TO AND FOR PEACE KEEPERS OF THE MILITARY AND ALL LAW ENFORCEMENT
   AT ALL LEVELS AND ALL OF THOSE IN THEIR SUPPORT SYSTEMS AND ALL
                         WHO CARE ABOUT THEM AND THEIR WELFARE.

CHAPLAIN CORNER IS DEDICATED TO ALL PEACE KEEPERS, CURRENT AND
RETIRED, THOSE LIVING NOW... AND THOSE WHO HAVE PRECEDED US AND
PASSED ON FROM THIS EARTHLY SCENE.  MY TERM PEACE KEEPER COVERS
 ALL SECURITY, JAIL AND PRISON ATTENDANTS WHATEVER THE TITLE; LAW
  ENFORCEMENT AT ALL LEVELS INCLUDING JUDGES AND PROSECUTORS;                
                            MILITARY IN WHATEVER BRANCH; AND
  THE SUPPORT SYSTEM PERSONNEL FOR ALL CATEGORIES IN WHATEVER
 COUNTRY OF THIS WORLD YOU HAPPEN TO BE INCLUDING SECURITY CONTRACTORS. 
YOU ARE VITAL TO OUR WORLD AND MY COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF AND I CARE GREATLY
FOR AND ABOUT YOU.  YOU ARE THE MINISTERS OF RIGHTNESS IN THIS WORLD...   
    AND THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT COULD NOT EXIST WITHOUT YOU!!!

IN ADDITION IT IS FOR THE PEACE MAKERS OF THIS WORLD.  SOMETIMES
THESE ARE THE SAME PEOPLE AS PEACE KEEPERS... SOMETIMES THEY ARE
NOT... BUT PEACE MAKERS ARE JUST AS IMPORTANT AND NECESSARY AS
                ARE PEACE KEEPERS NECESSARY AND IMPORTANT.

  PRAYERS ARE SAID DAILY FOR  ALL WHO HAVE REQUESTED MY PRAYERS...
FOR ALL FOR WHOM I HAVE PROMISED TO PRAY... FOR ALL FOR WHOM I HAVE
  BEEN INSTRUCTED TO PRAY... FOR PEACE KEEPERS... FOR FIREFIGHTERS...
FOR EMERGENCY MEDICAL PERSONNEL... DOCTORS... NURSES... TEACHERS...      
COUNSELORS... AND ALL OF THE PEOPLE ENGAGED IN THE TRANSPORTATION
OF THE GOODS WHICH WE NEED IN ORDER TO LIVE AND BATTLE THE EVIL IN
THIS WORLD... FOR ALL OF THOSE WHO MAKE UP THE SUPPORT SYSTEMS  FOR
ALL OF THESE AND ALL OF THE FAMILIES AND ALL OF THE LOVED ONES OF
ALL OF THESE PEOPLE... FOR LEADERS OF THE WORLD... LEADERS OF THE
     CHURCH... AND FOR SPECIFIC PEOPLE THAT HAVE SPECIFIC NEEDS...
         PLUS YOU ARE INCLUDED IF YOU ARE READING THIS MATERIAL.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<+>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
MY COUNTRY...

"My Country, 'Tis of Thee",
also known as "America", is an American patriotic song, whose lyrics were written by Samuel Francis Smith.
1
My country, 'tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing;
Land where my fathers died,
Land of the pilgrims' pride,
From every mountainside
Let freedom ring!
2
My native country, thee,
Land of the noble free,
Thy name I love;
I love thy rocks and rills,
Thy woods and templed hills;
My heart with rapture thrills,
Like that above.
3
Let music swell the breeze,
And ring from all the trees
Sweet freedom's song;
Let mortal tongues awake;
Let all that breathe partake;
Let rocks their silence break,
The sound prolong.
4
Our fathers' God to Thee,
Author of liberty,
To Thee we sing.
Long may our land be bright,
With freedom's holy light,
Protect us by Thy might,
Great God our King.
Other verses have been added by different authors but I never heard them before.  The above is ther version I am familiar with.  If you desire to read the added verses use the following link.  Courtesy of Wikipedia:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Country,_%27Tis_of_Thee

