Them's fighting' words!

     Earlier this week, we held a book discussion on Rita Nakashima Brock and Gabriella Lettini's Soul Repair:  Recovering from Moral Injury after War.*  My two co-facilitators represented two very different experiences of  the military; one was a former Army brigade commander, the other a Marine Chaplain.  Both recognized the circumstances reflected in the book:  soldiers often find themselves doing things in battle that are at odds with their inner compass, and they have varying degrees of difficulty coming to grips with that disconnect.  They also had, however, different ways of using words that addressed some of the issues in the book.  And those differences got me thinking.
      The chaplain (as well as others with whom he works) shy away from the phrase "soul repair".  The word "soul" conjures up all sorts of associations for folks, and raises the issue of whether or not it can be "broken".  So, it seems that "inner conflict" is preferred.  Again, the circumstances/effects are not under debate, only the description.  The brigade commander avoided adding the "D" to PTS (Post-Traumatic Stress [Disorder]), suggesting that it is no longer considered a "disorder", but something else.  Again, the circumstances/effects were not under debate, only the words used to describe them.  The chaplain suggested a question that got at the heart of what I was hearing:  "How does our language (i.e., concerning diagnosis) affect -- or counter-effect -- people seeking treatment?"  That is, if someone doesn't consider themselves "injured", then they might not seek help.  Or, who really wants to consider themselves "disordered"?
       I then recalled a conversation with Barb, the student from Iliff School of Theology who's been working with me this year. She was preparing a sermon for a service here at DU, and asked me whether or not she could talk about "sin".  I said, "Of course!  Entirely appropriate for that service!"  She responded that some other folks had counseled her against it, saying that that language wasn't going to work these days.  I encouraged her to stand her ground.
       Now I concede that "sin" language is a bit out-of-fashion.  No one wants to be told they're a "sinner" (I suppose the truth hurts too much); such language smacks, I suppose, of old-time revival meetings and groveling before an angry deity.  But when I put that reaction to "sin" next to the reactions to the language of "injury" or "disorder", I have to wonder whether we've lost our connection with the full human condition!?  I am not necessarily a big fan of the classical western Christian concept of "original sin", but I think that most religious traditions recognize that we are NOT perfect beings.  We all fall short of some higher expectation.  We mess up.  We are hurt by so many things.  We are broken.  Yet it seems that we are loathe to admit it.
       We are loathe to admit it . . . but most of us recognize our circumstances and want to be whole.  It's a dilemma, indeed.  Yet it's a problem we need to address, given the number of folks who are hurt so badly, but never seek help until it's almost too late.  I'm not saying we need to continue to use "sin", "injury" or "disorder", but we need to come up with new, compassionate, ways of addressing our ills that (a) don't sidestep the realities we face, but (b) extend an invitation to wholeness regardless of the depth of our pain.  Any ideas?

Blessings,

Chaplain Gary

*(Beacon, 2012).  A recording of the discussion can be found under "Recordings of Past Discussions" at this page.

Gratitude's response

      A number of years ago, I accompanied a group of students to Costa Rica as part of a cultural exchange.  My role was primarily as "chaperone" (ha!), van-driver, and keeper-of-the-funds.  The students were doing most of the interacting, which was good, because they were much more likely to know Spanish than me!  My education in Español, sadly, was limited to Junior High level . . . and that was a while back!  But I did remember enough of the basics to say "Please", "Thank You" and something akin to 'We've got to get going now!"  And I was not too old to learn new phrases, like "Check, please?"
      I was surprised, however, the first few times I tried "Muchas gracias".  I knew enough to pronounce it correctly, and use it in the right context.  But the response I got back from the "Ticos" (Costa Ricans) wasn't quite what I expected (which was "De nada" -- the phrase we learned in 7th grade!).  Instead, the response was "Mucho gusto".  Once I figured out what I was hearing (and translated it), I became quite taken by the Tico answer.  Instead of hearing "It's nothing", I was told that whatever the service (carrying my luggage, serving my meal, opening the door) occasioned my appreciation came with "Much joy!".  Hmm!   Pretty often, then, I am invited to recall this bit of education . . . and challenge.  Even yesterday, I heard (in an interview) the host effusively thank her guest. His response was, "No, thank you!".
      So, I've been thinking about how we respond to "Thank you."  In the U.S., there is no clear-cut winner.  The responses range from "You're welcome" to "No problem" to "It was nothing" (de nada) to "Don't mention it" to . . . ?  Similarly, there are no clear "winners" in other languages.  Common in French is "de rien" ("it's nothing").  But, in the south of France, "avec plaisir" (i.e., "with pleasure") is more common.  Swedish?  "Varsågod"!  "Be so good"?  Chinese:  "bú kè qi", or, literally, "Don't be nice".  And, so I've begun to wonder, too, about what the response says about the personal or cultural values behind thatservice to others that prompts a "thank you".
      "It's nothing", or De nada suggests (to me) that the server felt imposed upon, but, perhaps, not unnecessarily or unexcessively so.  Avec plaisir or Mucho gusto suggest that the act service itself was a joy, or pleasurable.  "Be so good" may suggest that the recipient return the favor.  But, "You're welcome"?
      At a conference/retreat I attended last week, the speaker challenged us to respond to "thank you" with an enthusiastic "YOU'RE WELCOME!".  Not "You're welcome", but "YOU'RE WELCOME!"  And I began to toy with that.
      "Welcoming" is an act of hospitality.  It is an invitation to encounter and engagement.  It is drawing of the other into one's own circle.  It is making a place for that other at one's own table.
      Ponderable.  You have done an act of service for someone; you have stepped aside from your life's demands to attend to their needs.  You have opened your door to them.  They recognize that and express appreciation.  "YOU'RE WELCOME", you reply as you invite them into your life, with the implication that they may anticipate your continued hospitality.   "Hospitality" -- a virtue that lies at the core of every religious tradition I know.  And, by extension, I suppose, at the heart of God.
      How many times a day do we have the opportunity, in such an easy way, to reflect the heart of God?  It's not nothing.  It can be an act of much joy!

