Christmas Reflections 2008

Christmas has grown in my estimation since I was a child. Like all of my peers, I feasted on the excitement of my parents, the satisfaction of new things to own, and the rather strange and interesting ceremonies involved (from midnight Mass to Christmas dinner the next day). Yet as my cognitive reasoning increased and I began to comprehend the full Christian meaning of the holiday, it became more and more important to me. I think the change had a lot to do with the consistency between the traditions and the religious meaning of Christmas. Celebrating God's incarnation as the fragile baby Jesus vindicates and elevates the Family, with which tradition dictates we must spend the holiday. The very hopelessness of Jesus' redeeming mission (what with our Original sin and all) is reflected in the stirring and improbable Christmas story--a long, mandated journey for a caring man and his young pregnant wife with the childbirth occurring at the most inopportune time. The custom of giving gifts is a joyful symbol of God's great gift to us of his son, as are the gifts of the Magi after Jesus' birth; their own difficult and faith-directed travels are also a further symbol of our own difficult path to find God. It makes rational sense to me, it is inspiring, and it makes me very glad to celebrate.

I don't share many of my Christian contemporaries' view that the Christmas spirit has been prostituted to retailers. Certainly any greed, acquisitiveness, and unnecessary extravagance are bad. But it seems appropriate for people to truly enter into the spirit of gift-giving and gift-receiving, wherein they practice charity by seeking and sacrificing (time, energy, treasure) to make their loved ones happy and practice humility by acknowledging the love of others. These two virtues are not, of course, only expressed in the exchange of gifts--they should be practiced throughout the whole of our holiday traditions, as when hosting or attending parties, decorating houses or places of work, or traveling to visit others. And though many people who celebrate Christmas don't really attach religious significance to the holiday, I am actually quite happy that they join in the spirit of my religious celebration. Naturally I hope that one day all the world accepts the truth that I believe is right, namely that which is held and taught by the Holy Catholic Church, but as that is manifestly not the state of things right now I don't think non-believers should be excluded from the celebration itself. It wouldn't be charitable at all, and certainly the mark of us Christians should be our uncomplicated and all-embracing practice of that virtue. Furthermore (as St. Paul and St. Francis notably observed), all we can do to evangelize, really, is humbly set the example without, if at all possible, making others uncomfortable. So why not celebrate Christmas as best as we know how, and hope that our actions might be a vehicle of God's grace?

Unfortunately, I won't be spending Christmas with my family. I am deployed military at the moment, which means I must stay "in theater," which is far enough away from home to exclude a visit from family. At least I won't be spending the holiday alone--35 of my comrades (among which are some of my closest friends) will be there to share Christmas day with me. Also, I am living comfortably right now in Okinawa, Japan, which enjoys moderate weather and none of the dangers of the Middle East. It is with a twinge of homesickness, however, that I notice nearly all my friends' Facebook pages testify that they are home with their loved ones. Unfortunately, that also means they will have little time to send me messages, which I read eagerly whenever they arrive. But when I begin down this path of self-pity, I am brought up short by the fact that my parents are taking this current separation much harder than I am. It has been their great struggle over the years to forge a tight, happy nuclear family, and as we all get older I know they worry that we are falling apart. There is small comfort to be found anywhere in this situation--after all, the horrible thing about spending Christmas alone is that even God had His family on Christmas. At least on Easter, we celebrate God's singular redemptive act in all it's pain and glory, and we can rejoice alone. But on Christmas we celebrate family, and all the carols and traditions support this. There is little recourse for my parents' loneliness this year, and even less for the men and women who are deployed like me, but in more dangerous places and/or with fewer comrades. I ask you who are reading this to remember these servicemembers and pray for them.

Probably the most wonderful thing about Christmas is that it recognizes the pain and brokenness of our world and yet still manages to celebrate a conquering beauty. The hardships of Joseph and Mary fade in comparison to the arrival of the Christ child, the singing choirs of heaven, and the pilgrimage of shepherds and Magi. The winter, which must have been a season of great suffering and darkness in the long ages before central heating, electric lights, and an abundance of fresh food, is yet marvelously transformed by a new snow and the untouchably clear and starry skies of the extended darkness. The songs of Christmas are more dramatic in darkness, and the presence of others is more satisfying when it helps banish the cold and darkness. And with these beautiful images I must leave you and put on my coat for the short walk home. At this solstice-time Okinawa nights carry a hint of real winter cold, which I enjoy very much. I pray that all of you who read this receive all the blessings this season has to offer, and wish you all a very Merry Christmas. There is no better time or thing to celebrate.

The Magic of WestPac

As time grew short in San Diego last summer, and my squadron's WestPac deployment loomed, it was hard for me to work up much excitement. That I would miss spending the holidays with family and friends, the long list of things to accomplish (related both to my job and my personal life), and the knowledge that I would be leaving my familiar and good life in the states for six months of unknown places and constant movement all weighed heavily on me. In that frame of mind I couldn't truly listen to those who had experienced such a deployment before, all of whom spoke of WestPac with an indefinable longing--for some it seemed like the highlight of their career (which, seeing as how most of them had flown fighter aircraft in direct support of troops in conflict, is saying a lot). Yet nearly three months into the trip I am beginning to understand.

