THE SOUL REPAIR CENTER: Newsletter Fall 2016 Table of Contents 1. News About the Center 2. Upcoming Fall Events 3. What We Have Been Doing 4. Soul Repair on the Road JUST POSTED! News About the Center The Texas Observer features a story about moral injury and the work of the Soul Repair Center by journalist Jake Whitney. It includes stories of veterans who have struggled with moral injury. https://www.texasobserver.org/combating-moral-injury/ UPDATES ABOUT OUR NATIONAL ADVISORY BOARD Capt. (Chaplain) Kyle Fauntleroy, USN, Command Chaplain of the Pacific Surface Fleet, will officially retire this coming summer from military service after thirty years as a military chaplain. After he retires, he and his life partner Laura Loving Fauntleroy may return to Texas. A Brite Divinity School graduate, Kyle entered seminary wanting to become a military chaplain. He encountered some resistance to this vocation during a post-vietnam time when many seminaries discouraged military service. In following his call, he has served with distinction both as a chaplain and as a trainer of chaplains before his current assignment, he directed the Naval Chaplaincy Training School and Center in Fort Jackson, SC. Rev. Dr. Robert Lee Hill retired in 2015 after a thirty-year ministry at Community Christian Church in Kansas City. He now works for the Kaufman Foundation and maintains a leadership role in several projects that are committed to excellence and retention in professional clergy. He led the organizing to create the opening worship service at the October 2015 national conference in Kansas City. Bob was instrumental in helping the Center receive funding from the Lilly Endowment, Inc. from 2012-2017 and remains a committed fundraiser for its work. Amir Hussain, Ph.D., Professor of Theological Studies at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, recently stepped down after five years as editor of the premier international journal in religious studies, the Journal of the American Academy of Religion. His advice to successor, Cynthia Eller, the first woman to edit the journal was a quote from one of his heroes, the Texas songwriter Guy Clark. Be one of those who knows that life is just a leap of faith / spread your arms and hold your breath and always trust your cape. http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/content/83/4/885.full Amir is currently enjoying a fall fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies at the University of Southern California and finishing an essay on moral injury in the Quran for an upcoming anthology, Exploring Moral Injury in Sacred Texts, edited for the Center by Joe McDonald, Ph.D.
Jonathan Sherin, M.D., currently Chief Medical Officer and Director of Military Affairs for the Volunteers of America, will begin a new job on November 1 as Director of Mental Health Services for Los Angeles County, which, with over ten million residents, is larger than all but 8 U.S. states. He will oversee 3500 employees and a $2billion budget. Perhaps for the first time in the U.S., a county program in mental health will be overseen by a professional with knowledge of moral injury and an understanding of its importance in overall mental health. http://mynewsla.com/government/2016/10/11/volunteers-of-america-chiefmedical-officer-appointed-director-of-mental-health/
Upcoming Fall Events THE NEA BIG READ AND THE VIETNAM WAR The Soul Repair Center has teamed up with April Brown, the new full-time Director of Veterans Affairs at TCU, to join Tarrant Community College s Big Read project. From Oct. 22-Nov. 22, we will host events to encourage the reading of a Vietnam War novel by Tim O Brien, The Things They Carried. A study guide is at https://brite.edu/wpcontent/uploads/2013/07/obrien-bookstudy-guide-.pdf. The project is funded by a grant to TCC from the National Endowment for the Arts, so we have books to give away 5 to every congregation in Tarrant County that wants to start a reading group. NEA Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest. On Nov. 1, 7-9 pm, reflections on the war by combat veterans, Tim Lindsey and Clarence Moore, who served in Vietnam, will open a book discussion in Weatherly Hall on Brite s campus. The discussion is co-hosted by the Veteran s Coalition of Tarrant County (VETCO) Moore and Lindsay are President and Vice-President of the VETCO Board of Directors. Center Director Dr. Rita Brock will facilitate the discussion. As the youngest veterans of the war enter their sixties, hearing about it from living survivors is becoming an increasingly rare opportunity. Join us for this discussion as we consider how the war is depicted and remembered. On Nov. 17, 2016, 7-9 pm, Dr. Jonathan Shay, retired VA psychiatrist, MacArthur Fellow, and author of Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character will speak at the TCU Kelly Center. The TCU Office of Veterans Affairs, the TCU Psi Chi Honors Society in Psychology and the Department of Modern Language Studies, and the Soul Repair Center are co-sponsoring Dr. Shay s talk on moral injury and military trauma. A lunch conversation with Dr. Shay 12:30-1:30, Nov. 17, will also take place in Weatherly Hall on Brite s campus. All Big Read events are free and open to the public. FFI or for books, contact Elia at 817-257-4511 or Elia.whitworth@tcu.edu. MORAL INJURY PROGRAMS IN SAN ANTONIO NOV. 20 On Sunday, November 20, from 1:00-7:00 PM at the San Antonio Grand Hyatt Hotel, moral injury will be the topic and a host of scholars will discuss it. All of the events are free and open to the public, so join us if you can for some or all of the events. The schedule is: