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Our "Comprehensive Airman Fitness" (CAF) program emphasizes four pillars that are needed to maintain a state of total wellbeing. The synergy of these four pillars helps sustain the fortitude for bouncing back from difficult life experiences.
Most of us understand the mental, physical and socical parts; but what does it mean or look like to be "spiritually" resilient. We can learn answers to these important questions by examining the life of a "spiritually" resilient giant - Chaplain Preston Taylor. His life offers a menu of suggestions on how to develop spiritual resilience for all of us. Much of what follows is quoted directly from Taylor's official bio or from author Billy Keith's book, Days of Anguish, Days of Hope, and his article in the Baptist Press titled, Fourth of July: POW Chaplain Redeemed His Agonies.
So who was Chaplain Preston Taylor? He married his beautiful wife, lone, after seminary and then he served as the pastor of two churches in Texas where he joined the reserves. In 1941 he received a call from the War Department asking him to spend a year as an Army Air Corps Chaplain in the Philippines. His congregation approved. He departed knowing that the most difficult part would be his separation from his wonderful wife lone. She had been the only one in the family to bid him bon voyage at the port of San Francisco when the USAT Washington sailed for the Orient.
Taylor arrived in Manila in May 1941. With the declaration of war on Japan after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, his 31st Infantry Regiment, Philippine Division headed to the front lines on the Peninsula of Bataan. Taylor would later be cited for bravery and he was awarded the Silver Star for gallantry in action for his services in the Battle of Bataan.
At the surrender of the American forces in the Philippines, he became a member of the "Death March" which led from Bataan through the streets of Manila, to the prison camp approximately eight miles east of Cabanatuan. He served as the chaplain in the prison camp hospital at Cabanatuan where he ministered to more than 10,000 patients. In the summer of 1944, he spent 14 weeks in solitary confinement for...