Trey's Days No. 17

"Think about the last time you were stressed out – I mean really stressed out – I mean 'I have four papers due on Monday and I washed a red shirt with the whites and I’ve been stuck on the tarmac at Logan for two hours for no discernible reason' stressed out. What did your friends do? They took you for coffee or for ice cream or, perhaps, for coffee ice cream. They told you to take a couple deep breaths. They told you to focus on breathing. Everything will be alright, they said. They knew that breathing, like God’s presence, is a constant in our lives. They knew that we don’t have to focus on constant things in order for those constant things to continue happening. But they also knew that when we do focus on those constant things, we often find peace – peace and new beginnings." The Rev. Adam Thomas

Once when I was in a real crisis, my therapist Anna took me on a little spiritual journey that began with the words "I want you to become aware of your breathing." That commenced a little trip to a place inside myself that I'll call my conscious contact with God. It's always been there and does not depend on my awareness. Each time I remember Anna's words in that still quiet place, it re-emerges, unchanged by time and neglect. And each time I renew my conscious contact with it, its nourishing power, its salving balm is just as sweet as it was the first time. My God is like that. Unchanging, not dependent on me, ever salving, calming, saving.

The story of "Jacob's Ladder" to which the Adam Thomas piece refers, begins with a dream. Many stories in Scripture begin with dreams. Like dreams, our unconscious and the synchronistic nature of things, always lie just beneath the surface of our conscious busyness, and when we get stressed out, frantic, afraid, tired, they are there to remind us, "I want you to become aware of your breathing." And when we return, in an instant it reappears, that connection with something greater than self, greater than circumstances, greater than the world, greater than death. Yes, greater than death! That clear clean cool well of pure spiritual awareness that is our God is waiting for us, and all we have to do is breathe. Amen.

Now check out Adam Thomas' blog for a slightly more coherent hint of what I'm talking about.

http://wherethewind.com/2011/07/18/the-autonomic-spiritual-system/

Trey's Days No. 16

Betty Ford and Julia Hagerman: a legacy of recovery

by Trey Merritt on Tuesday, July 12, 2011 at 7:49am

"I'm having an eclipse of my own!" The living room was completely dark. I wouldn't have known she was there except for the orange glow coming from the tip of her Kent. "C'mon granny, we're going outside to see the lunar eclipse!" Her reply was startling to me as a young child, but now I understand it completely.

Betty Ford died on July 8th, and left a legacy of recovery. When I was growing up in the era of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, our family didn't talk about addiction or alcoholism. It was a dirty little secret, like being gay, or having a mental illness. There were lots of dirty little secrets that families suffered with in silence, or more likely, with whispers.

"Your grandmother is an alcoholic. She's had too much to drink. She doesn't mean what she's saying and she won't remember it tomorrow." My mother knew enough to tell me as a child that Granny's behavior had a cause. Her rants, her ramblings, her nonsensical goings on came after an afternoon of drinking Scotch and smoking cigarettes, a daily event that began with an oh so gentile, "I believe I'll have a highball. Would anyone else like one?" That highball was followed by a succession of "patches" which consisted of an ice cube or two and a splash of Scotch. Her glasses were etched with pink elephants. Her stories were of things that happened long ago, or never.

"I wish you could have known my mother before she got like this. She used to be a lot of fun." We had gone to the coast for the day. We had family in Pass Christian, and the beach was not far away from my grandparents' South Mississippi home. Granny had not gone with us that day, preferring to stay home and drink and visit with the maid, which is how she spent every day. Upon returning at dark thirty, we found my grandmother, walking in circles in the kitchen, the floor covered with smudges of blood and broken glass. One more patch was too many and the pink elephants had shattered all over the floor. Too drunk to clean up her mess, she had walked around in broken glass for who knows how long. My mother spent the rest of the evening picking glass out of her feet. "I wish you could have know my mother before she got like this."

No one ever suggested to my grandmother that she might have a problem with alcohol. Betty Ford hadn't sobered up yet, hadn't founded her famous hospital. AA had been around for decades, but in that small Mississippi town such things were far far away, or at least not mentioned. It was Betty Ford who changed all that. What Bill W. had started in 1935, Mrs. Ford took public in the 1980s. Suddenly it was not only okay to get help, it seemed like addicts and alcoholics were coming out of the woodwork, their disease to expose. Recovery happened. As a society we started to get well together.

So when it came time for my family's disease to manifest itself in me, help was everywhere. At work, at my church, at school, in the grocery store, on facebook, everywhere I go, there are people who walk the walk of recovery with me, and we see each other getting better, we listen to each other's stories and hear ourselves there. We see a fellowship growing up around us like a miracle we never could have imagined while in our disease.

So rest in peace Betty and Julia, and thank you a million times thank you for your legacy of disease and recovery. Things will never be the same for those of us who get a second chance, and we can never repay the gift you have left us. May we ever have the Grace to keep passing it on.

Trey's Days No. 15

Life is Good

I read an article about a dude who hiked the Appalachian Trial from way down south to way up north, and realized there that all his big thoughts crystallized into "warm dry place to sleep, food to eat." My Appalachian Trial at the moment is many sheet pans of cookie dough, great bowls of strawberry bread batter, and many repetitions of attempting the best brownie recipe ever (if you haven't tried the Boulevard brownies, you must!). I didn't go to school to scoop cookies and attempt to perfect brownies. I went to school to think big thoughts and write about them for people who critique big thoughts and writing about them. But somewhere in the third attempt to make the brownies, in the reading of an Appalachian Trial tale, in the bone tiredness of working all night, comes my crystallization.

I recently was temporarily kicked off Facebook pending an investigation of an allegation of abuse. It was resolved in my favor, for which I am very grateful. I didn't realized how much I would miss my Facebook friends, our little interactions here, the sites I see and read here. The human community if so great. The love we share with each other is powerful, nourishing and life giving. Yes, I know, it's on-line, and it's Facebook, but it's also human. We touch each other with our little words, our posts, our poems, our pictures of our lives unfolding, and somewhere in there is a crystallization of love between real human beings, connected, even if it is with computers.

Just as I was coming back to Facebook there was an article from "elephantjournal" by a guy who is a Buddhist meditation teacher, about how Jesus is God, and like seeing a wave in the ocean, if you've seen him you've seen the Father. And so it is with us. The article is about Buddhism, meditation and the Bodhisattva way, but it says something powerful too about who Jesus is. He's God! And we, through the magic of the human connection can see God through His fearless giving. And this coming from a dude who is not a Christian! And there too, a crystallization! I realized how much I love Jesus and His Church while I was sitting on a cushion meditating with some Buddhist friends. I thought I was getting away for a while, only to realize I was always moving toward Home. We all are always moving toward Home, no matter how far away we may feel now. Trust that!

Whether we're hiking the Appalachian Trial, making cookies, sitting on a Buddhist meditation cushion, kneeling in an Episcopal Church, rocking out to heavy metal or drinking beer by the pool, we're all being called Home by a God who loves us, and after all the big thoughts and complicated words are thought and said, it's all crystallizing down to a warm dry place to sleep, some food to eat, and a loving human community to be a part of. For that I am very grateful. Life is Good! Amen.

Trey's Days No. 14

Guidance

I had known for a long time from experience that to stay on the beam, to stay clean and sober, to maintain constant contact with a higher power, I had to be willing to follow directions and to get honest. Time and time again I had thought I was willing to do that, only to discover that at certain times making decisions in life, mostly small every day decisions, I wanted to be back in the driver's seat, to call the shots myself. And each time I did, I got myself into difficulty, into pain, a pain that is not sustainable without some relief. Well, we know what relief looks like. It looks like a drink, like a joint, like sex, like pornography, like over eating, like spending money; it looks like something that feels good for a matter of minutes and leaves a long hangover of still more pain.

This time around it had to be different. This time around, I was ready for the permanent solution, the solution that comes not from myself, but truly comes from a power greater than myself. This time around I was willing to follow directions.

I had seen (we'll call him “J.”) once several years ago at a church I was visiting. He was one of the lay people in charge around there, a trusted servant we might say, doing his work, unassuming and shy, but with a quiet authority. We never exchanged words but I knew who he was. I did not know then that he would be my way back to a way of life that demands rigorous honesty. Years later I would see him at a convention where we gather to hear people tell their stories. And I would see him at a meeting I go to, and I would see him at a different church where I had become a member. It seemed I couldn't go anywhere without him popping up. Interesting how these things work when there's Guidance involved.

