Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be always acceptable in thy sight, oh Lord, my strength and my redeemer.  Amen.

Before I begin, I’d like to make a small disclaimer - as all persons attempting cleverly to speak on an issue of political importance might do.  I am a writer, a playwright.  When posed with interesting psychological or political issues, I can create fictional characters to live out those dynamics.  When I relate to conflicting views, I can even create two separate persons to battle out my own inner disagreements, and its fascinating and cathartic.  That is the great beauty and safety of fiction.  When dealing with reality, however, the characters are much more tenuous.  When talking about one’s life to real people, and without the aid of fictional characters, you can experience a similar catharsis, but it’s terrifying as well - you want the words to be exact, the sentiments precise.  But, I’m still a man in process - a 25 year old kid, actually.  A kid who’s been around the block, but I’m just the guy you played soccer against when you were eight, you sat behind in home room.  These words tonight are a snapshot of how I’ve dealt with the profound questions of warfare and violence.  But they’re just that, a snapshot.  I’m still coming to terms with what I experienced in Iraq, I’m certainly not a finished product.  But, I’m okay with that.  I’m not trying anything new or fancy.  I’m simply asking what every other Christian who’s passed through history has also had to ask: as a follower of Christ, what does it mean to be authentic?

A few days ago, one of my closest friends was asked to co-officiate the funeral of his grandfather.  Unordained, he extended layman’s hands toward a cold shell of a man, anointed his forehead, and prayed for the Lord’s favor.  Joseph’s grandfather had not been a very religious man.  Somewhat dazed already to the tragedy of that moment, I chuckled actually and told Joseph of a not too different time when I had been asked to be priest - to hear a confession.  A fellow soldier, then taking six separate medications for post traumatic stress disorder, knelt in a male toilet stall while I heard his confession in a Fort Gordon latrine.

Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. I have never confessed, he said to me.

Reacting on the fly to a most peculiar request, I did not wish to turn away this hurting friend from his moment of penitence, not knowing how many more similar opportunities would arise.  I told him I would do my best, and pray as God might lead me.  When John emerged from the stall, I too extended layman’s hands toward a cold shell of a man. Perhaps that had been the most alive John had been in months, though. I gave him a hug and promised that I would walk him through the penance I had suggested for him.  Weeks later, though, I found myself wrestling John over a bottle of gin amidst shouts and clutching and paranoid hands.

This is the fragmentary world we live in.  Laymen praying the prayers of priests, and dead men walking as if alive.  But I understand John’s anguish and Joseph’s faith, to pray in the hopes that a timeless God might have mercy upon words we might also need for ourselves.

Look upon me with favor, Lord. Absolve the sins I am still learning how to confess.

John and I both served in the 202nd Military Intelligence Battalion.  We were both trained as interrogators and as Arabic linguists.  We had both studied philosophy.  We had both studied Greek and literature.  John did his Honors Thesis project on the book of Job - I did mine creatively on Ecclesiastes.  I was assigned to the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center, Abu Ghraib, Iraq.  John was a member of a Mobile Interrogation Team, and had spent time in Baghdad, Fallujah, Ramadi and Tikrit.  For days on end, John waded through corpses and rubble.  His mission once: “finger print” the bodies of Iraqis in the aftermath of the assault upon Fallujah.  John translated for Marines and Special Forces units who interrogated with tools like hammers and clutched fists.  Once John tried to turn himself in as a committer of atrocities, but he was ignored.  He was unconfessed, and he knew no prayers.

Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. I have never confessed.

For months in Iraq, I prayed the daily offices.  This was an outlet John did not comprehend, but I fled continually to prayer for my strength.  The Rosary, the Magnificat, the Prayers for the People, and of course my own self-scripted dialogues with God.  Morning and Evening and Noontime alike, I knelt alone, lit candles, sang.  Often Chaplains could not make it to the prison due to convoy difficulties and security concerns.  Sometimes I would pray the Mass liturgy in their absence, and linger for an hour or more with my head upon my book of prayer, the silence pounding upon me.  Not for long, however - as silence often transformed itself into the daily mortar attacks and explosions on neighboring roads.  But these times were my own.  It was an entire world unto itself.  I lived in a church of self-creation and improvisation.  My unit began calling me “priest” and “holy father” because I was always found either in the prison’s makeshift chapel, or alone saying the daily liturgy.  But that was a world altogether different from the one that existed between my moments of seclusion and prayer.  I was, after all, a soldier at war.  I was an interrogator.

The first three weeks of any incoming interrogator are pretty much the same.  You want to believe in what you’re doing.  It doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from, you look for a way to get through what you’re doing.  So, you look across the interrogation table in order to right a wrong.  You look with the eyes of justice for an evil to be rectified.  Sometimes it’s a decision of conscience, sometimes a decision of necessity.  Each morning I rose.  I prayed my prayers.  I donned my M-16 and body armor.  I walked to my interrogation booth.  I met my enemy.  I searched his mind like a thirsty man in a desert, and like a runner at a race’s finish line, each day I collapsed again upon my knees, kneeling before an altar of cardboard, cutout icons, and rosaries made of ranger beads, praying for the strength to get through another day - to find justice, to be the servant of justice.

