The book I'm writing takes place mostly in prison. While doing some research, I was making notes about the electric chair and, forgetting the existence of paper, scribbled on my hand the name of the most recent person in the US to be executed via electrocution: Robert Gleason. Seeing this killer's name on the palm of my hand reminded me of God's words to wayward Israel in Isaiah 49:16: "I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands." This vicious criminal's name on my hand reminded me that the names of you and me, who have done atrocious things against God, were inscribed in His palms by the nails on the cross: He paid for our crimes via capital punishment, though being innocent, and remembers each of our names, "inscribed on the palms of His hands."
Tuesday, October 9, 2018
Wednesday, August 22, 2018
Cigarettes For the Under-Privileged
This is why I, despite not being a smoker myself, carry a pack of cigarettes with me when I'm downtown or riding the bus. In my city, those are two places where many homeless and impoverished people congregate. And nine days out of ten, somebody will ask me if they can bum a smoke. I always felt bad that I had none to give - they always seem so hopeful that someone has a cigarette. I'm sure you've been in this situation too. It's strange - instead of asking for a sandwich, it's almost always a cigarette. I believe it's because the underprivileged have a sense of their doom. They know they're dying, with no help from you and me (taking pictures of them for social media "statements" about class division doesn't count, unless you then sold your camera to buy a meal or a jacket for the unwitting subject of your art).
So, since you and I conduct this firing squad, this execution by apathy and lip-service, it's among the least we can do to keep a pack of smokes when we're in the more disadvantaged areas of our cities. Where they're not concerned with the repeal of the net neutrality because they can't afford their medication, where there's no "white privilege" because it's been eaten to stay alive, where the ramblings and shoutings of the unshowered aren't covered by our cushy mental health awareness hashtags.
I carry Pall Malls myself (menthols usually). I've noticed Newports are another popular brand among the bus station regulars. It's a good idea to carry a lighter or a pack of matches, too. And while you're at it, maybe packs of peanut butter cheese crackers. Or even a twenty so you and this stranger can have lunch - last meals are customary before executions, too.
Monday, July 16, 2018
Booger Treasures
My pastor once used the word “boogers” during a sermon. I hate the word boogers. It invokes gross, appetite-killing imagery. He used it in describing his home: it was once a clean place, but three young sons later, he and his wife, outnumbered by three young hooligans, are losing the battle to keep their house tidy. This includes, my pastor explained, their youngest son's “booger wall” – the wall on which he wipes his nose goblins.
...ew.
My pastor described this behavior in making the point that it's not our homes, our houses, a family cherishes, but rather the people in them. The walls of a home can be soiled with mucous, but it's the love for those in the home that should be most important. I bring this up to say that the word of God, messages of truth, can make even a word like boogers, which causes me to shrivel up inside, a tool in crafting a beautiful message of edification like my pastor gave that Sunday.
In my experience I've found the same is true for depressing, hard, gritty things. Things hard to take, things hard to think about.
In Colorado in the 1930s, Joe Arridy, a man with an IQ of 46, was wrongfully convicted of murder, despite overwhelming evidence of his innocence. The warden of the prison, out of some odd pity or guilt or both, gave Mr. Arridy a toy train. Like a child, Mr. Arridy treasured it. He was executed in the gas chamber in 1939, apparently unaware he was going to die until the end. When he was told he had to give up his train, Mr. Arridy thoughtfully gave it to Angelo Agnes, a black inmate he'd befriended (who would later be executed as well).
Maybe I'm reading too much into the latter, but Joe Arridy's childish mind made him blissfully unaware of the fact that in 1939, white people just didn't give away their things to black people. It made him unaware of any sort of biases and walls and barriers we build between one another. I wish I was dumb enough and naive enough to give more without thinking, to love more without cramming that love through some intellectual filter that makes me rethink it and remove the selflessness of Christ from it.
I even wish I was too dumb to fear death.
Do you see all the beautiful things I got from that depressing story? Much like my pastor's message was not mired by snot, there is an abundance of truth waiting to be found in the shadows of such stories as that of Joe Arridy's.
I just can't get any joy from “Ferret Learns To Rollerskate! Click Here!” I've no interest in Chicken Soup For the Soul, All Creatures Great and Small, or any of those Dalai Lama quote books.
It's in the darkest places that light does the most good.
