I don't usually write personal stories that have nothing to do with sound or healing, but I have been compelled to share my thoughts about something very close to my heart. In March of this year, my nephew, who I have had the fortune to known since shortly after his birth, graduated from military training in the Infantry. He is now stationed somewhere in Germany and bound for Afghanistan. The only word I can think of to describe what I feel is "conflicted." I love my nephew. I know him to be a lion-hearted being following his path. But I detest war...I detest the way we perpetuate it, waste money on it, accept it as necessary, and use it to justify so many unjust things.

It is a struggle for me to speak out about the war because I would never want to offend my nephew nor dishonor his sacrifice. And his sacrifice is so valiant...because it is innocent. He really believes he is protecting his loved ones from terrorists and religious persecution. He is young. He trusts authority. He believes the stories they tell to justify secrecy, violence, and killing, and he doesn't yet see behind the veil they've so carefully woven to the absolute hippocracy of war. I sometimes wonder if it is better he never do, for his sense of betrayal will be fierce.

He tells me he wants me to be safe from "them". It warms me, his desire to protect. It is so beautiful. The absolute irony is that I am far more in fear of my own country and its corrupted leaders than of any foreign body of people and their beliefs. I am more in fear of a system so topsy-turvy and confused that it's got us all numb, silent, and in a perpetual state of disbelief and inaction.

I am afraid of the threats we continually ignore as we pour our energies into sustaining those we only imagine.

I pray for my nephew's life every day. I pray that he gets to experience a life free from fear, bigotry, fanaticism, and the horrors of war. And I hope one day, he is in a position to change the world in a way that makes it safe for every human life...not an "us" or "them"...a life in which our constitution is more than a set of token symbols we convince ourselves we experience while all the while surrounded by corruption, slavery, and suffering. I hope he lives justice, freedom and happiness.

I know he has it in him to be great, to take what he experiences, question it, and some day make his mark. And I know being called upon to stand up for unacknowledged truths, he will do it, even at the risk of being ostracized and humiliated, even if threatened with his life, because he has already proven himself a man of courage and honor, just not with the luxury of having chosen his own beliefs. When he begins to discover his own, look out world!

God bless soldiers everywhere doing what they believe is right. Awaken. Awaken. Awaken.