Sometimes you just have to suck it up

Note:

I am trying to set up some speaking engagements in Tennessee for the fall. Please let me know if you are interested in having me come to your church, school, or community event.

Blessings, Norris


Sometimes you just have to suck it up

Trying to walk through our muddy base camp has become like walking on fudge, layered with mousse and covered with chocolate milk. The slurping sound that accompanies each trudging step lengthens our day, shortens our accomplishments and weights each foot with an extra two pounds.

Trucks skid through the muddy camp as if they were driverless cartoon characters in the movie "Cars." A pickup in a granddaddy pothole is winched out by a Humvee; 20 feet away, a fully loaded porta-potty slides into the ditch.

"This mud sucks, chaplain!" complains a passing airman.

"Embrace the suck," I say, repeating a raw military witticism.

According to a book by the same name, the expression means: "The situation is bad, but deal with it."

The oft-quoted Prussian Gen. Carl von Clausewitz showed understanding of the "suck" when he wrote: "Everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult."

As he predicted, the simplest things -- like getting water into camp, fueling our generators and siphoning our porta-pottys -- are very difficult.

With all the "simple difficulties," our folks still move out each morning to four work sites about 20 minutes from the camp. They go because they are the 820th Expeditionary RED HORSE Squadron (Rapid Engineer Deployable Heavy Operational Repair Squadron Engineers. See tinyurl.com/mudwheels.)

At our site in Sanson, a bulldozer driven by the guys we call "dirt boys" pushes through the mud to make room for a playground. Electricians climb ladders to hang lights on a pavilion where children will play, sheltered from the blistering sun.

Simultaneously at a clinic in Rio Iglesia, a construction crew lays concrete block for a storage room as they inhale the contents of 16-ounce water bottles like they were oxygen. Carrying heavy bags into the area, their sweat absorbs lime, and some deal with painful burns.

Across the street at a school, plumbers put in needed bathrooms as engineers contemplate what to do with the remnants of an old outhouse, a toxic-looking liquid dump topped with floating syringes.

At our third site in Santa Librada, the Army works to build four classrooms. They seem to be in a friendly race with their Air Force counterparts and work an extra half-day to gain the edge. When the teachers call recess, the children emerge from under the thatched roofs they call classrooms to kick a soccer ball around with the soldiers.

All the while, ancillary crews go off in every direction. My assistant and I remove our mud-caked rubber boots to enter the local church looking for an English-speaking priest to do confessions. Our medical doctor drops off specimens to a Panamanian lab.

The commander visits our sites to keep the jobs on schedule. Fuel trucks bring the fuel for the heavy equipment on site. Supply trucks make the three-hour trip to Panama City for needed supplies and additional troops.

Watching these guys truck through the "suck" has taught me a lot about what to do when I get stuck in life.

First, keep moving. If you stop, the mud dries and you're stuck.

Second, call a friend to help pull you out. Don't be embarrassed. We all get stuck sometimes.

Finally, sometimes we have to simply wait for help from above. In the words of Isaiah, "Those who wait upon God get fresh strength. They spread their wings and soar like eagles, they run and don't get tired, they walk and don't lag behind."

Remember those three things, and I think you'll have to admit, "Being stuck in the muck doesn't have to suck."

great news and a column

Dear Readers,

I have some exciting personal news I'd like to share. Two things happened this week.

First, I've been promoted to Lt Colonel in the Air National Guard.

Second, the National Society of Newspaper Columnist named my column 2nd best in North America in papers over 100,000 in circulation. I competed with secular columnist in the general category of columns. see www.columnists.com

That said, here's my column for the week.


METETI, Panama -- It's not the bat hanging at our construction site or the squawking flock of parrots overhead or the howling monkeys nearby. It's not even the discovery of the deadly baby Fer-de-lance viper killed in our camp the previous week that told me we weren't home.

It was the fact that this was Sunday, and I'm not in my home church.

Instead, I am in my chapel tent (a hybrid of building and tent with canvas stretched over an aluminum frame atop a wooden floor), waiting for chapel to begin.

As congregants enter through the aluminum tent door, religious music provides ambience. Briefly, they stop in our vestibule, which is really a 2x4 plywood boot box where folks remove their muddy boots before stepping into our sanctuary.

They put their boots in the boot rack and, in stocking feet, they step onto the tarp floor my chaplain assistant swept clean three times yesterday. Some stop at the literature table to pick up a Bible or pour themselves a cup of coffee, but most quickly find a chair.

Our service begins at 10 a.m. with a young airman reading a Psalm and voicing a prayer: "God, thank you for letting us assemble here so far from home. Bless this service and teach us what you'd have us learn today. Amen."

In the transitioning silences, I can tell the rigors of jungle living takes a toll on the congregation. One slaps at a mosquito, another scratches her chigger bites and one more nurses a peeling sunburn.

Our singing is led by our camp lawyer, a young Air Force Academy graduate, who teams with a guitar-playing airman. After a long week battling heat and rain, we sound fragile, but it's still a soothing sound.