“You, who have shown me great and severe troubles, shall revive me again and bring me up again from the depths of the earth.” -Psalm 71:20
Note: Joe Arridy received a posthumous pardon in 2011. His tombstone in Canon City, Colorado reads, Here Lies An Innocent Man.
...ew.
My pastor described this behavior in making the point that it's not our homes, our houses, a family cherishes, but rather the people in them. The walls of a home can be soiled with mucous, but it's the love for those in the home that should be most important. I bring this up to say that the word of God, messages of truth, can make even a word like boogers, which causes me to shrivel up inside, a tool in crafting a beautiful message of edification like my pastor gave that Sunday.
In my experience I've found the same is true for depressing, hard, gritty things. Things hard to take, things hard to think about.
In Colorado in the 1930s, Joe Arridy, a man with an IQ of 46, was wrongfully convicted of murder, despite overwhelming evidence of his innocence. The warden of the prison, out of some odd pity or guilt or both, gave Mr. Arridy a toy train. Like a child, Mr. Arridy treasured it. He was executed in the gas chamber in 1939, apparently unaware he was going to die until the end. When he was told he had to give up his train, Mr. Arridy thoughtfully gave it to Angelo Agnes, a black inmate he'd befriended (who would later be executed as well).Maybe I'm reading too much into the latter, but Joe Arridy's childish mind made him blissfully unaware of the fact that in 1939, white people just didn't give away their things to black people. It made him unaware of any sort of biases and walls and barriers we build between one another. I wish I was dumb enough and naive enough to give more without thinking, to love more without cramming that love through some intellectual filter that makes me rethink it and remove the selflessness of Christ from it.
I even wish I was too dumb to fear death.
Do you see all the beautiful things I got from that depressing story? Much like my pastor's message was not mired by snot, there is an abundance of truth waiting to be found in the shadows of such stories as that of Joe Arridy's.
I just can't get any joy from “Ferret Learns To Rollerskate! Click Here!” I've no interest in Chicken Soup For the Soul, All Creatures Great and Small, or any of those Dalai Lama quote books.
It's in the darkest places that light does the most good.
“You, who have shown me great and severe troubles, shall revive me again and bring me up again from the depths of the earth.” -Psalm 71:20
Note: Joe Arridy received a posthumous pardon in 2011. His tombstone in Canon City, Colorado reads, Here Lies An Innocent Man.
Thursday, June 21, 2018
Where Was God?
God has watched innocent men dangle from trees because of the color of their skin. God has watched frightened runaways be tortured, raped, and killed. God has watched old men and old women lonesome beyond lonesome weep in dusty rooms, their faces tight and worn with age, so seemingly dry that we think it’s impossible for tears to be made. God has watched nations crumble under regimes of murderous corruption. When we were in the room with a dying patient, awkward with sadness or discomfort, God has always been the One in the room who watched more deeply than we ever could, who felt more deeply than we could fathom.
“Where was God in all this misery?”
God was at the dangling, kicking feet of the hanged man. God was at the side of the men in
Chechnya forced to sit on bottles in a concentration camp. God was in the derelict shack in Greenville, Illinois with the helpless runaway and her killer. God was in the lonely room with the elderly widow. God was moving about the nations, present where bodies were piled up for mass graves, at the palace stairs when one evil regime overthrew another. God was counting the tears in the eyes, the hairs on the heads, the ounces of excruciating pain in the hearts. God grieved in anger and in sorrow at the lies we told ourselves about the color of skin, the twisted lust of the deviant who killed the runaway, the able bodied men who never visited the widow in her dreary post, the power-hungry madmen who trampled the poor. God must have been at every one of those nightmarish places, because He does not forsake His own word – “Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15). The Gospel is one not only of salvation, but of suffering; Christ will not turn away from His own Gospel, as He is the same Christ who cried out, as He Himself was unjustly murdered, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”
Without suffering, this world as we’ve made it would be incomplete, as it’s what we do best – we make one another pay for our sins. And without suffering, without the One who truly paid the debts of our sins on the cross, no atrocity, injustice, or lie could ever be made right, ever be forgiven, ever be driven away by Light that darkness cannot comprehend, either on this earth, or in the eternity to come. God watched His only Son, holy and blameless, mutilated upon a cross. He did not intervene, He did not save Him. He let this ugly, gory thing happen so that you and I, unholy and to blame for making one another suffer so miserably, could be holy, could be restored, redeemed, and given the strength and the light to do good and beautiful things in His name – millions of little candles in a world of mammoth darkness.
