My last three columns

Our uniqueness doesn't fit stereotypes

I'm deployed stateside this summer to Beale Air Force Base near Marysville, Calif., where I am made increasingly aware that I don't exactly fit the military stereotype.

First of all, as I often joke, "Because I don't like tobacco, coffee, golf or beer, I don't know how I made it this far as a military officer."

Oh, uh, another thing: I don't do guns, unless you count the fact I qualified as a BB sharpshooter at junior high church camp. Impressive, huh?

Also, I don't have the physique you'd expect. My snow-white hair gives me the appearance of a retiree and my stomach threatens to hide the toes on my slumping 6-foot-1 frame. Not exactly a mean, green, fighting machine.

Truthfully, none of these differences prevents me from fitting in, but they sometimes make me stand out. Like you, my differences can leave me feeling awkward, like I don't belong. When I feel this way, I remind myself that God created us to make our own unique contributions to life.

Sure, it's a cliché, but the truism is supported by the popular Myers-Briggs psychological assessment test. This test identifies 16 distinct personality types using a combination of four pairs of letters:

• Extroverted or Introverted = E or I.
• Sensing or Intuitive = S or N.
• Thinking or Feeling = T or F.
• Judging or Perceiving = J or P.

For instance, Meyers-Briggs finds most military officers are INTJ. (Introvert, iNtuitive, Thoughtful and Judgmental.)

It's a rare combination of traits, but they have nearly a mystical sense they've been appointed to lead. They are practical, realistic, matter-of-fact folks who get things done. They have a clear set of logical standards and can be forceful in implementing these standards.

Uh, not me. Unlike most career military officers, I test out as an INFP, (Introverted, iNtuitive, Feeling and Perceptual), which means I depend more on feelings and perceptions than logic.

Meyers-Briggs says folks of my personality type tend be idealistic and loyal. We are curious, adaptable, flexible and accepting.

But the biggest difference between most INTJs and us INFPs is we usually will care more about getting along with people than we care about whether a certain set of tasks were completed. A chaplain who cares more about people than programs? I'd say that's a value-added fit for the military.

The point is, you can't judge normal by what is normal for you.

Based on Myers-Briggs alone, it's a personality zoo out there, and we would need Noah's Ark to hold a pair of every different kind of normal creature.

So heed the Apostle Paul when he says, "Go ahead and be what we were made to be, without enviously or pridefully comparing ourselves with each other, or trying to be something we aren't."

Trust in his words and be encouraged to stick to what you are made to do.
For instance he says:

"If you teach, stick to your teaching; if you give encouraging guidance, be careful that you don't get bossy; if you're put in charge, don't manipulate; if you're called to give aid to people in distress, keep your eyes open and be quick to respond; if you work with the disadvantaged, don't let yourself get irritated with them or depressed by them. Keep a smile on your face." Romans 12:4-8 (The Message)

To which I would add, I married an INTJ, so they can't be all bad.


My calling from God came early

Callings have many beginnings, and if you'll allow some rambling as I near my 10th anniversary of writing this column, I'd like to share mine.

My most solid memories begin in May 1962 when my pastor-dad graduated from an Arkansas college. In the days after his graduation, he crammed all our worldly goods inside a plywood box he built atop a rusted boat trailer. He transplanted our Texas-born family to the opulent, and likely opiate, hills of Marin County, Calif. There, he enrolled as a ministerial student in Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary.

It was on this campus that I first conscripted my friends to play army with toy rifles and dirt grenades. We transformed the campus into a basic-training confidence course, spending hours fashioning forts in the overgrown summer grass, tumbling down ice-plant-covered embankments and storming the persistently under construction student housing area. Among my playmates was Rick Warren, not yet the famed author and pastor of the largest Christian congregation in America.

Then, in our unkempt thrift store coats, we concealed an armament of squirt guns, cap guns, stick guns and, if all else failed, a clicking thumb atop a shuddering index finger.

