Here Comes the Sun

THIS BLOG WAS WRITTEN IN NOVEMBER, 2014.

            It was 1976 and a young folk singer stood with his acoustic guitar at the front of the Vassar College chapel. I was 17 and getting ready for my senior year in high school. We waited. There was the song, that one song we waited for the troubadour to begin. Every word was etched in our collective mind’s eye; eight teens – four young men trying to figure out what manhood really was all about, and four equally young women. He struck the first chord and we knew, we were there with each word.

            “A long, long time ago

            I can still remember

            How the music made me smile

            And I knew if I had the chance

            I could make those people dance

            And maybe they’d be happy for awhile”

            Dreams and ambitions at 17. I wanted the world. At 6, I told my father I wanted to write a book. At 15, I sat in awe as I read a simple book on Constitutional Law and understood how a semi-illiterate man with a pen and paper could change the law. “Dear Supreme Court. My name is Gideon and I was denied counsel.” I wanted to understand law, and God, and beauty. I knew I could do anything I wanted. I knew I had my entire adult life ahead of me.

            “But February made me shiver

            With every paper I delivered

            Bad news on the doorstep

            I couldn’t take one more step”

            You want to see someone completely broken? Arrest a middle-class, middle-aged white guy with a house, two cars, and the picture-perfect family. Lift him out of everything he knows, everything he believes in, and close the cell door. Yeah, and the guy is already on edge. He feels like shit already. He’s eaten up with guilt, drinking five or six scotches every night to sleep. Eyes bloodshot, the left one twitches uncontrollably. Running, the one activity he always felt freed him, now was a struggle. Bloated and depressed he fears death and life. He can’t go on, but he can’t quit. He listens to her breathing at night hoping, praying that in those breathes lies his redemption. But it isn’t to be.

            “I can’t remember if I cried

            When I read about his widowed bride

            But something touched me deep inside

            The day the music would die”

            Sentencing and I was numb. Two years, twenty, two hundred, it didn’t matter. I was out of tears, out of hope. I sat in the holding cell with my hands holding my face. Some reason, I heard in my broken soul, music. I hummed “Be Thou My Vision” – I’m not even sure why; I softly sang John Prine’s “Angel from Montgomery” and Loggins & Messina’s “Danny’s Song.” Over and over I told myself it will all be alright; this is temporary; until thirty days later … and the papers and as broken as I had felt before, I now felt worse. I wrote; she cried; I prayed; the order came in; it was over.

            “Did you write the book of love

            And do you have faith in God above

            If the Bible tells you so?

            Now do you believe in rock and roll

            Can music save your mortal soul”

            It’s receiving and anything I’d seen before pales in comparison. I try each day to just get through. I talk every morning in the darkness to “Michael” my painted card angel sent by a friend to protect me. I am in a rundown, filthy cell with a psychotic, mentally-handicapped gangbanger beginning 76 years for a double homicide. I am who I am, nothing is different about who I am or how I interact with people which confounds and confuses inmates and officers alike. This man can kill me; I don’t care. I read the Bible daily, I write. I hear nothing from God. Later, I’ll agree with Pastor Rick Warren that “feeling God” is just an emotion. God “is” real; God “is” always there, even when in our worst moments we believe we have been abandoned and left for dead.

            There is an incident and my “cellmate” threatens to “tear my throat open and watch me gurgle on the blood.” “Go ahead,” I tell him. Am I crazy? Do I have a death wish? Or, am I tired of the brokenness, the hopelessness? He backs down (amazing!). Moments later he tells me something I will hear more than once:

            “You think you’re better than us.” I respond, “I don’t think I’m better than anyone but I know I’m better than this.” I am better than this. Fuck the judge, and the system that destroys, and my self-delusion and criminal behavior, and the broken promises and broken dreams … I am better than this.

            “I was a lonely teenage broncin buck

            With a pink carnation

            And a pick-up truck

            But I knew I was out of luck

            The day the music would die”

            Running was again freeing, liberating, exhilarating. I run and I hear the music and I keep coming back to that night in 1976 and that young folk singer and singing along.

            “I met a girl who sang the blues

            And I asked her for some happy news

            But she just smiled and turned away

            And the three men I admired most

            The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost

            They caught the last train for the coast

            The day the music would die.”