I think one of the reasons that the book of Job is the book in the Bible to which many atheists and doubters gravitate is its naked and honest outcry against the horrors of life, as well as the horrors of people, while waiting for God to deliver swift punishment and justice that doesn’t seem like it’s ever going to come. Job wails,
“Some remove landmarks;
they seize flocks violently and feed on them;
they drive away the donkey of the fatherless;
they take the widow’s ox as a pledge.
They push the needy off the road;
all the poor of the land are forced to hide.
Indeed, like wild donkeys in the desert,
they go out to their work, searching for food.
The wilderness yields food for them
and for their children.
They gather their fodder in the field
and glean in the vineyard of the wicked.
They spend the night naked, without clothing,
and have no covering in the cold.
They are wet with the showers of the mountains,
and huddle around the rock for want of shelter.
Some snatch the fatherless from the breast,
and take a pledge from the poor.
They cause the poor to go naked, without clothing;
and they take away the sheaves from the hungry.
They press out oil within their walls,
and tread winepresses, yet suffer thirst.
The dying groan in the city,
and the souls of the wounded cry out;
yet God does not charge them with wrong.”
We see hideous injustices in the world, we see those who perpetrate them go free, and we cry out, “Isn’t someone going to be punished for this?” But Someone was punished for the world’s sins – Jesus Christ, on a cross at Calvary. The Scriptures tells us, “For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). And Jesus, being God in flesh, could not break His New Covenant and “save Himself,” as those mocking from the ground challenged Him to do. Thus in His flesh, He died as flesh, as sin has no part with God. And having forsaken His Son, God allowed the wrath of sin to fall on Him so that you and I would not know it. Sin has no part with God, but because He who knew no sin “became sin for us,” you and I, sinners, can now have communion with God, in grace and holiness. Sin has no part with God, but our salvation depended on Him.
We muse bitterly that there’s simply no justice left in the world. But the truth is, that it was Jesus who absorbed the punishment of the iniquity of the world – those who believe in Him, in the atonement He provided upon that instrument of execution, have had their own part in the injustices of the world, no matter how big or small in their eyes, cleansed from them. Not only this, but they’ve been given the duty to strive for what is right, to fight against what is wrong, in a world that even God firmly proclaims in His word is evil, and needed a Savior.
Those who don’t believe not only cast away from themselves the forgiveness of their own wrongs, but they refuse to accept their punishment taken by Jesus Christ, refuse to embrace the gift He offers to live life anew. And so, that gift is ignored, dismissed as fiction and superstition, and another life in the world, another part of the world, slips further into apathy, and believes the lie that wrong cannot be made right.
-from Sheep Named Spike by Cpt. Bud Sturguess
“Where was God in all this misery?”
God was at the dangling, kicking feet of the hanged man. God was at the side of the men in Chechnya forced to sit on bottles in a concentration camp. God was in the derelict shack in Greenville, Illinois with the helpless runaway and her killer. God was in the lonely room with the elderly widow. God was moving about the nations, present where bodies were piled up for mass graves, at the palace stairs when one evil regime overthrew another. God was counting the tears in the eyes, the hairs on the heads, the ounces of excruciating pain in the hearts. God grieved in anger and in sorrow at the lies we told ourselves about the color of skin, the twisted lust of the deviant who killed the runaway, the able bodied men who never visited the widow in her dreary post, the power-hungry madmen who trampled the poor. God must have been at every one of those nightmarish places, because He does not forsake His own word – “Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15). The Gospel is one not only of salvation, but of suffering; Christ will not turn away from His own Gospel, as He is the same Christ who cried out, as He Himself was unjustly murdered, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”
Without suffering, this world as we’ve made it would be incomplete, as it’s what we do best – we make one another pay for our sins. And without suffering, without the One who truly paid the debts of our sins on the cross, no atrocity, injustice, or lie could ever be made right, ever be forgiven, ever be driven away by Light that darkness cannot comprehend, either on this earth, or in the eternity to come. God watched His only Son, holy and blameless, mutilated upon a cross. He did not intervene, He did not save Him. He let this ugly, gory thing happen so that you and I, unholy and to blame for making one another suffer so miserably, could be holy, could be restored, redeemed, and given the strength and the light to do good and beautiful things in His name – millions of little candles in a world of mammoth darkness.