I had some spare time this morning because my confuser was acting up and I had to set up maintenance on it.  So I went to have breakfast and watch a few minutes of a movie that was just coming on while the maintenance program did it's job.  I saw a one room school on an Indian reservation and the Indian children were singing the above song.  The incredible ambiguity of that scene struck me most powerfully...  Here they were,  captives on a land to which they were restricted and literally starving for lack of food and provision which had been promised to them.  One of the adult Indians was a Marine veteran of Iwo Jima who was college educated and capable of living in the white world but came back to live with his people after risking life and limb to fight for the freedom of the United States of America...  Yet on this reservation they were not allowed liberty nor freedom except by permit of and from the government of the USA.  They were forced to live in socialism by our conquering  government forcing them to stay there and live on the meager handouts of governmentally appointed managers... Just as it would be for us if if the ultimate plan of governmental control now being pushed by some politicians is ever allowed to be put into place in the USA...  But back to the song...

My country...  Why is it my country?  It is my country because my ancestors came here from far across the ocean...  From Scotland...  In search of a place where they could live in peace and privacy, how and where they wanted to live.  They settled in the mountains of North Carolina and Virginia...  And I was born in the Great Valley of Virginia at Lexington between the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Allegheny Mountains.  From some of the higher vantage points in the Valley you can look upon the beauty of both ranges of mountains...  But you had to come out of the hollars and onto the higher hills just to see either range of mountains.  In this area the Shenandoah Valley is very wide and has numerous hollars (deep, steep walled, crooked valleys), steep hills, bluffs, creeks and rivers.  I grew up within a 30 mile diameter area of this most beautiful spot in all of God's creation.

For many years I was confined to a much smaller area at several different locations within that 30 mile diameter circle.  As I grew in age, I also grew in being able to explore larger areas of the land and space around me.  Polio at the age of 6 took me 60 miles away to the nearest hospital with doctors who could handle my illness in Roanoke. 

Within that 30 mile circle there were numerous different types of topography from pleasant to rough...  Clear pastures beside slow flowing, wider streams to steep, hard to negotiate thick forested mountains with fast flowing streams.  Fish and wild game were plentiful.  Progress ran right through the middle of my rural village in the form of the Norfolk and Western Railway and the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway ran through three different places in my 30 mile circle at Goshen on the northwest, Glasgow on the southeast and Glasgow through Buena Vista over the N&W and on to Lexington.  My first memory is of a steam crane working on the track almost in front of the house where I lived for 9 years in that rural village...  Each place I lived until I was 16 was in sight of the railroad.  From 16 to 18 when I was living in town, I could always hear the trains even if I could not see them.  The die was cast...  All of my life I have loved steam locomotives, railroads and trains of any kind from toy to full size.  Part of my physical constituents must be coal dust, cinders, smoke, steam and cylinder oil.

All of my education and experience from infant to adulthood taught me to love and respect this land and the Nation of the United States Of America...  My country!...  But I had to learn to know and love her people because I was raised in poverty and in the backwoods I saw very few strangers and no one of other races except in certain places in town where the black people lived on both sides of the street going into down town.  Life was segregated then and I was raised to be prejudiced against other races.  Five generations of my ancestors lived and died here before I came upon the scene.  I learned their traditions of prejudice, separateness, frugality, privacy and hard work.  It took a while to overcome my prejudice but I did it.

The Pilgrims came to this country to find privacy and freedom so that they could live and worship as they pleased.  They met friendly Indians and survived because of them...  But that peace and cooperation came to an end and war developed because the white man needed more and more land and kept trying to push the Indian away from their lands.  Many Pilgrims died in these battles for land...  Then other whites came from Europe and enticed the Indians into alliances with them against the Pilgrims and those that came after them...  Then it was the French and Indian Wars and more of the settlers died...  Then there was the Revolutionary War and more settlers died including new generations...  Then we were at peace for a while until we got to the place where one group wanted to dictate to another group on how to live and we fought the War Between the States of the North and South and more of the people died including new generations...  In all of this there was the Pride of the Pilgrims in their search for Freedom and the death of our fathers as they fought to preserve the battle-won Freedom we cherish so dearly.

All of this action took place because of the dreams of the original settlers to let freedom ring...  You and I are the products of those dreams and those fights for Freedom... Freedom to live according to the laws of peace and personal prosperity as long as one did not violate the rights of anyone else in the process.

