Mysterious echoes of gunshots

It's hard to read any of the sermons that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. preached about death and heaven without hearing echoes of gunshots.

"The minute you conquer the fear of death, at that moment you are free," he said, in 1963. "I submit to you that if a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live."

Decades later, these words still inspire faith and courage, said social activist Johann Christoph Arnold, who marched with King in the Civil Rights Movement. That's why the patriarch of the nine Bruderhof communes in the U.S., England and Australia included this quotation in his most recent book, "Seeking Peace."

This was the book that Cassie Bernall and other teen-agers at West Bowles Community Church were supposed to have discussed on the evening of April 20th. After that tragic day at Columbine High School, Bernall's parents showed Arnold her copy of "Seeking Peace," with its handwritten notes for the study session that was never held.

Cassie had boldly underlined King's thoughts on death. Did she hear echoes of gunshots?

"Why did those words speak to her at such a young age? It is such a great mystery," said Arnold. "But I do know this. She had found something she was willing to live for, and even to die for, and that made all the difference in her life."

Here is what Cassie wrote, in a 1998 note her parents discovered after her death: "I try to stand up for my faith at school. ^?I will die for my God. I will die for my faith. It's the least I can do for Christ dying for me."

Cassie Bernall was one of the Columbine students who was asked, at gunpoint, "Do you believe in God?" Her story has been spread by news reports and chains of Internet sites hailing her as a martyr, in the true sense of that ancient title in Christendom.

Now, her mother has written her own tribute, entitled "She Said Yes." Because of the ties between Cassie, her church and Arnold's writings, Misty Bernall's 140-page memoir has been published by the Plough Publishing House, which is linked to the tiny Bruderhof movement, with its commitment to pacifism, simple living and the sanctity of life.

In the wake of Littleton, many Americans - politicians, preachers and pundits - keep arguing about the "larger issues" that supposedly led to the bloodshed, notes Misty Bernall. She is convinced parents must focus on more personal issues closer to home.

"Why, when parents and lawmakers are calling for gun control and an end to TV violence, are our young crying out for relationships?", she asks. "Why, when we offer them psychologists and counselors and experts on conflict resolution, are they going to youth groups and looking for friends? Why, when everyone else is apportioning blame and constructing new defenses, are they talking about a change of the heart?"

Nevertheless, "She Said Yes" makes it clear that Cassie's parents repeatedly had to say "no," as they pulled her away from peers involved in the occult. Her mother reprints passages from letters in which Cassie and a friend pondered suicide and murder. The Bernalls taped telephone calls, searched their daughter's room, took evidence to the police and, finally, moved to another neighborhood. Cassie raged against it all, until her life was changed during a church youth retreat.

Brad and Misty Bernall refused to give up, noted Arnold, and made radical changes in their own lives, as well as in the life of their daughter. All of this took time, energy and sacrifice. Cassie's new life was rooted in weekly patterns of fellowship, prayer, reading and service projects with her family and new friends. They ate pizza and went skiing, but also helped leukemia patients and built homes for the poor. Cassie traded vampires and "death rock" for poetry and photography.

"Cassie would never have said 'yes' in that final moment, unless she had said 'yes' so many other times before that," said Arnold. "She had to say 'yes' to many wonderful experiences in her new life, before she had the strength to say the ultimate 'yes' when that moment came. We must not forget that."

Generation J

As the child of a devoutly secular Jewish home, the last place Lisa Schiffman expected to be on Rosh Hashanah was sitting in worship with her parents and her self-avowed "lapsed Unitarian" husband.

It was a highly unorthodox service. The leaders of Aquarian Minyan - a "Jewish renewal" flock near the University of California at Berkeley - spread pillows on the floor and asked worshippers to bring drums. While the Hebrew prayers remained safely foreign, Schiffman noted that an awkward word - "God" - appeared frequently in the English parts of the rite.

"I can't pray to God," she wrote afterwards. "I'm not sure I believe in God - so I substitute the words 'our highest selves.' That'll work for now."

That was in 1996, before her diary evolved into "Generation J," a book that traces her wanderings through Judaism, alternative Judaism, New Age mysticism, Buddhism and all points in between. This year, the young poet and Internet professional initially decided not to attend a Rosh Hashanah service. Then she was surprised to realize she might regret not joining other Jews to hear the ram's horn blast that opens the High Holy Days. The season begins at sundown Friday (Sept. 10) and ends with Yom Kippur on Sept. 20.

