Chaplain Fisher

I've been back at work for a week now. My 20 day post-deployment vacation (most of which I have spent lazing around the house diligently) was brilliant but all good things must come to an end and so, it would seem, will chaplainfisher.com.

 

I've had a word doc sitting on my desktop for several weeks now called "last post" but it was blank as nothing significant would come to mind. Once in a while, I'd open it, try a few lines and then get interested in some other, vastly more interesting thing on the www and the "last post" would get closed. But here it is at last, the actual, honest, funeral dirge for what has been to me a good friend for the last four years.

 

I am a goal-oriented person. Most everything I put my hand to has what Powell coined as an "exit strategy." I rarely take on a project that has no clear objective. This blog was no different.

 

I started the blog in an effort to keep my family and friends informed about my new life as an Army chaplain. Back then, everything was amazing and new, fascinating and weird - the whole Army experience was changing who I was at the core and I wanted everyone I knew to be aware of it. Now, I'm thoroughly a soldier, professional clergy (as they say) and nothing much about it is new anymore. I find that the things I want to write about would be inappropriate fodder for a site that is so foundationally a site about an Army chaplain. It would be inappropriate for instance to write about politics given that as a professional soldier I am to be more or less publicly apolitical.

 

Beyond all that - I'm just kinda done writing for awhile. I've been fighting it before I went to Iraq for the second time and since then its just been like pulling teeth to put anything on the page. I may emerge again under a different, less military-oriented title but until then - thanks for coming along with me on this journey.

 

You have encouraged me when there was no encouragement.

 

You have been with me during some of the darkest, most frightening times of my life.

 

You have joined me in the most joyful times.

 

So, to you who have kept up - Thank You!

 

Before I end, the biggest thanks is in order - this site would not have been possible without my dear friend and best man in my wedding - Jesse Gardener. (Founder of Plasticmind.com) Back when I had just started this site through iblog, he was in need of some material for his portfolio and designed the original look (remember the cammo?) and hosted it on his server. Since then, its had several awesome upgrades and has moved from place to place. Now, I don't have to be the web bum any more Jesse! Thanks for everything!!

 

The site will stay up for the next couple months and then move to its permanent archive on my .mac server. I still get a lot of hits from men and women that are looking into becoming chaplains so I think I will leave it up for them. I may keep blogging from time to time, who knows - I never do...

 

So, I think it appropriate to end this blog with a blessing and encourage you to keep seeking peace above all else:

 

May the God who knows your future better than you know your past, keep you with all grace and peace. Amen.  

I'm coming home....

Hopefully, (God willing and the dust don't rise...) I'll be leaving Iraq in a day and a wake up. We've folded the colors and the 603D mission here is done. What few of us are left just sit about waiting for the cue to get on the bird to leave Baghdad.

This has given me much time to catch up on some reading and some vegging in front of the computer. I finished up "Backwater" - very scary and am knee deep in M. Scott Peck's, "Different Drum." Fascinating.

I also read an article today that I wanted to comment on from the NY Times.

Given a Shovel American Dig Deeper in Debt

"Life takes Visa"

"The American Dream - Priceless"

Really? So, in order for me to get the "American Dream" or even "Live" I have to be in debt? It would seem so from the marketing. Indeed, so many have bought this ideology that whenever it comes up and and for whatever reason I note that my wife and I made some sacrifices to get out of debt entirely, many people our own age scoff.

Why? Cause we rent a house? Cause we save up for things? Cause we choose to buy things used? Cause we put things off till we can buy them cash instead of on payments?

Here are some gems from the article:
(by the way, I'm all about people living up to the choices they make. I do NOT believe in the "victim culture" however, I also believe that many people who would capitalize on consumer's bad choices are in fact enablers of bad behavior, thus bear a great deal of the blame for the problems that plague consumers. People are responsible for their choices, however, if there are no real choices - are they still wholly to blame? Furthermore, should I the taxpayer, be forced to bail out a corporation that did the same thing? A great read about an average American entrepreneur who chose to live up to his debts instead of taking the easy way out can be found here - read the comments at the bottom of the post - great stuff!)  (my comments are bold)

Years of spending more than they earn have left a record number of Americans like Ms. McLeod standing at the financial precipice. They have amassed a mountain of debt that grows ever bigger because of high interest rates and fees.

While the circumstances surrounding these downfalls vary, one element is identical: the lucrative lending practices of America's merchants of debt have led millions of Americans -- young and old, native and immigrant, affluent and poor -- to the brink. More and more, Americans can identify with miners of old: in debt to the company store with little chance of paying up.

