I was walking alone along the road outside a monastery in England, thinking about where I was. AWOL in a foreign country. I’d gone on a two-week leave several months ago, but instead of driving back and reporting for duty on the aircraft carrier I had boarded a plane. It felt like the only thing I could do. And I didn’t think I deserved to be punished for it, so I’d fled.

These weeks of walking the Scottish moors and visiting monasteries to rest and pray had soothed some of the turmoil inside me. But still I didn’t know where I was going. The initial gut-wrenching fear had eventually settled into the thrill of a new adventure, but it was now threatening to sink into dread. What would happen if I stopped running? Was my life ruined? Turned inward, I didn’t notice the trees around me or the ancient stonework of the monastery. Was this all a terrible mistake?

That was when I first felt it. Deep inside, down in a dark part of myself where I never looked, it felt like something was moving. Like the stirring of a hibernating animal, something large. The slow uncoiling of a hidden predator. I couldn’t see anything clearly, but it felt real enough to inspire awe at the power of the thing. It was enough to frighten me, yet the deep sensation was not fear. I remember thinking: Not yet. But it was coming. And it excited me.

A month later I was sitting outside another monastery. At the time I imagined that the monks were worriedly deliberating about me, but the decision probably wasn’t a hard one to make. I had asked to join them. An AWOL American who showed up two weeks ago. Did I really expect them to consider this seriously? It was a foolish dream: To flee the merciless world and disappear among the monks, behind monastery walls, where everything was different, where they would understand me. It was foolish because of course everything is not different behind those walls. In his confusion the monk had said the first thing he thought of: “We use the national health care system, and you’re not a British citizen.” But it was also foolish because I should have known we cannot flee. We cannot disappear.

I walked along the garden path, past the cross, high on the rocky hill, and slowly lowered myself onto mossy rock. To await the answer I already knew. Here was where my dream ended. Here I was finally waking up—I pressed my eyes shut tight.

Then it was all dark and I was alone. Far from everyone who knew me and everyone I had called a friend, far from the land of my home, where I was now considered a criminal. I saw my life broken in ugly pieces. All the opportunities and benefits I had been given I had ruined; all that I had gathered and protected I had squandered. It felt like I was falling, falling into the dark. I cried out.

It was then that I felt the movement again. Again in the deep dark. But this time it was all around me. I was in that forbidding place and the movement was close on every side. The darkness itself seemed alive.

But, just as before, there was no fear. I now knew this thing would consume me, was already consuming me, and I was in awe of it. I lifted up the pieces of my broken life. “Here, take it. It’s ruined.” And I felt the awakened Spirit move again, with such raw power that the garden seemed to lift from the earth. And I knew what I had to do.

I would go to prison. I had no doubt that when I returned I would be arrested and jailed, perhaps for several years. But now I had felt something greater than the thing I feared. I could go back, even to prison. And when I realized that, it was clear that the right thing was to return and submit myself to their judgment. I talked with several of the monks before I left the monastery, and they nodded approvingly, but I could tell they did not understand. That didn’t matter. I was the one going to prison.

I waited one more month to make sure I understood. I went to Ireland, walked a hundred miles from Dublin to visit another monastery, and said one more prayer before going home.

When I presented my passport in the U.S., the customs agent entered my information, then paused, staring at her computer with a look of concern on her face. For a terrible moment I was sure she was going to call security and have me arrested. I wouldn’t be able to see my parents or turn myself in voluntarily. Then she looked up, smiled, and waved me through.

I watched my mother cry when she opened the door and embraced me. The next day my parents went with me to mass and heard the priest read the story of the prodigal son. Then I rode twenty hours to the naval base in Virginia, staring out the window of the bus, reminding myself what I was doing.

But it wasn’t until I was onboard the ship again that I truly felt fear. I remember standing on the thick carpet in front of the Executive Officer’s desk; he was patiently ordering me to put on my uniform again. I had been an officer and it seemed they wanted to handle my situation quietly. I spoke calmly but my knees felt weak. My face seemed to twitch and tremble and it was all I could do to hold it still. I told him I couldn’t do that—it wasn’t right. He looked at me for a moment. Then he dismissed me.

Not that I considered myself a pacifist at the time. When I joined the Navy I saw military service as honorable, and I believed that some wars could be just. And my recent change of heart had not been theological or ideological. It was caused by the tension that grew inside of me as I tried to be a good officer and a good Christian at the same time. The existential tension between mercy and discipline, meekness and power. Finally, when it had become unbearable, I had admitted to myself that I could not do both. I had to choose. That was all there was to it.

