I had never planned on falling in love with a Jewish girl.  I actually didn’t really restrict myself to any particular religious tradition when considering who to date.  I grew up knowing that my mom was raised Protestant and my Dad was raised Catholic.  Their situation is definitely more common than mine, but still was a challenge and I grew up feeling as though their ‘mixed’ marriage was something that helped me to be open minded and accepting of difference.  When I started dating my wife I didn’t plan on marrying her, but it soon became clear that I didn’t want to be with anyone else.  From the very moment that feeling was shared between us we started to deal with some very serious questions that, from what I can tell, many couples do not discuss until after the wedding, if at all.  We had to talk about religion and what it meant to us.  It was a challenge for both of us.  Luckily she had been to Mass and knew a pretty good amount about Catholicism and I had studied Judaism so we had a little bit of context. What became clear is that religion is not defined by the institutions we identify with but the personal connection we find within those institutions.

She would ask me questions and I realized that I was trained very well to answer these questions - even though I did not fully understand the answers.  My wife found it much more difficult to explain what it meant to ‘be Jewish.’  I began to understand that struggling with identity and wrestling with questions is a huge part of the Jewish tradition.  Having answers for everything is almost counter-intuitive to the Jewish imagination.  As we had these conversations we both started to explore our own traditions with new eyes.  This process continues, and it has enriched both of our lives in ways we could not have imagined.

Another aspect of our interfaith courtship was encountering the limits of ‘traditional’ religious ideas.  To this day, whenever we share our dual-faith relationship, everyone has to ask a follow-up question, “how does that work?”  Or suggesting that one of us converts.  It isn’t easy facing suspicion at the very premise of the most important relationship in your life.  What was especially frustrating was reading priests and rabbi’s talking about how interfaith marriages are destructive to tradition and threaten the integrity of the Tradition.

My wife has been involved in the local Jewish federation, and even worked for them for a little bit.  She is really committed to the Jewish community and really wants to be involved as much as she can.  About six months before our wedding she started writing for a blog for Jewish young adults in the city.  When she was asked to write, she told them that she would probably write about her interfaith relationship.  They agreed and she wrote a few articles.  A couple of them were about our relationship, but some were about other issues she faced as a young Jewish woman.

One day she wrote an article about a Catholic-Jewish couples group we had attended.  The group was a place to talk about the issues facing interfaith couples and perhaps share some solutions.  Among other things, we discussed the issue of raising children.  The woman who ran the group shared that she and her Orthodox Jewish husband had raised their three children in both traditions.  Her story gave many of us hope and some ideas about what our life could be.  When she submitted the article she got an email back that said that they could not publish the article because it was too controversial.  My wife and I were both incredibly hurt, not only because they knew this is what she would write about but also because if the purpose of the blog is to engage young Jewish people, these are the kinds of real issues that they are dealing with.

This is the most extreme example of something we have experienced, especially from the Jewish community.  A majority of Jewish leaders reject the notion of inter-marriage because of some fear that it will destroy the integrity of the Jewish community.  The problem is that anyone who has been on J-Date knows that finding a partner who fulfills you in every way a spouse should, and is also Jewish, is incredibly difficult.  The reality is that the Jewish community is losing people who would otherwise be involved, because they condemn their choice of spouse.

Obviously these issues are much more complicated than I can explain here but, since I have been engaged to my wife, I have felt like I am part of some group of outlaws.  I hesitate to share my wife’s religious identity with people out of fear that they might treat me as less Catholic because I didn’t force her to convert for me.  Fortunately most people in the Catholic Church that I have met have been incredibly supportive.  We were married by a Priest and a Rabbi, both of whom we felt connected to and we continue to explore the dynamics of an Inter-faith marriage.  I don’t know what the future holds for us, but I know that as long as I face it with my wife, I don’t have to worry about anything.

My sister was born in 1986 with Down Syndrome. If she had been born in the 50's or 60's she could have easily ended up in an institution but thankfully my mom and dad wanted to give her all the opportunities they could. I was born two years later. Having my sister in my family has been a huge blessing and I can't imagine her having any other life than the one she has lived. My mom has worked hard to make sure that Bridget was fully included in all of her academics through high school and now has a full adult life. My mom has also used what she has learned to help other families and people with disabilities gain greater acceptance in schools. As the state was putting together a team to help people transition out of the institutions into community based support systems, they called my mom to help facilitate person centered plans. I was lucky enough to help with this process the last few weeks. We drove down to Jacksonville, IL to meet with a number of individuals with disabilities and their staff support team.

