(02:08) Daughter of Peter Braestrup

Peter Braestrup was a journalist and war correspondent who was widely considered an authority on the relationship between the press and the military. He served as a Marine in the Korean War where he was wounded in action. Reporting for Time magazine, The New York Herald, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, Braestrup sent many years abroad, specifically in Saigon reporting on the Vietnam War.

In 1975, he became the founding editor of The Wilson Quarterly of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He later served as an editor and communications director at the Library of Congress. In 1977, he published a two-volume book, The Big Story, which critically analyzed and pointed out the weaknesses of U.S. press coverage during the 1968 Tet Offensive.

The oral history collection at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library includes an interview with Peter Braestrup about his experience in Vietnam and his impressions of President Johnson during that era.

(02:34) Spiritual home in Unitarian Universalism (UU)

Religion scholar Stephen Prothero calls Unitarian Universalism (UU) "America's theologically and politically liberal denomination." In 1961, the Unitarian and Universalist traditions in the United States combined to form the Unitarian Universalist Association, which now includes over 1,000 congregations.

A 2007 survey by the Pew Forum reports that three-tenths of a percent of adults in the U.S. belong to this tradition. Both Unitarianism and Universalism are rooted in the Christianity of Europe and colonial New England. Unitarianism is most often described as the belief in one God — a rejection of the doctrine of the Trinity; Universalism is characterized by a denial of the doctrine of eternal damnation, wherein man is inherently sinful and deserving of condemnation to Hell at birth, and instead proclaims a loving God who will redeem all souls. Generally, Unitarian Universalists draw inspiration from many different faiths — Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, atheist, humanist — and emphasize the diversity of views and traditions within the UU community.

The Unitarian Universalist Association describes UU as a liberal religion that has no creed but instead affirms seven guiding principles:

1. The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
2. Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
3. Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;
4. A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
5. The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;
6. The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;
7. Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

(04:45) Ordination as UU Minister

Kate Braestrup was ordained as a Unitarian Universalist minister in 2004 and serves the First Universalist Church in Rockland, Maine. In her memoir, Here If You Need Me, Braestrup describes her first official act as an ordained minister was to pray for the game wardens and law enforcement officers present:

May you be granted capable and amusing comrades, observant witnesses, and gentle homecomings.

May you be granted respite from what you must know of human evil, and refuge from what you must know of human pain.

May God defend the goodness in your hearts.

May God defend the sweetness in your souls…

(05:34) Tibetan Buddhist Perspecive On Death

Tibetan Buddhism emphasizes awareness of death and impermanence. Tibetan Buddhists believe that preparation in life for death is central to living well, and, therefore, work towards a holistic understanding and acceptance of death as part of life's journey. They hold that the moment of death may actually lead to enlightenment or, at the least, to a transition period before the best possible rebirth.

(15:21) Braestrup's Understanding of Miracle

In her memoir, Braestrup writes about her understanding of miracle in relation to her work as a chaplain for the Maine game warden service:

A miracle is generally understood to be an extraordinary event that cannot be explained by any plausible application of natural laws and principles. For example, there is not natural law or principle that permits a human being to stroll across the surface of the sea or to heal the sick with a word…

Perhaps all anyone means by the word miracle is an outcome that defies the odds. In a football game in which a Hail Mary pass is complicated and the underdog wins, the victory is called a miracle. The conception of a child by an infertile couple, the complete remission of a notoriously lethal cancer, the appearance of a police officer just as a mugger pulls a knife….’What are the odds?’ we ask, and call it a miracle…

A miracle cannot simply be an event that is unlikely, for that would include the unlikely evil as well as the unlikely good. It cannot simply be an event inexplicable by natural law, for that would restrict use of the word to events that do not occur outside of stories…

A miracle is not defined by an event. A miracle is defined by gratitude… Sometimes a miracle is a life restored, but the restoration is always temporary. At other times, maybe most of the time, a miracle can only be the resurrection of love beside the unchanged fact of death.

(29:48) Passage from Braestrup's Book

The passage read by Krista is excerpted from the sixth chapter of Kate Braestrup's 2007 memoir, Here If You Need Me: A True Story:

I love my uniform. Quite apart from whatever unwholesome sartorial fetish this may reflect, my uniform is so useful. It tells everyone at a search or accident scene who I am and what I am good for. It also signals the many ways in which I am useless, if, for example, someone needs to be subdued, arrested, or shot. You definitely don't want me looking for you if you're lost in the woods; I can barely bumble my way from the command post to the truck without getting disoriented. Lieutenant Trisdale once suggested, not entirely in jest, that perhaps "Her Holiness" should be handcuffed to a tree, lest she wander off and make more work for everyone.

