DC

My friend DC was recognized at graduation the other day. I want people to know about this remarkable man and what he's been through. Candidly, he is like an older brother to me. At my worst in here, when I was losing it over the divorce, or the time facing me, or a hundred other issues that pop up behind these forsaken fences, I could always count on DC to listen and offer sage advice.

He and I are as opposite as two men can be; we come from opposite circumstances; different races; and yet, we found a commonality in this experience that has convinced me that good can come from the worst situation. He has done almost 44 years in the system--44--he came in as a 19 year old and leaves shortly after he turns 63; he was one of DOC's most notorious inmates--one of the original 15 to go to Virginia's Supemax Mecklenburg back in the 1970s. He was there when the Briley Brothers and associates escaped; twice they tried to bring capital murder charges against him for prison violence. He knows everyone and everything about the system--he was deemed incorrigible; and yet, I see in him as the reason I believe in redemption. DC isn't the violent man from the 1970s. He has earned his education step by step; he has earned the respect of the men and staff at this place. He has been as loyal and caring to me as any man in my life.

At graduation, the retired president of the community college announced that DC can do so much good when he goes home--the president is putting his reputation on the line, calling in chips, and getting my friend admitted and working at a prestigious university in the District of Columbia--why? Because he knows both sides of the struggle in the city--the struggle young black men face to avoid violence and drugs and prison; the struggle to earn a degree and lead a noble life.

I can't express to you how it felt the day he stood there in our dayroom with his parole papers in hand. "Main man, they granted me parole." I couldn't have been happier if I was let loose. He and I are the building runners-it never ceases to amaze me that a 56 year old and 63 year old can outrun guys half our age whether its five, ten or even 13 miles.

DC was the first guy I met here. His story--so matter of fact about the violence in these prisons--gives me so much fodder for my writing. His father--a Korean War vet just like my dad passed a few years ago. I was the first person on the compound he told; he shared many stories about his dad that day and that night, as I prayed for his family I thanked God that I was given the chance, the opportunity to find a friend like him.

He'll leave here in a few weeks and he will lead a wonderful life with a wife who has been there raising three daughters all these years; and his grandkids will see their "pop pop" and he will run and he will work and he will make a difference for the rest of his days.

I said earlier I learned that redemption exists from my time with DC. God never gives up on anyone--perhaps we shouldn't either.

The Good Chase

This blog was written in November, 2014.

            I have a friend named Chase and he’s Muslim. He takes his faith seriously, makes his prayers five times each day, avoids profanity, pornography, and gambling. During Ramadan he was undergoing chemo. The med staff here failed in their diagnosis. His jaw swelled about a year ago. Medical said, “You have an infection.” For nine months they ran Chase around with antibiotics and “suck on tart candies” to “stimulate your salivary glands.” Turns out they were wrong. The swelling got worse, started choking off his airway. A quick trip to MCV and the real diagnosis came in: cancer of the salvia gland, stage “3.” Tough to hear anytime, let alone less than a year before you go home after eighteen years. Chase, he took it all in stride. “It’s in the hands of Allah,” he said and he began the treatments. And Ramadan? In his weakened state, he couldn’t participate in the month long fast. That too was ok. He was alive and survived, he said, by the will of his God.

            Chase is a nice guy, one of the nicest men I’ve met either inside – or outside of prison. He may not have always done the “right” thing and like all of us he made mistakes. He was in here for the last 18 years for crimes he committed. But, he is a kind, decent man who strives to live to the tenets of his faith.

            Religion is a tough topic. My 81-year-old father – a Korean War veteran – tried to tell me at visitation the other day that we need to get those “barbarians” in ISIL. And, he distinguished ISIL by their religion. I asked him what Jesus would do? Jesus, I said, would forgive, and freely allow them to behead Him because it isn’t this body that’s important; it’s your soul. My dad just said Jesus wouldn’t make it in today’s world. I thought to myself, maybe that’s the problem.

            “Religion is the opiate of the masses.” That was Karl Marx, a near penniless writer trying to feed a family in the industrial Darwinism that was London in the 19^th century. Marx was angry at his circumstances, angry at the vast disparity between the haves and have-nots. Religion, he concluded, kept the disadvantaged from rising up and slaughtering those who held them in check. As I said, religion is a tough topic. And, it’s easy to draw anecdotal conclusions and apply them to every circumstance. The world isn’t black and white it is hued in a sorts of grays and religion is right in there.

            There are very good Muslims. There are very bad self-professed Christians. There are agnostics and atheists who better represent Jesus than I could ever hope to. Gandhi understood more about the Sermon on the Mount and our call to action as followers of the Prince of Peace than most Christians I’ve met. There is a self-described “man of faith” in here who claims to love his Catholic Church yet he is one of the meanest, most hateful men I have ever met. He is continually angry. He is a racist and a homophobe. Another man watches Joel Osteen multiple times each week yet runs most of the scams in the building and lies about everything from his “wife” to his upbringing. Christian – by affirmation – say both men.

            Chase occasionally will work himself into a frenzy – as do most Muslims and Christians here – when the subject of gay marriage comes up. Life becomes black and white. Homosexuality is a sin, they all agree. I find it ironic that the same ones who profess eternal damnation for that sin overlook their own murders, adultery, or a dozen other “serious” sins. So, I asked Chase if you’re sexual orientation is biologically predetermined (i.e. it’s in your genes) and God is the ultimate constructor of everything, from the simplest single cell to the sun doesn’t that mean God created those genes? “You have a point,” he told me. Islam – like Christianity – professes to judge not the sinner. All are God’s children.

