I went to the doctor’s recently to receive an injection. The shot was recommended to enhance my bone density. Like Ezekiel, I held to a vision of walking bones.

I don’t normally read disclaimers. I read this one at the office. I thought to myself –– dear God –this injection I’m getting to extend my mobility will end my life. The nurse practitioner saw my anxiety. She assured me not to be alarmed. As I pondered my mortality she looked at me kindly and said: “Drug companies write intimidating disclaimers; they’re just covering their ass, if you know what I mean.” I did know what she meant and I felt somewhat reassured. I had the shot, my bones still walk around and I am here to tell the story.

Two page disclaimers with prescriptions (both sides) are common today. What the nurse identified is commonly known as the CYA phenomenon, and serves as another reminder of the prevailing attitude of mistrust governing our common life. There’s a cloud of retribution hovering above us always threatening rain; with any misstep, a lawsuit awaits our dealings, whether commercial, medical and particularly political. The honorable handshake of yesteryear is history. Suing is in. Lawyers advertise 24/7. And what about justice?

Journalist Jonathan Mahler of the New York Times, wrote about his interview with one of Trump’s top high end lawyers, Jay Goldberg. Goldberg shows Mahler a letter from Trump, saying, “there had never been a lawyer more important to me.” Goldberg belongs to a significant cadre of trial lawyers known in the trade as ‘Courtroom Killers.’ In the interview Mahler quotes Goldberg speaking of the court room experience that he loves: “It’s the only place where you can emote and try to convince juries that black is white.” It’s estimated that the president has been and is involved in somewhere around 4000 litigations.

I suppose this is a candid portrait of the down and dirty of big money, power and politics. I found the article chilling. Perhaps my reaction speaks to the depth of my naïveté about the realities in the corridors of justice and in government. It’s apparent how justice has become primarily an exercise in winning by cleverly-crafted doublespeak. What’s right, or even true is inconsequential. There seems little by way of morality or any collective sense of what’s right.

Goldberg’s description of how he works for justice also reveals how generously rewarded he is by huge sums of money. His assets include a palatial mansion in Bridgehampton on Long Island. The mentality he expresses is now so institutionalized in our culture, and the winning mentality implied in it is so unchallenged, as to be regarded as normative, just the way it works. I suspect this has also spawned the hundreds of unflattering lawyer gags. It’s scary.

What is it that informs a mindset committed to doing justice and is there a point of reference other than winning? Historically there has been a frame of reference.

I looked for a larger historical context for thinking about justice. I made some cursory explorations of the word ‘justice’ as it appears throughout the Bible. By no means is America a Christian nation but the Judeo-Christian religious tradition has strongly influenced many assumptions we make regarding moral conduct.

For the ancient Israelites, justice and judgment were the essence of governance, and the guiding principles of their community life. Both were closely related. Inspired judgments were, by their nature, the essence of justice. When Solomon handled the case of the two women claiming a baby was theirs, his decision reflected wise judgement, and as harsh as it seemed, it was in fact, inspired and kind. Justice was also understood to be a divine attribute; acting justly described the way God behaved. “Keep the way of the Lord to do justice.” The practice of temporal justice was understood to be informed by a higher power, something greater than the ones who administered it, while mirroring the spiritual nature of our human condition.

Among others, I identified a common thread running through references to justice and descriptions of what justice looked like. Here’s one: “Defend the poor and fatherless, do justice to the afflicted and needy.” The focus was on the vulnerable. When justice becomes perverted, it looks like this. “None calleth for justice nor any pleadeth for the truth: they trust in vanity and lies.” In other Biblical references, a corrupt justice is one that favors the oppressor and oppresses the oppressed. Any of this seem familiar? If Goldberg represents today’s gold standard for American justice, we can at least depend on this; we’ll get what we pay for.

The practice of administering justice, like sculpting, is an art. As with any art, the character of its practitioners has everything to do what finally results. I imagine the practitioners of justice like potters. Both give a form to inert substances –– the clay and written briefs are both inert. They shape them, in the way an artist brings the medium alive, according to the inner vision that inspires his or her work. Character does count.

My fellow survivors of our children’s adolescent years know how hard it was to do the right thing. We parents were confronted daily with mercurial emotions and reckless behavior that could be unnerving and we had to address it. We tried to approach the youngsters in ways that did not exacerbate the dangers we recognized but at the same time sought ways to help protect them. The issue, then, was never how we might cover our ass, but how we could save theirs. Doing right, in this instance, was other-directed, not self-referential. Sometimes we did well, other times we tanked, but what redeemed us was not how often we got it right, but that we cared enough to keep trying.

I think that defines justice nicely: it’s not about always getting it right; it’s that we keep trying to do the right thing.

Columnist George Merrill is an Episcopal Church priest and pastoral psychotherapist. A writer and photographer, he’s authored two books on spirituality: Reflections: Psychological and Spiritual Images of the Heart and The Bay of the Mother of God: A Yankee Discovers the Chesapeake Bay. He is a native New Yorker, previously directing counseling services in Hartford, Connecticut, and in Baltimore. George’s essays, some award winning, have appeared in regional magazines and are broadcast twice monthly on Delmarva Public Radio.