Each person was different and each brought with them their own challenges and gifts. Some of them had significant language challenges and behavior problems that were hard to navigate. Some were capable of a relatively normal life with a job, social life, and real community. The major aspect of the person center planning process is dreaming. This is what seemed to be the most difficult part of the institutional environment. As much as these people were cared for and even happy to some extent, they had very few dreams for themselves and the only people in their lives were paid to be there and so no one had aspirations for these people beyond the most basic care. My mom and I had to stretch ourselves to think of dreams for these people we didn't even know. These individuals had been cut off from their families and natural relationships and put into a clinical environment that lacked the kind of creativity, which can only come from genuine relationships.

The experience has made me reflect on how important community is to human dignity and fulfillment. One of the most attractive aspects of organized religions is their capacity for community. When talking to these individuals about what they want out of life, participation is a faith community was a common desire. I've known many people with disabilities who have found strength and acceptance in their faith communities. My sister reads the bible more than anyone else I know. She always asks me about different characters and stories that shes been reading and I don't always know the passages she is referring to. She is someone that takes her faith seriously and yet our home parish has no program to support her and so she attends a bible study at another church. Christian congregations generally don't have a good grasp on how to incorporate people with disabilities. The bible study that my sister goes to is a special group, only for people with developmental delays and cognitive disabilities. There are a lot of programs out there with similar models. The problem is that they simply create a separate but equal kind of system where people with disabilities have to participate in a parallel congregation. I haven't seen any programs that have really incorporated people with disabilities in to the main parish programming.

The one exceptional model is that of the L'arche community. This is a movement that started in Canada when a man named Jean Vanier invited two people with disabilities into his home. The mission of L'arche is to create a relational based support system for people with disabilities. For those individuals who have spent their lives in state institutions, life have been a series of diagnoses and technical relationships that are really just maintaining life. What L'arche does is change the nature of those relationships so that the individuals with disabilities are given the opportunity to grow, change, and develop real adult relationships that are built on a mutuality between caregiver and care receiver. The housemates all participate in making the community better and they all share their lives and faith. Though traditionally a Christian organization, the L'arche community here in Chicago has recently accepted its first Jewish resident. I was blessed to be able to attend their first interfaith Seder. What was remarkable was the depth of understanding and the profound dialogue that was happening between these people who have varying levels of cognitive aptitude. As faith communities, it is our duty to embrace the most vulnerable members of society. This is why there are so many programs that try to serve the mentally challenged but what really needs to happen is a shift in attitude. It's not enough for a congregation to minister to people with disabilities; we need to create an environment where individuals with disabilities are encouraged and welcome to minister to their congregation in a fully inclusive and respectful way. As these individuals move out of state institutions, I hope that their faith communities will be able to welcome them into the fullness of religious experience.

This image, of a person unrelated to me, was accessed by way of Creative Commons, in accordance with specifications from Google Image results, designating this as a photo "labeled for commercial reuse with modification."

The Seventh Crusade (courtesy of Utah State University attribution via Wikimedia Commons)

For a long time I would cringe at the sound of the word “mission.” To me it represented the worst of the Christian tradition. I associated it with conquistadors and pushy missionaries, trying to “save” the heathens in the jungle, or islands, or wherever the godless masses resided.

I had experiences with some evangelical and fundamentalist groups that would go to Florida for spring break and just start talking to people about Jesus and the Bible. I even was solicited by a man whose car trunk was full of Bibles. We ended up getting in an argument about the Christian concept of justification. This kind of experience is even more real for people of other religions and is a large part of the burden of history that accompanies interfaith dialogue. As a Roman Catholic, my tradition has a spotty history when it comes to mission and I have worked hard to avoid using that language, but I think it is time we reclaim this word.

As an undergraduate, I participated in what we called “service immersion trips.” These were exactly what they sounded like, a group of students traveling to an impoverished community in order to serve and immerse ourselves in the struggles of the marginalized. I know that many universities have their own versions of this; sometimes they are called “alternative spring breaks” or something akin to that. I used to think it was so cool that they used this kind of progressive language instead of “mission trip.” I still think these titles have power but I believe it is time for Christian institutions and organizations to reclaim the language of mission in order to draw it out of its current associations.