So one day after I had gotten sick and tired of being sick and tired, after I had reached the end of the rope of making all my own decisions, I saw him at my church, and during the Passing of the Peace he said my name. Then later when I got myself to a meeting, I saw him there, exuding that quiet power that comes from years of following directions and surrendering to a power greater than oneself. I looked him up and called him. We got to talking.

I had finished school for the time being and it was abundantly clear that I was not going to seminary. The churchman I had sought out to help me with that had used me as a sounding board to share all his attempts at romantic exploits. He had listened to my theological and spiritual questions but assiduously avoided giving me the time of day on the content of my search, and each time I had broached the question, had made it clear I was not what his church was looking for. Not a squeaky clean undergraduate, not a successful second career person, no other degrees, more spiritual than religious, I was the exact opposite of what he would think of as a postulate for the discernment process. I went back to school with spiritual questions and seminary in mind. I had counciled with a minister who had helped me get to the place that at the age of 44 I was willing to go back to school and get that undergraduate degree I had abandoned to willfulness and youthful distractions. Minoring in music, philosophy and religious studies with a smattering of Spanish I was approaching a degree which looked on paper like one perfect for training for theology or ministry of some kind.

But Guidance would intervene at this point. The door I thought I had been persistently knocking on slammed suddenly with a smack. My persistent questions about spirituality and the church, my annoying comments about a church run by bankers, my demands that gay leaders, especially in the church have an obligation to be authentic and available to the struggling gay teen who is on the brink of suicide, my probing about the presence of God in our lives and the Guidance we receive through prayer, my exploration of eastern religion, had all just become too much. With the reprimand that it was obvious that the “friendship” had taken a back seat to my “other goals” he ended the relationship, soundly, suddenly and with characteristic vigor and finality.

Meanwhile Guidance had been pecking away at my brain. A friend had suggested a couple of books by Teilhard de Chardin. The Episcopal Church had celebrated the memory of Evelyn Underhill, Anglican mystic, on the day of the severing of ties with the closeted churchman, something had made me go back and reread “The Screwtape Letters” by C.S. Lewis, and J. had insisted that I apply for a job at the bakery, with a sprinkling of words about Brother Lawrence and “Practicing the Presence of God.” I had been clean and sober again for enough months now to know that Guidance was telling me something.

. A coworker at the bakery is “one of us” doing what I do for the problem I have. The people there are so patient and kind it immediately feels like I'm suppose to be there. The Teilhard, C.S.Lewis, Evelyn Underhill, and the words about Brother Lawrence, and not to leave out the Bill W. readings, all come together to show me that the Spirit of the living God was there all along, showing me the Body of Christ is not in just in an institution run by bankers with its buildings, budgets and bureaucracy. It's in the cookie dough. It's in a coworker who is one of us. It's in a guy named J. who keeps popping up every where and suggests I go apply for a job at the bakery. It's in Teilhard's fossils, Underhill's naked awareness, Brother Lawrence's “Pressence”, C.S. Lewis' quiet intuitive thought. It's in meetings where God has skin and shares stories of recovery. It's in the slamming of a door by a closeted churchman and the opening of a bag of patent flour. It's in a dog walk by the lake on a muggy morning, in a call from a friend at church I never knew knew me, it's in the peace that comes from finally surrendering to a power greater than myself and enough willingness to follow some simple suggestions.

I don't know where this journey is going, but recent experience is making it clear beyond a shadow of a doubt; Guidance is real, unmistakable, and it frequently looks very different from what we're expecting. It requires surrender and willingness, rigorous honesty and deep trust. But when those qualities coalesce in a moment, there is the feeling of being home at last, and the weary seeker can rest in the knowledge of Guidance.

Trey's Days No. 13

The Path

There was a flame from an oil lamp on the table between two chairs. This little light transformed the otherwise conventional mid-century living room into a chamber of soul searching. Anne had been through a lot. Minister's wife, mother, social worker, ordained minister now retired, it is here that she would share her considerable experience with me.

The session was life changing. She helped me make the decision. If I wanted to go to seminary getting my bachelor's degree was the first step. I would register for some classes and figure out what I'd major in later. There was on that day with the little light and the woman wealthy with experience a sense that something had changed. There was a new path, the path of education and preparation.

Academic advising with the chair of the music department was a mistake. It didn't seem like a mistake, but I emerged a music major. Dr. Choirmaster exclaimed “Major? Major?” and put his head down on his desk. Dr. Choirmaster has sent me to the department chair for advising. He had not imagined I would emerge a music major. “Okay, get ready!” he warned.

Concert choir was easy enough. Community chorus was even easier. Anyone with half a voice can sing in a huge choir, even if it is Handel and Mozart. It was the voice lessons and recitals, the piano lessons and recitals, the aural skills tests and the other classes on top of that that started the anxiety attacks. Standing in the wings, running “See the Raging Flames Arise” from Handel's Joshua in my head, the anxiety was like having an out of body experience. “Can you take it a little faster?” the Bulgarian accompanist asked as we walked out. “I guess” I squeaked meekly.

I crashed and burned. Two lines into the all together too fast Handel aria I looped and forgot the words. “Kristina, we have to stop.” She ignored me and kept on playing. Lost, I turned and tried to sing again. That was my last public performance. It was an unmitigated disaster. After many successes singing and playing, after mastering a gob of theory, after working my ass off, it all lay in the ruins of one disastrous performance. “Major?” Right. Big mistake!

Advising in the philosophy and religious studies department after years of a steady diet of music felt so much more appropriate. Of course. Preparation for seminary or a theology degree would involve philosophy and religious studies. Naturally. Off I went for some more years of classes I mostly loved. Existentialism, Islam, Medical Ethics, Eastern Thought, all wonderful stuff. But something had happened to me in the process of working on this patchwork we call a Liberal Arts degree. All the resolve of that day with the flame lighting a new path had vaporized. The hope of a degree itself had crashed on the rocky shores of a biology class taught by an old school hard ass. And the anxiety of crashing and burning on the shards of “See the Raging Flames Arise” with the Bulgarian racer now followed me everywhere.

“Wanna get high?” the hippie brother beckoned. Well hell yeah. Years of experience taught me how to make that stalking anxiety go away. Relapse held at bay for a while by a fellowship and a program, there comes in the life of every recovering person the moment when there is no human defense. Hell yeah I wanted to get high. I wanted relief, relief from “Major? Major?” Relief from “See the Raging Flames Arise”, relief from the passive bureaucracy of urban public education, but mostly just relief from myself, from my disease, from stalking anxiety that followed me from childhood, stirring my brain chemistry into a perfect storm of confusion and exhaustion.

I escaped with most of my dignity in tact and a zillion hours. I learned a tremendous amount. From Dr. E I got my faith back in Eastern Thought, Philosophy of Religion, and watching him teach. From my friends I found a new kind of fellowship, one of ideas and aspiration. But I had lost the light of that little flame showing me the way to a new path that would take me to the vocation for which my maker had given me great and powerful gifts.

The fellowship that offers a way out was right where I left it. Many of my old brothers were still there. They had saved me a seat. And in that fellowship I found the lamp still burning, the path still illuminated by the light of that one still and steady flame. The gifts are still there and into them has been stoked the logs of learning and even still breathes Spirit to fan the flame. Tomorrow I go to meet one who found his vocation and met his calling, to hear a word of experience. The path stretches out before me still, and still alive and breathing I have a chance. I am starting to see how my experience can benefit others, and alive in my recent memory is the message of Sister Helen Prejean reminding me not to be overwhelmed but to reach out to one in pain. And I have a whole list of names of people in pain who are waiting for me to reach out. The flame still burns, and the path will become visible again as my eyes open, I trust.

Trey's Days No. 12

Sister

I went to see the Dalai Lama. And I did, along with several thousand other folks. What I wasn't expecting was to be blown away by a Catholic nun. Sitting there between the leader of the Tibetans and a great American civil rights leader was a woman who taught me a lesson I've been needing for a while. She taught me how to not be overwhelmed in a world full of unimaginable suffering. She said you do it by reaching out to one person in pain.

Sister Helen Prejean sat between the civil rights leader and the Tibetan god king, an ordinary nun in plain clothes. She spoke plainly. She wore a red scarf and pants. She told of befriending one who had committed an unspeakable crime and another who was the father of one killed in an unspeakable crime. She told with great authority how they both wanted healing and how that healing cannot come from more violence. She told of a killing chamber with a window. Three are invited to watch the killing. There's the state's witness, there's one who is the representative of the victims family, and there's the mother of the one to be killed, her hand pressed against the glass as she watches her son the killer be killed. Nothing gets solved there and the cycle of violence continues.

