Things that make no sense..
But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. (Ephesians 2:13)
There are two groups of guys in prison who I purposely and intentionally try to put out of my mind for a few days after a Kairos ministry weekend. I put them out of my mind so I can breathe. They are the young guys who are facing life inside with no parole and the old guys who have been there since they were young and will die somewhere in the system.
I choose not to think about them until I’ve caught up on some sleep and done some deep knee bends with my emotions to get them back into a state of functioning normalcy. The young ones (who will be old) and the old ones (who once were young), are glaring examples for me of so much that is wrong about us human beings. From the inwardly generated perversities that caused these individuals to be removed from society in the first place, to the also perverse inclinations of a society to hide its human mistakes under a cement and barbed-wire carpet out there at the edges of nowhere, the young and old ones are like open societal wounds that never heal.
Jaime[1], clean-shaven, good-looking, 23 years old. A tiny tattoo in the intersection of his thumb and forefinger identifies a one-time gang affiliation; otherwise, his arms are clean. Why am I so sad all of the time? he asks. Forty years inside the walls of a Texas prison began last year, which means it will be 2023 before Jaime has a chance to sit in front of a parole board for the first time. He will be 43. If he is still alive.
Fred is 68. His many tattoos were scratched with a straight pin forty years ago. He smeared those bloody scratches with ink from a ballpoint pen and now they are nothing more than ugly testaments of faded blue-green hopelessness. Ten years before those self-inflicted wounds, Fred swore he’d stay clean and be out of prison before he was 30. He can hardly believe he’s still alive.
Jaime had a following outside, a new SUV, a girlfriend, a child, a methamphetamine habit, and a string of labs across South Texas producing more of it to sell. He got caught. I’m glad he got caught. I hate what methamphetamines do to people.
I have no idea what Fred came in here for initially, but I know he has stayed in because he couldn’t stay out of trouble. He became part of the Aryan Brotherhood sometime in the early 70s and 10 years became 30 years became 40 years became life with no parole. He is still alive because he hurt a lot of people to stay alive. Maybe worse, but I’m not asking and he’s not telling.
The reason I drive these men and others like them from my mind for a few days after I return from these Kairos events is because they push my faith farther than it is ready to be pushed all at once. My faith is not as elastic as it once was. It takes time to grow into the new positions it is forced at times to grow into. I can deal easily with the guys, old or young, who have a couple years left on their sentence, or who know they’ll be able to begin sitting in parole hearings in 5, 10, even 15 years. I may hate thinking about what they are facing in the meantime, but it is easy (relatively) to help them see the human light at the end of their personal tunnels.
But when it comes to offering hope to a 23 year old facing a lifetime of prison, or trying to find meaning in the life of a 68 year old who has spent his entire adult life inside prison, I am at a loss for words of hope or meaning. I cannot conjure a single logical coherent or comforting comment based on human experience.
And so it was for times likes these, in the face of that which makes no sense at all, that Jesus leaned over his disciples, breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” During the weekend just past, both Jaime and Fred were sitting with men, free and not free, who didn’t have logical or coherent or comforting comments either. What they did have was the residual effects of having been breathed on themselves by Jesus sometime in the past. They offered Jaime and Fred something far more important than humanly concocted verbal potions. They offered Jaime and Fred the ears of Christ, and the heart of God. They offered these men the presence of the Holy Spirit in the illogical communiqué of a homemade cookie, and in the encouraging crayola drawings of a small child.
Jaime has hope now he didn’t think it was possible to have. Fred has meaning where it has never before been. I can’t describe either of them to you, anymore than I can describe what physically happened in the jars of water at Cana or in the tomb of Lazarus. They are realities delivered by servants of God who had the good sense to stay out of the way of human logic. They are gifts of God made possible by disciples who prepared the way of the Lord, then got out of the Lord’s way.
I am so privileged to know people like Jaime and Fred and the men they were sitting beside. By knowing them, I am able to be there when Jesus made mud from spit and returned sight to blind eyes. By calling them my friends, I can taste the wine from those water jars in Cana. These are men who, with Christ, push and pull at my faith in uncomfortable ways and leave me with more questions than answers even as they affirm for me the reality of God’s goodness in the midst of human messiness.
[1] A pseudonym, as the rest of these names will be, too
There are two groups of guys in prison who I purposely and intentionally try to put out of my mind for a few days after a Kairos ministry weekend. I put them out of my mind so I can breathe. They are the young guys who are facing life inside with no parole and the old guys who have been there since they were young and will die somewhere in the system.
I choose not to think about them until I’ve caught up on some sleep and done some deep knee bends with my emotions to get them back into a state of functioning normalcy. The young ones (who will be old) and the old ones (who once were young), are glaring examples for me of so much that is wrong about us human beings. From the inwardly generated perversities that caused these individuals to be removed from society in the first place, to the also perverse inclinations of a society to hide its human mistakes under a cement and barbed-wire carpet out there at the edges of nowhere, the young and old ones are like open societal wounds that never heal.
Jaime[1], clean-shaven, good-looking, 23 years old. A tiny tattoo in the intersection of his thumb and forefinger identifies a one-time gang affiliation; otherwise, his arms are clean. Why am I so sad all of the time? he asks. Forty years inside the walls of a Texas prison began last year, which means it will be 2023 before Jaime has a chance to sit in front of a parole board for the first time. He will be 43. If he is still alive.
