Quaker Theology #14

The Importance of Context -- Page 2

We met in a children’s hospital in Viet Nam. We didn’t know each other long (barely a year), but long enough for Rick to help me deconstruct what I was now having troubles with. It became clear I was not saving the world for democracy, but instead helping in my own small way with the war effort. He didn’t judge me, but over the time I knew him he began to judge himself pretty harshly. There was enough of that going around in those days for everyone.

Rick was a tall, good looking, friendly guy like many of the Quaker youth I have met since then. Engaged, articulate, privileged, and committed to living out his Quakerism. To say he changed my life would be an understatement. He seemed to carry with him a quiet center. In the midst of chaos he carried within himself the most intimate relationship with God. Somehow in his growing up he learned to come to that deep place of peace that many Friends I have met since seem to have found.

And that deep place of peace was a challenge to both my life and my commitment to war. The amazing thing was that Rick never once confronted me. It was his incredible acceptance of me that won me over. I fell in love with him. This was the first example in my life of a spiritual relationship, made all the more important by the way many American youth were treating me. The words "baby killer" still haunt me.

My commanding officer was beside himself. He ordered me not to talk or correspond with Rick. The CO saw my questions, questions sparked by Rick’s acceptance of me, as disloyalty. The disconnect between what I thought I was fighting for, Rick’s analysis, and my CO’s attitude was stark. Rick wasn’t helping matters much as he struggled with confusion and anger at America. It was a difficult time. Honesty led to anger, frustration and rigidity. We both struggled with it.

Rick would die in Viet Nam. They say his plane went down in a storm, but I believe "friendly fire" was responsible. I have no evidence for that. Perhaps it is my symbolic way of coming to terms with his death. To this day, when I think of his death I tear up. More than anyone I knew, he struggled to come to that place where he loved so completely there was no room left for hatred. I needed to find that place behind his anger and frustration.

Eventually I asked my commanding officer for conscientious objector status and a chance to get a degree from Iowa State University. It wasn’t easy. The Navy refused to talk with me about it. At first they ignored me, then they threatened to ship me off to the most dangerous of duties in the Navy, the river boat patrols. I knew what my chances of surviving that were. I didn’t care. What they did or did not do seemed to not have any connection with me at all.

I thought of going to Canada. Instead, I became very sick. I had a extremely high fever for which there seemed to be no cause. I became delirious, began hallucinating and was hospitalized. Finally after a few days, the fever broke, and with it any connection to my former life. I simply refused to return. I decided not to go to Canada and to simply wait for them to arrest me.

When arrest did not come, I thought I was a deserter. I lived with the thought that I had probably been given a dishonorable discharge or might be arrested at any time. I forgot about it and went on to live my life. Years later, after my mother’s death, I found among her possessions that the Navy had given me an honorable discharge. To this day I have no idea why. It’s a complete mystery and how like it was of my mother to not ever tell me!

So I worked on getting a degree and learning more about Quakerism. I joined Rick’s Meeting in Ames and I eventually got a degree in English from Iowa State University. I went to graduate school there and became a father. Later I got a graduate degree in mathematics, but that’s another long story. After a long life it becomes a choice about which of our many stories to tell people. I’m trying to place my Quakerism in context, so I’m leaving out the stories that might be more interesting. You’ll have to ask me about the details when you see me.

I finally was able to pursue a degree in mathematics when I got over feeling I wasn’t a very good mathematician. It was a long struggle. Suffice it to say my mathematics and the war in Viet Nam planted me firmly in the Universalist camp. I guess I’d call myself at the time an agnostic or Buddhist Friend. When I thought of God I thought of God as being the sum total of all possibilities. As a logician I learned Gödel’s Theorem and realized that in any sufficiently complex system there will always be true things which can not be proved to be true and false things which can not be disproved. Mathematically, God is in the space beyond proof.

I sometimes wish that were enough for me. I find great strength in Universalist Friends who do not need a personal God and who are able to sense the movement of the Spirit through the World. I haven’t been able to find that kind of strength in my life. The first time I fell in love with a man and it was reciprocated, I realized that I needed a more personal God.

I had always heard that God was love, but I had no idea what that meant. I had gone for a few months to a Hindu monastery in Chicago. I also played with Zen Buddhism, attending several week long sesshin, or periods of intensive zazen meditation. Yet my friendship with Rick, perhaps my love for Rick, shaped my religious beliefs in ways I can only guess at. He showed me what it meant to give one’s life for love.

The first time I had sex with a man, months after Rick died, I stayed awake all night in wonder. So this was what it was to love. For the first time I understood what it might mean to give one’s life for another. It suddenly made sense. I walked around on air for a week. Not only was I not racked with guilt, I floated on a sea of love. Forever after, sex and religion would be intimately connected for me. The vague concept of Christian love now had meaning and I fell in love with Jesus as I learned to love other men. It has been that way with me. Each human relationship, each experience of touching another human being, has deepened by longing for Jesus.

Later I fell in love again, only with a woman. I learned that love seemed to have no boundaries in my life and I began to sense a great need to connect with the Love that underlies all creation.

Context is important. Perhaps now that you know a little about me you can understand why I can not find such Love without a belief in a personal God in whose arms I hope to surrender through death, as a bride relaxes into her bridegroom’s arms. Each relationship in my life has made Jesus’ embrace more and more real.

I recognize this is my journey and no one else’s. Each of us has our own faith journey and I think we get into trouble when we try to make everyone else walk down the same path. There are many paths and all of them involve running quickly down easy trails, only to turn the corner and find a rocky section with many miss-steps and stumblings. I find great strength in a personal Christ who is for me a companion on the path, who has endured the pain of the cross and so can comfort me in my own pain, who understands that Love demands the acceptance of pain as part of the journey. For me, Christ calls me to this radical discipleship.

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