Contrasting
those folks are the “if only” crowd. “If only I’d done this,” they’ll tell you,
“then I would have ended up … “In those folks’ minds they are masters of their
own fate. They control their lives. They replay every decision and believe
“this” led to “that.” There is nothing else at work in the cosmos but their own
actions. It’s Hollywood’s “butterfly effect” driven totally by one’s own ego.
I’ve
been thinking about those two theories since my conversation with Rabbi Dave
after our recent workout. Rabbi Dave – my name for him that somehow stuck – is
my weight lifting partner. Five months ago we asked a young college guy working
on his physical fitness/trainer degree to help us with a weight training
program. Three times a week, Dave and I hit the weights. I’ve never been a
weight lifter, but there’s something about lifting more than your body weight
in a dead lift, or bench pressing your body weight, that burns and excites your
muscles. And Dave and I are a good pair. We encourage each other and laugh a
lot during our ninety minutes moving weight.
Rabbi
Dave is leader of the small, conservative Jewish group on the compound. Funny,
but he was raised in a middle-class Protestant home. He came to prison in ’05,
felt lost and wasn’t sure who he was or where he was headed. Like Moses at the
burning bush, one night he felt called to go in a new direction. He started studying
Hebrew, switched to a kosher diet, and then officially converted. There are
about twenty conservative Jews on the compound but that overstates the actual
committed, practicing Jews.
Lunenburg,
in an attempt to control who gets on the “common fare” (Kosher/Halal) religious
diet, provides that any inmate enrolled in a religious program for six months
and who attended at least two services in a month can be provided the common
fare diet. As a result, all the approved religious programs have large rolls of
participants who really don’t participate. Dave presides over a flock of twenty
that in reality is really three.
That
doesn’t deter Dave. He begins each morning with a prayer shawl covering his
shoulders as he recites his morning prayers in Hebrew. He follows basic
Levitican dietary laws (no milk and meat on the same tray). And, Dave knows he
stands out. “Dave the Jew” or “Dave the Hebrew” is heard daily as guys look to
him to tailor and repair clothing. Dave, apart from being the lead Jewish
inmate, is also the best tailor on the compound. He can sew or repair anything.
I met Dave eighteen months ago when he enrolled in the college IT program. It
didn’t take long before we became friends; mere happenstance.
A
funny thing happened the past few months. I, a guy who’d never thought of lifting
weights, now had a workout partner. Dave, a guy who hadn’t run since basic
training, now had a running partner. My strength and his mileage began to
increase. And during those three a week workouts, those two hours we’d spend
together on the weight pile Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday, we began opening up
to each other and talking about our pain. It’s strange how it would come out.
We’d be jogging around the track and one of us would say, “I remember …” and
the story would lead to that melancholy moment when you realized how close you
still wore your emotions when it came to her, or them.
I
read a book a few months ago by a young writer who’d made it big with his first
novel. He was a success, at least to those who saw him. But inside he was a
mass of conflict, doubt, and pain. His marriage collapsed. He contemplated
suicide, and instead, he began to die slowly from alcohol, drugs, and a dozen
other arrows to his soul. He wrote, “It takes a man ten years to get over a
divorce.” I couldn’t get his words out of my mind.
Happenstance.
We had a pretty intense workout on Thursday. My arms ached and sweat poured off
me even fifteen minutes after we’d finished our last set. Dave told me a story
about a guy he’d met at jail. They’d exchanged words, threats were made, and
then Dave – out of character for the man I knew – pummeled his would-be
assailant before the man knew what hit him. “The guy never had a chance. He was
bigger and had friends who could really hurt me. But they didn’t. After that,
they left me alone. It’s been like that my entire sentence. God’s always
protected me. “And, I realized, he was right.
How
do I explain going from a sense of total helplessness and depression so great
that I wished I was dead to where I am now? How was I kept safe each and every
time a threat was made to me? How did I negotiate my way through this barren
and violent wilderness unscathed? That isn’t happenstance.
I
think often of my five months at the receiving unit. In those five months I saw
a lifetime of violence, degradation, and human folly. Yet not once in those
five months did I ever fear for my safety. “Though a host of enemies surround
me, I will not fear.” I thought about King David’s words a great deal while I
was at receiving. David wrote those words with a death sentence hanging over
his head. Pursued and hounded each day. Forced to live in caves, he somehow
knew his life was controlled by a force larger than his enemies. David knew,
even in his darkest hours, that he was shielded and watched by his God.
At
receiving I was told by my counselor (funny DOC word counselor; there is no
“counseling” involved. The counselor is the person who serves as a conduit for
DOC’s central office to tell you where they’re sending you) that I was
scheduled to go to one of three facilities, none of which was this place. The
morning they packed me up (3:30 a.m. in fact) I learned for the first time I
was getting on a bus for Lunenburg. That was Friday, November 20th.