Not overwhelmed in such a world where the cycle of violence continues unabated she loves each of them one at a time. She listens to them one at a time. She is Jesus for each one of them, one at a time, and walks away strong, sad but strong onto the stage of the Razorback arena before thousands.

As we waited in the afternoon to see His Holiness the Dalai Lama of Tibet again, coming to receive his honorary degree of humane letters from the University of Arkansas, the audience are in their own thoughts. A mother and daughter behind us check their stocks and talk excitedly about Pepsi's recent split. Another wears lama colors, yellow and maroon. The superstitious and the irreverent together waiting to see if the sound system can be fixed so the monologue on a non-violent response to Chinese oppression can be understood better than the morning talk which presumably was on non-violence, although it was anybody's guess since very little of what he said in the morning could be understood; his English fast and bubbly runs together in the giant re-verb of too much amplification, soft fast speaking and a giant echo in a huge domed room. All that way and a year of preparation, to present a god king and scarcely a word he spoke could be understood. Finally some brave anonymous one of the thousands yells “louder!”. But louder was not the answer, maybe slower, clearer, with less reverberation.

The message which could not be heard was that a baby learns love and compassion at her mother's breast. We carry that mother child connection into the world and we can't let it get beat out of us. In a jail cell in a Chinese prison, a monk has the snot beat out of him over and over by a guard whose job it is to be cruel as a matter of course. “My enemy my best teacher” he can almost be understood to say. Can't learn patience from a loving mother, from a Buddha, from your best friend. No. But from a guard who beats the snot out of you on a daily basis as a matter of course because he's just doing his job, you can learn patience. His culture irreparably altered forever, his childhood home raised to the ground, his people systematically oppressed on a daily basis in the country where he was once the god king, he smiles, even laughs. “My enemy my best teacher.”

It was the re-verb that taught me patience on this fateful day. Arising at 4, driving up in the morning, sitting through unintelligible speech all morning, returning hoping for another chance to hear the god king before he goes back to his place of exile, perhaps never to come this close to us again, it was agonizing to see him and hear sound coming out of his mouth and to be able to catch only about every third word. But what we did hear loud and clear is that unimaginable cruelty and suffering on a global scale cannot take away our hope. An ocean of suffering cannot overwhelm us. They taught us with their unintelligible words to love each other one at a time, to reach out to one in pain today, and to bring our love and hope with us, even into a great reverberating stadium full of chatty people checking their stocks, and superstitious groupies wearing the right colors with “spiritual” jewelry. From the god king and the simple sister came a love that cannot be killed, even by all that.

Trey's Day No. 11

Secrets

Wiping his mouth he was sweaty and out of breath. It was obvious something had been going on. Then came the trick out from behind the curtain, zipping his pants. Sam Steward aka Phil Sparrow muttered something to the sailors coming in the door about how he wanted a fly tattooed on his head.

His tattoo shack was in the most dangerous part of Chicago, a part frequented by bikers, rough trade, sailors and misfits, perfect for a genteel patrician professor with a secret life. No one would ever find him here. Tattooing was great cover that got him close to the lower men he craved but rarely found on the campus of the Catholic school where he taught snotty brats. This is the life of the “Secret Historian.”

Teaching in universities through the era of Joseph McCarthy's witch hunt when mail was routinely opened on a variety of pretexts required secrecy if you were homosexual. The inner self that could not be expressed publicly had to find outlets in secret. The difference between Samuel Steward and many thousands of others was that he kept meticulous records in his “Stud File.” This record survives today and is shared now by Justin Spring in his sometimes raunchy tale of a secret life now revealed. What hits home here is the toll that secrecy took, driving Steward to alcoholic drinking and drugging. extreme masochism and what in the end was a lonely life painful to see. It was as true for him as it is for us; we are only as sick as our secrets.

“Exit Through the Gift Shop” exposes the secret life of street artists, finding walls in LA to make their art. London, Paris, New York, train cars, bill boards, all filmed by this crazy Frenchman who came to be known as “Mister Brain Wash”. Recording their secret art and the adrenalin stoked nights of painting and running became a passion that took him all over the world. Sam Steward needing the sweat and danger of toughs, graffiti artists needing to leave their art in dangerous places, radicalize me back to the true authentic self that would be kept secret in a world full of posers, polished polite people and their repression, smiling and thinking to themselves, “Eeeww, what's wrong with him?” But “Mister Brain Wash” and Justin Spring's Sam Steward each in their way make it clear the light of day is necessary for life and dark secrets make us sick.

So re-radicalizing to the un-secret world of Sam Steward's tattoo shack and the rush of secret artists streaking through the night their free gift to give, I breathe in the fresh life giving air of secrets exposed. The “Secret Historian's” story is told so we see how sick secrets make us. “Mister Brain Wash” gives us public auctions gobbling up once secret art for a hundred thousand quid, all to show us the life giving power of the light of day.

Authenticity, real raw reality is a rare thing. So filtered was the world of Joseph McCarthy's 1950s, so cultured and narrow the world of art and self expression that they unwittingly birthed the tortured life of a secret historian and the unbridled exuberance of Mister Brain Wash. An elephant painted red with gold fleurs de lils brought all the stars out for a street art show “Barely Legal” in Los Angeles, and suddenly the art that couldn't make it in the filtered fiber free world of the art show was making all the galleries and auction houses and a vandalized telephone box off a London street brings 100,000 dollars; brilliant!

Unfiltered was Sam Steward's secret world when he became Phil Sparrow, inking flies on heads below the waist, doing a sailor, wiping his mouth as the next customer comes through the door of the gritty shack. Exposed is the secret world of repressed art exploding in the night filmed by Mister Brain Wash and brought to us in the fresh brilliant light of day as we take in “Exit Through the Gift Shop.”

So spray about some authenticity today and let out some Phil Sparrow. Don't exit through the gift shop but find art on a train car, on a wall, in your heart, let it out! We're only as sick as our secrets.

Trey's Days No. 10

Resurrection

She awoke covered in blood. For a minute she wondered if it was her own or somebody else's. It was her own. She had walked into a bar to have a few drinks after work and ended up in a strange place with strange people not sure how she got there. As she became conscious the evening slowly came back to her. She remembered meeting the two “coke whores.” They told her that if they went with these guys they had just met they'd get some coke. She didn't want coke. She wasn't like them, she told herself. She just wanted to have a couple of drinks to take edge off. Now here she was lying in a motel bed covered in her own blood, raped and badly beaten. And this was not the first time.

Memories like this prepared her for what was next. Today she is a forensic nurse who helps women who've been raped by gathering evidence that might convict their assailants. She also carries the message that if you think you might have a problem with alcoholic there is a solution. You don't ever have to drink again. Having been a drunken coke whore lying a pool of her own blood she knows there's a way out. She ends by reminding us of Palm Sunday. Jerusalem's streets are crowded with people waving palm branches cheering Jesus. “What if the donkey thought all that was for him?” she asks. And she concludes “I'm just the jackass who gets to carry the message.” That's Springtime in the Ozarks.

The sun had finally come out and it warmed up. Sitting outside at Local Flavor we had a great vantage point for watching people. Bikers rumbled by. Some strollers waved and called up to us. An old friend was our waiter. We were sitting in a sea of friends. With dogwoods blooming and the warmth of love and sunshine life is pretty sweet at Springtime in the Ozarks.

The stone antique auditorium has wooden seats. If they were an inch narrower my wide behind wouldn't fit. Down front standing up talking animatedly to the people in the row behind him is the muscle dude we called John. He had on a tight “John 3:16” t-shirt. His porcelain skin shown below short black hair gelled just so. His pecs and arms clearly were not an accident but the product of many hours in the gym. But it was his friendliness and joy that I noticed above the muscled physique. He clearly had found a way out of the dilemma that plagues many. The fresh peace and happy laughter that he exuded was even more attractive than his gym honed body.

The lights came down, the audience hushed, and the Serenity Prayer was said by 1,000 people in unison. I feel at home. To the stage walks a man from Shrewsbury Mass. In a South Boston accent he tells a tale of loosing himself in the “High Life.” He tells of being taken to meetings by a friend who was eight months pregnant, through the Boston snow, driving to help her friend find what she had found, a way out. His spontaneity as he shared his love and deliverance with 1,000 strangers, his courageous sharing of gruesome pain,his ready laughter at himself, were contagious.

