Local chaplain says now is the time for military to pull together

Captain Brannon Bowman has spent the last year as a chaplain for the 165th Air Lift Wing of The Georgia Air National Guard.  He never imagined being asked to talk to a reporter because one man in uniform had killed fellow soldiers on American soil.

“I would certainly hope that we would let something good come out of something very, very horrible,“ he tells me.

He says his thoughts and prayers are with the victims at Fort Hood as well as their grief-sticken family members. “And I believe those who were killed, that their desire would be that we would not walk away from it unchanged,“ he says.  “I hope we as a military family would be prompted to be stronger, more careful, watching after each other, and as a country just that we would continue to have high support for the men and women who wear the uniform.“

The irony of this day does not escape either of us when he tells me that “soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq are praying for soldiers back in Texas instead of just vice-versa.“

The idea that the military is facing betrayal by one of its own is unthinkable. “I think the way any of us deal with a sense of betrayal is that we recognize that we live in a broken world,“ Chaplain Bowman says.  “As a man of faith I think about how God’s word that says that one day we’ll bet our swords into plow shares because there will be no more war. But as of right now we live in a time of war and that war sometimes rears its head in places we don’t expect.“

Bowman believes the military may be able to do more reach out to those in their midst who may be in trouble.  “I would just hope this would cause folks at installations not on deployment but even here stateside to recognize and be vigilant, to not only reach out to those who might be hurting and might even be dangerous, that we’d reach out to them pre-emptively.“

The chaplain believes the nation can do more to help the military and the military can do the same within.  “The military community is a family and sometimes in the midst of a family there can be horrible and difficult things. But what defines a family is after it’s all said and done that you work through it and you’re committed to being a family.“