"I'm getting comfortable thinking in terms of God being a kind of divine presence in our lives," said Schiffman. "'God has become a wide, wide word for me. That word means many things to me, now."

This is what life is like for non-practicing Jews born after the Holocaust, she said. They are marrying non-Jews in record numbers. They are turning to other religions in record numbers. They attend classes about Judaism, but can't seem to join a congregation. Many Jews are even having doubts about the skepticism taught by their parents.

Schiffman calls this phenomenon "Generation J." This is the "generation of Jews who grew up with television, with Barbie, with rhinoplasty as a way of life. Millions of Jews -- the unaffiliated, secular, atheist, indifferent, or simply confused -- are lost. We can't say whether our Jewishness is a religion, a race, or a tribal remnant." Her conclusion is stark: "We can neither claim nor escape our Judaism."

As Schiffman tells her story, the God of Abraham and Sarah does play a poignant role - captured in the voices of a diverse collection of Jews who describe their lives of faith, prayer, ritual, tradition and law. A woman who guides Schiffman through a ritual bath of cleansing - the mikvah - put it this way: "There is a God. There is a creator who created the world. He gave us instructions." An Orthodox jazz musician tells the writer: "The way to know God is to fulfill his will, and God's will for a Jew is to go to the Torah and follow the mitzvot. That's our path."

Schiffman's response is blunt: "I needed another way to God."

But she eventually takes a small leap of faith -- nailing to the doorpost a mezuzah given to her by her husband. This is the small, ornate container that tells visitors they are entering a Jewish home. Inside is a parchment scroll and, by tradition, its first lines proclaim: "Listen, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength."

This was a highly symbolic step, said Schiffman. But it's also symbolic that, a few pages later, she finds herself sitting in a tattoo shop having her upper torso painted with a long, snaking vine in preparation for her naked role as the maiden of honor -- sort of -- in a friend's pagan wedding. Schiffman tells the artist to have the temporary tattoo end with a large Star of David on her back.

"I know that I'm not Orthodox," said Schiffman. "I'm not kosher and I still haven't joined a synagogue. I don't even know what the 613 mitzvot are that we are supposed to keep. I know that I have come a long way, but I still don't know where I am. But I am a Jew."

Light a candle for Y2K

Researchers who study America's "civil religion" usually end up studying sound bites by pious politicians, the on-camera prayers of victorious athletes and other displays of lowest-common-denominator faith.

Now, the American Banking Association has added a strange text to the public canon, circulating a Y2K sermon that it hopes will calm nerves in pulpits and pews.

"We want to go into the new millennium with hope, eagerness and faith in this new century of promise," says the speech, which was prepared by the association's public relations staff. "We don't want to be crouched in our basements with candles, matches and guns. There are, after all, two ways to cross the Red Sea. With Moses, who with God's help, led the children of Israel into a bright, hopeful future. Or with Pharaoh, who, in trying to preserve the old, hurled his chariots, his officers and his army into the sea."

The five-page text was posted in a members-only Internet site, with the suggestion that bankers give it to their local clergy. The goal was to create a "template" offering words and images preachers can use to address the computer bug that will crash programs that register only the last two digits of a year, meaning that 2000 could be interpreted as 1900.

"No one ever expected people to take this into the pulpit," said George Cleland, a spokesman for the bankers association. "We simply wanted to advance public discussions of this issue and we think it's important for the church to take part."

The main theme is that prophets of doom who say the computer glitch will crash power, water, financial and communications systems are updated versions of listeners who panicked during the 1938 "War of the Worlds" radio drama about invading Martians. Bleak millennial scenarios have been especially popular among Internet-savvy religious conservatives.

"What's so ironic is that, while it's the right wing that tends to be worried about Y2K, the whole style of this sermon seems to be aimed at the left," said Quentin J. Schultze of Calvin College, author of "Internet for Christians."

The text includes several references to God, but uses only one biblical metaphor and never mentions Jesus. Above all, said Schultze, the sermon embraces the "great defining myth" of American culture, which is that progress is inevitable because technology always makes life better. The bottom line: Trust in God, but have faith that the computer wizards who run things can take care of business.