It was 9:30 before we got out and we hadn't eaten. In the tiny town of Eureka Springs nothing much is open at that hour. Between McDonald's and Subway we chose Subway. We were not the only ones. About 15 people had lined up suddenly and there was only one poor fellow working there. It took forever to get our food. Now one would expect that at least someone would be impatient. I was struck by the calm kindness with which all the waiting hungry cheered this lone Subway worker. We waited patiently and one woman noted that we all seemed to have been at the same place doing the same thing, getting a dose of serenity we could then pass along. That's Springtime in the Ozarks.

Tall and lanky with dark wrinkled skin that shows his Indian blood and a life in the desert sun make him look tough. But he warns, “I'm a crier so get over it.” As he relates a saga of running, marrying nine different women, “hostages” he calls them, the tears flowed freely. Over more than a quarter of a century of a different way of life he has found what he was always looking for in a whiskey bottle, in Las Vegas bar rooms, in nine wives. His tears now are tears of joy, joy he shares with us as he freely cries in front of a room full of people from all over, people he doesn't even know.

Eureka Springs is a town of just a little over 2,000 people, and we were a visiting group of 2,172. As the weekend progressed I had the distinct feeling that I was not just among friends but family. Just like me, they all had felt what we all feel, had done what we have all done, and now together we have a common solution. We were everywhere in that tiny beautiful Ozark town, surrounded by love and springtime sharing our solution.

From Belfast a Catholic man tells of being burned out of his house at age 12 by the opposing paramilitaries. He tells of living a life after emigrating to New York that revolved around a bar full of toothless hopeless people. He said once a beauty queen with three teeth came in and stopped the chatter, even the juke box went silent. Relating the unfeeling environment in which he was raised, he said once there was an Irish man who loved his wife so much he almost told her. Feeling unloved and unlovable, he nearly drank himself to death. But even he from his hopeless state of confusion and depression found a solution.

As we drove down out of those green and flower covered mountains toward home my companion and I agreed that if life never got any better than this it would be just fine. We had been reminded not to confuse peace and contentment with boredom. We were assured that the safe warm sea of love and friendship is open for business 24-7-365 and it's free for the asking. All we have to do is surrender. If this is all the resurrection I ever see it would be enough. From what I hear there's more where this came from and more will be revealed. As my eyes and heart slowly open I see resurrection all around me. That's Springtime in the Ozarks.

Trey's Days No. 9

Running

“He did not look back.” Sarty escaped. He ran and didn't look back. One barn too many had burned and he wasn't watching another. He'd had enough. He wrenched himself free from the gripping hands that held him. Faulkner has this one escape the horror of a life he couldn't stand, people he wouldn't be held by. That one running, that one not looking back is me too. When I left the grip of Faulkner's Mississippi I did not look back but now “Barn Burning” holds up a mirror on the horizon. Moving forward not looking back I find myself running into a mirror and there before my horrified and wondering eyes is the Mississippi I ran from, in a strange light with the “liquid silver voices of birds” calling me home, and I didn't look back but forward--forward into a mirror.

The sound of night wind through tall pines was not first called whispering nor the call of quail in a backyard covey “bob-white” in Pine Hills outside Hattiesburg, but that's where I first knew them. In midnight black we rolled quietly into that needle carpeted drive where thick air was scented with pine resin and angel biscuit and murmuring voices heavy with history waited, a light on in the kitchen. As one who knew nothing of Oxford's Faulkner nor of the tension beneath the staid veneer, my sixties Mississippi was an enchanted land. Two sets of grandparents and their stories of parents as children sprang to life before my eyes at the first hint of those magic scents and sounds. I was engulfed in the love of another time that never lasted long enough, evaporating as too soon we drove north toward Memphis and home. It seemed you couldn't carry such fragile stuff far from its sacred sea of humidity and slowness.

Hearing early Oktibbeha, Kosciusko and Pass Christian in the strange way they are said there prepared me for Yoknapatawpha. Yet I was afraid when I started on the stories of Faulkner, afraid I wouldn't understand-- afraid I'd be ashamed of his Mississippi, my Mississippi. I've been told Oxford got hot under the collar looking in the mirror held in their faces by their most famous son. But hope told me that as my shame from narrow beginnings was confirmed, it would be purged by Faulkner. Hope was right. His Mississippi feels liberating and nourishing. That nourishment calls itself truth, truth that shines from a dark mirror its light to share.

I recently heard the story of a black woman from Haynes Arkansas, one of ten children, she is forty-six now and has four grown children and three grandchildren of her own. She told of a town in the Delta of about 350 people and two churches, one for white and one for black, and one honky-tonk that brought them together. Her folks ran that honky-tonk and it raised her. Drinking as a child is a big part of her story, one of pain and struggle punctuated by encounters with older brothers who brought her drinks, taught her how to be a woman in the way they would have her, typical of the Mississippi Delta. At first I was afraid I wouldn't relate, but I did. One daughter's Haynes is a son's Yoknapatawpha and another's Hattiesburg. Deep inside where it counts, beneath the skin where names fall away and blood is blood and pain is pain, we're the same.

I was born in Columbus, Mississippi in 1960. Some baggage is Louis Vuitton and some garbage bags and so it is with the mix of gifts that comes with such a history. Being born in Mississippi, parents from Mississippi, growing up in Memphis, I remember knowing there was something powerful to be proud of in our culture and something to be ashamed of too. We were a people with backs stiffened against the northern winds of change. Southern conservatives then and now are a stern quiet people who don't mind having angels among them but hate to hear them flap their wings. Both of my parents were born in south Alabama and moved as children to Hattiesburg ninety miles from the Gulf coast. Just about every middle class white family had a maid who made about forty dollars a week. Garbage men made so little money they qualified for welfare. I can remember the shooting of Martin Luther King and the riots that followed. Hearing that tale of a Haynes honky-tonk, this Mississippi boy could feel his childhood creeping up on him like a spook holding a mirror in the dark, barely visible, my own face in it.

These threads of Haynes, Hattiesburg and Yoknapatawpha weave together into a chord as southern as grits, as queer as Capote and as human as Adam and Eve. One pain is the pain of a black woman from Hanyes who can't stop drinking, the confusion of a Dixie queer boy who ran and the power of Faulkner's running Sarty, telling her story and mine at the same time in his Yoknapatawpha tale. He ties us together into a sinew of humanity breathing words that flow with the power of that muddy grandfather of all waters that gave all three of us life. A honky-tonk daughter, a Nobel Prize winner and I are one humanity, the same in the deep dark truth of that shining mirror.

Stories like “The Tall Men” and “Shingles for the Lord” and “Barn Burning” show me my culture, my people, my self. In the history Oxford tells of itself they admit the town was not fond of Mr. Faulkner until after 1962 when he died. As they realized the rest of the world called him genius they decided he was their favorite son. So it is with this double legacy, half blessed by genius, half willfully ignorant. I am no different. Listening to that shining black daughter of the Haynes honky-tonk, I get a little hot under the collar looking into that mirror of powerlessness, pain cleansed by truth. Just as God spoke to Mississippi in Billy Fa[u]lkner so She speaks to me out of the mouth of a Haynes honky-tonk daughter. Truth is like that, coming from dark places its light to share. Our powerlessness, our running, our wrenching away from a past that would hold us, is the same. We are all Sarty not looking back only to see we are running toward a dark mirror on the horizon shining.

As I read the “n” word used over and over by Oxford's Billy Falkner and the world's William Faulkner, I hear my mother's voice; “Julia spent twelve hours a day, six days a week working in Mother's house while she raised two children of her own and two that were not her own, and Mother thought she was doing Julia a favor..” Julia was my connection to the honky-tonk daughter, intertwined in the blood. Julia Banks ran my grandmother's kitchen, told the truth, stood tough and gentle in the face of the unimaginable. I see her face too in the “garbage men” and “yard boys”, in how they had to go on strike to get a little raise, standing tough, signs reading “I AM A MAN.” The April evening in 1968 when King was shot my Daddy explained “He's a trouble maker and he has a lot of followers, so there's going to be a lot of trouble.” I didn't know who he was until he was dead. I was eight years old.

It was in her face I saw it, that shining black face of the honky-tonk daughter, in Julia's voice I heard it as she asked me one Easter morning “Kind'a hot ta tote ya' coat, ain't it?” My mother had to translate. And she was right it was, on a steamy Easter morning in South Mississippi, from which I would run as soon as I had legs big enough, run like Sarty and not look back, to San Francisco, as far away as I could get, only to pick up Billy's tale of a boy who ran and didn't look back and see myself in a mirror there. Under the skin where blood is blood we are all the same, that Haynes daughter, Julia, Sarty, running toward the mirror showing us each ourselves, our deep selves, taking that magic sea of humidity and slowness with us all the way to Ocean Beach, and we get there and there we are.

