Prelude: As the world witnesses the horror of war and violence once again, this time with Russia's aggression against the people of Ukraine, I'm mindful of our human propensity to justify our actions, our lust for power and control over others. The example given below is a stark reminder of the horrors of war, which we are seeing on our screens once again. This essay which I began before the recent events unfolded, takes a personal look at the origins of human deceit, and suggests a remedy rooted in an ancient practice of confession.

In the opening to his book, The Forgiving Self, Psychologist Robert Karen recounts the story of the famous Vietnam War-era photo of a small girl running down a road, her clothes burned off and her body scorched with napalm. The man who claimed to have coordinated the raid on the child’s village in 1972 was a twenty-four-year-old U.S. Army helicopter pilot named John Plummer. When Plummer saw the photo a few days after the attack, he reported an overwhelming sense of devastation. Decades later, he told a reporter from the Associated Press: “It just knocked me to my knees. And that was when I knew I could never talk about this.” The guilt he experienced became a lifelong torment.

The young girl in the photo, Pham Thi Kim Phuc, survived seventeen operations, relocated to Toronto, Canada, and became a goodwill ambassador for UNESCO. In 1996, Plummer heard Kim speak at a Veteran’s Day observance in Washington DC, not far from his home. In her speech that day, Kim included these words: “If I could talk face to face with the pilot who dropped the bombs, I would tell him we cannot change history, but we should try to do good things for the present.” At the end of her speech, Plummer made his way through the crowd and found Kim. “I fell into her arms sobbing. All I could say is, ‘I’m so sorry. I’m just so sorry.’”

Kim responded, “It’s all right, “I forgive. I forgive.” The two began a friendship with occasional visits, and public appearances report Dr. Karen in his book, where he writes: “When I called Plummer four years later, Kim had just been to visit.”

While this is such a fantastic story of forgiveness in human relations, it is not that at all. It’s a story of human deception. You see, Plummer lied. He was not the pilot. In fact, according to reports from military officials, Plummer, while in Vietnam at the time, was assigned elsewhere and not involved in the raid that resulted in Kim’s devastating injuries. When confronted with the evidence in 1997, Plummer admitted to his deception and explained that he had gotten so caught up in the emotion of the Veteran's Day observance and Kim's speech that he acted as if he had been the pilot, even though he was not. Equally curious is how Dr. Robert Karen could report the above incident as the lead narrative in his introduction years after the truth had been revealed. It makes a compelling story to introduce an excellent text on forgiveness. But Karen's book was copyrighted in 2001. And he reports, "When I called Plummer four years later, Kim had just been to visit ." implying a verification of the story as Dr. Karen writes it. That would have been in 2000. Yet the evidence discrediting Plummer's role in this story was revealed in 1997. Which raises several questions: Did Robert Karen call Plummer in 2000? If he did call him, did Plummer perpetuate the lie while caught up again in the excitement of a reputable and published Psychologist asking him about the incident? Did Dr. Karen read/hear about this story and decide it was such a good illustration for his book and just inserted himself into the narrative for impact? Did everyone just want this story to be true, so they went along with it?

What’s going on here, and how does it relate to Ash Wednesday?

I came across all the above by pure accident. While searching for a topic for this issue of Notebooks, I heard the story of Kim and Plummer referenced in a podcast. That led me to research, including reading Dr. Karen's book. But just before hitting “send” for this email to all of you, I engaged in a quick Google search, which led me to reference the Plummer incident of deception. Dr. Karen’s version of the story is still up on the Oprah Winfrey website, albeit without the reference to calling Plummer, which is in his book on page 2. Dr. Karen’s book is a fine treatise on the psychology of human forgiveness. I’m not disputing his work. But I am intrigued by Plummer’s deception and Dr. Karen’s perpetuation of it. The heroic version of Plummer continues to be told in newspaper articles and books. It's as if we want it to be true. Heck, I wanted it to be true. I wanted to write you all this remarkable story of human forgiveness as a reminder of its power in our lives. My goodness, don't we all need a good account of grace and forgiveness these days? To her credit, Kim is on record as having said, “Whether or not he played a major or a minor role, the point is I forgive him,” She keeps us centered on the power of forgiveness as well as her resilience in the face of the horrors of war.

