draped the bodies of the soldiers.

All I could hear were short sobs and the snapping sound of elastic gloves being removed in defeat as we realized the soldiers were all DOA (dead on arrival).

I tried to write a column about it, but the words kept sticking in my throat as I dropped my face onto my keyboard.

Greatest

That's easy. It's working with men and women who want to make a difference in our world. It's working with heroes who never would accept that title. These are fearless service members who worry more about their buddies than their own life.

It's also getting to worship with these heroes and hear them sing, pray and sometimes cry.

Most dangerous

When I wrote about mortar fire last week, one reader told me she was worried for my wife, Becky.

It's true we are attacked here, but the attacks have decreased significantly. At the end of the day, the most dangerous things probably are the rocks we trip over during our nightly walk to the dining facility.

Best

The food. We have dessert bars filled with pies and Baskin-Robbins ice cream -- perhaps this makes the food the most dangerous thing.

While most people are trying to lose weight, I facetiously announce that my goal is "1 pound a week."

"Really?" they ask, sounding so impressed. "You're trying to lose a pound a week?"

"No," I say as I sit with my apple pie a la mode. "I'm trying to gain a pound a week."

Feigning excitement, I add, "I think I'm a bit ahead of my goal."

Worst

That's easy. It's not the weather. It's not the dust storms or the rain that creates mud like papier-maché . It's not the 24/7 wearing of a uniform. It's not the portable toilets. It's not the miles of rocks and sand. It's not the 72-hour workweek.

The worst thing is that I miss my family -- especially my soul mate, Becky. On most days during the past 29 years, I've awakened to feel her warmth. I tell her things I never could tell anyone. I tell her things I've only told God.

Next week is her birthday, and I miss her immensely.

She's also smart. Right after she explained superlative adjectives to her fourth-graders, she explained them to me.

You can read more of Chaplain Norris in his book, No Small Miracles, or at his Web site, www.thechaplain.net. You can e-mail him at Norris@thechaplain.net or write him at Chaplain Major Norris Burkes, 332 AEW/HC, APO AE 09315-9997.

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Danger can level the praying field

Readers:

You are welcome to reprint articles in church and organizational newsletters as well as forward to your friends. Just please keep all the credit information with the articles.

Also, I'm planning visits this summer or early fall to the towns where my column runs. If you know of any churches, organizations, schools, etc, that would like to host me as a guest speaker, please let me know.

I've receved enough donations to give away more than 250 books here in Balad. Thank you so very much to all who donated.

Finnaly, if you need to be removed from these mailings, please visit www.thechaplain.net and click on letter icon.

Blessings,

Chaplain Norris


March 14, 2009

BY NORRIS BURKES
FLORIDA TODAY

There are a lot of jokes that start with "A rabbi, a priest and a Baptist minister walk into a bar."

Well, if you subtract the joke part and keep the characters, you'll have the makings of a recent incident here at Joint Base Balad, Iraq.

It started when the Alarm Red sounded, signaling to base residents we were under an indirect fire attack.

It's called indirect because the fire is indiscriminate and random. For all we know, the enemy is shooting at the moon.

Nevertheless, this alarm, which sounds every bit like a diving Claxton from a WWII submarine -- oooo-ga, oooo-ga -- sent our chapel staff into a flattened position on the chapel floor.

Once on the floor, Rabbi Sarah Schechter, an Air Force captain; Tech. Sgt. Franklin Castro, a chaplain assistant; and I found a cozy spot under a desk.

At first, we found nervous humor in the whole thing.

"Someone lead us in a song," the rabbi quipped. "There must be something we all know."

"I've been known to take an occasional 'shot' from an unhappy reader," I admitted, "but I'm not used to people shooting at me in church."

From beneath another desk, the Rev. Hoang Nguyen, also an Air Force captain, added his signature line, "What up wit' dat?"

We chuckled a few more times. And then we heard it. A boom rattled our chapel building as easily as if it were a structure made from a child's erector set.

Suddenly, the fire didn't seem so indirect. It felt very personal. The enemy momentarily had leveled the playing field by hitting our side of the fence.

It was time to level the praying field.

There's something unifying about experiencing danger in a group. In an instant, the moment became a great time for interfaith prayer since several faiths were represented: a rabbi, a priest and me, the Baptist chaplain.

Lying prostrate on the chapel floor, we said our own brand of prayer -- even if it was just, "Oh, God!" It didn't matter what our religion was; we knew it was time to pray.