My Native Country, The great United States of America, gave me the opportunities and the rapture and thrills of heart and spirit as I grew and learned of my heritage and how to use it to my benefit and the benefit of others.  I searched for education and found it...  I searched for opportunity and found it...  I searched for love and found it...  I searched for joy and found it...  I searched for spiritual education and spiritual freedom and found them...  In all of this searching I also found the place where I fit...  I entered the field of Peace Keeping. 

That dream and opportunity entered my heart and would not leave me.  It was there because of the influence of all of my reading and because of my recognizing the deep need for Peace Keepers in our society and on our highways...  And I was influenced by the spit and polish Troopers who in my youth appeared to me to be as big as mountains and shined like new coins.  By Grace and persistence to overcome a physical defect that I was told could not be corrected, I was received into the Virginia State Police.  I tested with 40 men...  10 passed the written exam...  5 were eventually hired...  I was the 5th new Conditionally Appointed Trooper out of the 40 who were given the exam in 1962.  Sweet Freedom's Song had infected me and I started the Journey of fulfilling my destiny among the Peace Keepers of the great United States of America that has lasted through the past 47 years..

Our fathers' God ...  Author of liberty...  Long may our land be bright, With freedom's holy light...  Protect us by Thy might...  Great God our King!!!...

I have learned that there are no unbelievers in foxholes and gun battles...  I have learned that the toughest among us will eventually see something that will spiritually affect them to consider the God to whom the last stanza prayer of the quoted song was directed...  I remember one of my early brushes with death...  In the middle of the action that could have taken my life and removed me from this world I can still hear my voice screaming,  "O GOD!"...  I was not a Christian then...  I had no thoughts of God in my mind any recent time prior to the incident...  But when the incident took place those words came screaming forth...  And it was as though a great hand lifted me and set me down in a safer place...  While I could have been turned into ground meat and very dead, all I have left of that incident is a scar to remind me how close death can come and how close HE can be to keep death at bay.  Similar experiences have happened several times since...  And I am still here.

I have read all of the war accounts I could find from ancient warfare to modern times.  I have watched all of the movies I could see about war for my whole life and still do...  I have been in a few battles and deadly situations myself as a Peace Keeper and as a clergyman.  I have witnessed the aftermath of man's inhumanity to man.  I have tended the injured and supported the loved ones who waited for news of whether one would live or die.  I have stood in the ranks in Military Cemeteries including Arlington...  I have officiated as Peace Keepers bodies were committed to the ground or the sea...  I know the experience of battle and loss all too well... 

I know how it is to look into the eyes of a man as he attempts to crush the life out of you...  I personally know the ordeal of losing close loved ones of parents, spouse and child to death...  The experience of watching living bright eyes grow dim and lose their luster as life departs and is present in them no more...  In all of this I took the opportunity to learn.

In all of these experiences I have one other experience that I would desire for every one who reads the messages that I write...  I know the full and powerful presence of the Living God who is able to carry you through the worst of human experiences and give you all you need upon which to live when you are not even sure you want to live...  I know the God who is able to do this for all of His Peace Keepers...  And for all of His creation the same as He has done it for me through the knowledge of my Eternal Captain, the Lord Jesus Christ.  If I could give you anything in this world, I would give you the reality of my personal experiences in Him...  But I cannot  give my experiences and the benefits of them to anyone except to describe them and entice you to look to Him for your own experiences as you allow Him to lead you...  No one else could do it for me...  I cannot do it for you except to tell you that the experiences can be as real for you as they have been for me if you want them...  IF YOU want them!  If you do want them and need any help I can give, please ask!

To all of the Peace Keepers of my past and our history, I owe a debt of dedication to live the reality of the song I presented above; the reality of the opportunities I have received by citizenship in this great Nation; the heritage handed down to me by all of the Peace Keepers who preceded us; and to all of the Peace Keepers currently serving...  This Nation and it's Peace Keepers have made my whole life possible...  They made the Nation possible...  They made the opportunities possible...  They kept the peace while I learned and grew...  I kept it with them for as long as I was allowed to serve...  I continue that mission in every way I know how even as I am shut in here in order to take care of and for my daughter.  I do this because I learned it from my personal education and my spiritual education...  I learned it from the struggles and victories of all Peace Keepers who have served even if they lost their lives in that service...  Even as I do and have done what I am capable of doing, I have not begun to satisfy the great debt that I owe to all Peace Keepers for what they have provided for me, for those whom I love and for those who love me...  From my Commander-In-Chief and from me...  We send our eternal thanks and appreciation...   ETERNALLY, THANK YOU!!!

