Hobart Lecture

"Are these days delivering a wake-up call? How does one pastor in such an environment?" Bishop George Packard, Bishop Suffragan for Chaplaincies for the national church, asked the gathered ordained and lay ministers at this year’s Hobart Lecture.

The Bishop offered a solemn, informed look at the pastoral situations Episcopal chaplains are currently facing. The most imperative and demanding environments can be found in two gulfs: the Persian Gulf, where chaplains to the armed forces are daily witnesses to the Iraq War, and the coastal areas on the Gulf of Mexico, where chaplains are ministering to those affected by Hurricane Katrina.

The wake-up call
How we treat casualties, in war or disaster, says something about us, according to Bishop Packard.
“It should be worrisome that there is such a high contrast between the amount and abrupt use of technology in today’s warfare and the increased need for humanity and sensitive pastoral care,” he said, pointing to the initial response to Katrina where “technology was either absent or bluntly present.”

Those wounded in the war are likely to have been hit by an IED, or improvised explosive device, which has resulted in twice as many amputations in this war as in any other. In the American Gulf, the “noble recovery ministry souls” who are working with the victims of the hurricane are, in many instances, also victims of the same disaster. “How do you have an evacuee who is recovering from his/her own trauma minister to others?” Bishop Packard asked.

Psychological, as well as physical, wounds have to be addressed by chaplains. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a major hazard in both gulfs.

“We have all gone to school since 9/11 on the consequences of absorbing traumatic experiences. Many in this room have become well trained and sophisticated in the ways of preventing and treating stress during and after critical incidents.”

Before chaplains can address those needs, though, “Performing a values analysis of the times is a necessary first step.” Bishop Packard added, “Not enough slowing of motion has occurred during these intense times.”
Whether in war or in response to a natural disaster, “binding our anxiety to a forceful response…suspends the hard work of waiting in the moment and of forming an introspective design from a base of humility, compassion, and communion.”

Bishop Packard said that what this comes down to, really, is the pursuit of happiness and “force comes along as a friend of happiness because it offers a quick, if artificial, solution.”

But we need to define what constitutes authentic happiness in order to form an appropriate response to crisis situations. Referring to the work of author Chris Hedges, he said a “healthy culture” helps people find both happiness and meaning. the Bishop took that idea a step further, saying, “Meaning is humorless and sterile without happiness and happiness is superficial without the bulk of meaning.”

War can be attractive because it offers “a quick reestablishment of our happiness and contentment.”

Restoring balance with humility
“The prevailing work of the pastor is to be about perpetually restoring the balance” between happiness and meaning. Such balance can only really be achieved, he said, through humility. Quoting Thomas Merton, humility, “contains in itself the answer to all the great problems of the life of the soul.”

A chaplain needs to be quite clear about his or her faith and the source of that faith. Crisis brings out the “true, underlying personality.”

“So a frank spiritual inventory is necessary before deployment and another must guide it,” Bishop Packard said. Understanding the importance of spiritual guidance for a chaplain is “the greatest advertisement to us in the general population to get under authority and obedience,” he added.

“Restoring the balance is hard work.” Those who advocate force “can be quite convincing and certain.”
“The use of force gives dependence – and even looks like love, but…delivers fleeting, false happiness.”
An important part of the balance in war is naming the opponent. On a visit to Baghdad, he met a boy in the street who offered to sell the bishop “war souvenirs,” which turned out to be “a full selection of small arms.”

Noting that “most of the population of Iraq grew up during the scarcity of UN sanctions,” he also referred to the story of a young man who, when Baghdad fell, joined his friends in stockpiling weapons that were easily found in empty police stations and army barracks, which they eventually began using against American forces. The man, who said he ‘never expected [he] could do such things’, saw himself in “the underdog role of this war.”

In both gulfs, being grounded is key to balance – and one aspect of a grounded community is its treatment of the dead. “Have you noticed that the indication of how we are caring for the dead has become an unsaid measurement of how civilized and responsive we are in this disaster?” the Bishop asked.

Groundedness can be a basic matter. Chaplains in Iraq are given information about Islam and the region, with the intent “to help them dig in and be there. It is important for them to feel the grace of the land, its people, and its customs.” Again, paralleling the war in Iraq with the hurricane, “The people of New Orleans don’t want to leave the ground of their homes, for what is at stake is far more than a simple attachment to realty.”

A pastor in either environment then, “should help the culture restore its balance – and that means entering the struggle against the indiscriminate use of power and utility.”

Just functioning in such environments is an important step “and reclaiming scripture as a reference is equally so. Others use Scripture as a source of certainty; we must use it to put ambiguity in context.”

Our liturgical reading of Scripture puts chaplains or pastors in a special position, he said. “The reassurance I witnessed over the past few days,” he said of his visit to Louisiana and Mississippi, “came from those prayerfully claiming their humility and counting on the gift of faith disclosed in the events of the day, guided by the Spirit and aroused by the scripture from the Daily Office.”

This is the time, he said, for “choosing…the hard work of the Gospel…Hard work refers to prayer life, which discovers humility. It is the priceless gift for the clear minded and discerning. In that sense it’s not work but the result of choice, the choice to wait and act only out of humility and therein for the gift of faith.”

The annual Hobart Lecture is named for Bishop John Henry Hobart, the third bishop of New York, and focuses on the pastoral ministry of the church. Past lecturers include Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, then Archbishop of Wales, and Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold.

Before his election as bishop in 1998, Bishop Packard served several parishes in the diocese and is canonically resident here.