A Prison Chaplain Reflects On How This One Line is Like Gold In The Treatment of Moral Injury

At the age of 24, I began working as a counselor and advocate for survivors of childhood sexual abuse and rape in East Tennessee. On a trip home to visit my parents, we went to see the movie Good Will Hunting. During the famous scene where Robin Williams repeats the line, “It’s not your fault,” to his client, played by Matt Damon, until the client finally breaks down in tears and embraces the therapist, my father began sobbing so uncontrollably that he had to get up and leave the theater. I don’t recall if he ever returned to see the end of the movie, but I will never forget that moment, or that line: “It’s not your fault.”

My father’s childhood was not unlike the client’s in the movie. It was full of violence, abuse, addiction, and poverty. I don’t know for sure, but I am guessing no one ever told my father that the abuse he suffered was not his fault. Judging by his reaction, he needed to hear it, and I am glad that he did.

As prison chaplains, the line “it’s not your fault” is probably not number one on our list of chaplain mantras. Presumably, it is their fault that they are in prison, and telling them otherwise feels counterproductive to acceptance, reconciliation, and repair.

Yet, the reason people end up in prison is more complicated than what one person did, or failed to do, that constituted a crime and resulted in their punishment. Most people in prison are poor, are victims of childhood abuse, come from oppressed and marginalized communities, and face resulting mental health challenges.

If I drop a bowl and it breaks, it rarely breaks in only one place. The fragmented pieces can sometimes be put back together, but often the shattered reality is beyond repair without adding additional material that was not present before the bowl was dropped.

The art of Kintsugi is a Japanese design based on the philosophy of Wabi-Sabi. The artist takes a broken pot, cup, or bowl and repairs the piece with fine gold. This recreation of a broken vessel by adding gold honors the philosophy of Wabi-Sabi, which holds that the beauty of being human is found within the brokenness we share. It teaches that repairing—or healing—ourselves and others is of great value, allowing us to continue our function or work in the world rather than being thrown away like a useless, broken object.

Over the last few months that I have been serving currently incarcerated humans, I have said this one line more than any other: “It is not your fault.”

I only say it when it is true. And I only say it when I know, like the character in Good Will Hunting or like my father, that the human in front of me is broken into pieces and only gold will repair the vessel. That line, for me, has been gold in times when a child of a currently incarcerated person died, and the mother, upon hearing the news of her child’s death, immediately said, “It’s all my fault. If I had not [fill in the blank], I would have been there to keep them safe.”

It was gold when a currently incarcerated human, saying goodbye to her dying father on a Zoom call, said to him, “Daddy, if I were there, you would not have gotten sick. I am so sorry, this is all my fault.” When she hit “leave call” and the screen went blank, the only words I could offer were, “It’s not your fault.” And like Robin Williams in the movie, I have to repeat this line over and over until all the cracks are full and the vessel begins to return to a state of wholeness.

I do not tell currently incarcerated humans that it’s not their fault they are in prison—although, for most, I truly believe the systemic factors leading them there are not their fault. But their sentence for the crime they committed is actually not what causes the deep moral suffering and injury they express in their grief. It is the shattered lives of those they love, caused by their absence, that leads to the burden of shame shattering their souls.

The result of moral injury is a shattered soul. Until the soul is repaired, there is little capacity for growth and transformation. Until the shattered soul of a currently incarcerated human is repaired, there is little hope of returning to a community and living differently within it.

As a prison chaplain, my job is to see where souls have been shattered and find whatever gold is available to put the pieces back together again. We do this so the vessel can be made whole, and so the currently incarcerated human can be of service to this world in the way God intended them to be; offering their gifts, talents and skills to the people, land and communities they love so deeply. My job as a prison chaplain is to make sure we don’t throw away perfectly good pots just because they are broken.