Читать книгу Through All the Plain - Benjamin John Peters - Страница 7

Three births. Three lives. Three trajectories. This is a story of reconciliation, of that longing within us all to create one from three.

I was born of my mother in the craggy hills of northern California. Shortly thereafter, she and my father divorced. Life through the eyes of a child is foggy. I have only glimpses and partial memories of my father. I was fourteen when, once again, I entered his household. This was precipitated by the abusive actions of a stepfather. I was weary with both his anger and my mother’s acquiescence to it.

In many ways, my life has been a series of choices seeking to reconcile those lost years when my father was but a shadow. Through his absence, I lost identity. I wanted both self and belonging. And so, when approached with the story of a first-century prophet, I ached with hope and was later baptized into a new family. I was taught and mentored in the ways of Jesus. I had no understanding of conservative or liberal. I knew only Christ. I wrestled with old habits and new truths. I would be better than my mother. I would outpace my father. I would find myself in the Church. I would become a son of God.

A final birth issued from death: after September 11, 2001, I enlisted. Six months later I stood on the parade grounds of Recruit Depot, San Diego, and was awarded the Eagle, Globe, and Anchor of the United States Marine Corps. It was pinned on my breast by the man who, more than any other, fashioned me. I was proud, I was honorable—I had found myself, again. I was a warrior defending God and country. I did not question. I obeyed orders. I was born to embody death.

Three births. Three lives. Three trajectories.

This is my story, cemented in history. It is a true story, though not always accurate. As one writer claims, “Memory is creatively reproductive rather than accurately recollective.”1 I will tell it as I remember it, though another’s tale would doubtlessly diverge from mine.

‡ ‡ ‡

I reached for the doorknob. It was thin and silver, a sliver on which my hope rested. Images raced through my mind, pictures of the desert: heat, bombs, the cries of the fallen. I could never move past this juncture. I was broken. The war had done this. I hated it and myself. This was a chance, however, an opportunity for salvation. I had to open it. I had to stop hesitating. Life must continue. Even if I revered the past, allowed it to shape me, I still had to leave. I had to move on and into the future, so I could embrace the present.

I opened the door.

Sitting opposite me was an elderly man, gray with age and experience. He told me he, once, had returned from war. “Korea,” he said. He knew. He understood. He told me wounds could heal. “What do you want?”

What did I want? The silence, thick and tense, hung between us. There would be no return from the ledge upon which I now stood. “I want,” I started, “to feel whole.”

“And,” my counselor followed, “what is that—wholeness?”

“Aren’t you supposed to tell me?” I asked. It was my first session. I had never done anything like this before, never chosen to open.

“That’s not the way this works.” He paused. “Let me try again. Why are you here?”

“They said I had to come.”

“Who?”

“The seminary. They said I didn’t have a choice. I think they would have asked me to leave if I didn’t start coming.”

“Really?”

“I don’t know.” I shifted in my seat.

“Okay, Benjamin. That’s fine. Let’s start small. Let’s get to know one another. Does that work?”

I nodded.

“Great,” he smiled, both eager and friendly. “Where are you from?”

“The Northwest.”

“Seattle?”

“No. Portland.”

“It’s rainy there.”

“Yes,” I said.

“And your family?”

“They live there too.”

He scribbled in his notebook before continuing. “Are you close?”

“I live in Denver.”

He laughed. “I meant—”

“I know,” I interrupted. “It’s just . . . they’re good people. I don’t think my issues are related to them.”

“Are your parents still married?”

“No.”

“How many siblings?”

“There’re seven of us. No. Nine. If you count everyone.”

“And where do you fit?”

“I’m somewhere in the middle. And, no, I don’t really talk to my brothers and sisters.”

“Why not?”

“Look, I’m here because of the war. What does my family have to do with it?”

“Nothing. Everything. They may not be the inciting incident, but they’re integral to how you will choose or not choose to handle your trauma.”

“Ok. Well. Then it was like anyone else’s family. There was a lot of hurt, a lot of . . . stuff. Some of us ran towards each other, and others of us ran away. I ran away.”

“And joined the Marine Corps?”

“Something like that.”

“And now you’re in seminary?”

“Yeah.”

“If you don’t mind me saying, that seems a contradiction.”

“When I was in high school, I wasn’t . . . focused. I struggled with both class work and peer pressure. I enjoyed sports, though. They were a release from the tension of having to fit in or get good grades or whatever. I could just go outside and play.

“One day at work—I bagged groceries at Safeway—this guy, no idea who he was, said, ‘You played well on Friday.’ I was a football player and had recently been written up in a small, local newspaper. I thanked him, thinking that he had recognized me from my picture in The Chronicle.

“He invited me to go to church the following Sunday. Why not? I thought. It turned out he was the pastor. He came down after the sermon and shook my hand. He thanked me for attending. I don’t know. I guess you could say I had a conversion experience.”

“Can you tell me about that?”

“Sure. It was . . . I was . . . you know, excited. I took the bait. I threw away my satanic CDs, told my girlfriend we had to . . . you know . . . stop doing stuff, bought a Bible.”

“So you would say that you were or are religious?”

“At one point, sure. Now? I don’t think of myself that way. My experiences didn’t always align with my pastor’s sermons. I never really thought of myself as inquisitive, but . . . I wanted answers. I mean, if I was going to stake my life on something as mystical as a two-thousand-year-old story about a guy who returns to life, then I really wanted to know.”

“Know what?”

“If it was real or not. If it was worth my time, my effort, my life. I wanted to know if it was really the religion, the philosophy for life.”

“And?”

“And then the war.”

“Which changed you.”

“Which changed me.”

“Can you say how?”

I shifted and started gnawing the side of my cheek. “Violence.”

“I see,” he said. “Well, we’ll get there, only maybe not today, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Would you say you were conservative? I only ask, because it helps me to understand your trajectory.”

“Yeah. On fire for the Lord and all of that. But then the war happened and I had too many questions. Being ‘on fire’ was . . . well, it was bullshit.”

“When compared to war?”

“Yeah.”

“But there was a season in your life when you really embraced your beliefs?”

“I don’t know why you keep pushing that, but yes.”

“I guess I’m just curious. Is that why you joined the Marine Corps?”

“I don’t know. I was an evangelical Christian, alright? I joined the Marine Corp. I went to Iraq. I came home with a lot of questions. Am I still an evangelical? Yes. No. I don’t know. I’m not really much of anything, I guess.”

“Our time is almost up,” he said, looking at his watch. “At some point, we’re going to have to talk about Iraq, about what you remember.”

“Remember?”

“Yes.”

“So much of it’s a blur. I remember some things, but other things are a convoluted mess. Like . . . like I made the whole thing up.”

“The war or your experiences?”

“Both,” I shrugged. “Like I made up the enemy so I could deal with what we were doing. And my experiences, too.”

“Why those?”

“Because they belong in a history book somewhere, not in my past.”

“Next week,” he leaned in, “I want you start telling me your story—all of it. I want to hear every detail, not as it happened, but as you remember it. That’s what we need to work through.”

“Alright,” I nodded. “I can do that.”

“You said you wanted to feel whole again, right?”

“Yes.”

“That can happen, Benjamin. I promise. But it’ll hurt.”

“I know.”

1. John Dominic Crossan, The Birth of Christianity: Discovering What Happened in the Years Immediately After the Execution of Jesus (HarperOne: San Francisco, 1999).