Blessings,

Chaplain Gary

Elevator Talk: You are here

      I spent much of this week at a conference/retreat in Breckenridge.  Every time I needed to go to my hotel room, I was confronted with the sign above (I never DID find the stairwell!).  And the more I stared at the sign while waiting for the elevator, the more I realized that it was a relatively apt visual metaphor for much of the focus of (at least one session of) the conference.

     Our conference speaker was a Christian monk, and his addresses ranged far and wide -- but with one over-riding theme (poorly paraphrased):  "God made you.  Appreciate the gift that you are."  And, so, one of the underlying questions was how to do that.  Certainly he had a lot of very good suggestions; I'll ponder them for a while.
     In one session, however, he read the following quotation:

We live in a society whose whole policy is to excite every nerve in the human body and keep it at the highest pitch of artificial tension, to strain every human desire to the limit, and to create as many new desires and synthetic passions as possible. 

As our retreat speaker pointed out, this was written in 1948.  He went on to enumerate all of the technologies and distractions that were NOT around in 1948, everything from iPads to television to supermarkets (his list was MUCH longer).  And he observed that if the above represented a situation sixty-five years ago, how much more it represents today.   The downside to all of that "excitement" is that we have less and less opportunity or impetus to stop and figure out "where we are" (my terms, not his!).
      It didn't take a lot of deep reflection on my part to realize how much I rely on technological distraction or entertainment or . . .   Most days I spend a few minutes loading my smartphone with the podcasts I'll hear as I commute.  In the office, I often find an internet radio station (often soundtracks, if you're interested).  The idea of silence, or, at least, of non-technological noise is almost unthinkable.  I've almost come to the point where, if music isn't playing in the background, I feel like something's wrong.
      "Like something's wrong" could be another way of saying that I'm not sure where I am.  If I mask every moment with some artificial distraction, will I see where I am, really?  Do the "screens" of sound, activity, or computers help me know myself, or do they keep me from knowing myself?  Do they keep me from being present with my friends, my family?  Given the options of "exits" to either side, or elevators before me, can I know where I am, or where to focus my attention?
       I don't know that I want someone else to print a red dot telling me "You are here".  That sounds like a rather dangerous proposition.  Our speaker suggested attending to silence -- something I don't do enough.  Doing that, he implied, allows a different Voice to speak, One more authentic.  One that might affirm the gift of myself that I've been given, One that might give me a better picture of where I am.

Blessings,

Chaplain Gary

*Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain (1948).