Mathew 10:28 says: "Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul."

Yet we were afraid. This is the first time most of us have been in a combat zone. The old adage "There are no atheists in foxholes" proved correct.

The same verse in the message translation says, "Don't be bluffed into silence by the threats of bullies."

This translation best describes what happened next.

From our side of the fence, U.S. forces delivered some heavy return fire.

When the all clear sounded a few minutes later, the event proved to be a temporary disruption without injuries.

There have been a few more incidents since that one, and we've spent a few more times on the chapel floor -- the rabbi, the priest and the preacher. Prayers continue to follow.

And for some reason, the obvious joke escapes us as we ponder the frailty of the human body, ours and those of the service members surrounding us. It's scary, not so much in a terrifying sort of way, but in a sad kind of way.

But at the end of the day, our fear can be set aside as we heed the remainder of the verse from Mathew:

"There's nothing they can do to your soul, your core being. Save your fear for God, who holds your entire life -- body and soul -- in his hands."

Burkes is stationed at Joint Base Balad, Iraq, through April. E-mail him at norris@thechaplain.net or write him at Chaplain Maj. Norris Burkes, 332 AEW/HC, APO AE 09315-9997.

In a battle zone, relevance is key

March 7, 2009


In a battle zone, relevance is key

BY NORRIS BURKES
FLORIDA TODAY

Sunday is my favorite day here at Joint Base Balad, Iraq.

It's the day I recharge my spiritual batteries. It's the day traumas miraculously slow enough for 15 hospital staff members to come to the hospital chapel's worship service.

It's hard to describe what chapel service is like 7,000 miles away from home in a faraway land. The people who come seem to leave their pretense behind and bring a yearning to touch a sacred space.

From throughout our theater hospital, people arrive in ones and twos and sit quietly as our music team finishes its last-minute practice.

Before the service, I sit fretting about my sermon.

Maybe that's surprising to many of you who've heard me speak, but this isn't a crowd looking for the seminary standard of three points, a poem and a prayer. Each Sunday, when I look at the crowd, I know it is a crowd that reserves its reverence for the relevant.

The eyes of the people in the congregation tell me, "Chaplain, I pulled family pictures from the pockets of a dead soldier this week. Please tell me something that will get me through another week."

In one pew sits a nurse who has momentarily left a cleft-lipped Iraqi infant in the care of a colleague. Behind her sits a doctor who has finished yet another surgery on the insurgent who killed an American soldier. Coming in late is a respiratory therapist who had barely finished the breathing treatment for the soldier with inhalation burns.

Another congregant sits looking at his shoes contemplating the
e-mail he received ending a lengthy marriage. He's despondent, and he has an appointment to talk with someone later in the week.

I begin at the top of the hour with a nod to the physician sitting at the piano. I selfishly hope he won't be summoned again to a patient's bedside and leave us singing a cappella.

One congregant stands holding his bulletin, but he won't sing. He's a survivor of a horrific firefight that claimed several buddies. Another one stands gripping the chair in front of her and praying her friend returns from his patrol this week.

Soon, the songs begin. And with all the acoustical strength of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, the small concrete room erupts in hope.

Am I exaggerating their musical talent?

Maybe.

But that's the way I hear it in my soul. Their singing displays a synchronicity and harmony between their voices and their calling. The power of those two things brings us to a new level of worship.

As I look around the chapel, people are singing "Amazing Grace" with their eyes closed, not so much because they know it by memory, but it seems to be their prayer.

They sing "Blessed Assurance" and enunciate each word as they search for the assurance and the meaning found only in a personal calling.

Soon, it's time for my sermon. I begin my brief talk with a story from life. I tell them that I'm a storyteller because I think that's the way Jesus spoke to people.

Throughout the room there are various indications that people are hearing their own story in the words of the Scripture. People nod, they smile, and some say "amen." They are present together in worship.

The service closes with Communion. Congregants take the cup and they break the bread in a way not commonly known to the average person in the pew. For these people know the true meaning of Jesus' words when he said, "Greater love has no one than this: That he lay down his life for his friends."

We say a prayer. We go back to our work stations and prayerfully use our "spiritual recharge" to charge others.

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Enemies need our prayer, care, too

BY NORRIS BURKES
FLORIDA TODAY
"Trauma call, trauma call," announced the hospital speakers at the Air Force Theater Hospital last month.