I think one of the reasons that the book of Job is the book in the Bible to which many atheists and doubters gravitate is its naked and honest outcry against the horrors of life, as well as the horrors of people, while waiting for God to deliver swift punishment and justice that doesn’t seem like it’s ever going to come. Job wails,
“Some remove landmarks;
they seize flocks violently and feed on them;
they drive away the donkey of the fatherless;
they take the widow’s ox as a pledge.
They push the needy off the road;
all the poor of the land are forced to hide.
Indeed, like wild donkeys in the desert,
they go out to their work, searching for food.
The wilderness yields food for them
and for their children.
They gather their fodder in the field
and glean in the vineyard of the wicked.
They spend the night naked, without clothing,
and have no covering in the cold.
They are wet with the showers of the mountains,
and huddle around the rock for want of shelter.
Some snatch the fatherless from the breast,
and take a pledge from the poor.
They cause the poor to go naked, without clothing;
and they take away the sheaves from the hungry.
They press out oil within their walls,
and tread winepresses, yet suffer thirst.
The dying groan in the city,
and the souls of the wounded cry out;
yet God does not charge them with wrong.”
We see hideous injustices in the world, we see those who perpetrate them go free, and we cry out, “Isn’t someone going to be punished for this?” But Someone was punished for the world’s sins – Jesus Christ, on a cross at Calvary. The Scriptures tells us, “For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). And Jesus, being God in flesh, could not break His New Covenant and “save Himself,” as those mocking from the ground challenged Him to do. Thus in His flesh, He died as flesh, as sin has no part with God. And having forsaken His Son, God allowed the wrath of sin to fall on Him so that you and I would not know it. Sin has no part with God, but because He who knew no sin “became sin for us,” you and I, sinners, can now have communion with God, in grace and holiness. Sin has no part with God, but our salvation depended on Him.
We muse bitterly that there’s simply no justice left in the world. But the truth is, that it was Jesus who absorbed the punishment of the iniquity of the world – those who believe in Him, in the atonement He provided upon that instrument of execution, have had their own part in the injustices of the world, no matter how big or small in their eyes, cleansed from them. Not only this, but they’ve been given the duty to strive for what is right, to fight against what is wrong, in a world that even God firmly proclaims in His word is evil, and needed a Savior.
Those who don’t believe not only cast away from themselves the forgiveness of their own wrongs, but they refuse to accept their punishment taken by Jesus Christ, refuse to embrace the gift He offers to live life anew. And so, that gift is ignored, dismissed as fiction and superstition, and another life in the world, another part of the world, slips further into apathy, and believes the lie that wrong cannot be made right.
-from Sheep Named Spike by Cpt. Bud Sturguess
Sunday, June 10, 2018
When the Nobodies Die
I've been in psychiatric treatment for eighteen years this August - over half my life. I've been hospitalized in mental health facilities over a dozen times; on January 8, 2006 I attempted suicide and failed; four of the six medications I'm prescribed are psychiatric drugs; I feel I'm qualified to talk about mental illness.
I wish that the world would mourn so strongly when anyone, not just a celebrity, no matter how beloved, dies in the throes of depression. We're all beloved in God's eyes. Even if TMZ and CNN don't know our names, He does. I wish we mourned as openly and as deeply for Mary in Jonesboro, for Henry in Marseilles, for Nora in Manila - not only if they took their own lives in despair, but if they live with tears and hunger. Why shouldn't I also Tweet and wear a black armband for an "unknown" O.D. victim? Why should we reserve our loudest calls for mental health funding for when a beloved and well-known figure takes their life?
How many lives could be saved if we stopped reserving our tears for only the most stunning tragedies, and gave them to everyone with a broken heart? And how many more would be encouraged if we just as openly celebrated the return of their hope, once lost in darkness?
"Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep." -Romans 12:15
How many lives could be saved if we stopped reserving our tears for only the most stunning tragedies, and gave them to everyone with a broken heart? And how many more would be encouraged if we just as openly celebrated the return of their hope, once lost in darkness?
"Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep." -Romans 12:15
Wednesday, May 16, 2018
Religion & Bondage
Sometimes I get a slap on the wrist from other Christians if I call my faith "my religion." As the expression goes which we often repeat, "it's not a religion - it's a relationship with Christ." That's the absolute truth. All human rituals and superstitions are dissolved by Christ's sacrifice on the cross and we can have a personal relationship with God the Father through Him and His atoning death and resurrection. And, I suppose another reason Christians don't like for Christianity to be called a religion is due to the world's habit of lumping all beliefs in all deities of any kind or source into one big hasty pile called "religion." God is holy, a word meaning set apart; I can certainly understand, in that respect, why my brothers and sisters in Christ may wince at our faith being added to the pile of religion.