Cliven Bundy and Cute Cat Videos

     When I was in college (and one of my undergraduate schools was a Christian college), I had a fellow student come up to me one day and ask the (rhetorical, to him) question: "What's the last word of the book of Malachi (the last book of the Old Testament)?"  "Cursed," he answered, when I shrugged.  "And, what's the first word of Jesus' "Beatitudes" (Matthew 5:3)?"  "Blessed", I answered, pleased that I knew that!  "Right!" he said.  My friend was trying to emphasize the superiority (in his mind) of the New (Christian) Testament to the Old Testament (Hebrew Scriptures).  But . . . "What an absurd set of questions, a bogus kind of reasoning!" I told him.  "Using that logic, you can say/prove almost anything!" I said.  He looked a bit stunned, and then, a bit reluctantly, agreed.
      That encounter comes back to me with unfortunate frequency when I read the news, listen to preachers, watch sporting events (how many goal-line signs reading "John 3:16" have you seen?), or, given our current social media culture, scan my Facebook feed.  I know that, with great regularity, many of my Facebook "friends" will "share" something that came into their feed that extracts a sound-bite from a longer story.  The implication is that I should feel the same sense of outrage, or self-righteousness, that motivated them to "share" the post.  (My experience with Facebook--and my "friends"--has been sufficient that I've learned to screen such posts through the lens of suspicion.)
      So, it was with great surprise this last week that I ran across a shared post, from someone whose opinion I generally respect, asserting that Nevada Republican Cliven Bundy's (reportedly) racist remarks were taken out of context.  My "friend" was not supporting Mr. Bundy, but simply pointing out that what the media has been reporting might not be whole story.  Really????  The media has an "angle"?
      One of the realities of our new media culture is that EVERY outlet has "an angle".  And each of us can choose the outlets that we like -- usually those that align with our views.  Advertisers know this, the media moguls know this, politicians know this.  I suppose even WE know this.  But we continue to subscribe to some kind of fantasy that THE correct view of the world is mediated by the media we choose.  Just like my college friend (and he became a good friend!) who selectively chose Bible verses to make a very strange (and, certainly, contestable) point.
       Context IS everything, I believe.  That is NOT to assert that everything might be excusable because of context.  It is simply a recognition that, without learning and knowing the context of an event or quotation, we are subject to someone else's (self-motivated) interpretation.  Whether we choose to let others guide us in that way--for better or worse--is up to us. It does take a bit of effort, I know, to do the research . . . but, I think, it's worth it.
       So, when reading Facebook, I've taken to having another tab of my browser devoted to cute cat videos.  Why?  There's so little context demanded to understand them . . . except that they also serve as a reminder that the videographer CREATED the video.  I have had cats for decades; they don't try to be cute.

Blessings,

Chaplain Gary

The rubble or our sins?

      Filling the airwaves over the last several months has been the song "Pompeii" by the British rock band B∆STILLE.  Not only have radio listeners (and YouTube viewers) found the song difficult to avoid, but it also featured in the trailer for the recent animated motion picture Mr Peabody and Sherman.  The music video makes clear an allegory to which the title points:  the destruction of a beloved "city".   The lyrics suggest that the destruction of the "city" is due to the citizens' being "left to [their] own devices . . . and lost in all of [their] vices".  One of the "hooks" in the song recognizes that the destruction is happening, and asks the question about the future:  "Oh where do we begin? The rubble or our sins?"
      On the one hand, there is a bit of hope suggested by the questions -- that is, the song seems to suggest that there will be survivors who need to re-create (or create anew) a new "city".  On the other hand, it seems to me, the vision is lacking.  What the song calls for is correction of the past, e.g.,  clearing the rubble, or perhaps re-using it, is one way of moving forward.  Another way might be some kind of corporate repentance.  Now I have nothing against those kinds of responses; they may represent some kind of way forward.  But they both seem to look back, with some kind of expectation that revisiting, and repairing, the past will turn, by virtue of the onward movement of time, into some kind of desirable future.      Our Jewish neighbors have just finished celebrating the festival of Pesach/Passover, recalling the deliverance of Israel from its house of bondage in Egypt.  The story is familiar enough, with the dramatic passing through the Red Sea immortalized in several movies (and a theme park!).  the Israelites were free!  Free from bondage.  Yet, within a short while, that new-found freedom wasn't enough. God had promised a new homeland, and was providing the people with food (manna).  Yet they would rather return to their old land than follow the promise:  "If only we had meat to eat!  We remember the fish we used to eat in Egypt for nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic; but now our strength is dried up, and there is nothing at all but this mann to look at" (Numbers 11.4-6).  In other words, a return to past circumstances was more desirable than a future with a promise.        We are all, always, in the position of leaving something behind -- either willingly or unwillingly.  We are either delivered, or our "city" is destroyed.  In that situation is . . . possibility.  The song "Pompeii" wonders "How am I gonna be an optimist about this?"  I'm not sure that's the right question.  I wonder instead whether a different focus might be worth considering:  "What kinda new city might come from this?"  Our challenge is to find, and articulate, a compelling vision, one that is so strong that we're willing to leave Egypt behind, and trade cucumbers and garlic for milk and honey.  
Blessings,

Chaplain Gary

*The "Pompeii" video can be seen here.  A wonderful, less bleak a capella cover can be seen here.