Demilitarization came twice on Sundays and again on Wednesdays when, dressed in suits and dresses, my family of five heaped into our blue, 1963 Rambler station wagon and joined the hymn-singing congregation my father pastored in a storefront church.

Once in the hardened pew, I laid my head in my mother's lap as her diaphragm emptied the operatic notes of "Amazing Grace." I heard her refrains as lullabies and preludes of peace before my father's sermon, a tandem that nearly always favored a 45-minute nap.

I found myself lost in the musical rhythm and hypnotic oratory of the church; some cynics even may say I was indoctrinated.

In fact, many a time I'd assemble a congregation of family members to play church, casting myself as the preacher, and my siblings as the church choir. Perhaps these early times would explain why, by the time I was in junior high, I was convinced my future role would be something behind a lectern: perhaps a lawyer, possibly a professor, probably a preacher.

It was no surprise to my friends that I enrolled at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, in 1975 and, at the same school where my parents met, I told my advisor that like my father and his grandfather, I was called to preach.
My advisor told me my calling was commendable, but it would be good if I had something practical to fall back on. So, three years later, and 17 years before Baylor approved on-campus dancing, I earned a bachelor of arts in religion along with a fallback degree in journalism.

Baylor provided no special-colored tassel for a 3.01 GPA, but four years later I would add a master of divinity degree from GGBTS, the same seminary where I premiered the characters of preacher and soldier. Fifteen months after that, I blended those roles into the real life of a pastor commissioned as a citizen soldier in the Air Force Reserves.

Next month marks my 25th year in military service, and this year added my 30th year to ordained ministry. The imagined childhood roles of soldier/preacher have come to pass. God truly is good and I remain beyond grateful to be called into his service.

Biblically speaking, how well-versed are you?
Jul 17, 2011 |

Before you read this column, please open your Bible to find the book of 2nd Hesitations.

Not. There is no such book. It's an old joke perpetrated by pastors who like to check the biblical literacy of their congregants.

But the Pew Research Center didn't find America's lack of biblical knowledge funny. Last year, this nonpartisan fact tank tested the religious comprehension of Americans. If you're a churchgoer, it won't tickle you to know that atheists and agnostics scored best. Take the test yourself at http://miniurl.com/bibletest/

As a chaplain, I'm not surprised. I often find churchgoers don't know basic biblical stories. For instance, many people think the Bible says that Eve gave Adam an apple. Not true. The Bible only says it's a fruit. Furthermore, Eve received the fruit from a serpent; no mention of the devil.

Even the Christmas story has its share of misconceptions. We may sing, "We Three Kings," but the ones we call three kings were astrologers and we only assume there were three men because they brought three gifts.

But these are simple facts and harmless trivia. The real damage is done when folks use biblical misinformation to assert their own standards.

For instance, some evangelicals will assert their doctrine, "Once saved, always saved" as if it were a Scripture verse proving their Christian conversion is an irreversible lifetime membership. Not only is the saying not in Scriptures, but too often folks gloat over it like a get-out-of-jail-free card to justify bad behavior.

"Spare the rod; spoil the child" is used to justify corporal punishment. Sorry, it's not in the Bible. I'm not saying it's wrong to swat the hand of an errant child, but the actual passage is Proverbs 13:24: "The one who withholds (or spares) the rod is one who hates his son." The verse probably says more against the complacent parent than it justifies the violent expression of your will upon a child.

But the one misquote I rarely tolerate is: "God only gives you what you can handle." As I've explained in past columns, the quote is a poor paraphrase of 1 Corinthians 10:13, which is more accurately paraphrased as: "God will not allow us to be tempted beyond our ability to escape." It's the writer's way of saying, "Just say no" and it means God will provide us with an out in every temptation. The danger in this folksy misquote is it burdens people with a belief that God gives them their calamities.