A reference to an old song that my dad taught us growing up...


But behind the big increase in consumer debt is a major shift in the way lenders approach their business. In earlier years, actually being repaid by borrowers was crucial to lenders. Now, because so much consumer debt is packaged into securities and sold to investors, repayment of the loans takes on less importance to those lenders than the fees and charges generated when loans are made.

Lenders have found new ways to squeeze more profit from borrowers. Though prevailing interest rates have fallen to the low single digits in recent years, for example, the rates that credit card issuers routinely charge even borrowers with good credit records have risen, to 19.1 percent last year from 17.7 percent in 2005 -- a difference that adds billions of dollars in interest charges annually to credit card bills.

The point is that the lenders, instead of recognizing the danger in bad human behavior and stopping people, decided to cash in on their addictions - of course, if this were tobacco, there would be marches in the street and class action law suits. Instead, the taxpayer is tagged to bail out Fannie Mae.

Average late fees rose to $35 in 2007 from less than $13 in 1994, and fees charged when customers exceed their credit limits more than doubled to $26 a month from $11, according to CardWeb, an online publisher of information on payment and credit cards.

Mortgage lenders similarly added or raised fees associated with borrowing to buy a home -- like $75 e-mail charges, $100 document preparation costs and $70 courier fees -- bringing the average to $700 a mortgage, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. These "junk fees" have risen 50 percent in recent years, said Michael A. Kratzer, president of FeeDisclosure.com, a Web site intended to help consumers reduce fees on mortgages.

"Today the focus for lenders is not so much on consumer loans being repaid, but on the loan as a perpetual earning asset," said Julie L. Williams, chief counsel of the Comptroller of the Currency, in a March 2005 speech that received little notice at the time.

Lenders have been eager to expand their reach. They have honed sophisticated marketing tactics, gathering personal financial data to tailor their pitches. They have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising campaigns that make debt sound desirable and risk-free. The ads are aimed at people who urgently need loans to pay for health care and other necessities.

I find this particularly interesting. I read that a new emerging market for debt companies are those that just recently went bankrupt or consolidated credit - not because they are people that will repay loans but because they are more likely to generate fees.

For decades, America's shift from thrift could be summed up in this familiar phrase: When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping. Whether for a car, home, vacation or college degree, the nation's lenders stood ready to assist.

Companies offered first and second mortgages and home equity lines, marketed credit cards for teenagers and helped college students to amass upward of $100,000 in debt by graduation.

Every age group up to the elderly was the target of sophisticated ad campaigns and direct mail programs. "Live Richly" was a Citibank message. "Life Takes Visa," proclaims the nation's largest credit card issuer.

Eliminating negative feelings about indebtedness was the idea behind MasterCard's "Priceless" campaign, the work of McCann-Erickson Worldwide Advertising, which came out in 1997.

"One of the tricks in the credit card business is that people have an inherent guilt with spending," Jonathan B. Cranin, executive vice president and deputy creative director at the agency, said when the commercials began. "What you want is to have people feel good about their purchases."

Mortgage lenders took to cold-calling homeowners to persuade them to refinance. Done to reduce borrowers' monthly payments, serial refinancings allowed lenders to charge thousands of dollars in loan processing fees, including appraisals, credit checks, title searches and document preparation fees.

As the profits in this indebtedness grew, financial companies moved aggressively to protect them, spending millions of dollars to lobby against any moves lawmakers might take to rein in questionable lending.

Just two generations ago, America was a nation of mostly thrifty people living within their means, even setting money aside for unforeseen expenses.

Today, Americans carry $2.56 trillion in consumer debt, up 22 percent since 2000 alone, according to the Federal Reserve Board. The average household's credit card debt is $8,565, up almost 15 percent from 2000.

College debt has more than doubled since 1995. The average student emerges from college carrying $20,000 in educational debt.

Household debt, including mortgages and credit cards, represents 19 percent of household assets, according to the Fed, compared with 13 percent in 1980.

Even as this debt was mounting, incomes stagnated for many Americans. As a result, the percentage of disposable income that consumers must set aside to service their debt -- a figure that includes monthly credit card payments, car loans, mortgage interest and principal -- has risen to 14.5 percent from 11 percent just 15 years ago.