Thin ice and engine failure

     The other day I was listening to an interview with Canadian singer/songwriter/hymnwriter Veda Hille.  She sang a hymn that she had re-arranged, one associated with a small church somewhere up in the north of British Columbia.  It was a lovely tune, and the words were equally lovely, while being somewhat traditional.  And then she departed from the original version (as we learned later in the interview) and added these lines, after a petition for divine protection:

From sudden storm

Guns that jam

Alcohol

Late spring break up

Thin ice

Rogue bear

Engine failure, engine failure

Failure, failure*

She was writing, after all, about Inuit concerns.  Those folks do NOT want jammed guns when encountering a rogue bear, or engine failure during a sudden storm.  In other words, these were real concerns!  They struck me, and Mary Hynes (the interviewer), because they were so earthy, on the one hand, but also so out-of-context in a hymn.
       Yet they are so real!  Real concerns.
       I certainly know that we, as individuals, might often lift up such concerns to the Divine.  But how often do we corporately give voice -- especially with music -- to the immediate concerns of deliverance from alcohol or our equivalent of a "rogue bear".
        I remember, several years ago, attending a service in which a particular song/hymn had been edited so that the names of biblical plants and animals were replaced with the plants and animals of the Arizona desert.  The Prayer Book for the Anglican Church in New Zealand has done the same . . . so that we in North America, when reading that same song/hymn put in the language of the southern hemisphere, are struck by the inclusion of "kiwi" and "dolphin" and "avalanche" in a reading with origins in the Middle East.
       Yet, there is an immediacy in these kinds of changes.  A freshness to the language that causes me to sit up and take notice.  And I have to wonder what kind of spiritual exercise it might be for me to sit, reflect, and re-imagine how familiar words and phrases might be altered to provide fresh meaning and insight.  It is spring after all, let new life come forth!

Blessings,

Chaplain Gary

* The "Tuktoyaktuk Hymn".  You can hear it here.

A-frayed?

    Several weeks ago, the Denver Post ran a feature on the Denver band "The Fray".  The occasion was the release of their most recent album (their fourth) entitled "Helios".  One of the things that made this so newsworthy was that the album was released on vinyl.  How old-school!  (There was, included with the album, a download code . . . I suppose for folks who no longer had turntables!).  The frontman of the band, Isaac Slade, said that the album was much different than its predecessors; it wasn't as dark, reflecting changes in the lives of the bands' members (a couple of them, with their wives, are expecting children).  The article's author, Matt Miller, wrote: "when their professional lives are going well, the only result could be a happy record, despite their reservations.
     The next paragraph is basically a quotation from Isaac Slade:  "'The definition of cool for the last 65 years has been to be aloof, like you don't care . . . The uncoolest thing in the world is to smile.  When you're honest and you open up to being in a bright place, it causes a lot of exposure and vulnerability.'"   And that got me thinking about how many photos we see of folks who are scowling.  I'd never really connected the glower with coolness.  But, I think Slade is right.  And I wonder why we want people to connect us with a photo that might more likely be found on a mug-shot?
     I spent this afternoon with thirteen students and six Alzheimer's sufferers -- yes we were ALL together.  And we were playing croquet.  The program, put on by an organization called Jiminy Wicket, aims at bridging the dementia-gap through a simple game, and, in the process, creating smiles.  All of us DU folks, at first, were a bit apprehensive (whether or not we would admit it) about who might arrive in the van from the senior center.  And, we learned a bit latter, many of the seniors were a bit nervous too; some, of course, not entirely sure where they were going.
      Within just a few minutes, however, things were VERY different.  After the first "whack" of the croquet ball, the first ball-through-the-wicket, the barriers were gone.  Young men were helping (much) older women.  Young women were teamed with men.  Competition, while fierce -- and, maybe in some sports, prone to be accompanied by scowling and chest-thumping -- was not such that opposing players weren't smiling and cheering when Bob, from his wheelchair, made an amazing shot.  Or when Lucy, stooped and wearing dark glasses, made a 20' shot through the wicket.  Whoops and smiles galore.
      I've gotta say, it was a cool afternoon.  No glowering necessary.  We were, as Slade put it, "in a bright place".  And, yes, there was exposure and vulnerability. . . .on all sides.  But it became a time-out-of-time when we, together, were united by smiles - - old and young, able- bodied and not, from different religious background, different countries.  We were anxious no more.  No longer afraid.
      Way cool.

Blessings,

Chaplain Gary

Note:  We will be repeating the Jiminy Wicket experience again in May.  If you're interested in being notified when the date is set, send me an email at:  gary.brower@du.edu.