Angel biscuit, pine scented air and the soft call of “bob-white” run deep in me. The daughter of Haynes drinking to run, Julia standing not running, “I AM A MAN” marching, all deep in me, woven together by Billy Fa[u]lkner in his Sarty, his Yoknapatawpha, his running and not looking back, showing me a mirror of my deepest self. Can you see it? Look! There it is on the horizon, shining darkly.

Sucker

Trey's Days No. 8

Sucker

In sleepy suburbs, moneyed mansions, bullet pocked projects and raw row houses, hardening of the heart happens. It happens in children. Their eyes go from open oceans of wonder to cat eyes cocked for danger. Hands go from open palms waiting for sweets to fists clinched for smashing. But how? How do hearts get hardened?

Flannery O'Connor tells the story of a little boy called “Sucker.” He was adopted and felt adopted. He shared a bedroom with his older step brother. He idolized him and would do anything he said. Once Sucker jumped off the roof because his older brother told him if he held an umbrella it would act like a parachute. Sucker got pretty banged up earning his nickname.

The time came that Sucker's step brother was feeling better about himself, having a girlfriend, and started treating Sucker better. They were friends for a brief period and Sucker got the love he craved from his older brother.

“His face seemed different now. He used to look timid and sort of like he was afraid of a whack over the head. That expression was gone. His face, with those wide-open eyes and his ears sticking out and his mouth never quite shut, had the look of a person who is surprised and expecting something swell.”

Then the girlfriend left. The older brother felt bad and started taking it out on Sucker. After that Sucker changed. He hardened when that love was taken away: “Afterward I could remember the change in Sucker's face. Slowly that blank look went away and he closed his mouth. His eyes got narrow and his fists shut. There had never been such a look on him before. It was like every second he was getting older. There was a hard look to his eyes you don't see usually in a kid. A drop of sweat rolled down his chin and he didn't notice. He just sat there with those eyes on me and he didn't speak and his face was hard and didn't move.....All of that was two or three months ago. Since then Sucker has grown faster than any boy I ever saw. He's almost as tall as I am and his bones have gotten heavier and bigger....He's gotten up this gang of kids and they have a club...On the door there is some foolishness written in Mercurochrome saying 'Woe to the Outsider Who Enters' and signed with crossed bones and their secret initials.”

Flannery's tale of the hardening of a heart got me thinking about how it happens. Every time I see a news story about a kid being charged with a felony I wonder about their childhood. How do we make a child who can commit horrible crimes, who appears to have no conscience? I think Flannery's Sucker gives us a clue.

I had a cushy childhood. We had everything we needed and most of what we wanted, and yet I felt poor. It seemed there was always somebody who had more, or better, or different. My cousins came to visit us from Connecticut in their little Piper Cub. They'd take us up for a spin over Memphis and spend the day before they flew off for the coast. Suddenly, lucky to be invited, I felt less than. We went to a church where a lot of the people had Cadillacs and BMW's. We had a Ford--less than. My parents and grandparents loved us very much and provided well. But I was gay--less than. My dad loved me too but in an effort to make a man of me he could be pretty abusive--less than. I was never comfortable in my own skin. Now all this sounds like whining, and I am grateful for the blessings I had, but there was enough abusive ridiculing for me to identify with kids who had it worse. Hardening of the heart also happens in middle class homes where there's plenty. Thinking back I remember how the hardening of the heart can happen. Children can be very cruel, and my parents advice was to ignore them. I learned how to harden my heart and do what it took to get through school.

“What are you looking at?” a voice boomed across the locker room. I was horrified. As I heard the voice I realized I had allowed my eyes to come to rest on the bulging red briefs of a cocky little athlete. We were in the ninth grade and he seemed to be one of the more blessed among us. And considering he was parading around the locker room in red bikini briefs one might be forgiven for thinking he wanted us to notice. When I heard his accusing voice I knew immediately the “ignore them and they'll go away” strategy needed to be kicked into over drive. Turning away I ignored him, and sure enough it worked. Each time the “ignore them” strategy worked like an invisibility cloak, my heart hardened a little

I was not the boy my Dad wanted. I didn't want to play baseball. I didn't like places that he liked. I remember a time he took me back into the cypress swamp in north Florida. It was dark and the dripping moss and swarming bugs made my skin itch and I didn't trust him. I was afraid and I cried and begged him to take me out. He was mad. He drove the boat back to the house as fast as it would go. He didn't speak. Knowing I had disappointed him I was ashamed. My heart hardened a little. I knew I was a disappointment but I also knew I had to stand my ground. Like Sucker, I had to harden. I had to be a survivor in the face of a father who wanted a different son.

Once I felt warm spit soak through my hair. I reached up and touched it. I smelled it. I gagged. Darrel, the tough kid who lived around the corner sneered and laughed. Instead of hating him, somehow it made me admire him in a strange way. Knowing I had not been the son my Dad wanted, of course someone so self-assured, so masculine would loath me, would spit on my head just for fun. It seemed natural after a time to be reviled by boys more like ones my Dad would have wanted. My heart hardened to the reality that the ones I wanted did not want me. They would use me, taunt and abuse me, and I would learn to act like I liked it. After acting “as if” long enough that becomes reality. The twisted truth was I learned to hate myself and in that self loathing sought out ones like Daddy, ones who had disdain for fairies. A hardened heart can take it.

National Public Radio recently ran a story on crime among the youth of Chicago. During a time in which over all crime in Chicago is down, youth crime, particularly killings are rising at an alarming rate. In a years time 700 children were hit by gunfire and 66 died. Students are being exposed to risk walking to school. In 2009 we saw the viral cell phone video of Derrion Albert being beat to death. How can it be that while crime over all is down children are becoming more violent?

I heard a stranger tell his story the other day. He shot up cocaine, got shot up in gun fights, learned how to harden to the hard reality of living in a whore house. He didn't know his mother was a whore until one day he was ogling a “tall pretty white lady”, and she said “It'll take twenty-five dollars.” Twenty-five dollars? “What's she talkin' 'bout?” Then it dawned on him. All the partying, the men in suits, the pretty women, the drinks, the music; it was all for hire. “My mammy run a whore house!”

A hardened heart is well equipped to run a hustle, some game or other to get hooch, blow, whatever is required to make it go away, that screaming pain. A roll of bills and some stuff stands between a hardened heart and annihilation. Sucker's clinched fist and his little gang stands between a hardened heart and annihilation. Even in my own protected childhood I too learned it, how a heart can harden. We all learn it. And that's how we know what it means to be a child who winds up standing before a jury, charged as an adult, in a world where hardening of the heart happens to children. Each of us, if we think back, can remember the times when our once open wondering heart hardened to some hard reality. That's the remembering that brings up the compassion in us that can't be killed. Underneath lies still the open wonder of a child, soft, warm flowing feeling before the hardening of the heart. Can you remember?

Trey's Days No. 7

Encouraging friends cheer, “Write, write, write.” “Glad you're on the right track.” “Wonderful, beautiful, keep writing.” But I was broke when the door handle in the car broke as I was returning from an errand intended to take me back to where I was before philosophy, before Dr. E's non-theist faith dawned, before “too much education”. The sagely Vajrayana mother said the symbolism of that broken door handle must not be lost. But country folk will tell you, “What's wrong with her is she's got too much education.” And they'll ask, incredulous, “What's all that philosophy for anyway?” Sitting there on a sack of seed the old planter admonishes “Yeah, but you gotta eat!”

Flannery O'Connor has the writer's mother say, “When people think they are smart—even when they are smart—there is nothing anybody else can say to make them see things straight, and with Asbury, the trouble was that in addition to being smart, he had an artistic temperament.....she had observed that the more education they got, the less they could do. Their father had gone to a one room school house through the eighth grade, and he could do anything.” Enduring Chill indeed! But that's not the end of our story.

How does the writer write? How did Carson and Flannery, Tennessee and Truman make it from mind to print, stomach growling pressed against the spine? Can we serve God and mammon? Rice and beans can get old when all there is is “too much education” and the spark of an idea. Then the angel Super Moon shining in the sky delivers the Sparkling Host of the Insatiable Mind and whispers “Fear Not!” And just remember, “There are those this very day that would be glad to get a little rice and beans.” Gratitude in all things is the salving balm.

