Justice

As I hurried past the substance abuse clinic on the VA Medical Center campus one day, I noticed a small group of men clustered outside the door taking a smoke break in the afternoon sun. One of them called out “Hey Chaplain,” and waved me over.

“Scott.” I turned aside to meet him and we shook hands. “Are you back here again?”

A 61-year old veteran and a retired army major, Scott was deeply affected by his wartime experiences. Like many Vietnam vets, he had slipped into years of alcoholism that ruined his marriage and destroyed his family’s trust in anything he said or did. I met him during his second stay in a 30-day treatment program. As the chaplain assigned to the clinic, I had several heart to heart conversations with him then, and I felt privileged to be present for his graduation from the program.

Tall and thin, observing the world through half shut eyes much of the time, Scott thought long and spoke little. We stepped aside from the other smokers and stood talking for a few minutes. At first, I thought he must have slipped back into drinking. I felt a twinge of disappointment, because I wanted this vulnerable yet determined man to succeed in his resolve to get his life back.

“No, I’m not in the program this time. I’m here interviewing.”

“For a job?” I asked surprised.

“Yeah. I’m sort of like a mentor to these guys,” Scott replied with a thin smile.

A wave of admiration swept over me as he told me this. During his time in the military, Scott has been a leader of men. I knew how much it had hurt him to lose the respect of his family.

“That’s great,” I affirmed. “Are things going OK?” That was an understated question about his sobriety and his family relationships.

“Pretty good,” he replied. For Scott “pretty good” was positive. “Say, chaplain, can I ask you about something?”

“Sure Scott,” I said, my curiosity aroused.

“We had a visiting pastor the other day who said there are 600 million people in India who are all going to hell when they die because they haven’t heard about Jesus. He said it’s our duty to tell them about Jesus so they don’t go to hell.” Looking me straight in the eyes, he asked, “Do you think he’s right?”

I sensed that Scott was not seeking a “right” answer to his questions, but was wrestling with notions of fairness and justice. I also sensed a fear in his question. Could God be so unforgiving of people who don’t think and act the way religious people say they should?

“Well Scott, what do you think?” I asked him back.

He looked down at his feet as he slowly answered “I guess I’m at a stage in my life where I’m questioning all religions.” My instinct told me there was something more to be explored here. So I changed the conversation slightly. “Tell me, Scott, what is God like to you?”

He thought about this for a moment, then answered in a quiet voice. “He’s all loving, all knowing, all powerful.”

“What do you think that kind of God would do with these 600 million people?”

The answer came without hesitation. “I think that just before the Pearly Gates, he’d have a training program for them so they could hear about Jesus then and decide for themselves.” Another thin smile followed his answer.

I smiled back and laughed a little at his wry humor. “Tell me, Scott, how do you experience that God working in your life?”

Scott became very quiet and thoughtful for some time. “He forgives me, no matter what.” Here was a man hoping to have his experience of a merciful, forgiving God validated in spite of what he had been told by an “expert” on salvation. Having been in need of forgiveness himself, he could not believe God would simply condemn 600 million people just because they had never heard of Jesus.

“I think you know the answer to the question you asked me,” I said. “Do you trust the God you know, or accept someone else’s idea of who that God is and how he acts?”

He looked at me in silence for a moment. “Well that’s what I thought all along,” he said. “Thank you, chaplain.” We shook hands. Scott disappeared inside the clinic door and I continued on my way, thankful for a God who is always ready to give anyone a second chance.

© 2013, Chaplain David Pascoe

Forgive and Remember

“Forgiveness! Don’t talk to me about it. There is no word for forgiveness in the Cheyenne language.”

Joe Little Wolf’s words flashed out as he looked around the table at the men and women gathered there from the substance abuse program. “How can I forgive the Catholic Church? How can I forget what they did to my people?” he asked, his voice cracking with anguish and anger.

A leader among his people, the Northern Cheyenne, Joe lived on a reservation in Montana where Catholic nuns started a mission school in the 1880’s. While many of the Native American families live in poverty on the reservation, the school and its foundation now raise millions of dollars each year for education and humanitarian work. The problem, Joe said, is that the mission exploits the Cheyenne and nearby Crow people as poster children for their relief work while the Catholic Church has systematically destroyed the traditional spirituality of the people.

“It’s cultural genocide,” Joe spat out. “When I attended Indian School in the 1950’s, me and my friends were punished any time we spoke Cheyenne or practiced our traditional ceremonies. They washed our mouths out with lye soap and made us kneel on broomsticks.” His voice faded away to silence with the memory. Then his anger flashed again. “You want me to forgive and forget that?”

The group session I was teaching that morning was about forgiveness. Like all the other veterans in this residential substance abuse program, Joe was an addict trying to get his life back together. Angry at the abuses he felt had been inflicted on his people for over a hundred years and depressed at the hopelessness facing his children’s generation, Joe began numbing his pain with alcohol until his days became a series of one drunk after another. Scuffles with the tribal police followed. Punches were thrown. Shots were fired. His wife kicked him out of the house, and Joe spent time in the local jail. Now he was at the VA Medical Center, trying to piece his life back together.

“I need to be an example the young men can look up to,” Joe told me in private after the meeting ended. “Who takes a drunk old Indian seriously? I’m going to get back on track with my life. But I cannot forget what they did to my people. I cannot forgive them.”

How could a Christian chaplain reach this man? We were about the same age, but a cultural chasm loomed between us. What words could I find that might mean something to him? I began with an apology.