But this little tale is why we need Ash Wednesday. We need to face ourselves, reflect on our lives, come clean with an honest declaration of our vulnerabilities. The church version of this is called confession, which has unfortunately been misused and abused. I recall a friend of mine raised in the Roman Catholic tradition reporting to me once that she just manufactured things to say in the confessional booth as a teenager. Additionally, there are many reports of other misuses of this practice. Yet, confession has another more noble aspect to it. More akin to telling a good friend of one's regrets, lost dreams, great disappointments. Then receiving a comforting acknowledgment, touch, or another gesture with the promise that grace does indeed abound. "Your story is safe with me."

Most of us are cautious about revealing such personal wounds. We may also be reluctant to make the inward turn to reflect and gaze upon that mysterious inner world the ancients called the soul. Yet anyone who has ever gained the slightest bit of wisdom made that turn at some point.

“It is a bewildering thing in human life that the thing that causes the greatest fear is the source of the greatest wisdom.” C.G. Jung

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of the Lenten season of penance. It is forty days leading up to Holy Week and Easter. While Easter dates to the New Testament era, the traditions of Ash Wednesday aren’t quite as old. Ash Wednesday officially dates to the 11th Century following hundreds of years of various worship practices. The power of Ash Wednesday is in the imposition of ashes on the forehead. The minister makes the sign of the cross at the place where in our baptism we are sealed with the sign of the cross. The symbol of ash connects us with our mortality. "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust" and the many references in Hebrew literature suggest all manner of human frailty and penance. (Look here for a quick reference)

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of a turn away from one way of being in the world toward reconciliation and atonement… to be at one with God, neighbor, and self. We make a metanoia (an embodied turn toward a new life). In the Lutheran tradition, the liturgical movement moves us from Ash Wednesday, with its strong emphasis on personal self-reflection and confession, to the reconciliation of the Holy Week Maundy Thursday rite, where the Last Supper is reenacted. A meal filled with the Shakespearean drama of betrayal, denial, and yet a sacrament of forgiveness.

For me, Ash Wednesday has always been the day of honesty. It’s the day of “Let’s get real with ourselves, our relations, our world, and with the Holy.” It is a day to recognize that I can just as easily deceive myself, inflate myself even hide from myself. It’s a day of sobriety. Maybe Ash Wednesday is the religious version of the first step of a kind of A.A. program. Perhaps the liturgy for the day should begin with that kind of confession.

1. We admitted we were powerless over our addiction— that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

The parallels between the 12 steps of A.A. and the model of Christian life have been developed quite thoroughly by author Keith Miller.

The traditional liturgy of the Ash Wednesday service in the Episcopal Church can be found here. I find these words in the liturgy particularly poignant as we confess.

Our self-indulgent appetites and ways and our exploitation

of other people,

We confess to you, Lord.

Our anger at our own frustration and our envy of those

more fortunate than ourselves,

We confess to you, Lord.

Our intemperate love of worldly goods and comforts, and

our dishonesty in daily life and work,

We confess to you, Lord.

I recognize that many people have been hurt by the Christian church and the inappropriate and harmful ways it has communicated concepts of sin, confession, and repentance. That practice is something we should repent and amend. I am also aware that U.S. American society tends to have an overly inflated view of our goodness, righteousness, and ego. We do well to face our self-indulgent appetites, envy, and dishonesty. In other words, we are facing our self-deception. Ash Wednesday reminds us of our human fragility, lust for power, and desire to always be in control and place ourselves in the best light. But there on our foreheads is the reminder of our tendency toward self-deception. And here is the clever thing about this ritual. Since the ashes are on our forehead, we can only see them by looking in a mirror.

Perhaps that’s the point of the whole ritual.

Until next time, be well

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