But for me personally, I hope to be religious in the most literal and spiritual sense. The word religion means "bondage." I yearn to be, as Paul was called, "a bondservant of Christ." I want to be fettered to Him with chains I couldn't break if I tried - and I do try, all day and all night sometimes, to break "the ties that bind" Him to me. My natural self craves things harmful to me and others, and harmful to my relationship with God; so my flesh claws at the chains that keep me attached to Jesus. And though it is an "easy yoke, a light burden," He strengthens the shackles for my own good.
I want to be a slave of Jesus Christ, my heart fettered to His.
Thank God for these bonds! The fleshly, worldly mind would object, "I don't want to be a slave! I want to have freedom in my own thoughts, my own desires! What about what I want?"
I'm scared to death of my own thoughts and desires. I'm such a rotten and wretched man without Christ and His Scripture that any thought or deed I've done apart from Him, anything I've done or said in which I had to run from Him with an unsteady, shackled trot, has been selfish, greedy, lustful, bitter, hateful, bigoted, racist, arrogant. All the things Christ despises, all the things He died to cleanse me from. My imagination is one of my worst enemies.
When humankind is left to its own devices, we come up with the most miserable and vile things we can imagine. We murder, rape, torture, bicker, hate, fight, covet, exploit, abuse, turn a blind eye to injustice and want, indulge in the safety of ignorance, and find a hollow solace in the thought that we're following our own course, the course of human history, governed by humankind's own majestic imagination.
I don't want that. The rest of the world can have its freedom, but I want to find my liberty and peace on the narrow way described by Jesus. It's not fun - it's gritty, it's painful, it's boring, it invites criticism and humiliation. But I would desperately rather be a slave to what is good than a free subject of sin, leaving a wake of hurt and despair wherever I roam.
The most frightening thing God can to do someone is to let them have what they want.
Lord, chain me to Your heart!
But for me personally, I hope to be religious in the most literal and spiritual sense. The word religion means "bondage." I yearn to be, as Paul was called, "a bondservant of Christ." I want to be fettered to Him with chains I couldn't break if I tried - and I do try, all day and all night sometimes, to break "the ties that bind" Him to me. My natural self craves things harmful to me and others, and harmful to my relationship with God; so my flesh claws at the chains that keep me attached to Jesus. And though it is an "easy yoke, a light burden," He strengthens the shackles for my own good.
I want to be a slave of Jesus Christ, my heart fettered to His.
Thank God for these bonds! The fleshly, worldly mind would object, "I don't want to be a slave! I want to have freedom in my own thoughts, my own desires! What about what I want?"
I'm scared to death of my own thoughts and desires. I'm such a rotten and wretched man without Christ and His Scripture that any thought or deed I've done apart from Him, anything I've done or said in which I had to run from Him with an unsteady, shackled trot, has been selfish, greedy, lustful, bitter, hateful, bigoted, racist, arrogant. All the things Christ despises, all the things He died to cleanse me from. My imagination is one of my worst enemies.
When humankind is left to its own devices, we come up with the most miserable and vile things we can imagine. We murder, rape, torture, bicker, hate, fight, covet, exploit, abuse, turn a blind eye to injustice and want, indulge in the safety of ignorance, and find a hollow solace in the thought that we're following our own course, the course of human history, governed by humankind's own majestic imagination.
I don't want that. The rest of the world can have its freedom, but I want to find my liberty and peace on the narrow way described by Jesus. It's not fun - it's gritty, it's painful, it's boring, it invites criticism and humiliation. But I would desperately rather be a slave to what is good than a free subject of sin, leaving a wake of hurt and despair wherever I roam.
The most frightening thing God can to do someone is to let them have what they want.
Lord, chain me to Your heart!
Saturday, May 5, 2018
Amarillo City Transit Blues / My Homeless Future?
I have a thought. It's not a vision, and I'm not yet convinced enough to call it a revelation. It's just a thought, albeit a heavy one that hasn't left me since the day it first came. The thought is that someday, somehow, I will lose my disability benefits, my Medicare, my medications, my apartment, and will eventually become a mentally ill homeless man. Just like the kind you see all over the city.
