ABSTRACT
This chapter is written to increase understanding of the opportunities for creative healing of traumatic experience through spiritual growth. This is accomplished, in part, by describing the role of a chaplain in the military and the personal experiences of the author as a military chaplain. On the one hand, the spiritual origins that influence this writing lie in the author’s early New England Protestant Christian traditions of the northeastern United States. On the other hand, the author’s spiritual origins lie in the continuing ageless creation of the world. My career as a military chaplain required me to work within the established authorities of both religion and the Armed Forces. These authorities are the familiar customs, laws and culture of our nation. This career also required me to work in spiritual places I had only been able to read about in textbooks, books and journals on ethnology and anthropology, as well as theology and psychology. What was ancient and academically interesting became present and intimately powerful for coping and healing. An example of this personal experience was the spiritual presence and communication of a totemic relationship, which will be described later. First Nations peoples have always lived this way. What scholars call “primitive” or “legend” became remarkably contemporary living to me.