A tiny quiet woman priest in Christ Church's pulpit hits me with a glimpse of Glory. Suddenly Annie Dillard's crash helmet makes sense. Lashed to the pew, a glimpse is all it takes, and the gentle deaconess reminds me to be grateful, and I am, for being thrashed about. I make a list, which starts and ends with my people, people who have been the hand of God through thick and thin, the banker hierophant, the physician deaconess, the councilor friend who help answer the call. Thank you all.

Thomas Hart Benton had a wife who made hats. She worked to earn money while he painted and drew. It was all he could do. Truman, Flannery and Tennessee with words painted too. What else could they do? Who supported their work? How did they make do? Someone will support the work, but who? And then there's that angel again with the Sparkling Host of the Insatiable Mind rising like a super moon in a biography of Henri Cartier-Bresson, reminding us to trust, to write, to make our art. Fear not, but wear a helmet. Nice timing--stomach growling. The angel in the form of Cartier-Bresson, in the form of an Appalachian bishop, in the form of a tiny priest, in the form of Annie Dillard's crash helmet reminds us to hold on, to trust and expect to be thrashed about. Oh, Japan! Holding out would not be possible alone, but we are not alone, Japan you are not alone—the angel reminds us—do the work and dare to dream.

It would be demoralizing if we got an education only to find that there's nothing to do but go back to what was possible before. Why would we go to school at all? Not for Profit by Martha Nussbaum rings in my head. The gift of the Sparkling Host is for the world. Give it! Give it now. Are we crazy to think that God will feed the belly even as She gives the gift of the Insatiable Mind? The angel appears again with that Sparkling Host. “Fear not!” Give it to the world. Just give it. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. Bombs away--write, write, write.

It's the insatiability of the mind that fuels the art. When Thomas Hart Benton's wife had a friend visit from Missouri, the friend asked, “How can you stand to live like this?”--no heat, kerosine lamps in the middle of Manhattan, a dresser drawer for the baby's crib—Mrs. Benton replied, “My husband is a genius.” He painted what he saw, went back to Missouri and drew the people there. Blacksmiths, white hooded Klansmen, the “S” shaped curves of a blue black woman dancing like there's no tomorrow. Now we've got his murals in the Missouri state capitol and the Truman Presidential Library, and they call him the king of the Regionalists.

Thomas Hart Benton and Henri Cartier-Bresson saw it, and Flannery and Carson understood. Truman and Tennessee knew too. When the angel has delivered the Sparkling Host of the Insatiable Mind the old white bread of before will never do. There's no going back. Write, write, write. Trust, clean house, help others. And the angel said, “Fear not!”

When we heard the title “For Colored Girls Who Considered Suicide When the Rainbow was not Enough” it rang. We knew! But the Sparkling Host of the Insatiable Mind might be more than enough. Glimpses of glory might be more than enough. Any more would blow our circuits. They're already smoking; keep a fire extinguisher by the desk. Sparks fly in the stream of consciousness where angels shatter the sun into Carl Parker's sundogs. Crash helmets strapped on, lashed to the pew-- thanks for the warning Annie. And the angel said “Fear not!”

Paul Newman said one time that if you hear someone who is successful in the arts tell their story and they don't mention luck, they're lying. He was humble and considered his success to be mostly looks and luck. Serendipity is a word that has been used to describe the way in which the artist encounters circumstances which enable her to do her art. Setting aside those materialist messengers who tell you to be realistic and trusting in luck means having faith. It's faith that tells us to trust that if we give our art breath and life the world will meet us half way. All the Nelle Harper Lees, Truman Capotes, Tennessee Williamses and Paul Newmans, the Thomas Hart Bentons and Henri Cartier-Bressons, and yes all the yous and mes, know all we need to know at a certain time when despair has run its course. There is a place in heaven for those who pray, and a place for the artist who trusts that daring to dream calls the angels. Fear not. Your time and mine is nigh. Remember, at first Moses said no. But Aaron came out to meet him and went with him back to Egypt and the words were put in their mouths; “tell ole Pharaoh, 'let my people go!.'” Just go!

If you are one as I am who ingests the Sparkling Host of the Insatiable Mind as it rises and hears the angel whisper “Fear Not”, know that your time has come. Trust, dream, make your art. The world—illumined by that rising super moon resting gently on the wings of the angel—hungers for the present of your gift.

Trey's Days No. 6

Tennessee told us a while back we could blow out the candles because now-a-days the world is lit by lightening. As a cold front blows through Little Rock a massive thunderbolt strikes the stately marble dome. Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain and Iraq crackle with the voltage of revolt. Under the dome in Wisconsin a storm of workers clambers for a collective voice. Around the world Tibetans spark any flint they can find to light Beijing with enlightening. Four Amish children are swept to their drowning by the Kentucky rain of climate change. And in my heart thunders the voice which would speak with a deafening clap. Tennessee knew it. Now-a-days the world is lit by lightening. Can we pretend to not know why Obadiah Elihue put God on Parker's back? Be still and know that I am God, cries the Psalmist from the mist of our oblivion. Once you know you can't not know and so we're stuck with it. We who made our messes now must clean them up. It's no wonder when the angels speak they open with “Fear Not!”

“Food Inc.” struck me like a shock in the gut. Cows standing knee deep in putrid waste, antibiotics coursing through their veins to keep the bugs at bay. Pigs scream like babies as they watch their sisters electrocuted before their eyes. Crowded chickens get their beaks chopped lest they peck each to death to get some air. Ground water groans in a choke of chemical sludge as Monsanto feeds the corn that gags the cows. Yet I get up hungry and wallow off to Wal-Mart clutching my Yarnell's Gold Rewards coupon . Not the least bit squeamish we've been trained to tune it out, that voice that says that's God on Parker's back. The burning tree looms on the horizon, but who can beat free Yarnell's?

Dick Cheney's heart runs on a machine now. Halliburton paid in advance for any advancement that would keep their favorite son alive a little longer. BP paid too. Cheney more and the shrimper less. It was more peaceful to not know. Ignorance of the collusion between our elected government and the corporations for whom they work was bliss. Knowing is such an irritation, like heart burn only in the mind. The grocery store, the gas station, the TV crime drama all look a little different now that Parker has the face of God on his back and the burning tree is on the horizon blazing. Blind oblivion is more tricky now with the sky lit up by the lightening of that swift storm. We cannot ignore the drowning Amish babies another second. Climate change is not a victimless crime.

Now that the oil no longer boils up in the Gulf we are encouraged to forget. A green myth of clean coal beckons us to forget. Pundits at Fix News obfuscate to obscure the data. Besides we gotta eat! And there are a couple of scientists out there who doubt it's the hand of man that drives us toward the cliff. Lulled by sweet confections, delighted by dramas where good guys win and coupons in the mail for free glut, we just look away when pigs scream, babies drown and pelicans loose primordial nesting grounds. The whizzing of NASCAR thrilling us to sleep is overpowering. Oscar's bright lights blind us in our dream of glamor. Blinking but not seeing, we drink the salt water of wanting and thirst for more and better and different. To see the face of God on Parker's back we have to stand between the mirrors and look just so, but the second we do it we see plain as lightening. Bang dawns the truth like the whack of a broomstick on bear shoulders. Red whelps mark the face of God. Once you know you can't not know. “Who's there, I ast you?” “Obadiah, Obadiah Elihue” the whisper thunders.

We turn our heads as if we expect someone behind us to give us the answer. The sky has lightened slightly. There are two or three streaks of yellow floating above the horizon. If we are still and look we can see a tree of light bursting over the skyline. And as Flannery brings her story of Obadiah to a close she has him leaning against the tree, crying like a baby. And so it is with us. The grief at what we have done, what we have allowed our appetites to do looms large in us and will not be denied. But we know instinctively the angels who whisper “Fear Not” know something. We see the organic farmer on the side of the road with apples, corn, peaches and peas, Monsanto nowhere in sight. A soft cleansing light falls gently as we gather groceries with our neighbors, from our neighbors. As we can and share, we stand between the mirrors and see the face of God, on our backs forever with eyes to be obeyed. We get up and look toward the dawn wiping away the tears shed for the pigs and cows, the Amish babies, and Dick Cheney. At the end of a storm is a golden sky and we walk toward it.

Trey's Days No. 5

2-23-11

Orange Sweater Vest

I was sure we had nothing in common. He was tall and lanky, I not so tall and not lanky at all. He was black. I'm white. He had a decided limp from a gun shot injury in a ghetto shoot out. I was spared. He grew up in the federal housing project in Little Rock, I in a middle class neighborhood in Memphis. He calls the “Dunbar” home. I don't. He wore an orange sweater vest. I wouldn't.