And day after day I prayed a prayer which, little by little, began to dominate all of my moments of solitude.

My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.  For he hath regarded the lowliness of his handmaiden: for, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.  For he that is mighty hath magnified me; and holy is his name.  And his mercy is on them that fear him throughout all generations. He hath shewn strength with his arm; and hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.  He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and hath exalted the humble and meek.  He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away.  He hath holpen his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy; As he spake to our forefather Abraham, and to his seed for ever.

Raised as an Evangelical, the transformation of my Marian prayer life came by almost complete surprise.  But, these were the prayers that I fled to, that helped fashion my experiences when my own words seemed almost untrustworthy.  I didn’t know how to pray exactly.  I’d never been to war, I’d never had to comprehend the feeling of talking face to face with whom one refers to generally as “the enemy”.

Hail, Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.

That was a prayer I could comprehend.  I hoped to be molded by the prayers of the Church, rather than simply praying for my own needs, as I saw those needs to be myself.  This was a crossroads where I did not trust myself to properly gauge what those needs actually were.  One does not think clearly when bombed on a regular basis.  One does not think clearly under threat.  You think for survival, you think for safety.  But as CS Lewis has told us, Aslan isn’t safe, he’s good.  I knew that I needed to pray for something greater than my own safety.  I needed to find some way of praying for truth, and to seek a way for that truth to shape me - even in the midst of threat.

During my first three weeks of mandatory naivete - that is, the time before a soldier starts learning how things really work in combat - I read an article distributed by my interrogation center about comparative psychology and the challenges of Westerners in interrogating Arab males.  It talked about the differences between a shame-based society and a guilt-based society.  This article loosely described Western society as guilt based - that is, we’re a society where wrong is determined by a broad and systematic legal code and the guilt incurred by breaking that code.  The article described Arab society as shame based, which is more social in the understanding of whether a given act brings shame upon oneself and one’s family.  In a shame based society, so said this article, the interpretation of a code of ethics by a community plays a larger role in determining “wrong” than the actual code of ethics itself.  The real wrongs committed in a shame based society are the ones done to your loved ones - acts that shame them.

Many Western interrogators revel in frustration over a feeling that goes like, “Don’t these people understand laws?  Don’t they understand logic?”  I, on the other hand, read this article and instinctively related more to the description of the shame based society.  When I was eleven, I got caught shoplifting with two of my little hoodlum friends.  Of course breaking the law was a grave mistake, but it was walking through the front door of my home and staring into the disappointed eyes of my mother that instructed me of what matters.  When I walked into the interrogation booth, I saw men whose families knew they had been imprisoned.  More than a few had done plenty to earn their stay.  One flat out told me he would kill me if he had the chance.  He said he’d come to kill people like me, and would try again if God granted him such an honor.  Other times, however, I’d stare across the table at taxi drivers, at local laborers, at school boys, at young fathers, at Imams, and at veterans of previous Iraqi wars.  I was the main interrogator once of five breadwinners who had been taken from one home.  In a patriarchal, war-time economy, that could have just as easily spelled death for the family members of these five men.

And these were the faces and stories of enemies I took with me into my moments of solitude and prayer.

He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and hath exalted the humble and meek.  He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away.

A few months into my time in Iraq and I could barely open my prayer book to state words.  Who was the mighty?  Who were the humble and meek?  One day at mass, the priest gave a homely on the parable of Lazaras, and the rich man who ate sumptuously while Lazaras lay starving outside his door.  That day, like all others at Abu Ghraib, I ate my meals at the dining facility.  I looked around the hall, at the food which was available to me, thinking to myself what the family of these five men were doing while I ate buffet style.  Or, I’d return to my barracks room and see the rows of boxes of goodies sent from the States - entire boxes of snacks that would usually get thrown away, because soldiers couldn’t possibly eat them all.

The next day I interrogated a man accused of attacking coalition forces.  He laughed at me, and asked, “Who can do this?  Let’s say I take one soldier, or even one tank.  You bring back five jets and ten tanks.”  Revelation 13 crossed my mind and the awe and terror of those asking, Who can wage war against the beast, who brings fire to fall from the sky?  Fighter jets raged across the Fallujah sky that week.  The earth shook for miles as pay load after pay load came down upon that city.  And my friend John collected finger prints of the nameless amidst the rubble.

After about four months there were nights sometimes where I’d lay in bed for over an hour, waiting for the motivation to pray.  Book and Bible upon my chest, I’d pray for the ability to pray the prayers which had shaped my first few months.  But a time came when I could no longer withstand the contradiction between the prayers of my solitude the duties of my hours spent with the enemy.  What am I truly praying, when I repeat the Marian declaration of the coming of the Just One - the One who will elevate the poor and the downtrodden.  Am I saying these things so that I might remain all the more secure?

When I traveled outside the prison walls on convoys, terror surged through my heart.  I was not afraid of being killed.  I had accepted that fate already, and found peace with God over the possibility of my death. 

