Revelation 22:1-2; John 5:1-9
“O beautiful for heroes proved in liberating strife, who more than self their country loved, and mercy more than life.” Every time I sing America the Beautiful, I struggle to get through these lines without crying.
Part of what stirs my tears is the way these words lift up what is noble in our human spirits. They remind me of the courage of people who rush into danger to
help, who risk their lives for a cause greater than themselves. They stir my hope, my prayer, that if I am in a situation that calls for it, I might choose to love mercy more than life.
There’s more, though, behind my almost-tears. These beautiful words have a dissonance to them. As a daughter of a minister during the Civil War, Katherine Lee Bates would have absorbed the emotion of many funerals of Union soldiers. She would have heard of neighbors who fought and died for mercy, for freedom, for enslaved African-Americans. By the time she wrote this poem as an adult, she would also have known there was very little mercy in the way the Civil War was fought. Like every war, it was brutal.
Bates was a brilliant poet; I suspect she wanted her words both to inspire what is noble in us and also to push us to acknowledge harsh realities of war.
Her words call us into a deeper remembrance for those who died in the service of our country. They challenge us to acknowledge both heroism and brokenness. For me, the most meaningful way to honor those who died serving our country is to recommit ourselves to supporting those who are still living.
Last fall, Ruth Carney, Roy Dennington and I attended a workshop, sponsored by Brookfield Institute and hosted by Edwards Church, on Moral Injury. There has been growing awareness of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome among veterans–a syndrome that reflects a natural human response to extreme danger. Lots of wise, creative people have been developing new treatments for PTSS. Veterans Yoga emerges out of that effort.
In recent years, there’s been a recognition that something else is going on for many returning soldiers, something that may be intertwined with PTSS but is different. Moral Injury, as it has come to be called, is defined as “the lasting psychological, biological, spiritual, behavioral and social impact of perpetuating, failing to prevent, or bearing witness to acts that transgress deeply held moral beliefs and expectations.” [Litz B.T., S.N., Delaney E., Libowitz L., Nash W.P, Silva C., and Maguen S. (2009). “Moral injury and moral repair in war veterans: A Preliminary Model” Clinical Psychology Review. 10.1016.
Moral injury might come from witnessing an act of such brutality that it shakes a fundamental belief in the goodness of the world. It can start with a sense of betrayal, as a superior officer issues a command that feels deeply wrong. It may originate in not being able to prevent the death of a brother or sister in arms. Or from a split-second decision made in the heat of combat–killing a child who has been set up as a human shield.
The description of moral injury rang true to me. At a very basic level, we are talking about something that is part of the human condition. Whatever our circumstances, we all have times when our actions violate our most deeply held beliefs about who we are. In church, we may call it guilt or regret; at its best, it leads us to seek forgiveness and try to change.
What makes moral injury different, it seems to me, is the intensity and brutality of war. War takes that experience of failing our deepest selves and multiplies it exponentially, to the edge of what human beings can endure.
Moral injury is not a disorder; it is a natural human response to unbearable circumstances. It is not a sign of weakness; if anything, it is an indication that a person has a strong moral compass.
Whether you have served in uniform or not, been on the front lines of war or not, I invite you to reflect on your own experience. When have your own actions violated your most deeply held beliefs about who you are? What has been, or what might be, your healing journey?
At that workshop I asked what we all agreed was an obvious question. “It seems to me that moral injury is a deeply spiritual issue, and so faith communities should be a place of healing for folks struggling with it,” I began. “And yet it seems we are the last places most veterans ever turn. What do we do about that?”
The presenters acknowledged a deep gulf of distrust. The experiences of war are so horrifying that it is hard for returning soldiers to trust anyone with their stories. They imagine people who haven’t been there themselves would be unable or unwilling to understand. They imagine being judged or being dismissed. There are no simple answers to my question.
Last week, I went over to Edwards Hall to ask Dave Heilman, the Vet Center counselor, for some resources on Moral Injury. He told me about a veteran who came home from war struggling with the things he did. He went to confession and told his priest. The priest told him he didn’t have to worry about what he had done, because he had acted in the service of his country. The veteran got up and left, never to return to church.
This veteran wasn’t looking for quick absolution to take away his pain. To say that what he did was okay felt like an even deeper betrayal of his own soul, for he knew it was not okay. This veteran was looking for someone to honor the depth of his pain, for someone to help him claim his own goodness without denying what had happened.
