A Student Reflection

The Rev. Jonathan Mohler, MDiv ‘21

The Army takes civilians and turns them into soldiers. When you show up at reception, you’re met by grim-faced, uniformed drill sergeants waiting for their next batch of civilians. One of these drill sergeants climbs aboard your transport bus and immediately starts screaming. In the next distressingly disorienting 72 hours of your life, all of your personal belongings are taken from you, you are issued uniforms, your head is shaved, you’re poked and prodded, presented with textbooks and orientation briefings . . . and you get screamed at a lot. When that’s over, you’re placed back on a bus and shipped out to basic training. 

During the rigorous ten weeks of basic training, drill sergeants strip you down to your bare parts and then build you back up again as a soldier. It is an intense experience, and those with strong personalities or strong wills who fight this molding tend to struggle the most. You head out day after day for training, repeating drills over and over and over again, the goal of which is to train reactions into you. In a moment of crisis, you can’t afford to think about reacting – it must be instinctual, having done it so many times in training that when a crisis happens in reality, your knee-jerk response is the correctly trained one. The drill sergeants want you to learn to trust your equipment, to trust your training, and to trust your battle buddies, your fellow soldiers. The intensity of this experience leaves lasting marks on the individual and drives deep and fiercely tight relationships that abide for a lifetime. Every soldier has stories about basic training and the lifelong friendships that have come out of it. Furthermore, every soldier can immediately bond and connect with other soldiers because of that shared experience, even if they didn’t go through it together. I have been in the Army for 13 years, and the experience is still palpable. It has left an indelible mark on me and shaped who I’ve become, a fundamental part of my identity and the man I am today.

In May of this year, I finished my MDiv and graduated from the Nashotah House. Reflecting on my three years, it’s remarkable to me all of the ways the pedagogy of Nashotah House is similar to formation in the military. Thankfully, there aren’t drill sergeants screaming at you, nor do you get your head shaved when you arrive on campus. Still, there is a similar intensity and disorientation, a similar kind of tearing down and building up. When you show up, you do get a uniform – or, rather, you bring one with you. You and everyone around you wears the same black cassocks, which serve as a type of uniform. During orientation, the “trainers” use all sorts of weird words and names for things, like “refectory,” “cloister,” and “garth.” As an aside, I actually remember at our orientation being told (lovingly, I now understand) that Nashotah students were like “refugees from the island of misfit toys,” which surely ranks up there with things I have heard a drill sergeant say (not so lovingly) to a private.

Further parallels include the rigid pattern of life and intense (and in some cases forced) community. Every morning begins in chapel together, then breakfast together, class together, lunch together, work crew together, back to chapel together; then you go home to eat dinner and tuck your babies in bed before heading back to the library together. I spent the last three years looking at the same eight faces every day. I didn’t choose those eight faces. They were my classmates, they were my battle buddies, and if we were going to get through this, we had to learn to get along despite sometimes profound differences.

As you are systematically torn down, the civilian in you is stripped away, and you are built up into your vocation as a minister in Christ’s church. I’m not just a priest but a Nashotah alumnus. This peculiar identity carries with it a particular perspective and mindset. Just like in the Army, the ones who struggle the most are the ones with strong wills or personalities who fight this formation. But for those who submit to it, the result is an ability to think and respond in life and ministry like a priest. The repetitive nature to the training and the pattern of life instills into those shaped by them the appropriate automatic reactions for the moments of crisis. You can really live into your vocation. 

Ministry life can be challenging. Right after I graduated from Nashotah House, I moved back to Texas and was ordained a priest. Halfway moved into my house, I showed up for work at the diocesan office. The Canon to the Ordinary told me that there wasn’t much going on, so I could take it easy, take time off, spend time with my family, decompress from seminary, and move all the way into my house. The next day he had a stroke, and five days later he died. This has understandably shifted the whole dynamic of my summer. On my first Sunday as a priest, I was sent to fill in at a church that uses the 1928 Prayer Book. I have never used the 1928 Prayer Book and had never looked at the rite outside of the classroom. At the time I write this article, I’m assisting in the planning of another funeral. And the list goes on and on and on. Not at all how I thought this summer would go, I keep promising my wife that I’m hoping to take some time before the end of the summer to finish helping unpack our house. In the fall, I leave for 14 more weeks of Army Chaplain training. 

I don’t mention these things to invite pity. No, in fact, in some ways, I think I’ve gotten off easy. In talking to some of my classmates, I find that they too have been blindsided by tragedies, challenges, and other complex issues. Yet, it’s incredible to sit on Google Meet with them and listen as they explain what’s happening and how they’re handling it, with a steady calm in their voice. Some are people who, three years ago, one could be forgiven for looking at them, scratching your head, and wondering, “Is this person really going to be a priest?” They are now deftly navigating the storms coming their way. Being trained at Nashotah House was an incredible experience. It has left an indelible mark on me and become a fundamental part of who I am. It’s given me relationships that I expect to last a lifetime. And, most importantly, it has helped shape me into the priest I am today.

The Rev. Jonathan Mohler, ‘21, was ordained at his home parish, the Church of St. Peter & St. Paul in Arlington, Texas, on June 29, 2021. Fr. Mohler serves as a chaplain in the United States Army. The preceding article was originally printed in Nashotah House’s Fall 2021 Missioner magazine, volume 35, number 2, pages 10-11.