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Pilgrims Lost in an Alien Land
By Brett Webb-Mitchell

"Young people who have been diagnosed as 'behavior disorders' are pilgrims lost in an alien land It is important to note that they are not new to God's story, since they are able to describe God and God's nature in ways that reveal a living faith. They are waiting for someone, somewhere, to accompany them on the journey and to point out to them that sacred place where they can find rest for their souls and answers to their queries of God."

Theologian Stanley Hauerwas claims that our life stories reveal our character, which is also a reflection of the community in which our faith is shaped and nurtured.¹ The truth of this statement is manifested in the following stories of three young people. These stories tell us much about their character and reveal also essential fragments of the Christian and Jewish communities' sacred story, in which they were raised. These young people are residents of a hospital for children and adolescents with disabilities. They are the ones who, quietly or defiantly, tell us that they are leaving home, are using drugs, or are escaping to the violence of the inner-city streets. These children and adolescents come from across the country, from African American and Hispanic American families of different configurations, many raised by extended family members. Some are from wealthy families and many from lower income backgrounds. The one thing these children and adolescents have in common in this institution is that they are all labeled and categorized with a disabling condition; they have behavioral disorders.

I

The first narrative is Ben's.² Ben is an energetic, lanky, and tall fifteen-year-old adolescent who is Jewish, having already participated in the bar mitzvah ritual in his home synagogue. I met Ben soon after I

Brett Webb-Mitchell is Director of Religious Life at the Devereux Hospital and Children's Center in Melbourne, Florida. He has extensive experience in ministry with disabled persons and three books on this topic, Religious Education with People with Disabling Conditions: Welcoming Unexpected Guests to the Banquet, Discovering Our Common Ground: The Presence of Persons with Mental Retardation in Congregations, and God Plays Piano, Too: The Spiritual Narrative of Children with Disabilities are forthcoming.

¹ Stanley Hauerwas and L. Gregory Jones, Why Narrative? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Press, 1989), p. 12.
² All names in this article are changed for confidentiality.

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came to the hospital and introduced myself to his unit as the director of religious life. He beckoned to me after that first meeting to come into his room. He was sitting on his bed in his room, but then he suddenly got up on a chair and started throwing books at me that would help me in getting to know him. The first book he threw was Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger, saying "Now you know my hero!" The second book was The Diary of Anne Frank; "Now you know what my faith is." The third book was Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass." Now you know what I like to do."

Since that first meeting, our relationship has most often been one of mentor and disciple, while at other times I am scribe to his poetry writing. He will often come into my office and dictate his poetry, rocking wildly to and fro at first, then slowing down to a gentle rock. In his poetry, he tries to tell me what has been happening on the unit, depicts for me his relationships at home, and reveals much about his relationship with God.

For example, one of the first poems was "The Day Will Come":

The day will come
When we will all realize
What fools we've been
   and stop these foolish lies,
And come to our senses and reach for God's hand.
And until then we will be imperfect people in an imperfect land.

"There," he said, thrusting the poem under my nose. "What do you think? You probably don't like it." I told him I was struck by the truth of the poem. He smiled. Then I asked him to interpret his poem for me. "We're ruining this world that God made. And He's probably none too happy about it ... or with us. That's what I think." With that, he got up from my rocking chair, and over we went to the unit.

Around Thanksgiving, I asked him to write a poem for the holiday. This is the poem, which revealed more of his theology:

Give thanks to God
   And your answered prayers.
Give thanks to your fulfilled dreams
   That didn't turn into nightmares.
Give thanks to that hope
   That helped fulfill your dreams,
   Even when it was coming undone by the seams.
Give thanks to the people
   Who helped you to reach that star.
But don't forget that strength and courage
   You had when your goals seemed so far.

The second narrative belongs to thirteen-year-old Glen, who has blond hair, blue eyes, and a quiet, gentle spirit. There is nothing violent

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in his demeanor. Telling me about life on the unit, he is a keen observer, watching and listening to his peers, letting them teach him about life as he learned from his two older brothers outside of the institution.

Glen and I have recently begun meeting on a weekly basis to talk about God and life. Sometimes we meet in his room, other times in my office, and he asks me about God. He believes in God, knowing that God is here, acknowledging that it is God who has pulled him through some frightful moments of life in dealing with a drug habit forced upon him by one of his parents at an early age.

His interest in God and the church was sparked during his time in a home for "troubled boys," which was connected to a monastery and abbey near his hometown. He remembers the ornateness of the church, with a larger-than-life cross of the crucified Christ in the front of the sanctuary. He and his friends would run around the church in the still of night, searching for leftover wine, playing among the confessional booths, hiding in the pews in a darkened sanctuary, and daring one another to drink the holy water.