If you live by the sword, by the sword shall you die. 

If I died with a loaded rifle, I could not be angry with God.  The terror that filled me when leaving the prison walls was the possibility of being one who kills.  Once while driving slowly, just outside the perimeter of the Baghdad International Airport, I pointed my rifle as I always did, out the window of our armored humvee.  Through the sites of my rifle I saw the faces of three young shepherd boys - probably eight years old, each.  I realized that I had just pointed a loaded weapon at three eight-year-old boys, all of whom I’d made eye contact with.  I can still see them passing by me, as if in slow motion.

How would they remember that encounter?  Were they used to weapons?  Had they, too, grown accustomed to living in threat?  How was I, an ambassador of the love of Jesus Christ, supposed to recall that day?

Be prepared always to proclaim the hope that is within you, says St. Paul.

It was my sin mostly that came to mind when leaving the prison walls.  What was yet unconfessed?  Who had I not reconciled with?

Lord, please do not let this trigger pull.

Every time we safely concluded convoys, I’d thank God for keeping my rounds chambered in my rifle.  Before I even thanked God for my own safety, I thanked him for keeping me from taking life.  There has to be something beyond this.  Christ came to set the captives free.  How can I talk of the freedom of Christ, while playing the role of captor and inquisitor?  How can I talk of faith when I only move from place to place by means of guns pointed in all directions - even at eight-year-old shepherd boys.

I acquired deep admiration for this exasperated people.  Waiting in line for gasoline for four entire days.  Fathers and brothers being incarcerated without cause.  Individuals who had previously lived non descript lives being seduced by violent causes because it provided meaning to their suffering.  I think of this emasculated generation of Iraqis whose oppression was crushed by a foreign army, but then whose daily lives were secured by that same foreign presence.  When do I get to take care of my own?  When do I get to be a man and provide for what is my own?

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the Hour of our death.

The issues escalate.  The prayers become more incomprehensible.  Is this the result of Calvary?  I want to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the Living.  The Psalmist says he would have lost all hope had this not been his yearning.  Where are those who will pray for those who persecute them?  Where are those who Paul commends when the goods of their homes are ravaged by violent men, and they do no violence in turn?  When comes the day when I can look a Muslim extremist in the eyes and say, There is an answer to the cycle of vengeance you are found within!  I will show you a more perfect way.  Lay down your violence!

In a play I have been writing about my experiences of war, and the battle of returning to life afterward, a character James talks about the question everyone asks of war vets: what was it like?  James responds,

You can’t really ask things like, “What was it like?”  Doesn’t matter.  From the  moment you hear ’em say, “lock and load” you’re in a totally different world.  You  start experiencing things in hand-me-down phrases.  People and places come at you, and it’s almost like on TV.  Your heart goes numb because you’re trying to feel with things like your hands, your lungs and your eyes.  So you bring a lot of those hand-me-downs with you - those times when, those people who.  Guess it’s how you try to make sense of it all.  When things get crazy, it helps to have something to hold onto.   But you can’t really ask things like, “what was it like?”  It still is.  You don’t really  come back.  It comes back with you.  Who you seen.  Who seen you.  It’s the things  you can’t quite see, though, that return worst.  Because you can’t return to who you  were.  (Pause) They say that salvation is living in eternity.  I heard though that  eternity might also be like living fully present.  Fighting for that present is the battle  of the return.  Sometimes you go forward, and sometimes behind.  So, I don’t mean to  dodge the question.

In a way, James is more honest about the issues than I have been.  We all dodge the question a bit.  That question, “what was it like?” can only really be seen in how it changes the people we have and will become.  My friend John didn’t have prayers.  In a way this gave him peace for a time.  He was not haunted by the perfection that came off my lips.  And yet, as my conscience became wounded by my words, I experienced a liberty that eluded John as I began to submit to what I was praying.  I too went numb when first I heard them tell me, “lock and load”.  But the wound I suffered in prayer gave life through the sufficiency of God’s grace.  When circumstance turned me numb, God used pain to tell me I was still alive.  I began to believe, in a way I had not previously comprehended, that the Just One had indeed already come.  That there was indeed a way for me to look the extremist in the eyes and say, Follow me, let us take this path together you and I.

I think of the others like John, reeling in anxiety, suffering from PTSD, fingers clutched around a bottle. The vacuum of meaning is severe.  “What was it all for?” we all asked.  They pinned medals upon us, which my friends and I wanted to lock away from sight.  We were told we were the best, but no one could tell us why.  And we all have our memories - the rubble, the fingerprints, the shepherd boys.  And like my friend Joseph, we speak now with an authority we know is not quite our own yet, but we search for the words, and we search for meaning; praying that a timeless God might grant us grace and look upon us with favor, even though we feel cold, shells of men and women.

Cast down your burdens, and I will give you rest.  I give you peace, my peace I give you.

And now we pray that God look not upon our sin, but on the faith of His Church.  I have to believe there is a more perfect way.  And every day I meditate upon the same thought with which I opened this evening:

Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be always acceptable in thy site, oh Lord, my strength and my redeemer.  Amen.