"If you wanted to talk to the people who are buried in their evangelical bunkers, then this is not the sermon that's going to do it," said Schultze. "This thing reads like something a government official would send out to clergy who work for a state church."

According to "Thinking about Y2K: Moses, Orson Welles and Bill Gates," the millennial bug will cause some hassles, but nothing worse than a bad storm. Nevertheless, the sermon ends with a sobering litany - a catch-all legal disclaimer - that will raise questions for Y2K optimists.

"So in preparing for Jan. 1, 2000, do what you can. Trust God. Trust those you love. Be informed. And take a few practical steps. Save copies of your financial records. Keep a few days' worth of cash on you. Have a little extra food and water around the house if that makes you feel better. Keep an adequate supply of medicines and over-the-counter drugs on hand. If it's a prescription medicine that you're required to take, put aside enough for a few weeks. Make sure there are fresh batteries in your flashlights. Keep some candles on hand. If you have a fireplace, put some dry wood aside."

Say what? Round up a few weeks worth of extra drugs?

"No one really knows what Y2K will bring. There are just too many variables. I think it's going to be more than a bump in the road, but less than a protracted crisis," said philosopher Douglas Groothuis of Denver Seminary, author of "The Soul in Cyberspace."

"But this business-sponsored sermon seems so double-minded. It says to trust God, but above all trust your bank. It says the electrical companies are going to be fine, but get some extra candles. Which is it?"

Journalism -- an awkward calling

CHICHESTER, England -- Terry Anderson walked through refugee camps in Lebanon, filling his eyes, ears, nostrils and memory with death, disease and destruction.

He counted bodies. He interviewed evil people and innocent people. He wrote it all down, because that's what journalists do. Sometimes, he was able to give a suffering mother his water bottle or share food with a child. Then he had to go back to his desk and write.

"As a Christian, that's not enough. I want to do more for these people," said Anderson, speaking to a global conference of Christians who work in secular newsrooms. "But sometimes, as a journalist, you have to say, 'It's time for me to step back, now. I have to go write my story and that is the most good that I can do. That is my calling.' "

Then came March 16, 1985, when the chief Mideast correspondent for the Associated Press became the subject of global headlines. The details are well known. He was snatched off a Beirut street and stuffed in the trunk of a car. He spent six years and nine months in captivity, sometimes in agonizing isolation, sometimes locked up with other prisoners.

But it was a question poised by the Rev. Benjamin Weir that served as the seed for Anderson's emotional dialogue with the 150-plus journalists — from 30 nations — who gathered last week at University College in Chichester, south of London. Soon after they met, in chains, the Presbyterian missionary asked: "How can you be a Christian and a journalist?"

Anderson continues to ponder that question, as a professor in the Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University. He is convinced that God does not fear journalists.

"The search for truth is not, in any way, in conflict with the truth that I know as a follower of Jesus," said Anderson, who is an outspoken Catholic. "But, you know you cannot be a Christian and a bad journalist. That doesn't work at all. You cannot practice Christianity and a journalism that takes away dignity, that has no compassion, that exploits pain and misery. That's not good journalism and it's certainly not anything that Christ taught."

Anderson wasn't the only person with a troubling story to tell, either in a speech or in the off-the-record sessions in which participants could pray with, or debate, each other. Obviously, journalists face spiritual questions in Bosnia, Rwanda, Jerusalem or Littleton, Colo. But it's also possible to crack while covering bishops, bureaucrats or bond markets.

The on-the-record speeches were intriguing enough. There was the anchorwoman from India who is leading a crusade against "dowry deaths" in which in-laws murder young wives. A journalist from war-torn South Sudan said he wants to start a newspaper in a region that doesn't even have telephones. A television-news executive from the American Midwest told how she quit, rather than accept a corporate order to stop teaching a Bible class in her spare time.

The conference was organized by Gegrapha (www.gegrapha.org ), a worldwide fellowship for Christians who are journalists. The name is Greek, and means, "I have written." It is found in the Gospel of John, where Pontius Pilate is asked why he put a sign on the cross claiming that Jesus is the king of the Jews. Pilate said: "What I have written, I have written."

The host was journalist David Aikman of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., who is best known for his 23-year career as a Time foreign correspondent. He stressed that the conference had no agenda other than to encourage professionals who often feel attacked in their churches and misunderstood in their newsrooms. Aikman defined journalists as people who "get rebuked for what they write and what they say, or who get rebuked for what they don't write and what they don't say."