The call sent a flurry of staff toward the ER where we commonly see patients of all kinds: U.S. service members, civilians and even enemy combatants. No matter who arrives for treatment, our doctors will scrub the same way, ER techs will prepare the same homemade blankets, and nurses will lay out the same delicate instruments.

I've seen our staff work on our service members, and I've seen them work on enemy combatants. Each time I see the latter, I'm reminded of Jesus'

commandment to "love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."
This trauma call would bring at least two wounded. One patient, a U.S. soldier, had a bullet lodged in his head. The other patient -- as yet unknown -- entered our ER with a tourniquet skillfully applied to his leg wound.

Since the soldier was critical, he was immediately treated by a trauma team.
The Coalition traumas arriving during the past six months had a 97.7 percent survival rate. They have that opportunity for life because our medical staff is willing to attempt what seems impossible. They define the words "heroic efforts" as they push beyond the limits of civilian medicine.

In this case, our soldier sustained an injury that would cause most stateside hospitals to initiate comfort measures and ready the family for a death.
Not here. Not this hospital. Not this staff.

The soldier was wheeled out of the ER and into the operating room where our neurosurgeon searched for the bullet. When she found it, she announced what she likely knew before surgery: The fragmented bullet made surgery impossible. The soldier would not make it.

At that point, I was summoned to a place I'd never been, the OR. I put on a mask and entered the room to see the remnants of this heroic effort: tubes, IVs, bags of blood, bandages and pharmacological equipment and monitors strewn about the room.

What I'll remember most are the bloody footprints made by a harried staff.
"Chap, he's not going to make it," said our trauma doctor, Air Force Maj. Joseph DuBose. "Can you say a few words?"

My audible prayer was short, but my internal prayer had as much to do with our reaction toward the person in the OR next door as it did this man.

For you see, the staff knew the man in the adjoining OR, the one with the bullet in his leg, had likely caused this carnage. Now that man was receiving the best medical care possible from the same people who were grieving the loss of a fellow service member.

You learn a lot when you care for your friends, but you learn a great deal more when you care for your enemies. As I heard one of the doctors say, "This is Geneva Convention 101," in reference to the requirement to treat wounded combatants.

Jesus summed it all up in the Sermon on the Mount: "You're familiar with the old written law, 'Love your friend,' and its unwritten companion, 'hate your enemy'?

"I'm challenging that," Jesus flatly stated. "I'm telling you to love your enemies. . . . If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that." (The Message, Matthew 43-44a, 47)

This trauma team didn't settle for "run-of-the-mill."
And just so you know, neither did the fellow soldiers of the soldier who died; they were the ones who skillfully applied the life-saving tourniquet to the enemy combatant.

Enemy combatants need prayer, care, too

BY NORRIS BURKES

"Trauma call, trauma call," announced the hospital speakers at the Air Force Theater Hospital last month.

The call sent a flurry of staff toward the ER where we commonly see patients of all kinds: U.S. service members, civilians and even enemy combatants. No matter who arrives for treatment, our doctors will scrub the same way, ER techs will prepare the same homemade blankets, and nurses will lay out the same delicate instruments.

I've seen our staff work on our service members, and I've seen them work on enemy combatants. Each time I see the latter, I'm reminded of Jesus' commandment to "love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."

This trauma call would bring at least two wounded. One patient, a U.S. soldier, had a bullet lodged in his head. The other patient -- as yet unknown -- entered our ER with a tourniquet skillfully applied to his leg wound.

Since the soldier was critical, he was immediately treated by a trauma team.
The Coalition traumas arriving during the past six months had a 97.7 percent survival rate. They have that opportunity for life because our medical staff is willing to attempt what seems impossible. They define the words "heroic efforts" as they push beyond the limits of civilian medicine.

In this case, our soldier sustained an injury that would cause most stateside hospitals to initiate comfort measures and ready the family for a death.
Not here. Not this hospital. Not this staff.

The soldier was wheeled out of the ER and into the operating room where our neurosurgeon searched for the bullet. When she found it, she announced what she likely knew before surgery: The fragmented bullet made surgery impossible. The soldier would not make it.

At that point, I was summoned to a place I'd never been, the OR. I put on a mask and entered the room to see the remnants of this heroic effort: tubes, IVs, bags of blood, bandages and pharmacological equipment and monitors strewn about the room.