After three short songs, communion comes prepackaged with a wafer affixed to a cup of juice. I read the account of Jesus' last supper, and we re-enact the supper by consuming the wafer and juice. One person coughs as the sour juice goes down the wrong way.

By prearrangement, a sergeant delivers the gospel reading before my sermon. As I stand behind the rickety table I use for a pulpit, I see nine service members waiting for me to give them something relevant. My sermon is short today, and we finish the service in about 35 minutes.

Here in the unfamiliar land of Southern Panama, I'm reminded of how I'd sometimes challenge my congregations to imagine what it might be like if they were suddenly transported to another time and space. "Do you think you'd live out your faith with the same fervency as you do now?" I'd ask.

"In other words, is your faith portable?"

With the service members meeting in our chapel tent that day, it seemed that, indeed, their faith was portable. From all across the United States, they brought their faith traditions to assemble in our chapel tent.

True, apart from those who know them, they could easily be using this deployment to impersonate a person of faith and morph into someone they can't be at home. But since we have no litmus test for faith here, we just accept each person at their word that they've brought their faith with them.

Because at the end of the day, no matter how far we find ourselves from home, if we've brought our faith with us, it won't matter how many strange sights we encounter. Even if those sights are bats, monkeys or snakes, we'll still be home.

Norris Burkes is a syndicated columnist, speaker and author of "No Small Miracles." He also serves as an Air National Guard chaplain and is certified in the Association of Professional Chaplains. You can call him at 549-2500;
e-mail him at norris@thechaplain.net; visit his website at thechaplain.net; or write him at P.O. Box 19522, Sacramento, CA 95819.

'Who is my neighbor' a matter of perspective

METETI, PANAMA — -- "Do they celebrate July 4 here, too?" asked a young airman as our unit readied our Independence Day fireworks celebration at our deployed location.

It's the kind of ethnocentric question I often hear from people who never have been outside the United States.

Simply defined, ethnocentricity is the assumption that our way of life is best and other cultures are the ones that drive funny, dress funny or eat funny things.

In the airman's defense, I must admit that celebrating Independence Day in a different hemisphere does something to your sense of perspective. It can be difficult to remember that, while we may all look alike, we come from different backgrounds and carry different assumptions about things.

Like a baby looking out of its playpen, ethnocentric thinking makes it easy to think that the world you see is the only world that makes sense. This simple thinking makes it easy to imagine that everyone in the world is worried about commuter traffic, their 401k, their Facebook page or their fifth-grader getting a cell phone.

The people here in Meteti, however, are worried about some very different things. Like whether their children will get the vaccines afforded to children in developed countries. Or whether their son's fifth-grade classroom finally will get the walls needed to protect students from the harsh climate.

It's easy to look exclusively at our local headlines and think human rights boil down to whether someone can carry a gun to Starbucks or whether we are using the politically correct language du jour.

But being down here tends to remind me that we are part of a bigger community. When you visit a side of the world where many people are simply looking for their next meal, it makes you realize we have bigger fish to fry than whether to join the tea party or the coffee klatch.

There's a global consideration here that was framed in a question a lawyer asked Jesus: "Who is my neighbor?"

Jesus' answer came in the form of the Parable of the Good Samaritan.

The parable tells of three men who came upon a man left for dead by roadside bandits. Afraid for their safety, the first two men continued their journey.

The third man, the Samaritan, however, stopped to help the wounded man.

"Which of these three," Jesus asked "do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?"

"The one who showed him mercy," replied the inquisitor.

To the speechless listeners who hated the Samaritans, Jesus said, "Now, go and do likewise."

Here, men and women who normally deploy to combat zones have come across the hemisphere carrying tools to build schools and playgrounds and to remodel clinics. In so doing, the merciful hand of the Good Samaritan is extended.

So, does Panama celebrate Independence Day?

Panama actually has two days on which its residents celebrate their independence.

On Nov 28, 1821, they declared their independence from Spain. Three weeks later, they became a part of Columbia; 82 years later, on Nov. 3, 1903, they separated from Columbia and became their own country.

Don't worry; I won't test you on that.

The real test, however, begins each morning when you wake and face the question: Will I self-centeredly act as if mine is the only hemisphere? Or will I do as Jesus commanded and show my neighbor mercy?

Burkes is a former civilian hospital chaplain and an Air National Guard chaplain. Write norris@thechaplain.net or visit thechaplain.net. You also can follow him on Twitter, username is "chaplain," or on Facebook at facebook.com/norrisburkes.

two column from my deployment in Panama

Wife finds comfort in my lack of it

Whoops, I did it again.

I volunteered for yet another overseas deployment with the Air National Guard.
By the time you read this, I should be in Meteti, Panama.

"Wasn't Iraq enough?" my wife asked.

"This is kind of a break from that," I said.

She looked puzzled.

"This isn't a war zone," I said, uncharacteristically cheerful. "The only bombardment I'll face there is from the mosquitoes."

