This weekend I am writing several of the essays to move me toward becoming a U.S. Army
Chaplain. Yesterday I posted my essay to the U.S. Army. Today I post the draft of my essay to the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations. I look forward to the thoughts and feedback of any of the denziens of the Celestial Lands who can help me to make the essay better, and I thank you all for engaging in this part of my journey with me.
My Call to the U.S. Army Chaplaincy
Application for UUA Military Chaplaincy Endorsement Essay
1LT David Pyle
March 21, 2010
I stated in my essay to the U.S. Army Accessioning Board that I feel as if my entire life has been preparation to serve in the U.S. Army as a military chaplain. While I feel a call to the parish ministry, and perhaps a call to serve as a hospice chaplain at some point in my ministerial career, I believe that my ministry for the next decade to 15 years can be best served in returning to the community in which I was raised, in which I learned what it means to be an adult, and in which I first encountered Unitarian Universalism and Liberal Faith. With this essay and the attached application, I am formally requesting the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations endorse me for service as an Active Duty United States Army Chaplain.
I was raised in a conservative Christian family. My father was Southern Baptist and my mother is a Pentecostal Christian. My father was a Non-Commissioned Officer in the United States Army, rising to the rank of Master Sergeant as a Counter-Intelligence Agent. My mother was a homemaker who was involved in the life of the Chapel we attended on the Army Post we were assigned to. I am the oldest son of three children. My two sisters do not remember much of our life in the military as they were too young, but I remember those years as the majority of my childhood.
I remember living on several different U.S. Army posts, including Ft. Meade in Maryland, Schofield Barracks in Hawaii, and Ft. Polk in Louisiana. I encountered the special circumstances of life as a military child, including long separations from my father during overseas deployments, and the ever present fear that something might happen and Dad “might not come home”. I remember the bag that Dad kept in the closet by the door, ready to leave at a moment’s notice. I remember having to make friends quickly, and how to let go of friendships just as fast… because my friend’s parents were always being transferred from one post to another. I remember the regular moves from post to post.
When my father retired from the military in 1984, I was 11 years old. I learned first-hand the difficult transition that military families make when moving into civilian life. I saw my father struggle with finding civilian employment, and my mother struggle with the loss of all the benefits that exist for military families. I saw my father struggle with his own self image, having once advised Presidents, to now be making a living selling used cars. While our family did adapt and eventually became accustomed to civilian life, those years prepared me to help soldiers make their own transitions.
Throughout my years of High School I participated in the Naval Junior Reserve Officer Training Program, rising to the rank of Cadet Lieutenant Commander and serving as the Commander of my high school’s NJROTC Unit. I also participated in Boy Scouting, and rose to the rank of Eagle Scout. In the year between my junior and senior years of High School, I enlisted in the U.S. Army Delayed Entry Program at the rank of Private First Class. I reported in to Basic Training on July 3rd, 1991 after graduating High School.
Returning to the military was both a return home as well as a claim of an adult identity. Though my father had wished I would go to college instead, I still felt the intense pressure in my extended family to “prove myself” by military service. I soon graduated from basic training at Ft. Leonard Wood Missouri, and was sent for Individual Training at Goodfellow Air Force Base, in Texas, to become a Signals Intelligence Analyst. After graduating top of my class 7 months later, I attended the U.S. Army Airborne School at Ft. Benning GA.
It was at the Airborne school that I went through a major transition in my spiritual journey. I realized I believed in God, but not necessarily in the conservative Christianity of my youth. Soon after that school I discovered a label for my beliefs; I had become a Christian Deist, similar to that of many of the founding fathers of our nation. The experience taught me how those initial few years in the military is a time of religious, spiritual, and faith transition for many service members. It was for me, and I have seen that replicated among the recruits I have worked with at the Great Lakes Naval Station countless times.