These tensions are real, said Anderson. Nevertheless, he urged the journalists to remember that they, too, must learn to pray: "Forgive us our trespasses." "The most important one is the daily trespass into other people's lives, which we are required to do as journalists," he said. "That's just a part of our jobs. It can be done badly. It can be done carelessly. It can be done without respect for dignity."

God is in the church-state details

Vice President Al Gore has faith in the power of faith, as long as faith-based groups that take government money are willing to forgo asking people to embrace any particular faith.

Hopefully, details of this generic, non-sectarian, yet life-changing brand of faith -- faith in faith itself -- will emerge later in the race for the White House.

Meanwhile, Texas Gov. George W. Bush wants government agencies to be free to financially support all kinds of faith-based groups, without discriminating - this is a quote -- against "Methodists or Mormons or Muslims, or good people of no faith at all." Think about that for a minute. Somewhere or another, Bush has found some faith-based ministries that are led by faithful agnostics, and good ones at that.

The GOP superstar clearly has some church-state details to work out, including a few legislative proposals that have a prayer of surviving a test in the U.S. Supreme Court.

It's a sign of the times that so many politicos are trying to find a legal way to breathe spiritual power into the body politic.

"Whether they are religious or not, most Americans are hungry for a deeper connection between politics and moral values; many would say 'spiritual values,' " said Gore, in the sermon that opened this latest round of church-state negotiations.

Trouble is, no one has found a way to harness the power of faith without letting religious believers share their faith, including the messy details. In other words, it's hard to use government funds to light revival fires in human hearts without giving other people heartburn. The vice president knows this because he is a "moderate" Southern Baptist, a species of Baptist that has faithfully defended a high wall between church and state.

Nevertheless, Gore has boldly admitted that faith-based groups have a unique ability to change lives, especially when dealing with thorny issues such as drug addiction, homelessness, youth violence and the rehabilitation of criminals. These groups offer more than money and moral advice.

"I believe that faith in itself is sometimes essential to spark a personal transformation," he said.

Yet hearts are rarely set aflame by the kind of vague faith that passes muster with lawyers and legislators. It sounds like the vice president wants faith-based groups to be able to use the power of faith, as long as they preach a nonjudgmental, toothless faith that makes few, if any, claims of authority in this life or any life to come.

Gore has, for example, stressed that faith-based groups must not require participants to attend "religious observances." Above all, those who seek government funds must avoid the appearance of proselytizing. In other words, these ministries must allow participants to opt out of the very parts of their programs -- worship services, prayer meetings, Bible studies, accountability groups -- that focus on conversion and on the transformation of hearts. These ministers are supposed to help sinners, but they can't preach to sinners, pray with sinners or ask them to repent of their sins.

Bush has been using remarkably similar language, while simultaneously seeking to please pluralists and court religious conservatives.

Prison Fellowship, Teen Challenge and other faith-based ministries are united by a "belief that no one is finally a failure or a victim, because everyone is the child of a loving and merciful God - a God who counts our tears and lifts our heads," said Bush. "The goal of these faith-based groups is not just to provide services, it is to change lives. And lives are changed."

While Gore is vague about how faith can be expressed in programs involving public funds, Bush is being vague about where the money would come from to pay the bills. He has, in this era of projected budget surpluses, suggested offering new tax incentives to promote a wave of giving to charities and religious ministries.

Bush has stressed that his administration "will never ask an organization to compromise its core values and spiritual mission to get the help it needs." He has not addressed how this would effect worship, religious education and evangelism.

These questions will not go away. As the old saying goes: God is in the details.

Chechen bandits with empty souls

Dimitri Petrov quickly realized that the men who shot out the tires on his humanitarian-aid truck weren't fighting for the breakaway Russian republic of Chechnya.

The situation was worse than that. The gunmen were bandits. They weren't interested in politics or religion or debates about freedom and international law. They didn't care if the food and medicine was destined for Moslems or Christians or anyone else in the village of Aki-Yurt, on the border of Ingushetia and Chechnya, back on Sept. 20, 1997.

"The bandits have no nationality. They have absolutely nothing in their souls," said Petrov, a Russian national who was working for the Baltimore-based International Orthodox Christian Charities when he was kidnapped.

