What is the Spirit?

“The Spirit is the core of the human being from which arises the decision to decide or decay, to live or die, to overcome or knuckle under.”

This is the ‘spirit’ in spiritual care.  This is the generic trans-religious interpretation of the human being that, I believe, connects the work of all faiths in the world.  And that sounds so bland and boring.  See how the Spirit is illustrated in Staff Sergeant Paul Worley of the USMC, awarded the Silver Star in 2010.  While in combat…

Worley didn’t even realize he had been hit until he saw blood: A round had struck his thigh.  “I was so full of adrenaline, it really didn’t matter,” he said.  He pulled down his trousers, patched up the wound-dismissing the platoon corpsman to help the more seriously wounded-and continued to resupply his men’s waning supply of ammunition and direct their fire.  On the radio, a lieutenant relayed that higher command wanted him evacuated. 

“I told them fuck no, that I was busy.” 

I believe we were made this way, with a Spirit at our core that makes or breaks us.  As a Christian, I accept that this is in the image of God’s Holy Spirit, that part of my Lord that pushes me beyond myself.  That is the part of the man or the woman that the chaplain can work with.  It is the part of us that deals with the ultimate things of life, the universe, and everything.

 

I do not have the authority to edit the words of a hero.

Death: The Christian Answer

If we are going to discuss death, we need to have some background on the Christian point of view concerning death.  In my faith, it is not the ‘forever good-bye’.  It is, rather, punishment for sins committed against God, but a death sentence that has been commuted to life eternal by the death and resurrection of someone else.

I stand up at funerals and share the promise of the gospel, that in Christ, death is but a doorway, a way station, until such time as we are all united once again.  It kind of sucks for those who are not Christians, but I am the advocate of a God of Mercy, not a God of Vengeance, so I think it takes a whole lot to take on death as punishment (but it can be done).

But unlike some of my colleagues, I do not share this as a scare tactic for mourners to get their act together before they get laid out.  I share this as hope for somewhere down the line, somewhere through the grieving process, somewhere when the feelings of the death have begun to integrate back into the person’s being.

I will be the first to admit, it doesn’t do much for the shock moments of death, for the traumas that follow losing someone, especially if you are carrying the burden of perhaps doing something that could have saved their life.  But it carries the possibilities that things can be okay again, someday.

 

Charlie Hebdo: Owning the Deaths

Bradley Cooper, in an interview about "The American Sniper", made a very interesting comment about art, not from the point of view of the artist, but the recipient.  When "art" is made, it is for the consumer to own and react to.  We are not taking about buying the artwork to 'own' it.  Ownership comes from interaction, from consideration, from a reaction informed by our connection to that artwork.  And the "art" of Charlie Hebdo led to mass murder. 


The sum total of my experience with Charlie Hebdo is a cursory internet search of cover images.  Now, I like satire.  And it ain't Mad magazine.  And it sure ain't Monty Python.  My idiomatic French is enough to be offended by what they are doing.  I have owned the "art" of Charlie Hebdo as far as I care to.  I've been provoked, and I, the consumer, do not find it to particularly appealing.


I have experience with people of my own faith who have, in the name of religion, come out in criticism of some piece of "art", whether photographs by Mapplethorpe, a magazine by Larry Flint, this movie or that book or such a video.  Whatever is being criticized, rarely have the critics seen or listened to or experienced the art in question.  There is no 'ownership'.  I wonder if the terrorists ever actually read Charlie Hebdo.  Or did somebody tell them what to think and what to do? 


Here is the real kick in the pants for me.  I have been trying to figure out why this has provoked my thinking.  It just clicked.  This is how Jesus died.  He was crucified for things people thought he had done.  He was killed for political expediency and by a conspiracy of the powers that were at that time who did not like what he had to say. 


I know God has a sense of humor.  My own vocation as a pastor is proof of that.  But is there a transcendent satire here

Charlie Hebdo: Dying for Art's Sake

There was a discussion on the radio this morning concerning a panel discussion on the role of art in the aftermath of the shooting of the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris.  The one line that stuck with me from the discussion was along the lines of defending someone's right to express themselves even when that expression runs completely contrary to what you consider proper and decent.


The discussion went all over the place, from artists needing a sense of responsibility in their work so that they do not shock and shut down the audience they are trying to reach through acknowledging that it is the extreme edges of personal expression, those things that are done to shock and provoke, that bring about real conversations.


In the case of Charlie Hebdo, what they did to shock and provoke, what brought a deadly response, was universally agreed upon as wrong and abhorrent.  But it was also acknowledged that many people find their satirical work to be wrong and abhorrent-though not to the point of murder.


It does not take too much imagination on my part to think of a situation where I, as a pastor and faith leader, would be criticized as two-faced for 1. condemning an artistic presentation that I considered to be inappropriate, grotesque, or disgusting while 2. speaking my heart that the artist still has the freedom to express themselves in this way.