Jesus angrily denounced religious leaders for their habit of quoting verses that supported their selfish causes: "They tie up heavy loads, hard to carry, and put them on men's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing even to lift a finger to move them."

If you are like me and got 100 percent on the test, congratulations. We are spiritually gifted and well-versed in verses. But the real test is how you apply the Bible, not to others, but to yourself.

I read a blog recently by Craig T. Owns, a Michigan pastor (see http://craigtowens.com). He says when he reads the Bible, he asks himself some hard questions.

• Do I have an emotional response? Or is it just a meaningless daily habit?
• Do I share with others what the Scripture has revealed about me?
• Am I willing to be accountable to others to make the changes I need?

But his best question is the one that I've been trying to say for the past 600 words: Do you just read the Bible? Or do you allow the Bible to read you?

Two months of columns

Folks,

I got a little behind on sending these out, but I'm sorry I waited until I have a book's worth.

I'll be locally deployed the next 70 days. See the column below.

Blessings,

Chaplain Norris


Fighting war from home adds isolation
Jul 10, 2011

I just got home from a two-month wartime deployment with the Air National Guard and, despite the fact the mission took us through the skies of Iraq and Afghanistan, my wife hardly noticed I was gone. No, it's not because I'm that useless when I am home or because she's that inattentive. It's because I hardly was gone at all.

I was deployed about 90 minutes north of my home where I joined an active duty mission at Beale Air Force Base that interprets intelligence video coming from unmanned aerial vehicles. We communicate with servicemembers involved in live firefights and other critical missions. While we aren't pushing the buttons that deliver hellfire missiles, we are the ones who target the bad guys. These airmen are the 9-1-1 operators of the war.

To get some sense of the mission, check out the declassified YouTube videos for some good examples of our daily missions at http://tinyurl.com/dronekills. After you've seen the video, you'll be closer to understanding the stress of these long-distance missions.

After four days of 12-hour shifts in a room about the size of a gymnasium, watching a ton of images on dozens of flat screens, airmen go home to something as innocuous as their son's soccer game. They can't talk about what they've done or what they've seen nor can I give more specifics than what I've already shared. Suffice to say these men and women regularly are involved in missions where lives are taken and lost.

As a chaplain, I wandered through the workstations of these young people and I wondered. I wondered about the challenges of war by remote control on the edge of this virtual frontier. I wondered about their mission to cross boundaries of ambiguity where people bleed long before we are able to see the whites of their eyes. And although I never wonder about their dedication and professionalism, I sometimes wonder how they do this mission in such isolation.

Military mental health experts identify the hazard of this kind of isolation as "the silo effect." The term refers to this bizarre disconnect airman sometimes feel between what they are doing and what actually happens a half world away.
I return this month for another two-month deployment, but during my leave last month, I noticed these airmen aren't the only ones who experience the silo effect.

When it comes to the war, many of you also are in isolation. Like the airmen, your information comes to you exclusively by video or in text, but the big difference is that your information comes to you from nightly news anchors or reporters.

On one hand, you are fortunate your country does not require you to make the remote decisions these airmen make that cost lives. But on the other hand, you can become very isolated and immune from its effects. The problem is we say America is at war with terrorism, but in reality, few Americans are sacrificing anything to be at war. Our idea of remote warfare is to battle our teenager for the TV remote.

I know you can't go to the frontlines of Afghanistan, but I do think there are ways the average American can be involved. Perhaps you can send care packages to the troops, write your congressmen, volunteer at a veteran's cemetery, read an in-depth book on the war, or perhaps even visit your local base to find out what they are doing in the war.

All I'm saying is that, whatever you do, don't be remote.


War makes tragic deaths a sad routine
Jul 3, 2011

Late last month in Rio Linda, Calif., a mother was told she'd lost her son, Army Sgt. Russell Proctor, to an improvised explosive device. I know because I'm the one who told her.

I've done more than 30 death notifications in my career as an Air Force chaplain, but this was the first time for the sergeant accompanying me. Fortunately, this was routine.