After moving Petrov and his colleague Dmitri Penkovsky five times, the raiders consigned them to a cold, dark, unventilated cement pit hidden under a metal plate and a parked car. A previous prisoner, probably from the Russian military, had carved marks in the wall trying to chart the days of his ordeal.

Once a day, or less, the relief workers were fed potato soup and bread. Penkovsky was released after six months. Petrov, who believes he suffered a heart attack while in captivity, was set free after 11 months. Leaders of their relief agency -- citing security concerns -- declined to answer questions about the terms of their release.

There are parts of this world too dangerous and too remote to be featured in the tiny video universe of the evening news. It didn't make news when these humanitarian workers were kidnapped, and it wasn't news when they were released. But it was news in the churches in which people prayed for them, day after day, rite after rite. It's a strange day when church bulletins contain about as much life-and-death international news as many newspapers.

The remote mountains of Chechnya, located between the Black and Caspian seas, may look like heaven, but they've a slice of hell right now. Humanitarian workers and missionaries vanish and die on a regular basis. More than 40,000 people have died in a savage, but largely unnoticed, war since Chechen nationalists declared their independence from the Russian Federation in 1991. Petrov said that, at the most, the secessionist government controls a mere third of the state. The rest is up for grabs.

"It is an area of the world that is just as violent and unstable as the Balkans, if not more so," said Alexis Troubetzkoy, the International Orthodox Christian Charities representative for Russia. "It is an area of incredible beauty, but also of incredible hatreds. ^?The conflict there is so complex and so desperate that it is almost impossible to describe."

The situation has degenerated to the point that "it is the bandits who have the real power. It is just evil. They will do anything. Thieves are stealing from thieves," said Petrov, speaking through a translator during a prayer service with supporters in the Baltimore area.

The result was a chaotic game of hide-and-seek in a land in which the economy is in ruins and civic order is a cruel joke. At one point, another cell of bandits attempted to kidnap them away from their original captors, said Penkovsky. This is what the bandits do for a living, he explained. "They steal people."

They also kill. During their captivity, they heard their captives discuss the status of other prisoners. A pair of Baptist captives did not fare as well. One is still missing. The other was killed and his head left in a garbage bin, said Penkovsky.

While their captors did attempt to browbeat them into converting to Islam, Petrov and Penkovsky both said they are convinced that their kidnappers were inspired by greed, not political, cultural or spiritual convictions. This wasn't about religion -- it was about money. It wasn't about politics -- it was about raw power.

But pray for Chechnya, the men said. Prayer may be the only option left.

"People keep telling us that our release was a miracle," said Penkovsky. "The longer we are free and the more we learn, the more we believe this is true. This was a miracle. It takes a miracle to survive in Chechnya."

Caught in the Columbine crossfire

Heidi Johnson didn't volunteer to fight in America's culture wars, she got caught in the crossfire in the Columbine High School library.

A crowd of preachers, political activists, rock musicians and boisterous teens became extremely quiet last week when the willowy 16-year-old spoke at a rally on Capitol Hill in Washington. She is one of several survivors who has spoken at religious rallies and conventions and faced waves of media interviews. Still, she seemed poignantly out of place in the marble-and-gilt environs of a U.S. Senate caucus room.

She spoke quickly, keeping her voice under tight control as she moved through the minefield of her memories. April 20 was a normal day. She went to the library at lunch, as usual. She heard explosions. The shots drew closer. Then the gunners were right there, killing the kids who were under the library tables. The story hasn't changed. It was real.

"I saw things that no one should every have to see. My innocence was lost," said Johnson, at a rally urging students to back a Nov. 17 effort to spread the Ten Commandments in public schools, using T-shirts, book covers and signs.

"When kids are killing kids, it's time to go back to the basics," she said.

People keep asking Johnson and other survivors the same questions. But there are so many questions she can't answer -- including many of her own. She still isn't sure exactly what happened. It was hard to hear, in the cacophony of gunfire and taunts and screams and sobs. Johnson said she has "blanked some of it out" of her mind.

Many ask about the exchange between Cassie Bernall and her killer. Witnesses have said that a gunman asked, "Do you believe in God?" Bernall said, "Yes, I believe in God." The killer laughed and said, "Why?", then killed her. But some people claim he asked, "Do you believe in Jesus Christ?", and blame the media for covering this up. Even more elaborate stories are circulating at rallies and on the Internet.