After an additional course at the Army Intelligence School at Ft. Devens, MA, I was assigned as an intelligence analyst/collector for the Military Intelligence Detachment, 2nd Battalion, 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne) at Ft. Bragg NC. The years that followed involved many deployments on counter-narcotics and counter-insurgency missions in Latin America, including three months as an Analyst at the U.S. Embassy in San Salvador, El Salvador. While I was in El Salvador, my father died of a heart attack. It was an Army Chaplain who convinced me to come home, procured compassionate leave for me, and helped me work with my grief afterward. The last words my father ever said to me were “I’m proud of you, son.” It was a Chaplain who helped me to understand how important those words were for me.
When I left Active Duty in 1995, I joined the 337th Military Intelligence Battalion, a reserve unit out of East Point, GA. It was with the 337th that I deployed first to Germany, and then to Bosnia. The years in the 337th saw my marriage, then later divorce from ***********, who could not accept my regular military duties among other aspects of marriage. In Bosnia, I witnessed some of the worst atrocities of that war, and encountered a nation nearly destroyed. Though my experience of combat stress reaction was mild, the experience of having been deployed, struggling to remember how to be a civilian when I returned, and having a divorce related to that military service gives me some insight into what many of our soldiers are experiencing today, in the midst of two wars, repeated deployments, and post-traumatic stress.
My own reaction to my experiences in Bosnia led me to search for a new religious community in the years after my return. I remembered a U.S. Army Chaplain had told me of a religious faith that would accept Deists, known as Unitarian Universalism. It took several tries at attending a UU congregation before I found one that became my home. Much of that earlier resistance came from my having become more liberal religiously than I was politically, and I had questions as to whether I would really be welcome in UU. The church that became my home was the UU Fellowship of Galveston County, TX. Eventually that church would allow me to hear my own call to the ministry, and to the military chaplaincy.
In 2005 I entered the Meadville Lombard Theological School and moved into a paid leadership role in my UU Fellowship. In 2006 I left Galveston to become a residential student at MLTS. I graduated from the Army Chaplain School in 2007, helped found and served as the MOD Minister of the UU outreach ministry to the Great Lakes Naval Station with Lt. Col. Seanan Holland, and completed a ministerial internship at the Unitarian Church of Evanston with the Rev. Barbara Pescan. I am currently a CPE Resident with Advocate Lutheran General Hospital and Rainbow Hospice in Park Ridge Illinois. The years at Meadville also saw my marriage to my wife and long-time partner, Sandy Loiseau-Pyle. Sandy is a military veteran, former military spouse, and one of the soldiers I served with in Bosnia and Germany.
Since January of 2007 I have also been a U.S. Army Chaplain Candidate, and I was also privileged to help draft the UUA policies on military chaplaincy. I served as a researcher on chaplaincy and combat resiliency with the Institute for National Security Ethics and Leadership of the National Defense University in Washington DC. I am a graduate of the U.S. Army Chaplain School, and the U.S. Army Medical Center and School’s Combat Medical Ministry Course. I also had the privilege to serve with the 3rd Bde Chaplain Recruiting team. During all of this, I had the honor to author a published essay on the reasons for Unitarian Universalist support for Military Chaplaincy in the book Rev. X, published by Jenkin-Lloyd Jones Press, with the support and mentorship of Chaplain Lt. Cynthia Kane and Chaplain CPT George Tyger.
Despite all these developments, I recommend Tramadol No Prescription (at least for the people who find anesthesia more important that the state of small inadequacy)
In my experiences of parish and civilian ministry, I found that I was often called to lead with my faith and my beliefs… to be an evangelist for our liberal faith. In my own life, Unitarian Universalism and Liberal Christianity were salvific… UU helped me to find my way home from Bosnia and Liberal Christianity allowed me to transform my childhood conservative faith rather than discard it. It is my theology of parish ministry that the life and spirit of a congregation occurs in the space between members of a covenanted community, and so part of my theology of ministry is to be outspoken for my faith and beliefs as well as to be welcoming and engaging of beliefs other than mine simultaneously… to create a fullness in the space in between.