Besides running around with his friends, certain rituals of the church have made an indelible impression upon this young man. For example, when we talked about God, his image of God is that of spirit, a loving spirit "that surrounds and keeps all of us safe." In drawing a picture of his impression of Jesus for me, he drew an image of Jesus with a halo over his head and a crown upon his head because he has heard of Jesus being referred to as "the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, or something like that," he says.

Glen comes up with so many questions that would challenge many theologians, querying me about the nature of God, the rituals of the church, and issues of life and death. Glen says he knows that God is here because of the love the staff shows to him and others.

Glen believes in the power of God's love and desire to answer prayers because of his experiences in jails and detention centers. He remembered one cold January night, when he was nine years old, and he had gone to night court because the police found him in possession of illegal drugs:

I prayed to Jesus when I go to court over drugs. I didn't want to be put in jail. My Mom met me at the court house. We rode together in the cop car. I prayed that Jesus would save me from jail. But I went (there) anyway. And I was OK. I think with Jesus you have to meet him half-way. He comes part of the way in answering your prayers, but you've got to meet him and do some things for him as well. That's the way it works. You got to meet Jesus as well ... half way.

The third narrative is Tracey's, a young African American woman who attends a Baptist church when she's at home, who loves to sing and write poetry to God, like the character "Celie" in Alice Walker's The Color Purple. Our relationship began when she found out that I was reading Ben's poetry on the unit." I'm a poet, too. Aren't I good

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enough for you?" she asked one day, smiling, knowing that this bait would hook me.

When asked what she liked about church, she said that she loved to go to church because of the community:

What I like about church is going and clapping hands. If someone says something good, then we may say, "Thank you," real proper like, or else some really get into it, saying, "Amen ... Alleluia." I like that. I feel like standing up and sayin' that sometimes myself. For me, church is a place you can go to, and once, when you're in problems outside (in the world), and you can come in and get a peace of mind, and feeling like rejoicing and stuff.

The only thing that Tracey doesn't like about church is the offering, which they do more than once during worship in her church." They are always going for money it seems." Tracey's image of God is as the Father of Jesus, a merciful God who is always there for his people:

You can curse God, and God is still there; you are already saved in his name. God is very selfish because He wants you for Himself But because He wants you, He is very forgiving if you ask for forgiveness. That's all you have to do is ask God for forgiveness. I know God because I speak in tongues. God gives me a warm feeling in my heart. (And when) my heart is warm, then my hands get wet, and I gotta walk around ... gotta scream and holler ... got to say "Alleluia!" My mama said that when that happens, that's when the Holy Ghost is inside you ... you feel something.

What she likes about God is the promise "that if you walk in His word, you'll have everlasting life; that's pretty cool ... forgiving people. God's a pretty cool dude. My mama don't like me using that language, but He is."

One day while attending a group therapy session, Tracey shared with the group this poem, meant for me:

Come unto me all ye that labor and I will give you rest.
   Someone who says they are God.
How do I know someone named Jesus and God ever lived?
   Could there possibly have been a man who turned water into wine?
People worship him and so-called "drink his blood."
   WHY?
Only one man.
   If he was living, he'd be a millionaire.
Mr. God, help me if you are so mighty and powerful!
   Or is it that you only help people who give money to the churches,
   with fake preachers who has a cold beer after services?

"I mean every word of this poem," she said. A theologian in search of God.

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II

What emerges in listening to these insightful narratives and the questions being asked, participating in the ongoing dialogue throughout the days of working with these adolescents, are stories that reveal the wonderfully diverse character of human faith. In their stories about life, God, Jesus, the church, and religion, the reader becomes aware that this is truly faith in search of understanding. From among the stories told, each one of these young people is asking me, or, more important, asking God, to help make sense of the world that is often more chaos than cosmos, more helter-skelter than controlled and predictable. Ben is claiming that until we come to our senses and reach out to God we will have to work together, holding hands as imperfect people in an imperfect land. Glen is asking questions about the church and God, trusting that he can pursue these questions because God in Christ has answered his prayers before, helping him survive jail and rides in police cars as a nine year-old child. Tracey, strong in her opinions of church life, asks questions about the nature of God in the midst of seeming injustices in her world. In other words, these young people are doing and being theological. They are asking important, complex questions about the nature of God's relationship with humankind in sophisticated, and sometimes not-so-sophisticated, ways. They are trying to understand what is happening in their community and life experiences as part of their journey of faith.