            Free choice. It isn’t God who warps our minds and distorts and alienates. Over and over the New Testament tells Christians “God is love.” We are called to “turn the other cheek,” “forgive as God has forgiven you,” “care for the widow and orphan … visit the sick and those in prison, … clothes to the naked, feed the hungry … give and it will be given to you.” No, religion doesn’t make people hurl insults at Latino children who come here to escape the murderous rage of gang warfare in Columbia, Honduras, or El Salvador. Religion doesn’t cause “church members” to hold signs at a funeral saying “God hates fags,” or shooting doctors sitting in church because they happen to provide abortions. That’s man’s evil side, his – or her “free choice” packaged as God’s will.

            Beheading, torturing a kidnapped journalist in the name of God is evil and sinful. But, so is labeling all Muslims bad; so is calling on your nation to bomb your enemies into oblivion. That isn’t Godly nor is it confined to one nation, one race, one creed.

            A little background on me. In my college days, my mother always told me to consider the ministry. I could talk! Was it because I was so theologically astute that my mom wanted me to pursue a seminary education? No. She just wanted to be the mother of a preacher. But, we were a “churched” family. I was a deacon at 16, read Calvin and a host of other protestant “reformed: theologians. Intellectually, I got “it.” I always wondered, however, when the minister would take a position not in keeping with his congregation’s voting habits how the members would discount the words as not realistic in “the real world.” God and mammon co-existed quite easily in most churches that I’ve attended. Uncle Sam, it seems, sits on the left side of God. My adult life – married, father, ordained elder, Sunday school teacher, I lived quite comfortably with that cognitive dissonance. That all changed in August 2008.

            I understand more now about the infinite power and mystery of God than I ever did. And, everyday I’m reminded how far I must go. Too often guys in here use “religion” as a means of separation, segregation, and self-delusion. They miss the “real” message. Funny but the same is true out there. You ever read Paul’s letter to the Corinthians about love? Every wedding – it seems – uses Paul’s words. I can tell you – 28 years with a woman I still love and pray for everyday in spite of the divorce – we didn’t meet Paul’s test. We failed; almost everyone does.

            Don’t blame God for the evil that’s done in His name. Blame those of us who profess belief and then distort His desires and ways for our own selfish, evil, and petty hopes. And maybe, just maybe, we can all start practicing a little more what we profess.

Pieta

One of the world’s best known pieces of sculpture is the “Pieta”.  Latin for “pity” it depicts a weeping Virgin Mary holding the broken, dead body of her son, Jesus.  Christ is prone, across her lap, his arms hanging to the floor.  Mary looks with sadness and love, motherly love, at the body of her dear son.

That came to mind this week as I thought about mothers.  As I wrote a few weeks ago, my younger brother, my only sibling, passed away.  He lived a difficult life punctuated, I imagine, by moments of joy such as at the birth of his daughter.  My brother had a very difficult relationship with our mother.  He lashed out at her frequently.  He could be – and regularly was – verbally abusive.  For much of his adult life he was full of anger and self-pity.  He needed someone to blame and that fell on my mom.

My mom isn’t perfect.  She’s half Italian, half Irish and three-quarters worried what everyone thinks.   But, on her own she was her congregation’s visitation committee.  Birthdays, anniversaries, celebrations, tragedies, it’s my mom who gets cards and meals out.  She goes to hospitals and nursing homes every week.  She was able to reach and help so many, yet my brother was unreachable.  So many times in my life I remember her eyes welling up with tears as she’d whisper “he hates me”. 

Then a strange thing happened.  As my brother lay dying those last few difficult weeks it was my mother he called for.  Going in and out of lucidness he’d call “where’s mom?” and mom was always there.  My father, a stoic Korean War Veteran, couldn’t stay in the room and watch my brother’s life ebb.  He would walk out, go around the hospital halls.  Not my mom.  She took his laundry (t-shirts, pajama bottoms) each night and brought them back fresh the next morning.  When Mark lost his appetite, she made rice pudding (one of his favorites) and fed it to him.

The morning my brother died my mother had spent the night “I just had a sense,” she told me.  At 4:30 am she called my father at the house.  “You need to come back.”  My dad arrived just a few minutes before Mark took his last breath.  My mother never left his side.

A mother’s love.  I have seen grown men in here, men who have been stabbed, beaten, shot, kept in solitary for months, who have never shed a tear in their lives until their mothers passed.  And then?  I’ve seen them weep uncontrollably.  A guy I respect in here told me early on a piece of advice I’ve thought about these past few weeks.  He said “if his mother hasn’t given up on him, he’s still got a chance.”  For nine months after my arrest my father refused to speak to me.  My mom?  Multiple times each week she wrote. No matter what I did I knew my mom still believed I could overcome this.

Shortly after our second son was born, he developed a severe respiratory infection.  His oxygen level hovered, at times, in very dangerous levels.   Our family physician lived in our neighborhood.  He debated hospitalizing our young son but, knowing us and being willing to come by our house anytime we called, he allowed us to keep our son at home.  We were both exhausted.  At one point, late in the evening, I fell asleep on the couch.  When I awoke I looked across the room.  There, sitting in our recliner was my wife.  She held our son to her chest.  He slept soundly under her watchful gaze, his fist hours of restful sleep in days.

I looked at the two of them for the longest time trying to fathom the mystery of a mother’s love.  She would not close her eyes, she would not move while her child lay sleeping. 

Last Wednesday would have been my brother’s 49^th birthday.  I sent my folks a card and called Thursday.  My mother wept when she spoke to me.  “Yesterday was tough,” she told me.  I get that.  She carried that child.  She birthed that child.  She was there when her baby breathed his last.

Thanksgiving is here.   The past few months have given me a new perspective on life, a new sense of hope.   I am thankful for this experience.  More than anything, I’m thankful that my eyes have been opened about my mom.