If my thought ever comes true, and I become a crazy derelict, if I ever join that unwanted street parade, a walking, breathing city ordinance violation, have some patience and salt toward me.
There's a man who rides my bus - we'll call him "Chad" - he lifts up his t-shirt, talks to his chest and feet, looks up and waves goodbye to someone only he can see, and talks almost non-stop to who I can only assume is the same phantom to whom he bids farewell. Chad makes any newbies who may happen to be on the bus uncomfortable, especially when he flicks on his lighter and holds it dangerously close to his palm. Every time he gets off the bus at his stop near the resource center downtown, I sigh like every living feeling I've ever had is coming out of me. I've been tense the whole bus ride, worried Chad is going to burn himself or the contents of his garbage bag, tense because of the tenseness of the other passengers, fear that one of them will say something stupid and cause a situation, and hopeless knowing there's nothing I can do for him.
I believe that a little over half of my own generation (myself included) is made up of self-righteous dilettantes whose world views are based eighty percent on sentiment and anger, with only fifteen percent rooted in experience (the other five percent is a mixture of statistics and faulty math). I know I sound like every old person ever, but that's just how I feel. My feelings aren't rooted in some bitter notion I've inherited or been taught by former generations who were just as smug and self-assured; my feelings are rooted in one simple thing: the bus. The Amarillo City Transit, a combination VFW meeting, social worker's waiting room, Pentecostal church, underfunded mental hospital, and racist clubhouse on wheels. Riding the bus has opened my eyes to how entitled I am, how oblivious I am to the struggles of the world - they're very different when you see them up close, not through the lenses of memes and Facebook posts. If you ride the bus enough, you'll encounter many people who will humble you and make you feel downright ashamed for buying a $6 latte that morning instead of giving $6 to the High Plains Food Bank - just once, that morning. Maybe twice a week, $12 to the High Plains Food Bank. Maybe Wednesdays and Thursdays you can drink the nasty stuff they have at work instead.
Shame is not of the Holy Spirit, but humility is. If you spend enough time with people who have little, you'll realize that your zealous protest of the FCC's repeal of net neutrality is the stuff of outer space down there in the real world. I'm sorry you may have to pay $15 extra to your internet service provider for the social media package, or $20 extra for the porn package. But try telling that to the guy sitting across from you on the Amarillo City Transit, the most alert and coherent among them. He'll tell you he's got gangrene in his leg, $8 to his name until next month, needs new glasses, and he's been out all day looking for enough cigarette butts to make him feel like he smoked a whole one.
I feel guilty. I feel sinful for having a well-fed gut, a smart phone, clean socks, and an mp3 player that keeps me from hearing this guy's life story, or hearing what Chad is saying to the specter only he can see. If you're reading this and you're chubby like me, you can feel the way you want about your weight - this isn't some decree about overweight people, except for myself - but I don't feel good about my weight. Not because I think I'm unattractive, or because I'm in any poor physical health, but because there are people I encounter on the bus who haven't eaten since the day before yesterday. It just seems wrong that I'm fat in their presence. I'm no socialist, but it just doesn't seem right, and it embarrasses me every time I step on board the miserable mystery tour.
But, having said that, I ask of you one thing: if and when I become dissociated and dirty beyond recognition, when you see me and begin to feel uncomfortable, whether you recognize me or not, please don't inflict upon yourself the same self-loathing and guilt as I have. Again, shame is not a fruit of the Spirit. Keep your heart open to conviction from God, whether He tells you to give me a $5 bill or not, whether He tells you to buy me some socks, or to use that money to help someone else, or even to use it for that morning latte. It's no sin. Pay attention to convictions, delight and be glad that He convicts you, but remember God does not want us to hate ourselves, even if, like me, we've warped ourselves into thinking it's a "righteous" self-hatred, some pretentious morally heroic stance. Hate is hate, and it's wrong for me to despise myself because I have something someone else doesn't.
One's blessings only become gluttony when they're not shared or used for good. But this must be action and not mere sentiment, like a rich rock star pleading with those on whom he relies to buy his albums to "imagine no possessions."
Most people who know me know I hate "Mental Health Awareness Month," which is May. I hate it because it doesn't do enough to show what mental illness really looks like, the depths these sicknesses truly reach. Social media takes on the job of promoting "mental health awareness," showing black and white Instagram pictures of a girl (or angel/fairy wearing a black corset for some reason) looking sad with the generic caption that "not all scars can be seen" or some other such easy cliches. What you're not going to see during Mental Health Awareness Month is people like Chad, his shirt rolled up, talking to no one, his teeth broken, face unwashed, legs covered in scabs. That's not romantic. That's not quirky. And that's what Mental Health Awareness Month is about. Maybe it wasn't intended that way, but that's what social media and compulsively shared posts have made it.