Where do these questions and religious narratives fit within the medical and psychological models of the institutions where they live, play, and study? Like other settings for children and adolescents with behavioral disorders,³ most of the secular institutions have focused primarily on the body and the mind of these young people but not on the spirit. The very definitions used to describe what is occurring in a young person's life who is outwardly and overtly disturbed or agitated serves different professional and scientific purposes and reflects diverse perspectives, since all definitions of disabling conditions are social constructions. In terms of treating a behavioral disorder as an issue of the body or neurological disorder, the medical and psychiatric field may view a behavioral disorder as stemming from an organic dysfunction needing psychopharmacological treatment.⁴

A behavioral disorder may be viewed as an issue of the mind or

³ A behavioral disorder means a condition exhibiting one or more of the following characteristics over a long period of time and to a marked degree, which adversely affects educational performance: (a) an inability to learn, which cannot be explained by intellectual, sensory, or health factors; (b) an inability to build or maintain satisfactory interpersonal relationships with peers and teachers; (c) inappropriate types of behavior or feelings under normal circumstances; (d) a general pervasive mood of unhappiness or depression; or (e) a tendency to develop physical symptoms or fears associated with personal or school problems (Federal Register, vol. 42, no. 163[1977]: 42478, as amended in Federal Register, vol. 46 [1981]:3866).
⁴ Betty Epanchin and Jim Paul, Emotional Problems of Childhood and Adolescence: A Multidisciplinary Approach (Columbus: Merrill Publishing Co., 1987).

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psyche. Many in psychology believe that human life is a challenge to our power to shape someone else's life to the greater society's purposes.⁵ With this philosophy, psychologists have described behavior disorders as psychological in nature to the extent a child's behavior deviates from a relative social norm, occurring with a frequency or intensity that is judged to be abnormal. In psychology, many choose to work with young people with behavioral disorders using primarily behavior modification techniques and programs for controlling and modifying a young child's behavior.⁶

While the medical and psychological perspectives focus on the disabling condition, "behavior disorder" as a dysfunction of body and mind, neither field has adequately addressed the issue of spirit. Yet it is the spirit or, in the language of the Jewish and Christian communities, the faith of these young people that is longing to be heard and is awaiting a response from others who believe in God. The journey of faith of these young people, a journey that began before they came to the institution, needs to be nurtured again and given direction. For those who are Christians, the body of Christ is uniquely crafted and empowered by God's love as the compassionate community, able to answer the call and questions of these young people. While the medical, psychological, and educational fields are trying to help these adolescents, questions of God continue to arise, unanswered or not taken seriously. Many of these young people wonder if God is truly listening to their voices. These young people are singing songs of lament to God as pilgrims lost in an alien land.

III

How are we in our communities of faith to understand and appreciate such provocative questions about God's presence? Do we realize that these young people are pilgrims lost in our modern, secular society? These are pilgrims who have left behind them the often fractured security of their home, friends, and burned out neighborhoods. For some, they left with little choice about the situation. Many young people are in specialized hospitals because they were sexually, physically, or psychologically abused at home; for others, their families no longer knew how to cope with the sometimes erratic behavior of the young child or teen. A few leave a place of drugs and sleepless nights filled with the violence of the streets. Said one young man from an urban environment, "I'm afraid that Jesus won't forgive me for my sins. I'm afraid the acts have been so bad that Jesus won't forgive me. If he don't, I don't know what I'll do in this world once I'm away from this place."

These young people, bereft of home, friends, school and church, are metaphorically standing in the middle of the public square of our

⁵ Christopher Lasch, The True and Only Heaven (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991) p. 15.
⁶ Epanchin and Paul, p. 23.

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world stuck, naked, lost, lonely, violated, and vulnerable. And they are scared-scared because they have been taken out of the world of the threatening known into a place that is unknown, temporary, and, at first, even more threatening. Not trusting in others, they don't know where to hide. They are like John Bunyan's pilgrim, Christian, with a heavy burden upon their backs, individually crying, "What shall I do?" in the City of Destruction.⁷

Yet while standing naked and alone as individuals in the public square, they each sing their songs of lament. For while they miss their homes, friends, and families, they know there is another place for them, though they do not know how to get there or where they are necessarily headed. The goal of life's journey has not become visible or concrete. Echoing the words of Psalm 137, they sing about their need for community, lamenting that which has been taken away from them and dreading the isolation where they are. While living in a foreign land like a hospital, they are like the Israelites who remember something of God and Zion: "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, and there we wept, when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our harps" (Psalm 137:1,2). These adolescents, though they spent only a few short days of their lives in their respective Christian or Jewish communities, are like the children of Israel, as they remember those days when they seemed to be closer to God when living with their family and friends.

