Fitting In

November 18th, 2024

Several days ago, Karin and I had dinner with a young friend of ours. He recently moved back to Tulsa, and we stopped there to see him on our way back to Wisconsin from visiting family in Texas. We have known him for years. He was a novice in formation to become a priest at our church eight years ago. He was with our congregation for a year, and then he moved elsewhere for more training. Since then, we have tried to stay in touch. He has kept us abreast of his activities, and we have let him know about the drama in our lives.

This young man grew up in Tulsa, and after he left home, except for short visits, he did not see his family very often. Now, he is home again, although the word “home” is probably not accurate in some ways. As we sat and ate, he told me,

“I didn’t recognize the place when I came back here. Neighborhoods that were good fifteen years ago no longer are, and parts of town that weren’t very good are now better. My siblings have all moved on with their lives. I don’t see them much. I visit my parents and help my mom. She has health issues. They aren’t life-threatening, but she struggles to do some things.”

His comments reminded me of when I left the Army and moved back to the Milwaukee area after an absence of twelve years. My situation had been similar. I never really came home. My parents and my brothers were different from what I remembered. Also, I was different. I was meeting them again for the first time. The old relationships were severed, and it was hard to establish new ones. In some ways, I never connected again.

I think of my friend as a being a priest, although he left his religious community before he was ordained. He was trained to be a priest, and he always will be to some extent, just like I am still a soldier although I haven’t worn a uniform since 1986. I told him how sometimes a veteran can recognize another vet on first sight. He nodded and said,

“An indelible mark.”

A priest upon ordination is said to receive an indelible mark on his soul. This happens too with somebody who has served in the military. Being a priest or a soldier is not just a job. It is a vocation or a calling. A person who freely chooses one of these careers is set apart from the rest of society. The individual joins a culture that has radically different values from the population at large.

Can a person who was a committed member of a religious organization for many years assimilate into the “real” world? Can a soldier do that?

The short answer is: “No”. A soldier or a priest can never really belong there.

Sebastian Junger wrote a book called Tribe. His book speaks to this situation. A tribe is a group of people who differ from other groups in some fundamental way. One of the salient characteristics of a tribe is that each member is intensely dependent on the actions of the other persons. Each member is more concerned with the common good than with their personal wants and needs.

A couple days prior to dining with our friend, I was talking to my oldest son, Hans. We were riding in his pickup truck, and he told me about how hard it was to adapt to the values of civilians. He said,

“When I was in Iraq, when we went out on missions, everybody had to watch each other’s back. If someone chose not to do that, or if they froze when things got bad, well, then we had a party for him when we got back to base. Some of the guys who had a party left it with a couple broken ribs or a black eye.”

Hans smiled, “None of that ever got reported.”

Then he shook his head and said, “A brother is a brother, but when he isn’t anymore…” He left that part of sentence hang in the air.

Being a member of a tribe, whether it be a religious community or a military unit, means that there is a significant level of trust. Everything depends on this trust between tribe members, sometimes even survival depends on it.

My friend who is a priest in his heart is facing life in a culture where nobody gives a fuck about anyone else. That’s hard for him to handle. It was hard for me when I entered the civilian world. It was especially difficult for Hans, because he is a combat vet. We don’t fit in.

We don’t want to.