I don't mean to trivialize the event in describing it as routine; I simply mean that our visit was predictable, uneventful and unsurprising.

We arrived a few hours after supper. The family was watching television when we knocked. The dogs barked and the porch light exposed us staring at our clipboards.
The mother was receptive, but stoic. She graciously welcomed us inside a home that displayed the childhood pictures of 10 children. Of course, by the time we positioned ourselves on her couch, she knew the purpose of our visit.

My colleague cleared his throat.

"The secretary of the Army has asked me to express his deep regret . . ." his talk began.

The sergeant paused. He had spent the past two hours memorizing his speech, but now his breath stalled in his throat between punctuations. In the midst of this choreographed discourse, he was no doubt thinking of the soldiers he'd lost each week in his 2010 Afghanistan deployment.

His litany moved into the details. There had been an explosion generated by a typical IED, then the soldier's vehicle burst into a mangled chunk of burning iron. Of course, the Army would conduct an investigation and more information would follow.

But in the meantime, my associate added, "The secretary extends his deepest sympathy to you and your family during this trying period."

Then, I introduced some closing questions. Lately, I wonder if these questions sound more perfunctory than feeling, "Would you like me to say a prayer? Do you have some family or friends you can call? Do you have a pastor or counselor?"

She did. Phone calls were made. Heartache expanded exponentially and grief went viral.

"Are there any more questions for us?" asked the sergeant.

"No."

The whole thing took less than 30 minutes. We finally stood to leave. Handshakes were exchanged and prayers were promised.

Under a cloudless sky and a quarter moon, I found my way home just before midnight. Knowing the regularity of these missions has left me spinning like the drunk in a hit-and-run, my wife asked how it went.

"Routine." I said, because, ironically, the same noun describes the best and the worst of the notification. There had been no problem. It was just another average night in this damn war. A mother lost a son, a wife lost her husband and a son lost his father.
You might be asking, "Chaplain, why bring us such gloomy news amid the revelry of a holiday weekend?"

Because I think it's important to remember the cost of this war. It costs us people. Real people like Proctor who won't be eating homemade ice cream or watching fireworks this weekend. At 25, he never again will celebrate a birthday, take his son fishing or hug his wife.

Every servicemember I know will continue to do what this nation asks of us, but I, for one, will no longer accept this price as routine.


Our spiritual strength originates from God
Jun 26, 2011

As a chaplain in the Air National Guard, I often will ask airmen facing difficult situations, "Where does your spiritual strength come from?"

The question is designed to help them highlight their spiritual energy source. Their answer serves as a spiritual inventory list that helps them focus on their spiritual resources.

The answers I often get name a book from traditional religions such as the Bible or the Koran.

Others specify Jesus or Buddha, while still others give a generic response and simply say, "Prayer."

Yet there are many folks, and I hope you're not one of them, who cock their head like a dog hearing a high-pitched sound and admit they have no earthly idea what I'm talking about. To help them understand the heart of my question, I often share a story found in Judeo-Christian scriptures. And if you'll forgive me for being a little more sermonic than usual, I'd like to share it with you here.

The story, an old Sunday school favorite, is of a longhaired muscle man who likely resembled a Venice Beach muscle-head more than he did a Bible character. His name was Samson, and when he hooked up with a dreaded Philistine looker named Delilah, they became the ultimate power couple.

With the subtlety of a bazooka, Delilah often pestered Samson to reveal what weakness he might have, but Samson was not giving up this secret. So, Delilah called in some Philistine bruisers to employ enhanced interrogation techniques.

When the thugs arrived, she woke Samson in a ruse sounding like a two-bit melodrama, "Samson, Samson, the Philistines are upon you!" (Hiss, boo, hiss.)

Then in a scene from "Batman," (pow, biff, bang, sock, splat) Samson took them all down.