By contrast, the nation's savings rate, which exceeded 8 percent of disposable income in 1968, stood at 0.4 percent at the end of the first quarter of this year, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

More ominous, as Americans have dug themselves deeper into debt, the value of their assets has started to fall. Mortgage debt stood at $10.5 trillion at the end of last year, more than double the $4.8 trillion just seven years earlier, but home prices that were rising to support increasing levels of debt, like home equity lines of credit, are now dropping.

The combination of increased debt, falling asset prices and stagnant incomes does not threaten just imprudent borrowers. The entire economy has become vulnerable to the spending slowdown that results when consumers like Ms. McLeod hit the wall.

There is a lot of talk about America being "addicted to oil" - which I would more or less agree with but the addiction to debt is destroying families every day.

Today was a long, wonderful, exciting, exhausting day. The most important thing that took place today was the baptism of three souls marking their identification with Christ. It is my favorite part of being a chaplain/minister - baptisms.

The irony of today was that this particular baptistry has been used by me before - it was sitting in front a different chapel then - there have been two chapels since that one - and now its behind the new chapel on Camp Striker, and I found myself yet again filling the tank on a bright morning.

There were some issues about this filling though. It was one of those bureaucratic things where no one took ownership of getting the water to get it filled. The end result of alot of red tape was that at 0700 on the morning of the service, Ch Godfrey, (my BDE chaplain) PFC LePage (my assistant), SPC Tate (another assistant), and myself opening hundreds of 1-liter bottles of water and pouring them into the tank. I did in fact say "hundreds..."

Filling the Tank

So there we were, our hands and wrists had gotten so tired from twisting all those caps off that, I at least, had resorted to just stabbing and slicing the bottles like I was some kind of butcher. Everyone else followed suite after that. We had gotten the tank about 3/4 of the way full when the fellow in the picture walked up and (he didn't speak english very well) wondered what we were doing. He was driving the truck that brought water tot he porta-johns. I asked him if he had any friends with some clean water (the truck said "Blue Water, Non-Potable" on the side of it). He didn't really seem to understand so CH Godfrey tried.

(Motioning to a bottle of water he asked, "Clean water?" The fellow stared blankly.
"What's the word for water?" He asked the man, determined to get though.
The man looked at Ch G like he had a screw loose, "uh...water?"

We kinda gave up after that. The porta-jon water truck guy left and returned with his friend who spoke better english. Turns out, these guys were Muslims from Macedonia and were more than happy to fill our tank with clean water. Even though it was only the last quarter of a tank - it was a blessing from on high, two minutes did what would have taken us another half an hour...

That said, when we came back at 1000 for the actual service, the stillness of the water, the men gathered there prepared to plunge in and commit to a life with Christ. It was beautiful. It was sacred. It was holy.

Reading the opening Scripture

Into the water

Up out of the water

Post Baptism Prayer

Three new souls

I had something of an epiphany tonight. During my evening prayers I read, quite randomly, Psalm 84 which included this verse:

Blessed is the man whose strength is in You,

Whose heart is set on a pilgrimage.

I wept.

I am blessed, not because of where I might arrive or what conclusions I might arrive at - I am blessed because I am on the pilgrimage.

Those who seek - find. 

This last year, an old family friend died. His memorial was last week and I was unable to make the event as I am still over here...

I am in a spiritual shift... again...

I think that most of us need to constantly be moving in our spiritual walk - our walk with God. I just finished Thomas Cahill's Desire of the Everlasting Hills and am following it up with Rabbi Lawrence Kushner's God was in this Place and I, i did not know it.

Both have been profoundly moving. Both have furthered my walk with God. Earlier, I had posted a long article about love and what that means for me. Today, I will give you a couple passages and you can draw your own conclusions.

From, Desire of the Everlasting Hills,

The Son of Man has become the Ward of all mankind. Incarnated as Jesus of Nazareth, he is, after his resurrection the principle of Jewish Justice itself, incarnated in the person of anyone and everyone who needs our help. It is ironic that some Christians make such a fuss over the elements of the Eucharist - bowing before them, kneeling in adoration because Christ is present in them - but have never bothered to heed these solemn words about the presence of Christ in every individual in need. Jesus told us only once (at the Last Supper) that he would be present in the Bread and Wine, but he tells us repeatedly in the Gospels that he would always be present in the Poor and Afflicted - to whom we should bow and kneel. It is perverse that some Christians make such a fuss over the bound text of God's Word, carrying it processionally, holding it with reverence, never allowing it to touch the ground, but have never considered seriously the text of Matthew 25, in light of which we should always catch God's Needy before they hit the ground. It sometimes seems that it is to church people in particular - to Christian Pharisees - that these words are directed. pg. 247

To those that would count themselves out because they are not Roman Catholic, you need only look to the spirit that Cahill points to in order to see yourself.

