GUILT

Prayer For Police Persons

PRAYER AND REFLECTIONS for police and military persons INVOCATION FOR SAFETY Calling in a wise embracing power May you feel the warmth of loving hands Owlish protection in wild dreams Protective rings ‘round dark scenes Sweetness to you Compassion, compassion too Hearty rose, sky love blue Hallowed armor, holy waves Even ‘yond earthly graves --2020 No coward soul is mine, No trembler in the world’s storm-troubled sphere: I see Heaven’s glories shine, And faith shines equal, arming me from fear. --Emily Bronte

PSALM 23 The LORD is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.

LORD’S PRAYER Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, forgive us our debts (or trespasses) as we forgive our debtors (or those who trespass against us), and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil (or error). For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.

Guilt, Remorse and Grief When we are on duty and in the middle of a dangerous encounter, our main partner or someone else we work with regularly could be killed through gunshot wounds, a knifing, beating, a vehicle hit and more. If this happens to someone we have developed some sort of relationship with, someone we have gotten to know better or perhaps even have become close to, it can make us feel guilty for being alive when they are not, or for not doing enough before or during the encounter.

Taking Grief Down that Rocky Trail Sometimes the feelings of sadness can hit real levels of grief as a sort of ache that goes beyond sadness. Sometimes we cannot stop crying. Other times, tears keep coming up here and there. In other cases, it can be like a crying that goes on inside one’s self without the visible signs of tears. Sometimes it’s just a grim reality that has set in, one that feels the words are sugary or no longer needed. The grim reality feeling can be a kind of bitterness or impatience with words. The idea is right there at a point of succinct knowingness inside; feelings and ideas have become like a microchip of information. You’ve been through deaths or hard times to the point the first horror and grief has been flattened down into anger or self-survival. Don’t tell me how I am supposed to feel, man: been there and done that. I want to just get through, deal with it, move on. And then there can be this impulsive response: Wow, a twist of fate, and that could have been me. Or it could be a downright: Glad it wasn’t me. What might help is to go inward with prayer and meditation to find the depths of your own soul first, as best as you can. But sometimes it’s just a matter of going off somewhere and getting quiet, maybe looking out over a scenic vista in the middle of nowhere. Find the inner turmoil, horror, sadness and pain. Allow yourself to feel what you feel, whatever it is. In addition, if you cannot seem to feel anything at all, even if it is a sense of numbness or apathy, allow this. Don’t force anything. Sometimes that hollow nothingness is a call of its own. See if you can remember the times there seemed to be something more that peaked its head through, a higher power, God, a universal mind, a feeling of interconnectivity that transcends normal physical experiences. If that is your space, fine, if not - don’t force it. After you make that real connection with yourself, then reach out and try to make that connection to the soul or deepest part of the person or persons who have departed through the violence you were witness to. Try to talk to them in your heart and spirit as best you can, to express what you feel. Try to make that final goodbye in a way that is honoring to both of you. Send them your best wishes, if you are up to that, but otherwise remain true to yourself and say and be what you really feel in this matter. Then try to let it go while retaining the most significant parts of the memory of it all. You can retain what was best in your connection with this person. In addition, it is wise to learn from our experiences to add to our knowledge, experience and wisdom. We can learn from even the most tragic encounters and can apply this knowledge to future endeavors to help ourselves and others. If we allow, nothing is truly wasted or gone forever. Odors, Sounds, Reverberations It’s sometimes not just what you see. It’s things that come in through your other senses, too. They can be bad odors, like smelly breath, body odor, urine, feces, vomit, rotting food or decaying human flesh. It can be the smell of moldy clothes or blood. It can be burning bodies, or the thick smoke of a trash pit or a house in its last embers. The sounds can be bullets or the curses of a suspect. It can be the sound of children crying or fellow officers moaning after being downed by bullets. It can be the screams of several people being shot at one time, or fire-sizzling vehicles. Reverberations are something felt in one’s bones, an aftermath that keeps reoccurring almost as if it is still in the room. It’s like the memory of vibrations, but something more. It can be the impact of a blast, shot, knife slice or fire. It’s also the flash that seemed to hit the back of your eyeball, leaving you temporarily blinded. It can be something that shook the ground or building. It can be a certain whiz of bullets flying close by or a distant thump from large weapons ejecting missives. It’s when you wake up from a bad dream feeling the explosion or shot after it is long over. It can be the sense of buildings crashing after a burn, or the blasted parts bursting super-fast and outward from a burning truck. It’s the feeling of the bridge collapsing and sinking, which can be like an earthquake shake or the sense of the explosion with a lot of light, burning and splashing, the sense everything in its wake is blown across the terrain into a million tiny pieces, human forms no longer recognizable as such. Bullet impacts can be about the immediacy of it, no time to prepare; in your dream you try to shake yourself into quicker action when it’s already over. You are still processing the movements and feelings of things. There is the horror of dealing with technology that is faster and bigger than you are. The Sense It Could Come in a Flash or Behind Your Back in Public Getting gas, going to the store. Walking back and forth across the grocery parking lot to one’s car, someone ringing the door at the house, another could be sneaking in the back door or window. These are the fears and worries that nag or hang around in the back of one’s mind. On the job, a flash of an object, it could be anything. Trained to self-protect as a reaction, the officer flashes back. Later to find in certain circles, self-defense is suspect, a crime if the other guy’s not actually flashing a weapon at that precarious seeming moment. Sometimes phony gimmicks cover up the actual nature of the objects when someone is protecting the cartel members. Anything from cell phones to combs, if the other party flashes it and is wounded or killed when an officer shoots out of perceived or actual self-defense, what then? In the hands of connected people, who stands for the cop trying to protect him/herself? Sometimes people in the Force are the cartels, and the stories wind up just as flawed in some other way. Who is to protect the innocent in the Force When will truth be a matter of course? --Mid-2020 to Feb 2021 Updates: 2021/03/12 some things near bottom of page that were out of line were edited; 2021/02/05 All unmarked poems or reflections on this page are by Terri unless otherwise noted; the point is not to be a poet, but to express feelings and ideas in a different way than prose. These have come up for me while reading many policing related articles, and a growing number of military related books and articles. The latter includes resources about wars including WW2, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanista’s OIF and OEF, and other operations involving American military persons and their allies, as well as things I have personally heard from disabled or other veterans