Johnson said she doesn't remember, but said other witnesses have told her they heard: "Do you believe in God?" No one knows why Eric Harris -- who Johnson said was doing most of the talking -- asked the question.

"It really doesn't matter. It wasn't really him talking," said Johnson. "When I saw his face and looked in his eyes, he just wasn't there. There was no one there. ... I believe he asked that because he was possessed. That question came from somewhere else."

In the weeks after the massacre, some commentators -- secular and religious -- have talked openly about evil and even the demonic. Some have quoted Pope John Paul II, who believes the principalities and powers of this age have created a "culture of death."

The killers, ultimately, were responsible for their actions, argued veteran speechwriter Peggy Noonan, in the Wall Street Journal. But they were symbolic figures. Children are like fish swimming in toxic images, ideas and values, she said. Some of the fish get sick.

Using news reports, Noonan drew a small pool of ink from this sea, containing: "...was found strangled and is believed to have been sexually molested. ...took the stand to say the killer was smiling the day the show aired. ...said the procedure is, in fact, legal infanticide. ...court battle over who owns the frozen sperm. ...contains songs that call for dominating and even imprisoning women. ...died of lethal injection. ...had threatened to kill her babies. ..." And so forth and so on.

"What walked into Columbine High School," said Noonan, "was the culture of death."

Another Columbine student -- one of the dead -- made a similar point at last week's rally. A speaker read a letter from the mother of Rachel Scott, who was one of Columbine's most outspoken young Christians. The letter contained an entry from her daughter's journal, written days before her death.

"I'm dying," wrote Scott, describing the despair felt by many young people. "Quickly my soul leaves, slowly my body withers. It isn't suicide. I consider it homicide. The world you have created has led to my death."

A monk finds mercy, one step at a time

The last thing Father Andrew remembers from the afternoon of July 31, 1998 was asking his brother monk if he was too tired to continue driving back to New Mexico.

It had already been a tough day. They had taken the pre-dawn vigil hours as Orthodox Christians in eastern Colorado prayed the Psalms for 24 hours before the funeral of a friend killed in a car crash.

The young novice said he was tired, but OK. Father Andrew went to sleep, after reclining his seat all the way. That was probably what saved his life when the car tumbled off Interstate 25 near Pueblo, Colo. The 60-year-old monk was unconscious when rescuers pulled him from the wreck. Days later, he awoke and learned that Brother Mark -- the one novice at the fledgling St. Michael's Skete in Canones, N.M. -- had died.

Doctors warned him that massive head wounds cause pits of depression. Then there are the unique forms of doubt that stalk shepherds who feel lost in the wilderness.

"I have worked with many people who have struggled with depression. Looking back, I had no idea what they were dealing with," said Father Andrew, who asked that his secular name not be used since monks strive to leave their pasts behind. "It's not that you feel sorry for yourself. You just don't feel -- anything. I kept praying: 'God, have mercy on me.' "

A "skete" is a small community that is not yet a monastery. St. Michael's is a 15-acre enclave on a gravel road 90 minutes northwest of Santa Fe, where the high desert hits the mountains. For a decade, Father Andrew and a few supporters have worked in an old adobe house, a chapel shed and a cellar in which they make 10,000 beeswax candles a month, to sell to churches. Working foot by foot, they also are turning pumice, concrete and Ponderosa pine into a small sanctuary blending Spanish architecture and Russian Orthodox tradition. Brother Mark's arrival had been a sign of hope.

"You can't help but ask questions," said Father John Bethancourt of Santa Fe's Holy Trinity Orthodox Mission, who has spent many hours working at the skete. "But I believe God is building something here. I believe God will send other monks. ... We need more monks and more monasteries, not less. I don't think we can afford to lose one."

Father Andrew had faced tough times before during his own battle with alcoholism and then in years of work as a rehabilitation counselor. He also had been an Episcopal pastor, before he became an Orthodox monk. He already knew the answers to many tough questions.

"What was really tough was that before, when bad things happened in my life, I knew it was my fault," he said. "When I was drinking and stuff, I could see why I kept getting in trouble. But why this? Why now?"

During walks with his Australian shepherd, which also survived the crash, the monk gazed at the splendor in his valley. Yet he heard "dark voices" in his head muttering that death was the only reality and everything else was illusion. He heard echoes of his agnostic next-door neighbor during his Texas boyhood and his physics professor at the University of the South whose skepticism verged on nihilism.