A similar scenario was repeated three times until Samson finally told Delilah the secret only his hairdresser would know for sure: His strength would leave him if his hair was cut.

The Philistines then descended on Samson, buzzed him, bound him and blinded him. Alas, all seemed lost for our hero.

But here's the rub in the story. Samson didn't really get his strength from his hair. I know that's what Miss Myrtle taught you in Sunday school, but the truth is a little more complicated than that.

Samson was a part of a religious order that took a vow before God not to cut his hair, but he didn't get his strength from his hair at all. He got his strength from the integrity that came from keeping his promises to God. When he lost that integrity, he lost the source of his real strength.

The story ends with God granting our hero a suicidal burst of energy just powerful enough for him to bring the house down on himself and his enemies. Not your typical heroic ending, but Samson died, in touch once again with the source of his real strength.

There's an old saying: When the going gets tough, the tough get going. The expression begs the question: Where do the tough get their spiritual energy to get going?

Samson's story answers the question best by reminding us our personal strength to face life's tests always will come from our integrity before our creator. I guess that's why Psalm 121 reinforces the story so well when it says: "I look up to the mountains, but does my strength come from the mountains?

"No, my strength comes from God, who made heaven, and earth, and mountains


Best friends really are forever
Jun. 19, 2011

About six years ago, I was visiting patients in a senior facility in Sacramento, Calif., when I asked a 90-some-year-old woman in a wheelchair to tell me about the heart crudely tattooed on her hand.

She responded by quickly withdrawing her hand beneath her lap blanket. My curiosity obviously brought her some shame, so I apologized.

"That's OK," she said. "It happened a long time ago."

When I gave her permission to keep her secret, paradoxically, she told it. I only repeat it now because she has since died.

Her story began in the rural farming system that replaced slavery with something called sharecropping. It was a thinly disguised form of slavery in which the landowner often demanded an exorbitant share of his tenant's crop. At least this is the way my Yankee fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Pinkston, explained it to us.

The elderly woman recalled for me the story of her life in a large rural area that kept her separated from the possibility of friends, except one, another 12-year-old.

The girls spent every possible moment together. They helped each other with chores, and walked to school and church together. They were the best of friends in the worst of times.

The other girl fancied herself an artist and used anything available to draw on whatever medium was accessible. One day, she brought some ink into the barn where the two often played. I assume it was India ink, permanent ink widely used for writing and printing in those days.

With the ink, they mutually outlined dime-sized hearts on their hands to symbolize their love for each other. Then, the friend got the idea of injecting the ink into the skin with a sewing needle. It was quite a thing to do, given the infection rate of a farming environment, yet they were proud of their new tattoos.

But their pride would be short-lived. When my new friend arrived home for dinner, her mom instantly noticed the tattoo. You think moms get upset about tattoos now? Not so much compared to how a mother in the 1930s would have reacted to a tattoo on her daughter's hand. Her mom considered it obscene.

She took her daughter's hand and scrubbed it with lye soap and a horse brush.

"Obviously, the cleansing had little effect," I said.

The woman nodded and rubbed the tattoo as if still trying to erase the shame.
"My mother whipped me good with that brush," she said matter-of-factly. "I was never allowed to play with her again."

"Never?" I asked incredulously. "Didn't you sneak in some playtime on the schoolyard or at church potlucks?"

"No," she said adding that her mom's word was law and you never went against it.

I've done a lot of counseling inside hospitals, and I know when someone is grieving a loss, and after 75 years, the woman still was grieving this loss. In her heart, she could return to that barn and still feel the shame of her mother's judgment.

The connections between best friends can be a tenuous one. I know because I've watched my best friend go into treatment twice for cancer. Next week, he returns for his annual MRI to make sure that his cancer still is in remission.

While we've never gotten a tattoo together, we have a connection that can't be erased and I covet your prayers for him today.