What the young people yearn for is movement from this place of isolation, loneliness, and disconnectedness to some clear destination, some place with people who care for them. They long to be healed as their spirit is in disarray; they wish to reorder the state of psychological and spiritual confusion that springs out of the core of their being and infects the rest of life. So strong is this confusion that it is contagious, influencing the lives of family members, friends, staff, and acquaintances.⁸

To move these young people on in their journey of faith, they need to worship in a community of believers, to be in a sacred gathering where the manifestation of divine action has occurred time and again. They are like the children of Israel, who would travel to holy places to worship Yahweh during Passover (Luke 2:41). They are like Chaucer's medieval pilgrims, simple people who traveled from the ends of every shire in England, "to see the holy, blissful martyr who helped them when they were sick."⁹ Like the pilgrims of old, these young people are asking us to be the community of the faithful where they may go to ask their questions. For in the company of believers they may truly experience God's compassionate healing.

To guide these young people, church members need to be pilgrims with these young people, guiding them along the way of the sacred

⁷ John Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress (Laurel, New York: Lightyear Press, 1984).
⁸ Barry Lopez, Crossing Open Ground (New York: Vintage, 1988).
⁹ Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales (New York: Bantam Press, 1982).

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story learned in Christian communities and lived out in the world. As co-pilgrims, our task is to share and walk with them, to be the good companions who do not abandon the pilgrim, even in the face of great temptations and death, like the friend Faithful to Bunyan's Christian. As companions, church members are to be present as storytellers, retelling the sacred story because it is the map for life's journey.¹⁰ It is in the sacred story of God's love, recorded in Scripture, and in the telling of that story, that one discovers and unleashes the reservoir of God's gift of faith, hope, and love, which alone can heal, nurture, and guide these young people's spirits in disarray.

The sacred story of the Christian community creates an atmosphere in which truth becomes discernible as a pattern.¹¹ Truth, love, care, and compassion can only be understood in the context of story. Outside of story, these concepts become one-dimensional and lose their vitality and relevance. For these concepts are alive, yet unpronounceable. They are only known in the act of living the truth of God's love.

Along with the power of the story is the art of storytelling. Barry Lopez writes that the act of storytelling,

(Involves) the skillful invocation of unimpeachable sources and a listener's knowledge that no hypocrisy or subterfuge is involved ... the intent of the storyteller, then, must be to evoke, honestly, some single aspect of all (the story) contains. The storyteller knows that because different individuals grasp the story at different levels, the focus of his regard for truth must be at the primary one-with who was there, what happened, when, where, and why things occurred. It is then possible for the story to be more successful than the storyteller himself is able to imagine.¹²

It is in the telling and retelling of the biblical story, the singing, the acting out, and painting of the sacred story that the message of God's love for humankind and creation is made clear and tangible. The final destination of the pilgrimage is apparent, and the pilgrim moves towards a place of deep healing, where the fractured wounds of callous disregard are healed with a new heart, and the spirit is at rest.

Young people who have been diagnosed as having some kind of "behavior disorders" are pilgrims lost in an alien land. It is important to note that they are not new to God's story, since they are able to describe God and God's nature in ways that reveal a living faith. They are waiting for someone, somewhere, to accompany them on the journey and to point out to them that sacred place where they can find rest for their souls and answers to their queries of God.

The gift that many young people with behavior disorders have for the church is that of telling the truth. Among professionals who work with such young people, there is the sense that if these adolescents

¹⁰ Avi, "The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyler," in The Hornbook, Vol. LXVII, No. 1, 1992, p. 27.
¹¹ Lopez, p. 69.
¹² Lopez, p. 70.

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sense the therapist's weakness or "Achilles' heel" in working with them, they will exploit it to their advantage whenever possible. Often the professional tries to maintain a facade of strength and professionalism, placing on themselves a mask of knowledge and competence to hide fear and insecurity.

The "weakness" in others that these young people are very sensitive to is the sense of incongruity between the truths of God's sacred story and the contradictory actions of those who say they believe in God. Having come out of lives riddled with stories that were filled with lies, hidden truths, and abuse, creating a dark void of trust in their lives, the young people know when someone is or isn't telling and living the truth. While the rest of us forget what we see and forget what we don't see around us, a form of socialized blindness where we overlook the incongruities and subtle lies of life, such blindness among these young people hasn't been socialized yet. They upset us because they turn the bright lights of truth upon our hidden, dark lies, demanding honesty from us. They validate, in their own way, that which we all see or don't see. They remove the shadows in our darkened caves.