In fact, if anyone needs proof that God has a sense of humor, here it is: I am a middle-aged mother of four who primarily works with young, very fit men. My preferred habitat is a warm, well-stocked library, yet I work in the outdoors, with outdoorsmen. But the crowning iron, the one that makes family members and old friends smile in knowing disbelief, is that I, a famously loquacious person, have a job that mostly requires me to just show up, shut my mouth, and be.

(38:15) Quote from End of Braestrup's Book

Kate Braestrup ends her 2007 memoir, Here If You Need Me: A True Story, describing a scene in which searchers are coming in after searching for Corinne, a woman with Alzheimer's disease, who wandered off into the woods:

Perhaps you would like to fast-forward to the end of the story. Was Corinne, the white-haired woman, found, and found alive?

Well, usually, there is a find. The wardens work hard to get one, and generally they succeed. But I'm not going to tell you if it happened in this case, for in the end this is not a story about success, however richly deserved and deeply desired such success might be. The truth is that while usually there is a find, sometimes there isn't. Sometimes the wardens, the searchers, the family members—heroes all—must go home without success, without even an explanation of how the failure happened. That's hard.

In a true story, the end is never tidy. So I can only give you untidy searchers returning to the firehouse for their lunch. They are tired, cold, and very hungry. They are greeted with platters of lasagna, bowls of coleslaw, tottering piles of oatmeal cookies, and jiggling, jewel-colored Jell-O salads. The odor of damp boots and wet dogs mingles with the scents of fish chowder and fresh biscuits.

When the prisoners from the Downeast Correctional Facility come into the command post to hand in their GPS units, Nate Robertson meets them at the door. He puts his hand on one neon yellow shoulder: "Weren't you guys with us on the Addison search?" he asks. The man nods, shyly. "You guys were great. Thanks for coming."

Jim comes back to the firehouse with a heavy heart. He has scratches on his cheek, twigs in his hair, pine needles down his pants, and his mother is still nowhere to be found. Yet he takes in the scene before him, mops the rain from his face, and smiles.

"Look at this," he says. "Look at this! This is incredible."

The firehouse is filled with people. The old coots in flannel shirts, the middle-aged dog handlers, and the college students with piercings are sharing American chop suey with the state senator and his teenage daughter. The U.S. Marines are comparing blisters with the soccer players, the sheriff's deputies are breaking bread with the convicts, game wardens share Jell-O with equestriens, the stained-glass artist offers the retired state trooper an oatmeal cookie.

In a little while, they will go back out and search some more. They will try to find a body, living or dead. For now, they are here together, joined in community, bent on the common purpose of love.

"Everyone in the world is here," the lost woman's son exclaims. "It's a miracle!"

Amen.

(39:57) Story about Dorothy Day

Dorothy Day was a bohemian writer and social agitator who founded The Catholic Worker newspaper, shelter, and soup kitchen in New York. Based on the French Catholic Peter Maurin's program of social reconstruction, Dorothy Day founded the Catholic Worker movement in 1933 with the intent of uniting workers and intellectuals in joint activities such as communal farming and housing and feeding the urban poor in New York City. As part of that outreach, the Catholic Worker, a radical monthly newspaper supporting pacifism during World War II, was published with Day serving as editor until her death in 1980. "Our rule is the works of mercy," said Dorothy Day. "It is the way of sacrifice, worship, a sense of reverence."

Braestrup's comments on community and love echo Dorothy Day's sentiments encapsulated in the postscript to her 1952 autobiography, The Long Loneliness:

The most significant thing about The Catholic Worker is poverty, some say.

The most significant thing is community, others say. We are not alone any more.

But the final word is love. At times it has been, in the words of Father Zossima, a harsh and dreadful thing, and our very faith in love has been tried through fire.

We cannot love God unless we love each other, and to love we must know each other. We know Him in the breaking of bread, and we know each other in the breaking of bread, and we are not alone any more. Heaven is a banquet and life is a banquet, too, even with a crust, where there is companionship.

We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.

It all happened while we sat there talking, and it is still going on.

For a more in-depth conversation about Dorothy Day, her Catholicism, and her story, check out our program "Faith Fired by Literature" with author Paul Elie.

(41:08) Kitty Genovese

In 1964, Catherine Genovese was a young woman who was attacked and stabbed in three isolated incidents before eventually dying. Her case gained national attention because 38 people witnessed one of her three attacks and did nothing — not even calling the police. The tragic event called into question the morals and values of modern society, asking whether as human beings we as individuals can count on others in society to help us in a time of need.