Her puzzled look told me that this explanation still fell short. So, I voiced a more academic explanation.

"I'm going there for three months with more than 250 service members in an annual military exercise called New Horizons. The exercise is designed to strengthen ties with partner nations in Latin America and the Caribbean through combined quality-of-life improvement projects."

She looked at me as though she knew my reply was scripted by the Air Force Public Affairs Office. Of course, it was. So, I took a more heartfelt tact.
There is more to this exercise than good public relations, I assured her.
"I'll be the camp pastor for service members who are doing some genuinely good things."

We're going to build four schools, two clinics and community centers. In the midst of all the building, we'll send medical outreach teams of ophthalmologists, surgeons and dentists to provide free health care for the local people.

She seemed to be warming to the idea. Still, she never likes me to have too much fun by myself.

"Are you going to be in one of those beachside tourist hotels?" she asked.

No, Mrs. Chaplain. Unfortunately.Meteti is four hours outside Panama City and is at the end of the Pan American Highway on the edge of the famed Darien National Forest.

As a World Heritage Site, this forested area likely will provide some beautiful sights, but our conditions won't be touristy.

I'll be living in a tent, sleeping on a cot and eating one hot meal a day. The other two meals will be the prepackaged military meals called MREs -- Meals Ready to Eat, more commonly called Meals Rejected by Extraterrestrials.

I was hoping these austere conditions would draw the sympathy vote, but her smile told me she saw my discomfort as payback for leaving her alone with our teenager this summer.

Finally, I added, "I'll be there in the middle of the brutal rainy season. And do you want to guess when the little venomous snake babies are born? Yup, in the rain."

That's when my sweet wife closed the zipper on my mobility bag and added some excellent advice.

"Be careful."

Yeah. I'll do that.

I decided not to mention the possibility of the Dengue fever, aka break-bone fever. The mosquito-born ailment gets the alias from the bone-breaking headaches.

Maybe I'll mention it to her in an e-mail. After all, I don't want her to think I'm having too much fun.





Ah, Panama: Hot weather, cold tents
BY NORRIS BURKES • FLORIDA TODAY • JULY 4, 2010

If you missed last week's column, then you'll need to know that I'm deployed in Meteti (pronounced Met-et-tee), Panama.

I'm here with almost 200 service members as a part of a military humanitarian exercise called New Horizons. During our 90 days here, we'll work 12-hour shifts six days a week to build improvements for four schools and two clinics.

We started the project work on June 21, but our military has been here a few months setting up the base camp inside a compound for the Panamanian frontier police.

In some ways, we're like the kids who've set up a tent in the backyard of a friend. Only we aren't exactly in backyard tents. We are in two acres of tents, which house our dining facility, our headquarters, our supplies, and yes, even our showers.

The tents are fabricated by a company called Alaska Shelters and are aptly named, because we shiver under the air conditioning powered by our buzzing generators. The steady stream of air keeps the noise in the tent sounding much like the inside of a passenger plane at altitude.

Our chapel tent is about the size and shape of an old military Quonset hut. On our wooden floor, we've set up a pulpit and folding chairs for Sunday chapel services. Behind the pulpit, a blue tarp cordons off the sleeping area I share with my chaplain assistant, 30-year-old Staff Sgt. Christopher Fetters.

Bags are stuffed under cots, shower towels hang from a makeshift clothesline and malaria pills sit on the adjacent desk ready for a nightly dose.
Outside the tents, daily rain keeps the camp looking like a construction site flooded by a gully washer. Ruts are left where vehicles trudged through the two feet of mud. The thunder from some of the passing storms can sound like a hundred jets breaking the sound barrier.

Finding some quiet among this buzzing tent city is difficult, yet finding cool outside the tents is nearly impossible. Still, I manage to find some quiet in an overgrown area south of the camp where I look for birds, and I'm reminded of the 23rd Psalm that he leads me into green pastures.

Luckily, in the midst of all of this, hot food comes twice a day, "whether you're hungry or not" cracks a balding master sergeant. At the construction sites, under the oppressively hot sun, we eat Meals, Ready-to-Eat, washed down with lukewarm Gatorade.

Gratefully, nightfall comes mercifully quick to the equator and brings a respite. Airmen, dirty from their day's work, file into our chow tent and then off to the showers. Stomachs full and bodies bathed, 10 people file into our chapel tent, exhausted from their work, but hungry for a word of faith in a place so far from home.

I find myself feeling a bit intimidated by the fact that they're sacrificing their only free time with the expectation that I will provide something encouraging. There's no pushing a tired old sermon on this group, and they'll not tolerate regurgitated platitudes.

Wisely, my assistant suggests that we allow the men to take turns bringing the study each night. There is no preaching; thoughts are shared and ideas exchanged.

We conclude by inviting each man to share the thing he is currently praying for. Most prayers are for their families left behind during this voluntary deployment. After prayers are done, they leave the tent with a few quiet handshakes and go back to their cot for the night.
And tomorrow, we'll do it all over again.