Don't be gullible, follow only God's voice
Jun 12, 2011

In 1991, I was in training to become a hospital chaplain through a yearlong residency called Clinical Pastoral Education when my supervisor, Dr. Timothy Little, made a startling assessment: "You've got to be one of the most gullible chaplains I've ever met."

"Hmm, could be," I thought.

I know that if I were a prison chaplain, I'd probably wear the warden out with my weak and weekly pleas on behalf of the prisoners. "This inmate really is innocent," I'd protest. To which the warden would doubtlessly reply, "That's what you said about 'Crazy Jim,' and now he's back for robbing my mom."

Am I really that gullible or do I simply want to take people at their word? This is what I asked myself last month when I took Rep. Anthony Weiner at his word that the pictures sent through his Twitter account to a Seattle woman were the result of his account being hacked.

I didn't think I was being gullible, because this sort of thing happens all the time. Every week, I get e-mails from some poor reader whose account was hacked for the sole purpose of sending inappropriate content to unsuspecting friends.

I believed Weiner, but now it seems proof of my lack of wariness comes in a bare-chested photo posted online by conservative blogger and tattletale Andrew Breitbart.

It's tempting to accept the word of someone who is being adamant. Jesus was tempted in much the same way. Christian gospels recount a moment when Jesus slipped into the desert night to do some intense praying. Unfortunately, he wasn't alone, and he found himself facing three tests of gullibility administered by someone called the "evil one."

In the first encounter, the loathsome villain suggested Jesus conjure up a buffet by turning stones into bread. Jesus rebuffed the half-baked recipe by declaring: "Man doesn't live by bread alone."

The tempter was casting the same barbed lure of consumerism that hooks us into believing true happiness comes in taking care of your own needs first. The hook is, "Buy the widescreen TV or the new RV, and you'll be so happy."

For the second meeting, the malevolent trickster met Jesus on a temple roof where they eyeballed the kingdoms of the world. In this Kodak moment, the fellow prodded Jesus to jump off the roof and let the angels catch him, thereby proving his deity to a doubtful world.

Jesus didn't fall for this proposal, so the guy switched to Plan C and promised Jesus something like billions of Facebook followers: "Just go down on your knees and worship me, and they're yours."

Jesus blocked the invite by calling a halt to the devilish conference: "Beat it, Satan!"
Too bad we aren't always that smart. Our naiveté and conceit make us gullible to the voices of flattery, because we love the echo of our own publicity.

How does one know what voices to believe?

The answer comes in Jesus' quotation of a Deuteronomic Code shared by three world religions. "Worship the Lord your God, and only him. Serve him with absolute single-heartedness."

Jesus is saying that God is the only voice to hear, and if we follow any others, we become a Gullible Gus.

This past week, my mother used the Weiner defense when renouncing the inappropriate pictures on her Facebook post. She says I shouldn't be offended or shocked, because her account was hacked.

Well, I guess I believe her. After all, she is my mom. Or am I just being gullible again?



Gambling with faith makes for poor hand
Jun. 5, 2011

Oh, come on. Admit it. I know you are harboring a slightly superior air of "I-told-you-so" over Harold Camping and his followers because their doomsday prediction this past month was a flop. I know, because I, too, have the feeling.

If you're not aware of the cataclysmic bullet we all dodged, you probably missed the massive billboard campaign financed by Camping, a conservative Christian businessman, predicting Jesus' return on May 21.

As the day proved uneventful in all time zones, Camping announced his spiritual mayday wasn't wrong, merely a miscalculation. Now, he says because Jesus was no-show last month, he'll combine it with the catastrophic destruction of the Earth on Oct. 21.

But, in case you're tempted to do the Church Lady's Superior Dance as seen on "Saturday Night Live," Camping's situation calls to mind the story of Noah's Ark.
The details, common to the versions told by Muslims, Christians and Jews, describe a man named Noah who is commanded by God to built a giant ship called an ark in planning for the destruction of the world by a massive flood.