He began to tell his story. He talked about how he had low self esteem. Thinking back to when it began, this self doubt, self loathing, he recalled a day he “crapped his pants at school.”

“I was sick and I crapped my pants. It was sticky and it stank and all the boys were laughing. Flies were swarming around me. Ever since that day every time somebody snickers or whispers I know they're talking about me.”

I was stunned as I listened. I hadn't thought about it in years. I had been wearing a red Christmas vest. It was the day we got our picture taken with Santa. My mother and grandmother were picking me up from school to go to Goldsmith's basement where Santa waited in the “Enchanted Forest.”. Somehow or another it came over me suddenly like a wave of nausea. Before I knew it it was too late. My utter humiliation exploded around me in a cloud of fragrant nature. It was psychic devastation, complete defeat at the hands of my own bodily functions. It was too late. There I was sitting at my desk at school and it was too late. I like my friend in the orange sweater vest sitting there in my red Christmas vest faced as he had done everyone's worst fear.

Walking to the car I felt the dread of humiliation that only bodily functions can arouse. Made pristine at the hands of doting mother and grandmothers, taught to be fastidious by a band of neat-nicks I walked to the car like I was walking to my death. As I climbed into the back seat, my grandmother beside my mother in the front, I carried this cloud of fragrant humiliation with me. The first sound out of my mother's mouth was a sad sigh, followed by “well, lets get you home and get you cleaned up.” Granny said nothing. My utter humiliation was complete. How would I ever live this down? What's a man to say when it is so obvious that even at the ripe old age of six he still needs a diaper. Crushed, I began the process we all must learn at some point, the process of constructive forgetting.

And it was completely forgotten, stored away in the file of scars that are too painful to see, the scars we all store in a secret place hidden even from ourselves, hidden so well that only one who shares them can bring them out. But out is was now. The tall lanky black man in the orange sweater vest, the man from the projects, a man from Dunbar had found my secret shame. He was telling me that was the source of his low self esteem. Oh my God! Seen against my will and surprised at the unexpected suddenness of that total exposure, one of my deepest and oldest wounds lay open in the healing air. This lanky limping dude knew me better than I knew myself. And he was brave enough to tell our story. And it was our story!

His power began to spill over and I started lapping it up. He just told a whole room full of people in the middle of a luncheon my darkest secret, a secret I had kept all these years even from myself. The psychic power of ancient humiliation began to ebb away. That hard kernel of disgust, of self loathing and doubt stored in the darkest recesses of unconscious memory started to soften in the warm light of this courage. Emanating from the orange sweater vest where that lion heart lay open and alive was the stuff of life itself. Seen and heard the self loathing exposed gets loved into life.

So sure we had nothing in common I was prepared to listen charitably, courteously. Now knowing he knew my shame I could take heart. We had everything in common. His shame was my shame. His healing could be my healing, his courage my aspiration. So there it is, the deepest darkest hidden shame buried forever uncovered by the man in the orange sweater vest. I love you brother, and I am forever in your debt.

Trey's Days No. 4

2-11-11

Old One Answers Young One's Question About Peace: A Koan

Old One said, “A teacher of the Law came down from the Mountain of God and spoke to the people, “The Lord said, Thou Shalt Not Kill!” So naturally there followed many bloody wars and much killing. It was a huge blood bath.

Young One asked, “Master, how is it that the Great Law, 'Thou Shalt Not Kill' was followed with much killing. How can this be?”

Old One said, “Make peace with your question.”

Young One went away perplexed.

Another time they were talking and Young One asked, “Master, you said the Great Law, 'Thou Shalt Not Kill' was naturally followed by much killing. How then is there hope for the world?”

Old One said, “Once the son of a slave stood on the high steps at the feet of the Emancipator of the slaves and said 'I Have a Dream” And so, naturally, there followed much rioting and luting and burning of cities.

Young One, almost afraid to ask said, “Master, how can this be? How could “I have a dream” lead to riots?”

Old One said, “Make peace with your question.”

Frustrated, Young One pondered this.

Later, they were just sitting and Young One asked, “Master, if the Great Law 'Thou Shalt Not Kill' led to a great blood bath and if 'I Have a Dream' led to horrible riots, what hope is there for the world?”

Old One said, “Once a great teacher said the Way of Inner Peace is the Heart of Japan. So naturally The Emperor invaded China and established concentration camps for the resisters, and the pilots killed themselves in service of the Great Heart.”

Young One was angry. “Master, you say the Great Law 'Thou Shalt Not Kill' led to great killing, and 'I Have a Dream' caused riots, and the Inner Peace that is the Heart of Japan made the Emperor invade China and the pilots kill themselves. How then is there any hope for the world!!!”

“Dear Young One,” Old One said gently, smiling “When you have made peace with your question, the world will be at peace. Until then, let's have some tea.”

Trey's Days No.3

2-2-11

My grandparents were visiting. Some neighbors were over too. I was in the fifth grade. Science class was getting interesting so I decided to demonstrate to the folks assembled what I had learned about centrifugal force by spinning a bucket of mud and rocks over my head. It was heavy and when it got exactly overhead it stopped dead in the air, mud and rocks came tumbling down on my head, and everybody except me and my Dad laughed. My Mom heehawed, cracked up as she and I would have done together if it had been anybody else but me. My Dad didn't laugh. He took me in the bathroom to clean me up and told me how proud he was of me for trying my experiment even though it didn't work. He explained that most of the time experiments don't work. That's why we call them experiments. And when they don't work we fix them and try again. He suggested I put something other than mud and rocks in the bucket. Then he and I laughed about it together and he told me again how proud he was of me. That's my favorite laugh; comforted by being able to laugh at myself in the safety of the bathroom with my dad wiping mud off my head like the aftermath of some rite of passage. I remember his tender touch. By the time my mother told me she was sorry she laughed, I was on to another related but much bigger experiment; pretending I didn't care.

Someone told me once that “I don't care” is the biggest lie in the world. I don't know. I came home one day from school and reported to my Mom that the boys at school were making fun of me and calling me names and I just couldn't stand it anymore. I cried. She was very sympathetic and troubled but had little to offer in the way of a defensive strategy other than “If you ignore them they'll go away. You can't let them see it bothers you.” I've been ignoring them now for over forty years and it would appear she has been proven right. She didn't say how long it would take.

Truman Capote used to be on TV from time to time when I was a child in the 1960s. I used to cringe. He made me even more uncomfortable than Liberace. His lispy little girl voice, his affected mannerisms, his snide sense of humor gave me moments of sympathy with the abusers who couldn't stand the likes of Truman and would gladly have stomped his face given half a chance. Our Memphis of the 1960s was a violent place and there were many targets. What other people thought about you could get you killed, apparently. One became less sure as time went on in that strange summer of 1968. Suddenly everything was different. It was a time to be careful. The Truman Capotes were wise not to draw attention to themselves, yet there he was for all the world to see on the television.

I hoped and prayed it was not true but somehow I knew instinctively that I had something important in common with Truman. I also knew instinctively that things would not go well for me if I didn't hide it. When my mother said “ignore them and they'll go away” she couldn't have imagined how the Truman Capote beacon shown from my forehead and how that blessed curse of being the fag who used big words rang like a gong in the bullys' ears. We Trumans, we queer boys had bully magnets, were bully magnets. We got to see a world not obvious to everyone, a world through the lens of the bully magnet.

Fairy, fagot, pansy, queer zinged like darts across the recess air making the company of girls a safety zone. Truman knew what I learned, that the Nelle Harper Lees were ports in a storm with their fantasy games imitating the adult world where ridicule was more subtle, less violent. Naming dolls and choosing their clothes seemed somehow less extreme than collecting bee stingers on a leather belt. Besides, where's the imagination in that? I did not know at the time something that Truman knew early on. Those silly girls games, those little safe harbors were the artist's training ground, a rough and tumble sport of the mind not for the obtuse dart zinger belt stinger boys.

And just as Truman found women in his life for whom his glaring homosexuality was not a challenge, all of us who grew up queer in the South at a certain time found them. My grandmother's Aunt Daisey Griffith who lived in the Houston Hotel in Dothan, Alabama was one. We would visit her there from time to time when I was a child. I was fascinated by the life of one who seemed to float on the cream of a world that had disappeared out from under her and she didn't seem to notice. She wouldn't be made to. Her fragile 4'2” frame would not outlast the old guard that watched over her delicate routine. Her husband Floyd had been in the timber business in Bonifay just over the Florida line and it had not been very long since they ruled the roost. It was not exactly clear who ruled the roost in south Alabama in the late 1960s. It was no longer a certainty that it would be the Floyd Griffiths.