I saw me, and I have committed this sin. I have seen those with profound needs not as Christ, needing shelter, needing love - but as "one more broken soldier" I have to deal with before I can hit the rack. I have seen those that need my care and empathy not as Christ for whom I would do anything, but as "cases" and "clients."

Then I read this from Rabbi Kushner: (The book is a "midrash" a Jewish homiletic on Gen. 28:10-16 and focuses its attention on Jacob's words when he awoke from his dream, "Surely God was in this place and I, i did not know!" The book focuses on spirituality in a Jewish context and looks at the passage from 7 different Rabbi's perspectives. I have had to read each chapter twice to fully grasp the meaning...) Several thoughts from various pages in the first chapter.  

What Jacob is saying here essentially is, "If I had known [that God would have been here], I wouldn't have gone to sleep in such a holy place!"

The beginning of knowing about God, in other words, is simply paying attention, being fully present where you are, or as Rashi suggests, waking up. We realize, like Jacob, that we have been asleep. We do not see what it happening all around us. For most of us, most of the time, the lights are on and nobody is home.

Right now for instance, you are a reader. You are consuming these words and the ideas they bear. But suppose you were a typographer, then you would also notice the shapes of the letters. Suppose you were a poet. A paper manufacturer. A blind person. A composer. We find what we seek. And we seek who we are.

Perhaps Jacob thought, "If God was here and I didn't know, then perhaps God has been other places also..."

Spirituality then, is that dimension of living in which we are aware of God's presence. It is being concerned with how what we do affects God and how what God does affects us... it is about patience and paying attention, about seeing, feeling, and hearing things that were only a moment ago inaccessible.

{The world around us is so complicated and loud} We must therefore create an elaborate system of filters, lenses, and blinders to screen out the extraneous images, leaving us with a very small field of vision. {And we build a world that shuts out everything we don't want to see. Instead of the poor and needy who are Christ, we see welfare queens and drug adicts. Instead of broken souls suffering with no recourse we see the weak, complaining lot that needs to go out and get a job and contribute to society instead of tearing apart our precious social structure. In the words of Scrooge, "are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?"} {my thoughts}  

God said to Moses, "Come up to Me on the mountain and be there." If Moses were to ascend the mountain, why would God also bother to specify that he "be there?" Where else would he be? The answer, suggests the Rabbi, is that people often expend great effort climbing a mountain, but once they get there, they're not there; they're somewhere else.

Whenever I seem to get to the top of the mountain and get some perspective on life, it does not take long for me to "be somewhere else." I'm not sure that the Army is where I'll be for the rest of my ministry. I'm not sure what the future holds but one thing I am endeavoring to do right now:

Be where I am.

 

 

 

 

Whew, busy week. I'm bushed.

 

I took this morning off just to sleep in and rest a little. Its been that kind of week. I've literally counseled from the time I get to work in the morning to the time I go home at night. It's the first time since I got here that I've had people waiting to see me while I was dealing with another soldier. All week long, there were soldier's waiting to see me when I got to the office in the morning. Feels good to be needed, but man, does it wear me out!

 

Last year, at Stewart, I was having lunch with the Family Life Chaplain and we were talking about the future (a common topic among soldiers, the present being so tragic that one tends to talk about the future for the hope I think) and the career path that one can take in the Army. In the chaplain corps, when you finish your battalion time, you can go right up to a brigade or you can get another master's and do a three-year "utilization tour" as a family life chaplain (marriage counselor), ethics instructor, world religions instructor and researcher, or resource management. There are a few other things you can do in that time, different schools you can take - a common one is Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE)  and become a hospital chaplain - not something I ever really want to do, but a great ministry nonetheless.

 

So, we're talking about which of those paths might be good for me to walk down and he made an interesting observation about ministry. Often, I think that ministers (at least I do) feel a little guilty when (if they can be this honest) they admit that they don't like a certain part of their ministry. They love Jesus and they love ministry, but one part of it is really not their cup of tea. He noted that when he went through CPE, he really didn't like it all that much. When he got home at the end of the day, he was absolutely exhausted. He was tired from emoting and absorbing all that pain. However, he found that when he was counseling, he was energized! He could counsel all day and, though tired, still had it in him to counsel more. I completely understand. For me, counseling is exhausting. Maybe I don't have good boundaries or something but basically, I'm like a sponge and I just absorb all the pain that whoever I'm counseling emotes. They'll come in and start off with their particular tragedy and I listen. I try to put together a rough timeline and understand what happened, what their emotions are - and how that affects them. Then we try to work toward a workable solution. 