The following Monday I interviewed for work as a teacher’s aide in the adult
basic education program. I was hired that day. It’s unheard of in DOC to get
work that soon after arrival.
Four
weeks after starting my job I wrote a proposal for a creative writing class. A
few weeks later I was teaching, on my own, and guys lined up to take the class.
Six
months later the school principal called me into her office. She told me the
local community college had received close to a $1 million “Second Chance Act’
grant to provide college education to select, high recidivism risk offenders.
She told me it was the only program of its kind in the country and that six
mentors/academic aides would be hired to live with the students and tutor them.
Since that day I have worked with students at all levels of education. Did all
that just happen? Did I just “luck” into these opportunities?
There’s
a young guy in the bunk next to me named Thomas. I’ve always felt a special
kinship with him. Perhaps it was the fact he’s the same age as my estranged
older son, but I always tried to give him advice or just listen when he
struggled during his last two years in here. Thomas is a good kid. I don’t say
that lightly. He’s a young man who deserved better.
His
parents split when he was young and he became just another in the millions of
middle class white kids shuttled between divorced parents. His mom moved to
Oklahoma; he and his younger sister stayed with their dad; and that’s when it
started. His father began to sexually abuse his younger sister. He didn’t know
at least not until years later and he found out and turned his father over to
the police.
So
Thomas gets depressed – and angry. He’s nineteen and living on his own and
waiting for his dad to be prosecuted. And he’s drinking and using drugs. He
gets caught with a bottle of Jack Daniels. “Underage possession of alcohol,” a
misdemeanor. He’s given a court date six months later. “Stay out of trouble and
we’ll drop the charges.” He hears from a culinary school in Oklahoma – “You’re
admitted, but you have to be here by September 1st,” – two months
before his court date. He can’t go.
Thomas
blows all his savings – more than $2,000 – in less than a week and soon finds
himself living in the woods in a tent. One day he takes his pocket knife with
him, heads down the hill from his campsite, and walks in a combination gas
station/convenient market. “Give me money, cigarettes, and food,” he says in a
calm, matter of fact manner.
“Please
don’t hurt me,” the woman says from behind the counter. He isn’t going to, and
he doesn’t. He gets $300 in cash, a box with twenty cartons of cigarettes and
food, and then he walks out of the store and back up the hill. He sits on the
hill and smokes and watches the police show up at the store. And, he got away
with it. He felt like shit, he wanted to die, but no one knew he was the one
who robbed the Shell until …
Four
weeks later he’s in a car with a friend who happens to have a broken tail
light. The car gets pulled over and his id is checked. “You’re under arrest,”
the police say. Thomas had given all the cigarettes away. One of the guys who
got a free carton ratted him out.
Thomas
sat in jail and waited for his court date and then the judge asked for his
pleas. “Guilty your honor.” A law professor from Washington and Lee wrote the
judge on Thomas’s behalf. “I know this young man (Thomas was friends with the
man’s son) … I ask you to consider his situation and show mercy.” Apparently
the judge’s definition of mercy is different from mine. He sentenced Thomas to
prison for seven years. And here’s irony: Thomas’s father gets sentenced later.
Know what he got? Fifteen years with all but six months suspended.
We
were talking the other night and Thomas told me if he’d gone to Oklahoma he’d
be dead. “I would have OD’d or worse,” he said. “I was so angry and upset.” His
sister and he have grown closer. She’s in college, playing soccer, and doing
well. Thomas will leave Tuesday with his mom and aunt waiting out front. He’ll
get a job, finish school and his degree, and live a good life.
“And
the Lord will save me …
He
will redeem my soul in peace from the battle
Which
is against me …
Cast
your burdens on the Lord and He will sustain
you …”
I
memorized those lines from David’s 55th Psalm within days of my
arrest. I was lost, overwhelmed with guilt, remorse, and fear. My life, I
figured was lost, hopeless. But, my life was more out of control before my
arrest. I just couldn’t see it. It took a long time to get over the shock of
what my life had become. But that experience, those nights trying to figure out
who I was and where I was going wasn’t just controlled by chance. It was coming
face to face with the inevitability of what was beyond me. And I understood
what Job felt when everything was chaos and in the middle of the whirlwind,
with the storm raging, all around he heard. He heard. It wasn’t happenstance.
It was mighty, and wonderful, and beyond his control.
We
aren’t masters of our own destiny and we surely aren’t tossed hither and yon by
chance. It’s not happenstance. Sometimes it’s confusing, and painful; always
it’s beyond our capacity to fully comprehend and understand. In the end, it’s
simple faith.