“Joe, as a white man and a Christian, I sincerely apologize for what my people and my religion have done to yours. The Jesus I know would never have tried to destroy your faith in the Great Spirit, the Father of all creation. It’s us human beings in our fear and pride who have done these things to each other. And we did the same to him. We hung him on a cross to die because we couldn’t accept his message of love.”

Joe nodded in silence, then replied: “But that cross has become the symbol of our oppression.”

We were worlds apart. “Yes, I understand. But do you remember the words of Jesus on that cross? As the soldiers were killing him, he said ‘Father forgive them. They don’t know what they are doing.’ He calls us to forgive.”

“I told you we have no word for forgiveness in my language,” Joe said looking down at the floor.

My curiosity as a linguist now aroused, I asked him “So how do you express the concept if you don’t have that word? If someone owes you something and you want to let him off the hook, what do you say?”

“We say ‘Your debt has been paid.’ That’s how we say it.”

A chill passed through me and the hairs on the back of my arms stood on end. “Joe, in John’s gospel, Jesus’ last words are: ‘It is finished.’ In seminary, I learned that the Greek word for this, tetelestai, means that a debt has been paid in full. People in Jesus’ time used to write this word on a bill to show that the debt was now fully paid up and the bill cancelled. I think Jesus understood forgiveness like that.”

Joe was silent, still looking down at the floor. I pressed on. “People say ‘Forgive and forget’ but I think that’s wrong. I think we should forgive and remember. I think that’s what Jesus meant on the cross. Forgive the wrong that was done to him but remember that his death has paid off all our debts. Does that help you at all? No one should forget the wrongs done to your people. But how long will it be before that debt is paid? And how many more young Cheyenne men and women must live with anger and resentment weighing them down?”

Joe sighed. “Hmmmm! No one has ever told me ‘Forgive and remember’ before. Thank you, chaplain.” We shook hands, and I left him sitting in his room deep in thought.

A few days later, Joe went back to the reservation. I sometimes wonder if he got his life back together the way he hoped. If he regained the respect of his wife and the young men of his tribe. If he was ever able to see the debt from the past as paid. Or if for Joe, there still no word for forgiveness in Cheyenne.

© 2013 Chaplain David Pascoe

 

Walking the Labyrinth

My first experience with the spiritual practice of walking a labyrinth happened at Mercy Center in California. In the lush and verdant grounds of this convent and retreat center, skillful hands have constructed a large, circular walking path out of stone and sand, tucked away behind towering oak trees and blue and purple hydrangeas.

The labyrinth is a beautiful, geometrically designed circle with a large standing stone at its center. To get to the stone, walkers follow a narrow path that winds back and forth, arcing through the quadrants of the circle, now leading closer, now turning away from the center. It is not a maze, because there are no blind alleys or deceptive turnings. By staying on the path and trusting the builder of the labyrinth, a walker eventually arrives at the center. To get back out, the process is reversed, following the winding pathway back to the circle’s edge. A single break in the perimeter allows for both entry and exit.

Walking the labyrinth is a slow and deliberate process. I was not alone the first time I entered. On a month long training program in spiritual direction, I was with a group of 40 or more fellow pilgrims, who entered the labyrinth at staggered intervals that golden summer evening. From the trees all around, achingly beautiful plainsong echoed, swelled, and subsided from hidden speakers, as if our walking were accompanied by chants sung by the souls of holy men of long ago.

Though I am a tenderfoot, I felt compelled to walk barefoot over the hard packed sandy path. The outline of the path was marked by thin bricks that had been sunk into the sand. The path’s hard, grainy surface was occasionally scattered with dry pine needles and small, sharp stones. I felt enough discomfort in the soles of my feet to keep me focused on the ground ahead, though not enough to distract me from the experience. In fact, the occasional sharp pain kept me grounded in an unexpected way – just the opposite of how I had felt at other times walking barefoot on open ground.

My pace was naturally slow and deliberate. As I walked, I found my mind moving in rhythm with my steps. Almost before I was aware, I began praying under my breath: “For being untrue, forgive me Lord. For lying, forgive me Lord. For ridiculing, forgive me Lord. For disappointing, forgive me Lord.” All the way in, I prayed a litany of forgiveness for sins I had committed, named people I had offended, confessed things done, things not done. I prayed for people by name – family, friends, those close to me now and in the past, whom I had hurt or disappointed. When I reached the center, I paused to touch the standing stone. Then on the slow path back, I prayed prayers of gratitude, thanking God for every person, event, circumstance, and experience of my life.

Had I been alone, I might have spoken those prayers out loud as I have done at other times and in other places. This kind of organic prayer seems to rise out of me unbidden, unrehearsed at times when I am alone and focused on speaking to God. Solvitur ambulando says a plaque I bought at the Mercy Center gift shop. “Things are worked out by walking.”

The labyrinth calls me to simply be. As its slow, repetitive rhythms take over my conscious mind, I feel the pull to enter into the silence at my own center. Yet it is so hard to abandon myself to being. When I walk the labyrinth, I am most comfortable moving, reciting just under my breath prayers, petitions, praise, whatever thought process I am working out as I am walking in. But when I reach the center, I cannot stay. Simply holding still in the silent expectancy of the core is more than I can bear. I pay lip service, but am anxious to move again, relaxing into the unwinding of the path back to the safety of the margins.

And yet, dear God, our hearts are restless until they find rest in you. Why am I restless at the place where I should find rest? What will it take to abandon myself so completely to you that I am more “me” in the being than in the doing?

© 2013 Chaplain David Pascoe