Maybe this simply goes to the question of what art is.  Yes, like defining 'art' is a simple question.  It comes down to a theology of judgment for me.  The day that I decide it is up to me to judge what should be expressed and what should not be expressed is the day I have stepped into Jesus' shoes.  And I cannot imagine a more arrogant moment than that. 


And that frees me to be passionate in my love or hatred for the art that I have the privilege of being exposed to.

Why Do People Die In Fires?

Going to the heart of the work of the Fire Department, the question to put to God, why do people die in fires?  Police or military may ask why people die in violence, but this is the FD question.  I have a very unsatisfactory answer.  I do not really know.

I have an abstract, religious-type answer, it has to do with the fundamental evil of the universe and the sinfulness of humanity and the brokenness of creation, but that doesn’t seem like enough.  It also sounds like I am trying to defend a God who lets people die in fires.  From a certain point of view, I am.

Why am I asking this question now?  There hasn’t been, to my knowledge, a sudden death that requires expression.  It is the same reason you send a probie through the smoke box with all their equipment on, trying to squeeze through some narrow opening at the end.  Better to challenge something now, in the safety of practice, than when you run into the reality.

This started as a general question, but now consider the specific.  Why did that person, whom I could not get to, have to die in that fire?  I am pretending the role of a firefighter now.  It is one thing to consider the question is the broad sense, but how about the personal?  We have an ability, as a species, to put distance between ourselves and the tragic.  On the one hand, it lets us function, on the other hand, it lets us ignore.

There is a lot here, a lot more than one simple ‘meditation’ can answer.  But if we don’t ask the question in preparation, will we fall over the question when trying to find resolution?

 

What Kind of Healer is a Chaplain?

We don’t provide medical services or promote physical healing.  Neither do we lead physical training, except where we encourage the precept that the body is a temple.  Not being Roman, this is not an endorsement of creating a temple to Bacchus, the god of wine and debauchery. 

We don’t go rummaging around in your brains, we aren’t head shrinkers, we’re not going to invite you to lie down on the couch, sip some White Zinfandel and tell us about your feelings.  When we make diagnoses about depression or PTSD or something else related to mental health, at best we are educated, relatively observant laypeople working from long experience with our fellow human beings.  At worst, we’ve been watching too much television. 

No, the chaplain deals with that imprecise term of ‘spiritual care’.  We’re not talking alcoholic spirits or evil spirits.  No, spiritual care is about the human spirit.  The human spirit is a level of our humanity beneath our physical, beneath our mental, even beneath our emotional selves. 

The spirit is the iron in our being.  I’ve met 95 year old ladies, physically more brittle than uncooked spaghetti, but spiritually harder than a Marine Corps DI.  You can force them to do something, but you can’t make them.  That spirit is what sent First Responders back into the North Tower after the South Tower collapsed on 9-11.  That spirit drives when everyone else says it can’t be done and you do it anyway. 

Your emotional reactions are governed from your spirit.  Your mental toughness finds foundation in the toughness of your spirit.  Your physical health can hold up miraculously on the energy of your spirit.  The spirit is the thing of miracles, connecting us to questions of eternity.  Which is why chaplains deal with it.

What Does The Killing All Have in Common?

It seems like a confluence of events.  Twenty dead in Paris, death among police officers and the civilian population on the front pages here, ISIS calling for terror attacks everywhere, an island nation slowly drowning, no escape, always something more. 

And then, this morning, in my own devotional work, the apostle Peter says “Grace and peace to you all in in abundance.” 

Yah.

Where does our grace and peace come from as followers of Jesus?  In his death.  Seems to me this is a unique start to a religion, the leader being a lamb led to the slaughter.

The Good News is that three days later, God brought Jesus back to life, and the miracle of life from death is given to all who believe by the good grace of our God up in heaven.  But the fact is that our faith was born from violence.  And it grew up in violence. 

From attempts to kill it off by the Romans through the religious wars-for political gain, for right belief, for national and political advance, the vestiges of which can still be seen in a few places like Northern Ireland, our history is bloody.

And while I would love to say that this violence and killing no longer affect my faith, I would need to live in a box not to know the reality.  Where America is involved around the world, our faith is involved.  Maybe we don’t define ourselves this way, but radicalized Islam is fighting a religious war, against Christians, against Jews, against atheists (Charlie Hedbe).

Grace and peace come to us through the violence and death committed against Jesus Christ.  I wonder, in my soul, how we can pray for and work for and accelerate the power of the Living God to bring grace and peace again through this violence and death.

The hardest part is going to be changing on the minds of my fellow believers.  There are a lot of Christians out there who explain the violence and death as simply the playing out of the Book of Revelation, that there is no grace and there is no peace to be had until Jesus comes again.

Makes me think there is something fundamentally wrong with the way we are understanding and interpreting God’s Word if we believe that God’s plan is to leave us all to rot.