Carol Kirk, a nurse in Vietnam from 1969-1970 comforts Paul Stanger, an Air Force veteran who served in '68, '70, and '72 and was overwhelmed with emotions during the first annual Welcome Home Vietnam Veterans Day event at the Huntsville Veterans Memorial Thursday, March 29, 2012 in Huntsville, Ala. (Eric…

For several years now I've been working on a Master of Divinity Degree with a focus on Pagan Pastoral Counseling through Cherry Hill Seminary.  One of the things that I needed to do to complete the academics was to have an internship semester where I was actually doing hands-on work.  After a bit of searching around for a place to do it, I ended up working through the Chaplain's office at my local hospital.  I'm having a fascinating time doing it.  Love the work, love the people on the staff…

This semester at Cherry Hill I was enrolled in a class discussing the role of the interfaith chaplain.  Our instructor had once worked as a chaplain to prisoners and then to the homeless.  It opened my eyes to all of those groups in our society that are considered outcasts.  As Pagans we know how this can feel.  But I suspect that we often fail to see these "others" out there.  We don't hear their stories.  We don't see them as human beings with hopes and dreams just like us.  So this was my…

From Basic Training I had gone to El Paso where I was sent to the specialized training for operating room nurses from December 1968 to May 1969. There were seven of us in my class, and we became quite close during training. Shortly before our graduation our orders came down and all but one of us were on the same set of orders to report to Vietnam on the same date. The one who didn't come down on that set of orders we heard arrived in Nam about six months after the rest of us.

My…