Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76 Page 77 Page 78 Page 79 Page 80 Page 81 Page 82 Page 83 Page 84Plough Quarterly • Spring 2016 53 couple of bottles to the kid in front. The boy, who’s probably about eight, refuses – after all, what he asked for was candy. Something sparks inside of me. Here I am, risking life and limb, with my team leader downrange checking out an explosive, and this kid won’t take something I’m offering out of the goodness of my heart. I rip the cap off the liter bottle in my hand, dump some of it out on the ground, and throw it at him. An old man, most likely his grandfather, rushes up, grabs the boy, and pulls him away. The old man looks at me, not with anger, hate, or even sadness. His eyes are full of fear. He’s afraid of me. In that moment, I don’t rec- ognize that look, because I don’t recognize myself. How can he be afraid of me? I’m one of the good guys, after all. While in a prison in Nazi Germany, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote the poem “Who Am I?”: Am I really what others say of me? Or am I only what I know of myself? Restless, yearn- ing, sick, like a caged bird, struggling for life-breath, as if I were being strangled. . . . Is what remains in me like a defeated army, fleeing in disarray from victory already won?1 My life is nothing like Bonhoeffer’s. Yet the question posed by his poem gives me pause. Who am I? I am a husband and a student. I am an ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and an aspiring theologian. I am a combat veteran, a former Explosive Ordnance Disposal specialist in the US Army. These are identities I am proud of, identities I cling to. They’re how others might identify me. Yet these identities obscure another, more private identity, the something that “remains in me like a defeated army.” I am someone who bears a moral injury. I first encountered the term “moral injury” during my studies at Brite Divinity School. According to the authors Rita Nakashima Brock and Gabriella Lettini, moral injury “comes from having transgressed one’s basic moral identity and violated core moral beliefs. . . . Moral injury destroys meaning and forsakes noble causes. It sinks warriors into states of silent, solitary suffering, where bonds of intimacy and care seem impossible.”2 Moral injury is now receiving growing attention across various disciplines as well as in clinical discourse. The concept was first introduced by clinical psychiatrist Jonathan Shay,3 who works with veterans who have experienced trauma during and after war. According to the thorough working definition of moral injury developed in Clinical Psychology Review, morally injurious experiences include: Perpetrating, failing to prevent, bearing witness to, or learning about acts that transgress deeply held moral beliefs and expectations. . . . The individual also must be (or become) aware of the discrepancy between his or her morals and the experience (i.e., moral violation), causing dissonance and inner conflict.4 Moral injury has to do with questions of right and wrong. Thus it is distinct from post­ traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which is caused by experiencing life-threatening ­ situations, not by moral conflict. Though it’s impossible to say where moral injury resides – whether in the mind, body, or How does the church answer a soldier who says, “I am guilty”?