Today I sent out an email to the families of my unit. I thought it might be a help to others in that position and to give Christians something to pray about as these families that have not seen each other in 15 months prepare to get back together. The Reunion Questionnaire refered to in the entry can be downloaded here: 

Reunion Questionnaire.doc

Here were my thoughts:

Hey Everybody! 

Greetings from sunny, dusty Camp Striker! Everyone here is working diligently to get everything done that needs doing since very soon we'll be packing it all up!! Are you excited yet? Nervous? Have you started thinking and planning the parties, events, or vacations you're going to take? Do you fear what your Soldier might have become in the last year? Are you nervous that this reunion might be just one more unfulfilled expectation in your relationship?

 

That's what this email is all about - preparing for the dreaded, terrible, awesome, exciting, happy, sad, indifferent, scary, overwhelming, joyful oncoming reunion...

 

 

 

I have a confession to make.

 

I don't know why I confess things online. I really don't. Maybe it has something to do with responsibility of it, maybe its some kind of penance that I feel that I need to do in order to atone for my sin, or at least what I've though was sin. Whenever I post something like this, I know what the response is going to be, at least I think I do. People will shake their head and attribute it to being in Iraq, far from home. I suppose that's true on some level. When I'm deployed I have plenty of time to think. I have time to remember, regret, embrace, expand, acknowledge, appreciate, miss, and love.  It makes sense that during these times of being the desert, I would verbalize the feelings of my heart that tend to be anesthetized back at home by copious amounts of television and business.

 

Who knows - here it is anyway.

 

I don't like to read the Bible. I never have. I really want to. I just never have.

 

Its so freeing to admit that. I don't even know why. The other night in-between sparing in the ring, I said that to my friend. I forget what we were talking about but I was like - "yeah, I really don't like reading the Bible. I find it just hard reading. It takes a lot of effort for me to read Scripture." He was aghast. He looked at me in disbelief, "but you're the chaplain..." He went on and on for a while. I started to fee guilty, like I was leading him down a road that would end up with selling drugs to kids or something.

 

Later that night, while we were talking, I (thinking out loud as I do, it tends to get me into trouble) reflected on why I feel that way about the Sacred Text. I have always loved the Bible, I have always enjoyed studying the Word, but reading it?

 

Therein, I think, lies the central issue. The Bible has always been to be something that we memorized as a family, it was a book that we read and reflected on. It has always carried a academic feeling to me. When I hear the grand Kings English (the 1611 KJV - is there anything else?), I think of warm moments around a woodstove in our farmhouse, furious debates in the basement of the men's dorm at Fairhaven, mind-numbing hours in Greek class, chapel's at the Dale Horton where I would pinch my fingers in the pages to stay awake, hours of classroom time instructing from its pages. The Word of God has always been a book to honor, study, yea, even worship. Spirituality is defined by how much you knew about it. I mean, you might feel something, but that's not important - what does the Bible mean?? That's real the issue!

 

I've found that my Bible College and Seminary training was limited, as such education is naturally. All three post-high school institutions I attended came from their particular background and taught me to see life from that perspective. Each of them taught a particular hermeneutic as the foundation for truth. All truth was built on certain texts. If one truth was found to be not true - certainly the rest of the teaching would be suspect and could in fact be faulty. Truth is/was seen as one of those Jenga games where if you pulled one brick from the stack, the whole thing would come tumbling down.

 

Thing is, truth is so much bigger than that. Its so much more colorful.

 

A passage might actually have another interpretation that might actually be as true as the other. Two people can read the same passage in Scripture, be lead down entirely different paths and still both love Jesus.

 

I still don't much like sitting down and reading the Bible. My wife got me Eugene Peterson's The Message for Christmas. We started reading through it. For the first time I think, I found that I enjoyed reading the Bible. I looked forward to wading through a text.

 

Then I got deployed and here I am reading book after book about the Bible and have yet to crack it without the need to study it. Its not all that bad you know, only studying the Bible. Thousands of successful pastors do it every week.

 

Only, I don't want to read the Bible just to prepare a great message. I need it to speak to me. I need it to transform me. I need it to be what so many have said that it is - a living book! I need to want to read it.

 

In that feeling I think I have the want to. In fact, I know that I do.

 

I'm reading more now. There are days that I enjoy it, but sometimes, its still hard to get thought Leviticus...