Dave’s story gave me pause. I immediately thought about the one line I say every Sunday: “Friends, believe the good news; in Jesus Christ we are forgiven.” I stand by my line; I believe it with my whole heart. And suddenly, I imagine how hollow my words might sound to someone struggling with moral injury, someone who has done something they experience as unforgivable. How do we convey our conviction that God’s forgiveness is without limit, while acknowledging that the journey to accept that forgiveness may be excruciatingly long?
One of the resources Dave gave me included a quote that challenges the ease with which I say some of my other favorite statements. These words come from Sergeant Brendon O’Byrne, who served in Afghanistan:
“I started thinking that God hates me…I’m not religious or anything, but I felt like there was this hate for me…. That’s the terrible thing of war. You do terrible things and you have to live with them afterwards but you’d do them the same way if you had to go back. So what do you do? It’s an evil, evil, evil thing inside your body. It’s like…good versus evil inside there…”
How would Sergeant O’Byrne hear my affirmation of our Easter faith–the assurance that God’s love is more powerful than hate and evil? Or how might he hear Ruth Carney’s beautiful words of welcome: “You are a beloved child of God and there’s nothing you can do about it”?
Both of these statements, I believe, could offer healing for Sergeant O’Byrne. Unless they are said, though, in the context of trust built from deep listening, I imagine they sound not only hollow but alienating, for they contradict his deepest experience. Only when we in the church have been quiet long enough to hear his whole story and acknowledge the depth of his moral injury, only then do these words have healing potential. How do we become trust-worthy enough to hear the stories and hold the pain? How do we begin to build a bridge across a deep gulf of mistrust?
Our gospel story speaks to that deep gulf. I imagine the man lying by the pool of Bethzatha paralyzed by moral injury. He yearns for healing, and so he stays there for 38 years, at the edge of the troubled waters that have healing powers. He has seen many people enter and come out healed, but he isn’t sure anything can heal his broken soul. He cannot wade into the waters without help; they are too treacherous to enter alone. He dares not ask anyone to help him, for he fears they will judge him unworthy, and he fears they will be right. He is paralyzed by moral injury, isolated from those who could help him face the troubled waters of his own story, waters that might set him on the road to healing.
What happens next is a mystery. Maybe there is something about the way Jesus speaks to him that allows the man to trust he will not be judged. Maybe there is something in the way Jesus looks at him that enables him to believe in his own worth, that gives him courage to confront the troubled waters. Whatever happens, something in that encounter enables the man to stand up and walk. He may still have a long journey ahead, but he is no longer paralyzed. He is no longer defined by that wound.
Healing stories in the Bible seem to happen so quickly. In our lives, in our world, most of the time they happen much more slowly. But they happen. What is your experience of the slow journey of healing? Who has been willing to accompany you into the trouble waters of your own soul? Four days a week, in the downstairs of Edwards Hall, veterans struggling with moral injury find a companion who will accompany them into the troubled waters of healing.
Dave told me about methods he uses to support veterans on the long journey toward healing; he also sent me resources. At the heart of every treatment modality for Moral Injury is patient, deep listening, resisting the temptation to minimize or explain away a person’s actions and their anguish, holding the space for them to tell their story without judgment.
Some veterans find it helpful to write letters to the people involved in an incident: a comrade they couldn’t save, an officer whose orders put them into the situation, even someone they killed. Others gain insight through a process of examining the incident and actually assigning percentages of responsibility to the different participants. That exercise helps avoid our human tendency to vacillate between two extremes: denying we are to blame at all and pretending it was all in our hands.
Dave and his colleagues encourage veterans who are struggling with Moral Injury to engage in service to others. Doing something good, they know, does not erase what happened. It does enable them to re-experience their own goodness, to claim a new self-definition that incorporates the reality of what happened in war and acknowledges that they are so much more than that.
It takes a long time to heal from moral injury. And that healing is happening.
I am so grateful that it is happening here on our campus. I am grateful that, by offering this peaceful space, we play a small part in enabling that healing. I am grateful for the ways our offering this space over the years has softened the edges of that chasm of distrust.
May we honor those who have died in the service of our country by making space for those who are living. May we listen deeply, without judgment and without dismissing another’s struggles. May we proclaim through our actions, even more than our words, that God’s forgiveness is without limit, that God’s love is more powerful than hatred, fear or evil, that each of us is a beloved child of God, and there is nothing we can do about it. Amen.