The Decree on the Church's Missionary Activity from the Second Vatican Council states that “the Church on earth is by its very nature missionary.” This is a powerful statement because it describes mission as something that supersedes any religious tradition or structure. God's mission is not bound within the confined of the Church, the Church is instead in service of the mission. To me this means that we cannot continue to talk around mission as if it is implied. It's important to recognize that mission in a post-Vatican II world is not anything like the idea of mission that exists in the popular imagination of Christians and non-Christians alike. Mission today is becoming increasingly built on a model of Dialogue.

The theology of mission and the theology of dialogue are becoming one and this is why, as interfaith leaders, we need to re-claim mission. By building these two up together they can fortify each other. Mission that is based on dialogue is respectful, honest, and reflective. It does not use coercion, violence, or threats in order to accomplish some goal of conversion. Instead, the goal is simply to engage the other in honest and meaningful dialogue. The outcome might be conversion but that shouldn't matter to the modern Christian; as long as they have represented Christianity with faith and compassion, they have succeeded in the mission. Dialogue benefits from its association with mission just as much. A dialogue that is missiological is brought into the very core of what it means to be human. This gives dialogue the kind of significance that those of us who are engaged in interfaith dialogue know it deserves.

This word seems to be taboo among progressive Christians and I know that using it in an interfaith setting could spark some heated discussions, but those conversations need to happen and Christians need to be willing to take up mission with all of the problems it involves. If we are able to do this, we will be able to to transform mission into something that is faithful to the vision of God we claim to worship. I also think that this transformed sense of mission will be something we might be able to share, at least partially, with members of other traditions and faith communities. I hope that if we reclaim mission, we will be able to transform it from a barrier to dialogue to one of its strongest catalysts.

Staff Sgt. Robert Bales Courtesy of The U.S. Army (Attribution via Wikimedia commons)

For the last decade, America has been a country at war and there has been a lot of talk about supporting the troops as they serve our country. This rhetoric is hard to counter because troops are human beings who are asked to do our dirty work while we sit at home and watch the Food Network. Still, countless veterans end up on the streets facing the disapproving glares of patriotic Americans. As much as we are encouraged to support the troops, we never hear about what active combat can do to a person's psyche and how we can support the holistic care of our troops, both during and after combat. This neglect came into play recently as news of a U.S. soldier's massacre of 16 Afghan civilians sneaked its way through the barrage of campaign commentary.

Staff Sargent Robert Bales is not exactly the mass murdering type, as a 38-year-old, married man with two children, and even a recipient of some commendations through the military. On paper he seems like any other soldier and yet, if he in fact did commit this crime, it is clear that something snapped. People that know him and fought with him say only positive things about this soldier's character. Bales served three tours of duty in Iraq and had been in Afghanistan since December. Soldiers who have served in both areas have commented that Afghanistan is more “brutal” than Iraq. Even before Bales got there, he lost part of his foot and had a traumatic brain injury. There is also some evidence that he was treated for post traumatic stress disorder before his last deployment. All of these come into play as he goes to trial for a horrible crime, but at the same time this event has raised some questions about how the military operates and who is ultimately responsible.

The government has claimed that Bales was dealing with marital and financial problems which put a greater strain on him and maybe led to his erratic behavior. This seems to be an attempt by the military to distance themselves from the event and paint this, by all accounts, commendable soldier as an irresponsible and unpredictable character. In an analysis of pertinent psychological issues, psychologist Dr. S. Walker has pointed out that “There are higher rates of homelessness, alcohol abuse, domestic violence, relationship breakdown and criminality among former military personnel with untreated mental health problems.”

If this is the case then it seems as if neglect on the part of the military contributed to any deterioration of Bales' home life. Either way, Bales will have to answer for his involvement in the acts. What is at stake though is the human dignity of our soldiers in the eyes of the military industrial complex. The way this story has unfolded has suggested that soldiers are commodities with which political power is won and loss.

In this sense the issue might not be a military one but instead an issue of labor politics. As an employer, does the military treat its employees as human beings with skills and dignity?  In cases like this or the Abu Ghraib debacle, the military has failed to answer for the role it played. In the case of Robert Bales, the story has yet to be told, and there is speculation that this might have been perpetrated by a group of people.   If it was a group and if military leadership was involved, it will become increasingly harder for the military to throw any individual soldiers under the bus.