While that is a part of my theology of Military Chaplain ministry, it is secondary to the belief that I am called to walk with my soldiers through some of the best and often the worst moments of their young lives. My faith becomes the strength to allow me to walk alongside them, to carry some of their load, and to help them see hope when hope seems lost. The faith that will allow me to do this is not simply my internal beliefs, values, and principles… it is not simply my spiritual practice of prayer or my engagement with scripture from many world traditions. Part of that faith is the community of liberal religious friends, scholars and prophets that I have found within Unitarian Universalism. Maintaining my connection while I am in the “monastic community of UU military chaplaincy” to paraphrase a colleague, is an essential part of walking the path of the military chaplain.
The primary mission of the military chaplaincy is the protection of the free exercise of religion in the military, and I believe that Unitarian Universalist ministers are better trained for this aspect of military ministry than most other faith traditions. At the Great Lakes RTC, I had regular experience not only in ministering with many on the religious margins, but also serving as a trainer for UU seminarians learning to do the same. I believe this experience will be invaluable as I advocate within the military chaplaincy for the rights of those on the religious margins.
I also take seriously the reality that, within the entire Army, the Chaplain is the only person who holds absolute confidentiality. Amidst all the justice issues currently abounding within the military, (such as the rights of GLBTQ service members, the sexual abuse of female service members, the prejudice directed at non-Christians, and so much more) I understand a part of my role is to represent the inclusivity of Unitarian Universalism through the absolute confidentiality of the Army Chaplain. I understand part of my role to be the Advocate of those on the margins, no matter what margin that happens to be.
In my RSCC interview someone asked me if, being used to the “freedom” from authority in Unitarian Universalism, I could manage being within the authority of military life? My answer to the question still stands… our liberal religious faith is not as free of authority as we sometimes like to think. The reality that I have uncovered is that within our faith the lines of authority are blurred, and are sometimes very hard to see, yet they are there. In many ways, I am more comfortable within the military lines of authority, because they are much clearer and the boundaries are easier to see. Much of my life, from childhood through adulthood has been spent within the military culture and lines of authority, and I believe as a Chaplain Candidate I showed I could still excel within such military authority. In truth, I think I have had more issues relating to authority in Unitarian Universalism than I have in the military.
I also see a primary part of the military chaplain I aspire to be as connected to building the kind of relationship with my commanding officer where I can serve as an ethical and moral voice amidst the chaos and amorality of combat. I have made a focus of ethics in my formation, and understand that my relationship with my commanding officer will be paramount in my success at being a voice of Liberal Faith and values on the field of combat.
All of that said, the primary aspect of my call to the military chaplaincy in the U.S. Army remains my love for those young men and women who agree, for a myriad of reasons, to place themselves between “their beloved homes and war’s desolation”. That love is in part because I once made the same decision, as did my father, and my father before him, and his father before him. While I can no longer carry a weapon due to my faith, I can carry a rucksack and I can walk alongside the soldiers of today’s Army. I can help them to see hope when hope is lost, I can help them to grow amidst the stress of combat, and I can help carry some of their emotional and spiritual load when it is too much for them to bear.
I know I can do this, not only because of the power of my liberal religious faith, but because of all of the examples of military chaplains who have walked with me through the years. I know I can do this because my wife Sandy is eager to walk this path with me, as she too feels the need to walk with military families the way others once walked with her. I know I can do this, because of the amazing and astounding support I have received from fellow Unitarian Universalists, in and beyond the ministry.
I once asked Rev. David Pettee how you knew if you had a calling to the ministry, and he said “If you’ve tried to do everything else, and you just can’t.” For myself, the experience is a little different. My call to be an Active Duty Army Chaplain of the Unitarian Universalist faith arises from a life that has prepared me, passions that have moved me, and experiences that have forged me. So, I close with these words, from Isaiah 6: “Here I am. Send me.”v