So when I refused to put the uniform back on, it was not because I didn’t want anything to do with the military. It was simply because it seemed false. I wasn’t an officer any more, no one was going to give me the responsibilities of an officer, I didn’t deserve the respect of an officer, so why should I pretend to be an officer? And I hadn’t come back to play along with a lie, hoping for mercy. I had come back to submit to discipline.

This failure to cooperate brought me another charge, “Disobeying a Lawful Order,” and two days in the brig. The strip search was unpleasant. But the food was surprisingly good.

For the next several months I stayed at the Bachelor Officer’s Quarters on base, waiting for the military justice system to process my case. During this time I read Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God is Within You. And I realized that my experiences were not isolated and that there was much in Jesus’ life and teachings directing us to choose mercy instead of discipline, meekness instead of power. I came to believe that it was not right to use violence or the threat of violence against others, even those considered our enemies. I suppose I had always thought of myself as a conscientious objector, of sorts. But my reasons had been personal and private. Now I had the convictions that were generally recognized as those of a military conscientious objector. But I never considered applying to the Navy for CO status.

It was probably too late at that point anyway. But the more I became convinced that what the military was doing was wrong—not just wrong for me, but simply wrong—the more I thought it was important to stand against that wrong.

Applying for CO status seemed to be asking for permission to be excused. I wanted to object to the wrong, take a stand against it, refuse to participate in it. That’s what I had done so far. And while I had initially fled in fear of the consequences of that objection, now I had come back to face them. But I was not repenting of my refusal to participate, my refusal to keep giving military orders. I was not asking for mercy from those who I was objecting against. I was not asking permission to be excused.

During this time of waiting and being summoned before military lawyers, I frequently thought of Jesus’ trial. I didn’t see myself as completely innocent; I was at fault for promising to serve in the military in the first place, and for running away. But I still looked to Jesus as my model. And it was clear that he didn’t ask for mercy from the authorities that had charged him. He didn’t defend himself or insist on his rights and often he even refused to answer their questions. Why? Because Jesus wasn’t the one on trial—they were. Their judgment would determine God’s judgment on them. Despite how it appeared, the situation wasn’t in the hands of the authorities, it was always in God’s hands. I remembered Jesus’ words to Pontius Pilate:

Pilate therefore said to him, “You will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have power to release you, and power to crucify you?”

Jesus answered him, “You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above…” (Jn 19.10-11)

Jesus’ quiet, courageous refusal to beg or even answer them showed that he wasn’t looking to the human authorities for mercy or justice, but to God.

Ever since I had felt the powerful movement in the dark, I had believed that God was in control of what was going on around me. It was easier to believe that sitting in the monastery garden than it was in a lawyer’s office in the middle of the largest naval base in the world, but I still believed it. This comforted me during the months of waiting. I found out my case was being delayed because there was a disagreement between the authorities involved. The naval lawyers wanted to avoid a trial, perhaps because they didn’t think the charges were severe enough to warrant the cost and work of a courts-martial or the bad publicity of an officer going AWOL. But the captain of my ship was insisting on a courts-martial. So the lawyers had to start the trial process and then abort it when the captain no longer had jurisdiction; this took time. I never thought any of the authorities involved had my best interests in mind. Each was pursuing the course of action that they thought was most advantageous to themselves. But through that struggle I saw God’s hand at work, freeing me.

I was amazed how it ended. I had not demanded my rights or asked for mercy. I had stated my beliefs, but never asked for CO status. Then, after four months, they offered to drop all charges and release me. With an “Other-Than-Honorable” discharge. Surprised, I accepted; I had no desire for an honorable discharge from a service I now saw as dishonorable. And I wasn’t interested in taking veterans benefits from the military. I even returned the money that the Navy had paid me during the months I had been waiting (less the amount I had to spend for food and lodging during that time). The pay officer didn’t understand when I tried to explain it to him. But I understood: I was giving to Caesar what was Caesar’s. As for me, I was no longer Caesar’s. I had been delivered by a much greater power. I was God’s.

Now my wife and I live with the Christian community at Plow Creek Farm in Illinois, offering free spiritual retreats to poor people from the city, continuing to conscientiously object, continuing to look to God for justice and mercy.

And once in a while I tell a sea story.

About Paul Munn