What I'll remember most are the bloody footprints made by a harried staff.
"Chap, he's not going to make it," said our trauma doctor, Air Force Maj. Joseph DuBose. "Can you say a few words?"

My audible prayer was short, but my internal prayer had as much to do with our reaction toward the person in the OR next door as it did this man.

For you see, the staff knew the man in the adjoining OR, the one with the bullet in his leg, had likely caused this carnage. Now that man was receiving the best medical care possible from the same people who were grieving the loss of a fellow service member.

You learn a lot when you care for your friends, but you learn a great deal more when you care for your enemies. As I heard one of the doctors say, "This is Geneva Convention 101," in reference to the requirement to treat wounded combatants.

Jesus summed it all up in the Sermon on the Mount: "You're familiar with the old written law, 'Love your friend,' and its unwritten companion, 'hate your enemy'?

"I'm challenging that," Jesus flatly stated. "I'm telling you to love your enemies. . . . If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus?

Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that." (The Message, Matthew 43-44a, 47)

This trauma team didn't settle for "run-of-the-mill."

And just so you know, neither did the fellow soldiers of the soldier who died; they were the ones who skillfully applied the life-saving tourniquet to the enemy combatant.

Burkes is stationed at Joint Base Balad, Iraq, through April. E-mail him at norris@thechaplain.net or write him at Chaplain Maj. Norris Burkes, 332 AEW/HC, APO AE 09315-9997.

Enemy combatants need prayer, care, too

BY NORRIS BURKES

"Trauma call, trauma call," announced the hospital speakers at the Air Force Theater Hospital last month.

The call sent a flurry of staff toward the ER where we commonly see patients of all kinds: U.S. service members, civilians and even enemy combatants. No matter who arrives for treatment, our doctors will scrub the same way, ER techs will prepare the same homemade blankets, and nurses will lay out the same delicate instruments.

I've seen our staff work on our service members, and I've seen them work on enemy combatants. Each time I see the latter, I'm reminded of Jesus' commandment to "love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."

This trauma call would bring at least two wounded. One patient, a U.S. soldier, had a bullet lodged in his head. The other patient -- as yet unknown -- entered our ER with a tourniquet skillfully applied to his leg wound.

Since the soldier was critical, he was immediately treated by a trauma team.
The Coalition traumas arriving during the past six months had a 97.7 percent survival rate. They have that opportunity for life because our medical staff is willing to attempt what seems impossible. They define the words "heroic efforts" as they push beyond the limits of civilian medicine.

In this case, our soldier sustained an injury that would cause most stateside hospitals to initiate comfort measures and ready the family for a death.
Not here. Not this hospital. Not this staff.

The soldier was wheeled out of the ER and into the operating room where our neurosurgeon searched for the bullet. When she found it, she announced what she likely knew before surgery: The fragmented bullet made surgery impossible. The soldier would not make it.

At that point, I was summoned to a place I'd never been, the OR. I put on a mask and entered the room to see the remnants of this heroic effort: tubes, IVs, bags of blood, bandages and pharmacological equipment and monitors strewn about the room.

What I'll remember most are the bloody footprints made by a harried staff.
"Chap, he's not going to make it," said our trauma doctor, Air Force Maj. Joseph DuBose. "Can you say a few words?"

My audible prayer was short, but my internal prayer had as much to do with our reaction toward the person in the OR next door as it did this man.

For you see, the staff knew the man in the adjoining OR, the one with the bullet in his leg, had likely caused this carnage. Now that man was receiving the best medical care possible from the same people who were grieving the loss of a fellow service member.

You learn a lot when you care for your friends, but you learn a great deal more when you care for your enemies. As I heard one of the doctors say, "This is Geneva Convention 101," in reference to the requirement to treat wounded combatants.

Jesus summed it all up in the Sermon on the Mount: "You're familiar with the old written law, 'Love your friend,' and its unwritten companion, 'hate your enemy'?

"I'm challenging that," Jesus flatly stated. "I'm telling you to love your enemies. . . . If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus?

Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that." (The Message, Matthew 43-44a, 47)

This trauma team didn't settle for "run-of-the-mill."

And just so you know, neither did the fellow soldiers of the soldier who died; they were the ones who skillfully applied the life-saving tourniquet to the enemy combatant.

Burkes is stationed at Joint Base Balad, Iraq, through April. E-mail him at norris@thechaplain.net or write him at Chaplain Maj. Norris Burkes, 332 AEW/HC, APO AE 09315-9997.