At the very least, it is events like this that give us the opportunity to ask questions about how our soldiers are being treated by the military industry. Those are the conversations that should be happening. As important as it is to find justice for the 16 people killed in Afghanistan, as Americans, our role in that is to make sure that someone like Robert Bales doesn't end up serving four tours of duty with a history of injuries and clear indicators of mental instabilities. The psychological screening for soldiers needs to be more than just a questionnaire they get in the mail.

Ultimately we need to rebuild a system that treats soldiers as individual human beings. That kind of compassionate humanism could totally change the way wars are waged and fought but for that to happen, we need to stop placing the blame solely on the shoulders of U.S. soldiers, who are being taken advantage of by their employer.  Though the specific details of Robert Bales' situation are sketchy right now, the reality is that they give us an opportunity to raise serious questions about the ethics of soldiering and our military industrial complex.

References:

Walker, S. "Assessing the Mental Health Consequences of Military Combat in Iraq and Afghanistan: A Literature Review." Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing, no. 17 (2010): 790-96.

AMC has produced some of the most talked about TV shows in the last ten years. With shows like Mad Men and Breaking Bad, AMC presents complex characters facing extreme conditions. Perhaps the most striking and surprising is a show about zombies called The Walking Dead. At first glance it has all the makings of a B movie with a mysterious disease that awakens the dead with an appetite for brains, but underneath that facade lies a story of a family, struggling against all odds to figure out what it means to be human in a world gone mad. One hour each Sunday, audiences are invited to comprehend mortality and the limits of human compassion.

Since Mary Shelly penned Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus, the world of story telling has used monsters to hold a mirror up to the human condition and force questions that, under normal circumstances, seem better left unanswered. As the characters of The Walking Dead watch their loved ones turn from human beings into vicious animals, they come face-to-face with their own mortality and the complex questions that circle around what it means to be human all while trying to maintain a sense of order. The quest for survival and common experience of suffering formed a rag tag group of nobodies into a family of people who care and sacrifice for each other.

In the current season, the group run into a family that has survived in their farm house. What they soon learn is that the patriarch of the family, Hershel, is harboring zombies in his barn. When confronted about it he admits that they are his wife and other family members. He is convinced (as a doctor) that they are just sick and, more importantly, that they are still people. The original group tries to convince him otherwise. Hershel is presented as a loving father whose hope lies in his family. He needs to believe that he will wake up one day and these people will no longer be zombies. The realization of the truth breaks his will.

What is at stake for Hershel and the rest of the characters, as they try to survive, is the role that hope serves in times of suffering and fear. Hershel put is his faith in a false reality in which, somehow, everything will go back to normal. What the main character Rick and his family have discovered is a faith not founded on unrealistic possibilities but instead, on the power and fortitude of their relationships with each other. Though the universe has apparently betrayed them, they find hope in their community and their own sense of responsibility to each other. Whereas some survivors become barbarian and ruthless as they try to simply avoid death, Rick tries to establish a culture of hope that includes a reason to live beyond simple survival.

One of the biggest questions posed by The Walking Dead is not so much the question of “what if” but instead much deeper questions about what it means to be human. So many of the survivors are attempting to avoid becoming zombies, but in that effort they abandon all concept of what it means to be human. This leads one to question whether the walking dead are the zombies or the survivors who no longer find meaning.

What AMC offers is way for people to access many of the themes present in Viktor E. Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. The survivors experience the stages of shock, apathy, and disillusionment in every episode. Each one struggles with it in his or her own way, and it is inspiring to see them find a reason to not only survive but build a new life in this wasteland.

Just as Frankl suggests, Rick and the group of survivors he leads find meaning in small moments and instances of grace that speckle their otherwise hopeless and grim situation. One such moment is found when Rick is in a forest with his young son and they come across a buck. In the middle of a hopeless search for a lost friend they have this brief moment of grace in which a child is able to experience wonder. Immediately after, Rick's son is accidentally shot and Rick is consumed by terror, but still, that moment helped Rick find meaning in his and his family's survival. This moment is one among many smaller oases of meaning. The community they have created has become a haven of meaning itself.

Anyone who has seen The Walking Dead will tell you that it is about more than zombies.   It's about the beauty and complexity found in human relationships in extreme conditions. What is incredible is that the millions of people who tune in each Sunday are given a platform to engage in a discussion about human dignity, finding meaning, and the importance of community.

Image: Bob Jagendorf (Attribution via Wikimedia Commons)