| ||||
| ||||
| | | | |
| | | |||||
 | ||
| | |
 |  | |||
| | | | |
 | |||||||||
 | |||||||||
Lord, —Peace Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi | |||||||||
Mike Boehm with some of his Vietnamese friends. | |||||||||
| | | | | | | | | |
Mike Boehm huddled up to the stove inside the primitive wilderness shack, letting the warmth wash over him. It was a cold winter night, and he felt lonely and restless. His seven solitary years in the cabin, to which he had retreated to soothe the pain of past and present injustices, had helped to mend some deep wounds, but there were times when he longed for the outside world. In moments like these, he turned to some loyal companions. One of them, a violin, lay in a case by his side. He reached over and picked it up, cradled it on his shoulder, and guided the bow across the strings. Its distinct voice broke the silence in the still room. He was a novice on the instrument he had found in a trashcan a few years earlier. But the mere act of playing it made his blues go away. In a flash, a resident squirrel, carrying a big nut in its mouth, scampered across the room and sat near Mike, listening to the music. During his time in the cabin, Mike had tended to animals that had no parents. He became their caregiver, raising them until they were old enough to go out on their own, and finding gratification in the nurturing they gave him in return. The squirrel bit into its nut, and the crunching sound mixed incongruously with the violin’s scratchy tones. As he held the violin in his arms, Mike’s anger left him and he felt whole again. In time, Mike’s violin became an instrument of peace, not only to him, but also to people worlds away from his rustic cabin in the woods. Mike grew up a victim of war. The battleground was his home in Mauston, Wisconsin. The “enemy” was his father, whose weapons were fists and vicious words. Mike and his six younger siblings were all brutalized. The physical beatings weren’t as bad as the mental and verbal bullets that ripped away Mike’s youth. The stress from the abuse had devastating effects. He developed chronic stomach cramps and wet his bed intermittently. By age eighteen, Mike was a full-blown alcoholic, wallowing so deeply in his own despair that he was unable to experience human relationships. He commented: “I had been reduced to an animal. I saw people in loving relationships and wondered what human being could live without the possibility of love, as I was. I was always focusing on just trying to survive and had not been introduced to the possibility of love. I was a fucked-up kid.” Throughout the years of violence by his father, Mike desperately clung to the hope of reconciliation. In 1967, he volunteered to serve in the military in Vietnam. “I wanted my father’s approval even though he had abused me. I wanted to be wounded, seriously, but not too seriously, so that he would express his love for me. “U.S. soldiers in Vietnam were conditioned to think of all Vietnamese as enemies. But, except for mortar and rocket | ||
| | |