As she came down from her suite to breakfast by the clock in the coffee shop on the first floor, her sweet world of pink Austrian shades and perfect little suits of jackets and skirts ran like a machine in a bubble. Meanwhile Alabama swirled around outside unheard except through the RCA color television, which had an off switch. And there was the newspaper by the front door in the morning, but the gentleman who delivered it and who had stood by the door of that hotel for two generations found his daily march little changed by the stories of marches, sit-ins and historic bus rides. Can two worlds live side by side and not know each other? We remember how they can.

The “Iced Water” spigot on the porcelain lavatory and the conditioned air that cascaded from the big metal vent near the ceiling insulated the Griffith suite from the sticky steamy world outside where black storm clouds brewed for people of all colors. That invisible difference which Truman dared to make so hideously visible added heat for the lightening of that storm. Truman joined a small band of voices giving spirit and image to what it meant to be one like he who took refuge with women at a time when one dared not challenge, when just being was the challenge. And that's what was so trying about Truman. Sitting there between Granny and Aunt Daisey in a cocoon where being invisible and silent was rewarded with vanilla ice cream, cool air and Miss America in color, the possibility of being visible and heard was a most uncomfortable challenge. One can't hide one's color but one can hide one's inner Truman, at least for a while. But then there's Truman, not hiding at all. A most uncomfortable challenge.

The mud is all gone now. Daddy's touch took it away and left the lesson of trying again. Truman on TV was part of that lesson too. It was Truman who refused to hide between the granny and the aunt, who refused to settle for vanilla ice cream and Miss America but fluttered off to New York and Italy and a thousand other places and into my living room in Memphis. Truman was the leader in the greatest experiment of all, to be oneself. If Granny and Aunt Daisey offered a moment of comfort from a by gone era, the anointing in mud offered what Truman was teaching . We have no one but ourselves to be, even when we have mud on our heads. If the world doesn't understand or isn't ready then maybe we have to become Other Voices, Other Rooms. Maybe we have to breakfast at Tiffany's when the Houston Hotel is long gone and all the Aunt Daiseys and Uncle Floyds have gone to live in the musty smell that rises from the felt of a roll-top desk. And when that time has come, and it will come, Truman will rise ever himself, for Alabama and all the world to see, shining, washed and new.

Trey's Days No. 2.

1-22-11

His nose sweated beads of liquid in a steady slow ooze for which he carried a little white towel and dabbed every few minutes, especially during parts of his lecture which he found exciting. His belly shook and the buckle of the giant belt which went around the widest part of him bounced up and down. His favorite personal anecdotes, of which there were hundreds, involved his days at a prestigious Protestant seminary in a big city, where he was encouraged to play scholar. It is clear after a few minutes of his pedagogy that he is first and foremost a Protestant preacher whose forte might not be scholarship.

Now, there were days when a lesson in ethics got taught by one of the authors on the reading list in his “Ethics and Society” class, and the lecture was thin enough or short enough so as not to completely obscure the message. Most days one question from a smart mouth could hijack the agenda and send him off to that time in seminary when “...we were in 'Kant' class and everybody's eyes just GLAAAAZED over and I said....” (punch line, followed by forced laughter from the 'audience.')

One of those days when a philosopher of ethics was able to break through the noise came when we read “The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas” by Ursula K. LeGuin. If you haven't read it and want to, stop here (spoiler alert). It's a haunting tale of a little Utopia whose blissful existence depends on the perpetual suffering of a scapegoat. When citizens reach the age of majority, they are shown the suffering boy on whose torment they depend and they have to make a decision whether to go on enjoying the good life in Omelas at the expense of the suffering scapegoat, or to walk away.

William James talked about the “hideousness” of enjoying a utopian existence at the expense of one wretched scapegoat on the edge of things, whose perpetual torment is the price for that utopian bliss. But honestly I think I would have been one of the ones who stayed in Omelas. There are several reasons we can give for staying. One, because walking away presumes that we have an ethic that is superior to the whole community, which is suspicious. Two, walking away does not free the wretched scapegoat. And three, staying allows for the possibility of a dialogue in the community that might find a solution to the scapegoat dependent nature of things. It may in fact turn out that utopian bliss is not scapegoat dependent after all. That was a myth. One sure way to find out is to free the scapegoat and see.

Similar to the Omelas conundrum is the village Shirley Jackson creates in “The Lottery”, (spoiler alert 2). Communities in both stories have to decide whether to continue hideous systems in order to maintain the relative happiness of the community. In “The Lottery” when some of the villagers say they are thinking about quitting the practice of regularly choosing by lottery one among their number to be stoned to death, they are told that quitting might lead to going back to living in caves. It seems a story told generations ago by the elders still holds sway, and no one dares stop the old practice for fear that ancient warnings might come true.

After watching a couple of documentaries,“Food Inc.” by Mark Kenner and “The Corporation”, by Achbar, Abbott, & Bakan, it appears that all of us as consumers either feed the machine, or feed the machine while making efforts not to. In a sense when we walk into a grocery store where there are thousands of selections which are available all year 'round, we are choosing to feed the corporate system that makes it possible. All the cruelty to animals, use of hormones and antibiotics in food, exploitation of migrant workers, de-forestation of the planet, pollution from chemicals used in agriculture, etc. becomes ours. By continuing to participate we are the ones who stay in Omelas, the ones who continue the lottery, who continue to punish the scapegoat in order to maintain the wonderful life we have all come to expect. In our case the scapegoats are animals who live lives of unimaginable suffering, workers who are treated like animals, a planet that groans under the weight of unsustainable practices, and our own bodies which are over fed on the wrong foods.

And yet, even knowing and accepting this, I wonder: who were the ones who walked away from Omelas? Where were they going? Did they know? What if the villagers in “The Lottery” stopped the macabre practice to see what would happen? Would they really go back to caves?

We have a choice in our world to not participate in the corporate raping and pillaging of our planet and the systematic abuse of working humanity. But how? How can we free ourselves when we live in a world in which we are so inextricably embedded in a corporate system, where the 24 hour market is a way of life, where mass production and year 'round consistency seem like necessities, where the corporate label seems to offer some security? We are warned by corporate opinion makers that we'll starve and be cold if we try to unplug. The back-to-the-landers didn't age so well they say, and ultimately had to come in for dental work. But some persist in testing the old myth that freeing the scapegoat will bring down Utopia, stopping the lottery will have us back in caves, that without the Monsanto corporate farm we'll starve.

Today on National Public Radio there was a story about a swap meet of sorts where folk swap canned goods. Not the kind you find at Kroger or Walmart but jars of beets, honey, okra, peas and pickles, they had grown and put up themselves. “Put up” for our youthful citizens means taking vegetables from a backyard garden, at the peak of ripeness, and putting them “up” in jars for eating later like my grandmother used to do with fig preserves. These swap meet participants were young and old, men and women, every color and stripe. They increased the variety of their own gardens by swapping with their neighbors. And there are many communities joining this growing trend, growing, canning and swapping.

It is with mixed emotions that we are forced to notice that Walmart started carrying organic vegetables because their customers asked for them. We would be right to have trepidation when a manager whose sole motivation must of necessity be profit, appears to embrace the earth friendly alternative. BP after all invests in solar power, or at least advertising that mentions solar power. Our choices here are not as clear as walking away or not, stopping the lottery or not. It's complicated! But we can rest assured that once we know we cannot unknow. Once the unintended consequences of our habits are revealed, we really do have a simple choice. We can choose right this very minute to live into the adult awareness that our glittering city depends on a whole underclass of scapegoats. We can choose right this very minute to change one small habit and then another to move Omelas closer to freeing the scapegoat. By making one small change and then another, we can test the myth that if we stop the lottery we'll wake up in a cave. We can dismantle the earth raping, labor abusing, corporate profit machine, one little change at a time. And when we reach the end of our journey and it appears that we have failed, we can dare to trust that we are going to join the ones who walked away and we will know at last where they were going.

I have to admit I was tempted to walk away from Professor Preacher's Ethics class. Overcoming the impulse to walk away had its reward though. Enduring the parts that were objectionable, sacrificing my selfish desire to have it just as I would have it, yielded the lesson of the ones who walked away. It seems inescapable that all the personal anecdotes about big city seminary were just part of a community experience that had at the heart of it something wholly good. It makes me grateful that at least in that one instance I didn't walk away.