            17 and my life all ahead of me; 55 and more alive than ever. I knew he wrote the song about Buddy Holly dying in a plane crash, during a blizzard, on the way to a concert. But it also was about my crash, my broken dreams, my American dream fractured and bleeding and imprisoned and … resurrected. The music didn’t die. It was always there; it was, it is, it will be.

            I often think of Viktor Frankl, holocaust survivor, gentle man who told the world there is meaning to be found in suffering, or as CS Lewis put it, “Pain is God’s megaphone.” The music, like spring, always returns, always blossoms. I run and hear a new song, one of hope and thanksgiving:

            “Little darling

            It’s been a long, cold lonely winter

            Little darling

            It feels like years since it’s been clear

            Here comes the sun

            Here comes the sun

            And I said

            It’s alright”

Ignoring James

A friend pointed out the other day that I seem to focus a good deal of attention on the New Testament Book of James. I thought about her comment a few minutes and realized she was right. James wrote a straight-forward, short letter to believers that says, “You want to call yourselves followers of the Risen Christ, then do this …” He doesn’t pull punches. He tells his readers there will be trials, tough times, pain and difficulty, but you go forward, “consider it all joy …” because these tests produce endurance. I still remember the first time I read those words when everything (no exaggeration, I mean everything) was lost. James’s words couldn’t be any clearer, I thought to myself sitting in that cell at the jail. Suck it up, tough it out, endure, persevere, overcome … have faith.

James is so blunt. Perhaps that comes from being the Lord’s half-brother (think about that: “Mom always treats you better … like you’re God!”); or perhaps James just understands that to be a believer you can’t just “talk the talk.” No, you have to “walk the walk.” As he puts it, “But prove yourself doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves.” I thought about those words the other afternoon as I once again saw the hypocrisy in our politicians’ words.

“Obama would rather spend money on food stamps than a strong military.” Those were the words put forth by former Vice-President Dick Cheney reacting to budgets and troop reductions in the Pentagon proposed by the Obama Administration. And, I thought of my Bible reading and remembered a number of instances where Jesus fed the masses and ministered to the poor. I couldn’t think of a single instance where the Savior told his followers to spend more on weapons. I thought about the Book of Judges’ Story of Gideon. How God told him to only use 300 soldiers, not 10,000, so that God could show by His power our enemies are vanquished. We profess we are a Christian nation yet we somehow think by our own hand, our own might, our military strength we live free. We are deluding ourselves. James reminds us to care for “the widows and orphans.” We are judged by our compassion and our mercy, not our human might.

Then there was the member of the Virginia House of Delegates who recently commented on the failure of a bill that would have drastically cut phone rates for inmates. Phone call rates for those behind bars – and their families – are beyond usurious. A twenty-minute, in-state call from the facility can run over $15.00. Why? Because the state signs exclusive, kickback contracts with one of three “corrections telephone system providers.” That provider then kicks back a percentage of the annual revenue to the state. Virginia derives $3 million from their sweetheart deal with CTL.

What did this politician say when pressed for comment on a bill that would have 1. made phone rates in prisons and jails the same as competitive rates on the streets, or 2. specifically earmark all monies “earned” by the state under the CTL contract for prison education and re-entry? He said, “They broke the law, they can pay the higher rates.”

Really? Let’s see … there are thousands of men and women sitting in jail cells who have not yet been convicted of anything. And for those who are convicted, over 90% will return to their communities. Most are from poor families (I know this will come as a shock to the delegate, but income disparity, education level, and race play significant rules in who ends up in prison). The Commonwealth talks out of both sides of its mouth. On the one hand, they spend hundreds of millions of dollars annually to prepare incarcerated men and women for release and reintegration in their communities. And they know family connections are a major factor in a released offender’s success. On the other hand, the state has in place policies which bleed poor families. Outrageous phone rates lead to less family contact.

But this isn’t about economics; it’s about hypocrisy and “being a doer” of the world. This same delegate talks about the push toward marriage rights for gays as an affront to what God believes marriage should be. Well, here’s the thing about tossing your alleged Christian views into the mix. Most of the time, your views line you up with the Pharisees, not Jesus. I’d like the delegate to point out any case in the New Testament where Jesus turned his back on those who were different. He didn’t. In fact, he drew the outcasts closer. It was the Samaritan woman whom He explained to about the “water of life.” The lepers, the mentally ill, the blind and deaf were made whole. It was a law-breaker (the adulterous woman) through whom Jesus taught us to avoid judgment because in God’s eyes, we are all sinners. And, it was the thief on the cross who full of remorse for his wrongdoing was given eternal life.