If you want to leave your ideological bunker, if you want to see what mental illness looks like, if you want to be as aware of mental illness as you can get without a trip to Big Spring State Hospital, that rotten place I hope burns to the ground someday, go downtown and spend some time on the bus. Try to talk to the woman who wears a plastic garbage bag as if it were a scarf, who eyes everyone and curses them before she pulls the cord to get off at a random stop. Try to cram her into some feminist/socialist/liberal/conservative/capitalist box and see how well she fits. Try to put her in line with your talking points and the hashtags and catch-phrases you learned from your news feed. She won't fit as well as if you try to fit her face over yours in the mirror. You could be her someday; someone has to take her place in the street parade.
My favorite Bible verse is John 21:18, in which Jesus tells Peter that he'll someday be martyred for his faith: "Very truly I tell you, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go." This verse gives me such strange comfort in its surety of suffering. I keep this verse in mind when I feel any hardship coming, whether it be personal heartbreak or the disaster that awaits the Texas panhandle this summer if the current drought continues. I know God promises me I'll suffer, but that nothing He allows is for no reason, nothing is in the random, and He will strengthen, refine, and ordain me as a herald of His Son, in any situation, no matter how bleak and ugly. And I know that I can't stop it; it's as if it were already a memory, and that I must take my part in it.
Someday I may be clothed by another, a clueless teenage kid handing out faded t-shirts from the Salvation Army at the park, instead of Walmart's finest Oxford button-down shirts that I'm accustomed to; carried where I do not want to go, by exhaustion and numbness, to my night's home on the sidewalk on 6th avenue, outside the empty bar that used to be Sassy's.
If that happens, don't be ashamed to stare, so you'll be truly aware of what mental illness looks like, and what it does because of what we don't do; and if you can't help, don't hate yourself for it - if I'm destined for the street parade, and you for the comfort of a roof and a bed, it's been ordained by a far wiser Power than you or me.
"The world is nothing more than all the tiny things you've left behind."
PS If this ever comes true, and you see me loitering somewhere, please don't snap a picture to post with some sociopolitical analysis about class division and the one percent or whoever else you're blaming for my plight - instead, sell your camera and use the money to feed me, clothe me, or buy my medicine.
If my thought ever comes true, and I become a crazy derelict, if I ever join that unwanted street parade, a walking, breathing city ordinance violation, have some patience and salt toward me.
There's a man who rides my bus - we'll call him "Chad" - he lifts up his t-shirt, talks to his chest and feet, looks up and waves goodbye to someone only he can see, and talks almost non-stop to who I can only assume is the same phantom to whom he bids farewell. Chad makes any newbies who may happen to be on the bus uncomfortable, especially when he flicks on his lighter and holds it dangerously close to his palm. Every time he gets off the bus at his stop near the resource center downtown, I sigh like every living feeling I've ever had is coming out of me. I've been tense the whole bus ride, worried Chad is going to burn himself or the contents of his garbage bag, tense because of the tenseness of the other passengers, fear that one of them will say something stupid and cause a situation, and hopeless knowing there's nothing I can do for him.
I believe that a little over half of my own generation (myself included) is made up of self-righteous dilettantes whose world views are based eighty percent on sentiment and anger, with only fifteen percent rooted in experience (the other five percent is a mixture of statistics and faulty math). I know I sound like every old person ever, but that's just how I feel. My feelings aren't rooted in some bitter notion I've inherited or been taught by former generations who were just as smug and self-assured; my feelings are rooted in one simple thing: the bus. The Amarillo City Transit, a combination VFW meeting, social worker's waiting room, Pentecostal church, underfunded mental hospital, and racist clubhouse on wheels. Riding the bus has opened my eyes to how entitled I am, how oblivious I am to the struggles of the world - they're very different when you see them up close, not through the lenses of memes and Facebook posts. If you ride the bus enough, you'll encounter many people who will humble you and make you feel downright ashamed for buying a $6 latte that morning instead of giving $6 to the High Plains Food Bank - just once, that morning. Maybe twice a week, $12 to the High Plains Food Bank. Maybe Wednesdays and Thursdays you can drink the nasty stuff they have at work instead.