“I had a real ‘come to Jesus’ talk with this guy.”

You’ve probably heard this expression. It has nothing to do with Jesus. Someone is being read the riot act. But why would a confrontation be couched in the language of conversion? Confrontations are attempts to change someone, to turn them around. Conversion means to change or to turn around.

Conversion is a universal phenomenon. It extends beyond religion; it’s a process that sustains life.

Christianity’s signature conversion story involves St. Paul on his walk to Damascus. Paul was not a nice man. A cruel and an uncompromising zealot, Paul, then called Saul, was hateful and demeaning to his adversaries. He was an enforcer, like a Gestapo agent, seeking out his enemies; he didn’t bat an eye about the lives he destroyed. He had the authority of established religion to legitimize his actions. If you have an appetite for power, and like to abuse it, it doesn’t get better than what Saul had. Under those circumstances, the conversion he underwent was especially remarkable; the vitriol and virulent toxins that once drove him were transformed such that he would become a healer, mentor and unifier, and a brilliant inspiration to the fledgling Christian communities he once persecuted.

In religious circles, conversion might be referred to as ‘seeing the light,’ or in some instances, as being ‘born again.’

Conversion is critical to life, whether it’s our bodies, the slugs that leave their tiny glistening trails on my brick walk or the trees that grace my yard. It’s by conversion, we keep on going.

Most mornings, weather permitting, my wife and I sit on the porch eating breakfast. We overlook a creek where, along its banks, a stand of locust, black cherry and willow oaks grow.

Early sunlight strikes the locust leaves. The light makes them radiant. I’m mesmerized by the sight. I’m watching a conversion experience, of sorts, a universal process that turns things around.

With trees, this conversion, called photosynthesis, occurs as tree leaves are bathed in sunlight. As light strikes the leaves, a process is initiated that converts prevailing toxins ––carbon dioxide in this case –– into sugar and oxygen. As a result of conversion, the locust enjoys life and a healthy diet of fresh air and, as we might envy, all the carbs it wants.

For trees, conversion is not a once- and- for- all phenomenon. It’s ongoing, a serial event.

For people, too, the conversions that really change and turn individuals around are not once-and-for-all happenings; they’re serial events, often uneven in their path with plenty of fits and starts. Seeing the light is a popular way some sectarian Christians describe a religious conversion but it’s not as straight forward as we’ve been led to believe. Seeing the light is just for starters.

On the road to Damascus a bright light strikes Paul and he’s momentarily blinded. A voice asks,” Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”

When his sight returns, Paul changes the course of his life to become Christianity’s iconic champion and apologist for fledgling churches struggling to survive. For Paul himself, however, it ain’t over yet. He continues to contend with himself.

It’s commonly assumed that Paul’s conversion turned him around so completely that he was a new man. Well, yes and no. Most conversions, even ones that make significant changes and that endure, are not necessarily as spectacular as Paul’s nor are they a once-and- for- all moment. Significant moments will launch a conversion experience that strongly impacts one’s life direction; however, the course corrections are not necessarily smooth –– they go slowly and often erratically. Conversion alters the direction in which we were going but it’s hardly a slam dunk. Even Paul, having as dramatic a conversion as imaginable –– including hearing God’s voice –– was still not a completely changed man. His writings are filled with the struggles he continues to have with himself. The toxins that once plagued his personality still linger and reappear to haunt him.

He refers to this part of his personality as the “old man” or, the “body of death” as he calls it. He describes struggling with his character flaws this way: “For what I am doing, I do not understand,” Paul goes on to say, “I do not do what I would wish, but what I would not do, those things I do.’ You and I know this kind of experience from the New Year’s resolutions boldly proclaimed on January 31st, to be abandoned roughly two weeks later. It’s a perverse comfort to know that even saints are weak and broken people just as we are but are able to see the light and keep trying to stay turned around.

Society experiences conversion. I hope ours is in process, today.

George Floyd was not a saint. He was, as we all are, broken. In the way of providence, his murder has the potential to become an instrument in initiating a social conversion, a turning around, a new direction for an entire America that’s lost its way.

Floyd’s tragic death may be the light that initially blinds a broken nation, a people who’ve been traveling the wrong way for so long they don’t realize it. When our collective sight returns, our society will hopefully begin a new direction. It may transform the prevailing social and spiritual toxins and make them into fresh air and oxygen –– so the country that for so long has been laboring to breathe, a country suffocating in moral pollutants, may begin taking deep breaths and feel deep down the goodness and freshness of truth and justice.

When a society enters a moment of conversion, a time when it sees the light as it never has before, that’s just for starters. Then, the task for that society is to remain in that light by intentionally following its lead. The course will be erratic and unsteady. But that’s when the hard work of social conversion begins.

Columnist George Merrill is an Episcopal Church priest and pastoral psychotherapist. A writer and photographer, he’s authored two books on spirituality: Reflections: Psychological and Spiritual Images of the Heart and The Bay of the Mother of God: A Yankee Discovers the Chesapeake Bay. He is a native New Yorker, previously directing counseling services in Hartford, Connecticut, and in Baltimore. George’s essays, some award winning, have appeared in regional magazines and are broadcast twice monthly on Delmarva Public Radio.