"BE CAREFUL OUT THERE!"  ALWAYS be alert, watchful, suspicious and wary.  Take the very best care of you as you care for and about others. See to the strength and well being of your spirit as well as all the rest of you.  Your spirit must be strong for you to be successful.

Many of you will read this on December 7th...  The Anniversary of the attack upon Pearl Harbor...  The beginning of a war that cost so much in sacrifice and in lives...  We are still in a war today to keep what all previous Peace Keepers have secured and preserved for us to enjoy.  May you be victorious...  May You come to know all that I have learned and more...  May you become more Greatly Blessed...  May you come to know the Peace that passes all understanding...  Grace and Peace to you my Compadres', Brothers and Sisters of the same great heart...  Grace and Peace.

Call or write if I may be of any service... Or if you just want to encourage me... Feedback encourages all who write... It helps to know we are reaching someone who reads the message.

My daughter's wound continued to deteriorate and open further as it seeped infectious fluid.  She had surgery on Thursday to remove the diseased tissue leaving the wound about three times the size it was.  She will probably come home on Monday or Tuesday unless the CT Scan they ran on Friday shows something else that needs to be taken care of.  She had surgery four weeks ago last Friday and again this past Thursday...  Life has been very difficult for her ever since that procedure a month ago.  As soon as I began tending the wound two weeks ago I discovered major problems and then the splitting of the old scar stated to spread to three different places and they oozed the black infectious fluid.  All of that had to be removed and we will continue the fight for her health as soon as she is home again.  Thank you for your prayers and care...  Keep praying for us, please.

As it has always been... So it still is!!!

"VICTORIOUS WARRIORS WIN FIRST...
AND THEN GO TO WAR,
WHILE DEFEATED WARRIORS GO TO WAR FIRST...
AND THEN SEEK TO WIN."  Sun tzu

Training and practice are everything!
Without them, the best results are not obtained!

ONLY LIVE PEACE KEEPERS SEE THE VICTORY!!!
THEY SEE IT ONLY BECAUSE OTHERS HAVE MADE THEIR ETERNAL
PAYMENTS OF SWEAT, BLOOD, TEARS AND LIFE FOR THAT VICTORY!

WITH THE DEEPEST OF APPRECIATION AND RESPECT...
BE BLESSED (A CONDITION TO BE ENVIED)...
BE SUCCESSFUL... BE SAFE...
[My injunction to be safe means doing all you know to do as you do your job... it means
doing the best you can with what you have where you are using all your faculties to get
the job done well and with good results conquering evil and keeping or restoring peace...
it does not mean to avoid duty and honor... it does not mean to cower or allow anything
to hinder you in the process of duty according to rules, law and ethics...  it means that if
the demand takes your earthly life you destroy as much evil as possible in the process. 
That is my definition of being safe... doing the best you can and leaving the rest to God
or whomever else is responsible... being best employed for the sake and protection of all
the things and people that we hold dear.]

I represent, write for... and give the credit to:
God the Father (my Commander-in-Chief),
Jesus Christ the Son (the Eternal Captain of my life) and
the Holy Spirit of God (my Eternal Teacher, Keeper and Guide).
In Christ I live... with Him and for you I serve...
And I rejoice that you are there whether you are Christian or not...
For God, Country and the Peace Keeper...
D. R. (Don) Staton, Chaplain to Peace Keepers,
Surviving Peace Keeper,
Virginia State Police Alumni,
RETIRED Police Officer Virginia Beach Police Dept.,
Senior Chaplain and Administrative Chaplain VBPD,
DCJS Certified Police Instructor,
Community Service Officer (Traffic Safety) VBPD
Blackwater Alumni
757-431-2190, chpln1@verizon.net
3709 Beacon Lane, Virginia Beach, VA 23452
===============================================================
All rights reserved.  May not be duplicated without permission, except to be
forwarded with all source information for any quotation intact.
 
To subscribe to this free e-mail message for Peace Keepers, 
write to Chaplain D. R. Staton at chpln1@verizon.net or at 
3709 Beacon Lane, Virginia Beach, VA 23452.