We live in a world that professes one thing and does another. Jesus never denied aid to a hurting person based on their race, creed, nationality, or sexual orientation. Jesus never sided with those living by their definition of the law; He sided with those living the law in their hearts. And so it goes today. Are we really much different from Palestine in AD 30?

“If anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in the mirror; for once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was.”

James was pretty clear with his admonitions to believers. Seems like its time we start paying attention to what he said.

Gideon at 50

March 18^th marked the 50^th anniversary of one of the seminal cases in U.S. Constitutional law. Gideon defined the rights defendants have to counsel after arrest. The decision created a seismic shift in American criminal jurisprudence. That it began with one semi-literate, itinerant man and a letter to the U.S. Supreme Court made the case even more astounding.

            Gideon was a fifty-something, white male who’d spent too much of his life behind bars, going in and out for months – and years – at a time. He was accused of a break in. At his arraignment he asked the court to appoint him a lawyer. The Florida judge denied his request. Florida – as did most states in the early 1960’s believed the 6^th Amendment right to counsel (for indigent defendants) only applied to serious (i.e. Capital or life sentence) felonies.

            Without counsel, Gideon stood no chance. He was convicted and shipped back to prison. From his prison cell he wrote in poor grammar a heartfelt letter to the United States Supreme Court which landed on Justice Abe Fortis’s desk. Gideon said, “I am a poor, innocent man who asked the judge to give me a lawyer so I could clear my name …”

            Gideon’s case was accepted by the Court and one of America’s most prestigious law firms was appointed to argue his case. And it happened, the United States Supreme Court agreed with Mr. Gideon. Any time a criminal defendant is faced with a loss of freedom (i.e. jail or prison) the right to counsel exists.

            Gideon was supposed to change the landscape of criminal justice in America. The Court understood that the power of the State (or federal government) to take a person’s freedom was so significant and that the right to be “innocent until proven guilty” so important that citizens – regardless of their financial ability – are entitled to adequate, legal representation.

            Gideon was a remarkable statement on the power of the individual, the rights of the accused, in the face of a larger, more powerful state seeking to take his freedom. But, Gideon has failed to live up to its words.

            There perhaps is no more lonely feeling than standing before the judge’s bench to hear charges read against you. And, no matter what the law says about “innocent until proven guilty,” there is an almost immediate, visceral public reaction that says “the guy is guilty.” After all the police would never arrest the wrong person; prosecutors would never let ego or politics, or the public’s bloodlust dictate how a case was handled.

            The truth is, police and prosecutors lie, cheat, and steal just like the criminals; the issue usually isn’t about justice, it’s about getting a conviction. The state has virtually unlimited power and money to prosecute a defendant.

            Second, money matters. If you have resources and can mount a defense, the odds of you receiving a more favorable plea deal – or acquittal – grow. The system takes advantage of the poor, the uneducated, the gullible. The law allows the police to lie during their interrogation of a suspect.

            Third, the law is a highly technical field. The average citizen doesn’t understand what elements the state must prove to get a conviction. The average citizen doesn’t understand that being helpful and answering questions truthfully usually leads to words being twisted. The average citizen doesn’t realize that rights exist – not at the allowance of the government like a privilege – from God and are a specific, direct limitation on the power of government.

            Gideon has failed because we live in a country where more people are incarcerated than during Stalin’s days in the Soviet Union. Gideon has failed because lawyers get overwhelmed with huge numbers of indigent defendants. Lawyers cut deals without investigating a case because there’s no money in defending a poor person.

            Gideon has failed because America is a nation of a “gotcha” news reporting. We exercise schadenfraude judgment, gleefully, smugly basking in other’s failures and arrest.

            I have met hundreds of men who – had a less overwhelmed attorney handled their case instead of a young public defender with a plea deal at the arraignment – with adequate, caring defense counsel would not be in here.

            Gideon was an amazing, profound statement about what America believed justice should be. That the country failed so miserably to live up to that ideal is a scarlet mark on this nation.