Rita nakashima brock biography of christopher

  • We mourn the deaths of Chris Kyle and Chad Littlefield.
  • Brock: Studying Job was a turning point for me in college.
  • Rev.

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    Soul Repair: Recovering from Moral Injury after War

    February 2, 2013
    I've read a number of books about the trauma suffered by war veterans as research for my new novel, Along the Watchtower. Many are deeply moving, with real discussion and interviews about this critical topic. Soul Repair is no exception. But it takes a very different and important approach, viewing the emotional damage caused by war not just as an illness to be treated, but as moral injury. Moral injury is a term the authors use for the fragmentation of our moral sense after we are sent off to war. What damage is done when a society that has given us our ideals, tells us we are going to war to uphold those ideals. And then we discover just the opposite--that we are asked to do what in our deepest being we feel to be morally wrong.

    The question is an important one and not asked frequently enough, perhaps because of the political implications (is it a just war?) or perhaps because by asking it, we re compelled to qu

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    'Your maxims are proverbs of ashes'

    Many Unitarian Universalists can point to a religious impasse in their own lives: a point where experience collides with an inherited world view or core beliefs. In an interview, Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker—theologians and authors of Proverbs of Ashes: Violence, Redemptive Suffering, and the Search for What Saves Us—explore the dangers of this experience and explain why their book draws so heavily on the story of Job.

    UU World: Why Job?

    Brock: Studying Job was a turning point for me in college. I really came up against my own religious upbringing and how it had given me a false picture of Job as a pious individ who never protested—a martyr, basically. That was my own socialization as a Japanese woman, and as a woman in the U.S. inom didn't think of Job as a possible model. Then inom took this course and was stunned to discover that I'd been lied to about Job. This Job was furious! He was furious with the people with

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    During times of turbulence in politics, culture, and religious life, it’s tempting to hold tightly to current convictions. Allowing a change of one’s mind or heart can be difficult work. With this in mind, we have resumed a Century series published at intervals since 1939, in which we ask leading thinkers to reflect on their own struggles, disappointments, and hopes as they address the topic, “How my mind has changed.” This essay is the 12th in the new series.

    COVID-19 arrived just as I began contemplating what to write for this series, and I kept changing my mind about what to say in the face of so much suffering. But on January 6, I knew. That afternoon, as I exited my dentist’s office in Washington, DC, a black pickup truck roared past, loaded with White men in MAGA caps who shouted something that was drowned out by the truck’s blaring horn. Annoyed by the shrill spectacle, I checked my phone for news and discovered that a siege was in progress at the Capitol just three mile

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