Being abroad as a part of a group of young, capable comrades induces a carefree and deliciously arrogant sensation. Though our personal and professional burdens are heavy and the hours we work long, we are conscious of our collective freedom from the social restraints of home and proudly aware that should war erupt in the Western Pacific we will be the first to enter the fray. Robbed of the traditional cues of passing time (such as holidays and seasons) both by the tropical weather of our deployment locations and by our constant movement from one place to another, we happily find ourselves living mostly in the present--and when we do look to the future, we tend to care more about tomorrow or next weekend than next month or next year.

I could truthfully describe the time we spend here as frustrating, boring, hectic, exciting, and fun. There is an increased workload for us all that stems equally from the constant packing and unpacking of the squadron itself as we move around and from the extra time spent learning how to fly in new, strange locations. Yet for the young guys like me, many additional hours are spent after the normal working day studying for the Section Lead qualification. This is really the first career step for pilots after they arrive in the fleet, and it means (when they achieve it) that they are capable of leading another aircrew in combat, to include any of the many air-to-air and air-to-ground missions of which the F/A-18D is capable. It requires both extensive knowledge and a lot of flight preparation to complete the course of 11 "work-up" flights in which we demonstrate to instructors that we are qualified as a Section Lead, and the techniques they require us use for briefing, conducting, and debriefing such flights are specific and often "written in blood," a half-euphemism we use often to identify those procedures that were developed as a result of some forgotten mishap years ago. Moreover, the criticism of our conduct in these "work-up flights" is accordingly strict, and can last several hours or more while the entirety of our preparation, in-flight decisions, and post-flight debriefing are examined, discussed, and if necessary corrected. Though it makes for long days, we are all grateful for it--this winnowing process makes us harder, leaner aircrew, forces us to develop the necessary habits of safe flying, and trains us to focus our flights on actual combat rather than mere administrative procedures.

Of course, the best part of deployment has more to do with squadron-mates than actual flying. Living together, far from our homes, with no one else to occupy our time, we "relax" by finding things to do together. Often that is having several drinks at any number of O'Clubs and bars in the places we visit. But tourism is also fun, especially when there is the chance of finding something authentically foreign and yet undiscovered (by tourists) in the unfamiliar places we visit. Prompted thus, I have so far enjoyed a unscheduled and unguided bike tour through the compact and industrial city of Iwakuni to see the medieval Kintai Bridge and Iwakuni castle, stopping along they way back to enjoy being the only American in an (apparently) popular sushi restaurant. One weekend morning on Okinawa some comrades spent the morning driving to the island's rural and beautiful northern portion to find a beach with adequate surf, and another evening there we headed into the colorful and cheerfully dilapidated city of Naha to enjoy sushi at the touristy and famous Yoshi's restaurant. More recently I headed into the Outback to climb some waterfalls and dive into the fresh-water pools below at an Australian national park. Some places have yielded better times than others, such as the concrete pavilion behind our barracks at Kadena Airbase, Okinawa. The cookouts and drinking bouts, the songs sung drunkenly--particularly, nostalgically, "Country Roads" by John Denver--together under the stars in the heavy jungle air, the stumbling trips across the street aboard Kadena to pick up more beer all contributed to the most comradely nights of the deployment so far. Likewise the Officer's mess in Australia, scene of mustache competitions and three-man lifts, of cowboy- and 70s-themed parties (which we attended with the most flamboyant and outrageous costumes we could think up), of the creation of drinking songs, and of friendly carousing with RAAF pilots is now also a place invested with good memories.

There is something about the places themselves that is exhilarating--it has roots in their unfamiliarity and exoticism, but is also comes from our collective attitude of wonder and excitment at simply being on WestPac. I've already written of the indefinable pleasure of being catered to in Osan, Korea, and other places have their own intriguing characteristics. Okinawa is distinguished by the bright, Caribbean, almost third-world appearance of Naha city (with laundry hanging from lines strung between concrete apartments), the pockets of dark, noisy jungle squatting undiminished amid the sloppy civilization scattered across the island, and the sunsets riotous with color spreading each evening over a golden ocean horizon. Australia is a place where only Orion and Scorpio familiarly stride the night sky amongst the strange southern stars, where the reddish outback is rendered curiously bright by the slender, undersized trees that provide the vast majority of the scrub, where the large bats (alone of their species) sense the world through their vision and darken the evening sky with their great numbers, and where the thunderstorms are huge, swift, and violent. Many flights my pilot has spent circumnavigating the towering and dark cumulus clouds (whose tops reach higher than our high-performance aircraft can fly), and I have watched from above the dense rainshowers moving across the floor of the Outback and the terrible lightning striking all around my little vessel from cloud to cloud and down to the earth. In the evenings, when storms reach their climax after building all afternoon, I have stood in the entrance to the tunnel leading to our bunker with other squadron members working late, quietly smoking cigarettes and watching the thunderstorms flicker brightly, every couple of seconds, in the darkling sky. One night, watching the storm rage, lightning struck the airfield control tower merely several hundred yards away, causing us all to involutarily jump back and cry out.

There is more to see over the next months of deployment. There will be more nights of drinking and visits to new places in Okinawa, Japan, and Korea. And after that we will be moving ourselves one last time, from Iwakuni back to San Diego. No doubt when the time comes to go home it will be welcome indeed. But for now I am glad that date remains comfortably in the vague future, because despite the increased stress and strain of constant deployment (not least of which is the irritation attendant upon living in close quarters with the same people for an extended period of time) I am enjoying myself much more than I did in San Diego. This is perhaps the best-kept secret of the naval service--this is WestPac.