When Noah finishes the ark, God seals the hatches in preparation for the flood. The storm doesn't come, however, and for six days, Noah endures much of the same merciless teasing Camping heard this year. Finally, on the seventh day, it rains on the parade of scoffers, and Noah rebuffs the repentant souls pounding on the doors looking for last-minute cruise discounts.

Anticipating the same virtuous vindication Noah received, Camping and his unhappy campers played the theological lottery and gambled on a toxic strand of religion I like to call "gotcha evangelism." It's toxic because the gamble plays on our need to be right and retreats into self-pride when we are wrong.

The gotcha gamble isn't limited to the religious.

Health nuts use the gotcha approach to scare us into eating right. Environmentalists use it to frighten us into carpooling. Journalists use it to induce anxiety in politicians. And police use it in something called a sting.

When these folks have their theories proved or their traps sprung, they declare "gotcha," like a poker player who has wagered a successful bluff.

But, gotcha becomes a bigger game when high rollers, or Holy Rollers, play the Armageddon card along with the threat of hell to intimidate players into folding their hands.

Faith should be something that invites its adherents, not something that pushes, threatens or bankrupts their joy.

"But," you may ask, "if people weren't afraid of judgment day or hell, why would they believe in God?"

The question underlines the problem with gotcha evangelism. Like Camping, this question miscalculates grace. Grace is not a gamble or an escape hatch from a bad day. Jesus isn't our ejection seat, and heaven isn't an evacuation plan.

Heaven, Jesus rightly pointed out, is someday and today. "The kingdom of God" he said, "doesn't come by counting the days on the calendar nor when someone says, 'Look here!' or, 'There it is!' And why? Because God's kingdom is already among you."

Grace and forgiveness are not something we escape to, but rather something we are blessed to live in. Grace is so big we can't possibly get our arms all the way around it. It's constantly unfolding to us.

I know in my own life, when grace is added to the equation, all the other figures become nil. Grace is the real trump card.


Find your God spot and visit it frequently
May 29, 2011

Jogging isn't my idea of fun, but nearly five mornings a week, I tie a bandana around my gray head and a leash on my dog, and we hit the jogging trail.

I jog for two reasons. First, I'm a weekend warrior in the Air National Guard, so I must pass my annual fitness test next week. Second, even without the requirement, Toby will grant me no peace until after we go jogging.

Toby, or "T-Dog" as he is known around our hood, is a 26-pound, 15-month-old pound-pup of mixed ancestry who favors Benji. With the long hair of a Lhasa apso and the passion of a Jack Russell, he has the need for speed.

Today, we run along our usual route past a dozen houses and onto a creek-side trail that splits our orderly subdivision into fraternal twins. We arrive at our planned rest stop, a community lake that spills into a wetland sheltering mallards, Canada geese and egrets.

Toby and I spend about 20 minutes playing Frisbee, or at least until he drags himself under a shade tree, tongue dangling. It's important for me to spend quality time with him, lest I become like the dyslexic chaplain who lost his faith in dog.

But it's also important for me to have a place where I can reconnect spiritually, a place where I can talk to God. I'm here following the advice of my friend Tam, who says, in the words from her 12-step meetings, "Mark the places where you find God and go there often."

Today, we aren't the only ones appreciating the hallowed hint of green. A small truck arrives with a boy and his dad. The boy runs to the water's edge with fishing tackle in tow and eyeballs the reflective surface from a duck's view.

Opening his box, he sifts through a sea of tangled hooks to retrieve just the right size to catch the big one. He brings the hair-thin fishing line so close to his nose that his eyes cross and, with the precision of a surgeon trussing a blood vessel, he rigs his line with barbed accouterments.

He shuffles to a spot where he recently has anchored a mental buoy over a place stocked with promise. With a bent smile of determination, he throws the line across the water like a collegiate quarterback tossing a season-ending Hail Mary pass.
He then takes a seat beside his dad in an old aluminum-folding chair and waits. He expels a deep breath and he waits one more time.

