Month: May 2018

In a former life that seems light years away, I served as an Army Chaplain at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. My duties included weekly preaching to recruits in a World War Two chapel that housed the beginnings of the U.S. Army Chaplain Corps Museum.

That’s where I first heard of George Fox, Alexander Goode, John Washington, and Clark Poling. Theirs are not household names, but on this Memorial Day 2018, let’s recall them with gratitude.

Even if you know the story, it’s worth remembering.

On the evening of February 2, 1943, the U.S.A.T Dorchester—a cruise liner converted to an Army transport ship—was carrying 902 service men, merchant seamen, and civilian workers across icy waters from Newfoundland to a base in Greenland. Shortly after midnight, the German submarine U-223 spotted the Dorchester through its periscope and fired three torpedoes. One strike was deadly: mid-ship, starboard side, far below the water line. The Dorchester’s fate was sealed.

Scores of men died instantly or were seriously wounded. For those that remained, chaos reigned. As they staggered to the deck, bracing themselves in an arctic wind, many panicked, throwing themselves into the frigid water rather than lifeboats.

That’s when four chaplains began ministering in the midst of tragedy: George Fox (Methodist), Alexander Goode (Jewish), John Washington (Roman Catholic), and Clark Poling (Dutch Reformed). They calmed the frightened, tended to the wounded, and guided the disoriented to safety. As they distributed life jackets from a locker on deck, the supply ran out. Calmly, each of them took off their own preservers and gave them to others.

Survivors recalled their last image of the four men. They were standing at the railing on the slanting deck, arms locked together, still offering prayers and words of courage as the ship sank to an icy grave.

One survivor, John Ladd, said, “It was the finest thing I have seen or hope to see this side of heaven.”

Ultimately, the deaths of these chaplains are no more meaningful than the legions of unknown soldiers who lost their lives in conflict. Their heroism, remembered in chilling detail, has no more eternal value than anonymous acts of bravery lost in the sweep of death, never to be told.

Still, there is so much here that brings hope to our souls: love, self-sacrifice, and a vision of humanity than transcends divisions of religion, class, or race.

Memorial Day should never be a glorying in the death of our troops. It is meant as a deep and sober reminder of the higher values for which they died. It calls us to embody in our own lives these words from Abraham Lincoln in his second inaugural address: “With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive…to achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”

The sinking of the Dorchester cost the lives of 672 men. On January 18, 1961, President Eisenhower awarded the posthumous Special Medal for Heroism to each of the chaplains. Stringent guidelines for the Medal of Honor, requiring “heroism under fire,” prohibited that award, but the medals these families received were meant to have the same weight.

Today, as we remember men and women who died in the tragedy of human warfare, let us include George Fox, Alexander Goode, John Washington, and Clark Poling.

Semper fidelis…

 

 

 

Call me morbid, but I find it enlivening to stroll through graveyards. I remember a day when my wife and I drove down a remote road in Hardin County, Texas, to the Holland Cemetery, a lovingly preserved sanctuary. Surrounded by lush grass and a canopy of live oaks—cardinals singing in their branches—I came upon a rain-stained headstone.

But first…

I know I’m not the only one afflicted by a certain dis-ease. I have been blessed with abundance on so many levels: a loving family; more than adequate food and shelter; decent health; creative outlets that engage my mind, heart, and soul. 

Yet I still find myself ungrateful at times, restless in spirit. Succumbing to a culture where enough is never enough, I allow myself to become a spiritual casualty.

The simplest life-changing truths will lie inert in our lives unless we live into their power. I fully know that ingratitude—like fear, worry, and resentment—is a slayer of inner peace, a murderer of time. From a Buddhist perspective, these states of mind are the epitome of suffering, and they are self-induced. We can immaturely point to external factors as the source of our complaints, but we are the ones who choose our responses. There’s no passing the buck.

To rouse myself from this stupor, I have adopted a discipline that spans history. In medieval Christianity, it was called memento mori; in Buddhism, maranasati or lojong; in Islam, Tadhkirat al-Mawt. It is the core of every Dia de los Muertos celebration.

Remember death. Internalize life’s brevity and you can awaken to its present magnificence. Your hands, clenched so tightly around illusory problems, will begin to relax and let go.

A while back, I visited the San Antonio Art Museum to see an exhibit called San Antonio 1718, Art from Viceregal Mexico. It was a collection from that period of Spanish colonialism and included many oil paintings of idealized clergy and noble people. Clutched in many of their hands are memento moris, small replicas of skulls to remind them of death.

I have objects like these in my office, gathered during my service as a pastor, three decades when I was the one people turned to for comfort during times of loss.

• There’s the box given to me by a heroin addict. She found it while dumpster diving and could not, in good conscience, throw it back into the refuse. Its label reads: Cremated remains of Baby Bridget Spell, age 0, Date of Death, 9-20-88.
• There’s a rubber wristband that says, “Help me help the next Hugo Tale-Yax,” a tribute to a 31-year-old homeless Guatemalan immigrant, a Good Samaritan stabbed while helping a woman avoid a mugging. He bled out on a street in Queens, New York, while dozens of pedestrians passed by.
• There’s the small picture of 13-year-old Tony Matrulo, who died in a freak go-cart accident just months after I baptized him.

Back to that day in the Holland Cemetery, which has given a new memento mori. It’s a photo of a headstone that says: Infant Child of Mr. & Mrs. A. G. Haab, Born and Died, January 2, 1920, Only sleeping…

Unnamed child of God, knitted together in your mother’s womb, you never knew the seasons of this life. You never loved, laughed or grieved. You never smelled a flower or lifted your face to the sunlight. You never wrestled with the questions of existence. Your epitaph cries out to each of us: Remember death, and through its portal savor each moment!

I laid a rose at the headstone of baby Haab, then walked from the Holland Cemetery.

A cloud raced across the sun…