Brotherhood of Man The universality of sincerity can make all strangers brothers and sisters. When we find and operate from the core of who we really are, we are the same. Despite differences, something is deeply resonant in all of us if we allow it. --2020

Anger Can be a feeling That flies in Snappish, it stokes a fiery mire Hurry, bring frigid waters of a streamy caper, its downward stroke to uncertain end Burbles and rapples, brook’s stony chimes, songs chirple and tickle to hearty rhymes A mint and woodsy chill spicing wet bank’s edge Here a mist that hangs, there a flappy vapor Iced mountain waters splash giggles to dawn’s growing ire, droplets as holy water to brow’s early frets But drench with dousing hose to full-blown wrath, now a spastic fire fueled by dragon breath Rimy hands, spraying sweep our inner heart be heard Fire be gone, fire be song while raining love to earth --Late 2020-Feb 2021

You can fool part of the people some of the time, you can fool some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all of the time --Uncertain First Source

In grief over their fallen comrades, American military active duty persons in Iraq have consistently applied names of their fallen comrades to bases, chow halls and many other things, determined to honor and not forget the plight of the deceased, nor the conditions under which they suffered unto death. In addition, the “no man or woman left behind” promise has been taken seriously, with rigorous searches following abductions and other missing persons in the American military.

Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, “I will try again tomorrow.”

Hold an ancient stone or trace of moss, sit and contemplate years gone by. Millions to zillions, raw turns of time - The awe’s in retaining some the same alongside shifts small or great. Go back, back, back who are you in all of that? --Feb. 2021