There was no moment of epiphany. Father Andrew kept saying his prayers, doing his work and accepting invitations to fellowship and worship with others - even when he felt dead. He began reading works by believers active in science, medicine and public life. He didn't run from his questions.

Just before Christmas, a horrible cold put the weakened monk flat on his back. He said he turned on the radio and was assaulted by "every lousy Christmas record I had ever heard in my life." He fled to church and his cloud of depression lifted during the Christmas rites.

A year after the crash, Father Andrew said he continues to pray for God's mercy, while seeking answers to his questions. It's that simple, but not easy.

"I am supposed to continue a monastic life. I know that much," he said. "I still want to know what God wants to have happen here at the skete. I don't have a broad vision about the future. That's in God's hands, not mine. I have to take one step at a time."

Faith? An issue of human rights?

WASHINGTON -- The reports pour in via a handful of understaffed and overlooked religion news services that have sprung up on the Internet.

In Pakistan, two Christians were jailed after they clashed with a vendor who refused to serve them ice cream in the same bowls offered to Muslims.

"I do not have any bowls for Christians," he said, according to the Compass Direct news service. The brothers were accused of attacking Islam, under a statute that, if read literally, calls for execution. Their families fled into hiding. Supporters -- including some Muslims -- are trying to find them a lawyer willing to take the case.

In Iran, the fate of 13 jailed Jews remains unclear. In Russia, an extremist stabbed a leading rabbi. In China, the battered and lifeless body of Father Yan Weiping was found in a Beijing street, hours after the underground Catholic priest was arrested during an illegal Mass. In Tibet, the United Nations-sponsored World Bank is helping the Chinese government move more people into territory seized from Buddhists.

Then there are the Catholics in India and the secret missionaries in North Korea and the terrified evangelicals in Saudi Arabia and, in the Egyptian town called El-Kosheh, hundreds of Coptic believers continue to insist that they were placed under false arrest and tortured by police.

The inaugural meeting of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom was held shortly before a recent summit between President Clinton and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Before moving on to housekeeping issues -- finding office space, naming a staff -- the nine-member commission quickly produced statements on the scandal in Iran and Egypt.

"The Coptic community is finding it increasingly difficult to practice its faith freely," said the commission. "If the situation of Coptic Christians is raised with him President Mubarak will understand how strongly millions of Americans care about these reported human rights violations and about the future of the largest Christian community in the Middle East."

The problem, of course, is that Egypt is financially and strategically tied to the United States. Mubarak also faces tensions at home between competing Islamic factions. And religious freedom remains such a messy issue, the kind that sophisticated diplomats and business leaders prefer to avoid.

"You still have people in the bureaucracies saying, 'That's really a RELIGIOUS issue, not a HUMAN RIGHTS issue, and if we raise it, that could make people get testy,' " said Catholic activist Nina Shea of Freedom House, a commission member. "Some people even say that treating religious freedom as a human rights issue will violate the separation of church and state."

Nevertheless, the commission has staked out a three-part agenda for its early work: focusing on documented cases in China and Sudan; investigating new reports from settings such as Pakistan, India and Russia; and preparing materials to educate U.S. diplomats about the realities of religious persecution.

But the commission, said Shea, also faces another challenge -- investigating the current status of U.S. policies in this area, agency by agency and nation by nation.

"Let's take Sudan," she said. "If what is taking place there is truly genocide, and, at Freedom House, we're convinced that it is, then surely dealing with the reality of genocide would affect U.S. policy. Right?"

While the commission cannot ignore "geopolitical realities," its chairman stressed that it will do everything it can to convince government officials, the media and the public that religious persecution is, in fact, a human rights issue.

Clearly, many nations do not share America's commitment to religious liberty, said Rabbi David Saperstein of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. In some nations, there are ties that bind the ruling party or regime to a specific faith. At this point, members of religious minorities can be seen as dangerous rebels, enemies of the state or foreign agents who are attacking the culture's traditional values.

But this kind of conflict occurs whenever people from different cultures discuss human rights, said the chairman of the commission. One person's religious liberty is another person's Western cultural imperialism.

"Religious freedom is an essential human right, a matter of freedom of conscience," said Saperstein. "We, hopefully, will be able to convince the world that we are right on this issue."