Capt. Carl Subler, Chaplain and Human

The church I attended back home in Massachusetts had a Greek Orthodox priest comfortable in working at the church functions with sleeves rolled up, running around serving others food and chatting over a couple of drinks with a cigarette in hand. He was my favorite priest. When appropriate, he would wear the vestments, prim and proper, but then he always managed to show exactly how human he was the rest of the time. He was easy to talk to because we knew he would understand.

While I've managed somehow to walk the walk and talk the talk helping veterans, they understand I am not one of them. I was adopted into all of this from birth and by marriage. They also know that there was not one day of my life when I had perfect faith. I still don't even though I'm a chaplain now. The most important message they get from me is that they don't have to be perfect or have faith that is absolute.

We have Chaplains working with police officers, firefighters, emergency responders just as we have some working with the homeless, bikers, prisoners and every other walk of life you can think about. We all come called from the lives we have to serve others needing help getting thru their lives because we've walked in their shoes. We understand.

Think of being a soldier in Afghanistan needing spiritual help but finding the person they are supposed to talk to has never once stepped into human life with all the struggles and decisions everyone else seems to make. Never drank? Never smoked? Never used vulgar language? How are they supposed to understand what it's like for the soldiers? How are the soldiers supposed to be able to go and talk to someone with a "perfect life" when their own life is falling apart?

Well here's a story about my kind of Chaplain. He drinks, smokes and while he apparently takes his faith very seriously, he has it in perspective the same way Christ did. This may not be the kind of "spiritual" leader a polite church would want but he is the type they need.

This was sent by Lily Casura over at Healing Combat Trauma

Driven Life" and others in a dynamic conversation about faith and its impact on the world.

In Afghanistan, Sunday Mass on a makeshift altar
By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA
The Associated Press
Monday, February 22, 2010; 1:01 AM

BADULA QULP, Afghanistan -- The U.S. Army brigade's Catholic priest spits, smokes, cracks jokes and has come under fire like so many other American soldiers. He keeps altar bread in an empty grenade canister. On Sunday, he donned purple and white vestments over his uniform and celebrated Mass on a makeshift altar of four stacked boxes of MREs.

Capt. Carl Subler stood in the dust at an earthen-walled compound and prayed for the safety of those assembled, half a dozen soldiers who are fighting the Taliban near the contested town of Marjah in southern Afghanistan. He also prayed for peace in a country that has known war for decades. The men kneeled in their faded uniforms and some took communion, a reflective moment in a time of war.

"I find that my prayer life kind of suffers when I'm back home. I can pop a top on a cold one and watch TV," said Subler of Versailles, Ohio. "I find the more creature comforts are taken away from us, in many ways, we look to God with even more hope."


A busy Subler gave Mass on Sunday in three patrol bases - "Keep it rolling, baby," he said - in the Badula Qulp region of Helmand province, where the Army is supporting a Marine offensive against an insurgent stronghold. He is the only Catholic chaplain in the 5th Stryker Brigade, which has lent 400 soldiers to a mission that has waged daily firefights as forces push the Taliban out of villages.

"When you're separate from your families, sometimes you feel powerless to do anything when they're in trouble," Subler said during the service. "When you're over here, you kind of feel helpless."
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In Afghanistan, Sunday Mass on a makeshift altar