Puberty is not blessed with patience, so after a 10-minute attempt, he reopens his tackle box and extends its accordion trays. He palms a lure, weighing it, all the while casing the bank for a place to cast his investment.

His eyes wander: Where are the fish?

Tam says fishing holes and dog runs like this one are "God spots, tiny in a geographic space, yet they span across time, allowing a person to re-enter that moment anytime, anywhere, just by thinking about it again."

Sighting spirituality down the end of a fishing pole is not the hymn-singing approach I grew up with.

If a fisherman can sit on a nylon-weave pew, however, and get a hook on God's creation by plunging his or her soul into the pristine reflection of a lakeside cathedral, I have no quarrel with that.


Remembering 4 chaplains serving 1 God
May 22, 2011

In winter 1943, the USS Dorchester, a U.S. Army troopship, fell behind its escort off the coast of Greenland. Heavy with more than 900 men, the retired luxury liner was poorly maintained for this icy trip.

Gale-force winds made for a nauseating, if not monotonous, voyage. Fortunately, among those doing their best to alleviate the discomfort were four chaplains: the Rev. John Washington, the Rev. Clark Poling, Rabbi Alexander Goode and the Rev. George Fox.

During the voyage, they organized sing-alongs and talent shows, but mostly they took confessions and held worship services that were attended by everyone, no matter what their faith.

"They were always together, they carried their faith together," the ship's first sergeant said.

On the evening of Feb. 2, 1943, the ship's captain, concerned over the sightings of three enemy submarines, instructed passengers to wear life jackets to bed. Most found it uncomfortable and were unprepared at 1 a.m. when torpedoes from the German submarine U-223 slammed into the ship's midsection below the waterline.

Scores were killed in an instant, but many survivors, still dressed in underwear, clambered up on deck without life jackets. Amid the confusion, what most survivors remember was the peaceful workings of the four chaplains: two Protestant pastors, a Catholic priest and a Jewish rabbi.

Among the first officers on deck, they calmed the men and organized them into lifeboats. When the chaplains saw many were without life jackets, they found extra jackets and distributed them.

Told to pray as they abandoned ship, soldiers found courage from the chaplains, who remained steadfast in their purpose. Then, in an action that inspired a Medal of Honor nomination, the chaplains removed their own life jackets and gave them to the last four soldiers.

What we know next is from the vantage point of the men who made it into the lifeboats. It is said that, in the light of the fiery oil, the chaplains were seen standing arm in arm on the ship's keel, leading an interfaith service. Eighteen minutes after the torpedo hit, the Dorchester rolled into the sea on its starboard side.

In the most published quote of the tragedy, survivor John Ladd called it: "The finest thing I have seen or hope to see this side of heaven."

A Memorial Day eulogy 60 years later would describe the moment as: "Despair caught in hope's grasp. Four chaplains. Two faiths. One God."

It became the third largest U.S. maritime loss during World War II: Almost 700 died. Only 230 men saw sunrise. Naval investigation found that many lifeboats were hopelessly frozen to the ship; others had drifted out of reach. And even with beacon-equipped life jackets, the dead were described by rescuers as "lifeless lights bobbing up and down" in the 34-degree water.

Because the Medal of Honor can only be awarded for actions under direct fire, Congress created a special Medal for Heroism in 1960, praising the chaplains for "selfless acts of courage, compassion and faith." The award can never be repeated.

In 2008, Archbishop Desmond Tutu eulogized their sacrifice with the words of Jesus. " 'Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains barren. If it dies, it brings forth abundantly.' These men," he said, "should have disappeared in history, but extraordinarily, the opposite has happened."

Today, the Four Chaplains Memorial Foundation refuses to let the chaplains disappear under the waves of history and annually recognizes compassionate public service, provides college scholarships and assists in disaster relief. See more at www.fourchaplains.org.