Shame is not of the Holy Spirit, but humility is. If you spend enough time with people who have little, you'll realize that your zealous protest of the FCC's repeal of net neutrality is the stuff of outer space down there in the real world. I'm sorry you may have to pay $15 extra to your internet service provider for the social media package, or $20 extra for the porn package. But try telling that to the guy sitting across from you on the Amarillo City Transit, the most alert and coherent among them. He'll tell you he's got gangrene in his leg, $8 to his name until next month, needs new glasses, and he's been out all day looking for enough cigarette butts to make him feel like he smoked a whole one.
I feel guilty. I feel sinful for having a well-fed gut, a smart phone, clean socks, and an mp3 player that keeps me from hearing this guy's life story, or hearing what Chad is saying to the specter only he can see. If you're reading this and you're chubby like me, you can feel the way you want about your weight - this isn't some decree about overweight people, except for myself - but I don't feel good about my weight. Not because I think I'm unattractive, or because I'm in any poor physical health, but because there are people I encounter on the bus who haven't eaten since the day before yesterday. It just seems wrong that I'm fat in their presence. I'm no socialist, but it just doesn't seem right, and it embarrasses me every time I step on board the miserable mystery tour.
But, having said that, I ask of you one thing: if and when I become dissociated and dirty beyond recognition, when you see me and begin to feel uncomfortable, whether you recognize me or not, please don't inflict upon yourself the same self-loathing and guilt as I have. Again, shame is not a fruit of the Spirit. Keep your heart open to conviction from God, whether He tells you to give me a $5 bill or not, whether He tells you to buy me some socks, or to use that money to help someone else, or even to use it for that morning latte. It's no sin. Pay attention to convictions, delight and be glad that He convicts you, but remember God does not want us to hate ourselves, even if, like me, we've warped ourselves into thinking it's a "righteous" self-hatred, some pretentious morally heroic stance. Hate is hate, and it's wrong for me to despise myself because I have something someone else doesn't.
One's blessings only become gluttony when they're not shared or used for good. But this must be action and not mere sentiment, like a rich rock star pleading with those on whom he relies to buy his albums to "imagine no possessions."
If you want to leave your ideological bunker, if you want to see what mental illness looks like, if you want to be as aware of mental illness as you can get without a trip to Big Spring State Hospital, that rotten place I hope burns to the ground someday, go downtown and spend some time on the bus. Try to talk to the woman who wears a plastic garbage bag as if it were a scarf, who eyes everyone and curses them before she pulls the cord to get off at a random stop. Try to cram her into some feminist/socialist/liberal/conservative/capitalist box and see how well she fits. Try to put her in line with your talking points and the hashtags and catch-phrases you learned from your news feed. She won't fit as well as if you try to fit her face over yours in the mirror. You could be her someday; someone has to take her place in the street parade.
My favorite Bible verse is John 21:18, in which Jesus tells Peter that he'll someday be martyred for his faith: "Very truly I tell you, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go." This verse gives me such strange comfort in its surety of suffering. I keep this verse in mind when I feel any hardship coming, whether it be personal heartbreak or the disaster that awaits the Texas panhandle this summer if the current drought continues. I know God promises me I'll suffer, but that nothing He allows is for no reason, nothing is in the random, and He will strengthen, refine, and ordain me as a herald of His Son, in any situation, no matter how bleak and ugly. And I know that I can't stop it; it's as if it were already a memory, and that I must take my part in it.
Someday I may be clothed by another, a clueless teenage kid handing out faded t-shirts from the Salvation Army at the park, instead of Walmart's finest Oxford button-down shirts that I'm accustomed to; carried where I do not want to go, by exhaustion and numbness, to my night's home on the sidewalk on 6th avenue, outside the empty bar that used to be Sassy's.
If that happens, don't be ashamed to stare, so you'll be truly aware of what mental illness looks like, and what it does because of what we don't do; and if you can't help, don't hate yourself for it - if I'm destined for the street parade, and you for the comfort of a roof and a bed, it's been ordained by a far wiser Power than you or me.
"The world is nothing more than all the tiny things you've left behind."
PS If this ever comes true, and you see me loitering somewhere, please don't snap a picture to post with some sociopolitical analysis about class division and the one percent or whoever else you're blaming for my plight - instead, sell your camera and use the money to feed me, clothe me, or buy my medicine.
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