Journey to Myrtos: Vietnam to Crete--healing the Wounds of War (Take the Long Way Home)

Individuals join the military and go to war for personal reasons, but for some there is an instinctive need to find and initiate the inner warrior spirit. The awakening of the warrior spirit may come during training or in combat. It is an awareness of mysterious instincts, feelings and intuitions that guide one in combat and are more acute than logical reason. However, modern warfare can frustrate and undermine the authenticity of the warrior spirit.JOURNEY TO MYRTOS tells the story of a young man who, grieving the death of his mother, is unprepared to be swept into the patriarchal world of the father. Nonetheless, the warlords of the patriarchy take him to serve as a combat helicopter pilot in the Vietnam War. Going to war is a rite-of-passage from youth to manhood, but he fails his blood-rite initiation into the patriarchal "cult" of the warrior. Returning to a social environment hostile to Vietnam veterans, he questions the moral authority of his "initiators," sheds the attitudes and body-armor of the mechanized soldier and rediscovers the more innocent adolescent he left behind.He flees the United States for Europe. His adventure takes him to England, Germany and, ultimately, to the Greek island of Crete. In an isolated fishing village, once a sacred site for worship of the Earth Mother, he has a dream in which he discovers the goddess who rules over Eros and Thanatos, the gods of Love and Death, whose eternal conflict is particularly acute in the hearts of all young warriors.