Fred is 68. His many tattoos were scratched with a straight pin forty years ago. He smeared those bloody scratches with ink from a ballpoint pen and now they are nothing more than ugly testaments of faded blue-green hopelessness. Ten years before those self-inflicted wounds, Fred swore he’d stay clean and be out of prison before he was 30. He can hardly believe he’s still alive.
Jaime had a following outside, a new SUV, a girlfriend, a child, a methamphetamine habit, and a string of labs across South Texas producing more of it to sell. He got caught. I’m glad he got caught. I hate what methamphetamines do to people.
I have no idea what Fred came in here for initially, but I know he has stayed in because he couldn’t stay out of trouble. He became part of the Aryan Brotherhood sometime in the early 70s and 10 years became 30 years became 40 years became life with no parole. He is still alive because he hurt a lot of people to stay alive. Maybe worse, but I’m not asking and he’s not telling.
The reason I drive these men and others like them from my mind for a few days after I return from these Kairos events is because they push my faith farther than it is ready to be pushed all at once. My faith is not as elastic as it once was. It takes time to grow into the new positions it is forced at times to grow into. I can deal easily with the guys, old or young, who have a couple years left on their sentence, or who know they’ll be able to begin sitting in parole hearings in 5, 10, even 15 years. I may hate thinking about what they are facing in the meantime, but it is easy (relatively) to help them see the human light at the end of their personal tunnels.
But when it comes to offering hope to a 23 year old facing a lifetime of prison, or trying to find meaning in the life of a 68 year old who has spent his entire adult life inside prison, I am at a loss for words of hope or meaning. I cannot conjure a single logical coherent or comforting comment based on human experience.
And so it was for times likes these, in the face of that which makes no sense at all, that Jesus leaned over his disciples, breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” During the weekend just past, both Jaime and Fred were sitting with men, free and not free, who didn’t have logical or coherent or comforting comments either. What they did have was the residual effects of having been breathed on themselves by Jesus sometime in the past. They offered Jaime and Fred something far more important than humanly concocted verbal potions. They offered Jaime and Fred the ears of Christ, and the heart of God. They offered these men the presence of the Holy Spirit in the illogical communiqué of a homemade cookie, and in the encouraging crayola drawings of a small child.
Jaime has hope now he didn’t think it was possible to have. Fred has meaning where it has never before been. I can’t describe either of them to you, anymore than I can describe what physically happened in the jars of water at Cana or in the tomb of Lazarus. They are realities delivered by servants of God who had the good sense to stay out of the way of human logic. They are gifts of God made possible by disciples who prepared the way of the Lord, then got out of the Lord’s way.
I am so privileged to know people like Jaime and Fred and the men they were sitting beside. By knowing them, I am able to be there when Jesus made mud from spit and returned sight to blind eyes. By calling them my friends, I can taste the wine from those water jars in Cana. These are men who, with Christ, push and pull at my faith in uncomfortable ways and leave me with more questions than answers even as they affirm for me the reality of God’s goodness in the midst of human messiness.
[1] A pseudonym, as the rest of these names will be, too
posted by D.Barry Weber at 12:35 AM
4 Comments:
Hi Barry,
A few days before I read this post of yours, I wrote a poem called
"Wounded Faith." Haven't finished
or posted it yet. The description
here, at first, had me thinking
how lucky I am. And, in fact, I am lucky in some respects. But....the next time you see Jaime,
you tell him this: There are people who are not in prison,
will never go to prison,
who will never be blessed by God
as abundantly as he has been.
Even staring at 20 years, he is
an incredibly lucky man. He may
not be able to move as freely as
he once could, nor take his drug of choice, nor see his wife and daughter as often as he would like...
but everyone is in a prison of a sort. We all deal with limitations
of finances, health, possibility,
social restrictions, etc.
He has many reasons to be thankful.
Hello Barry, I followed you here from Poets.com and am glad I did. Your prose tugs at the heart of me; its beauty is truly a gift and I so appreciate the opportunity to come here and read. May I say for Jamie and Fred that they have the same hope we all have on this earth because nothing that is here brings the kind of joy that is found in that relationship with Jesus Christ, empowered by the Holy Spirit. Their prison outside was much more cruel than the one inside and perhaps, just perhaps they may have an opportunity to store up those treasures that will await them once they are truly free, forever. The person who wrote the previous comment was so right in that we each have our own prison wherein we are bound heart and soul until we are born again into a new world and seated in the heavenlies with Christ. Then we are free indeed. parsonsmom
Powerful stuff my friend. I love that you can beautifully express how God can surpass the logical and show up where we may not be expecting it. How faith and hope can be delivered with unintention. How these guys, as uncomfortable as your faith is made, have taught you a thing.
That no matter how bleak or seemingly desolate we may be on our path, no. All hope is not necessarily lost. I will always remember those two guys - from your story - and one day I will be having a hard day. I will wonder where God is. I will be angry and I will feel abandoned. And I will remember. I will remember the story you told. Your words in a blog.
I will feel I have a choice. I will have the choice of remaining in the pit or I will choose faith and hope. It'll be Jesus whispering to me "Remember."
You relay the message and you do God's good work. I honor you and I appreciate that more than you could ever know.
Love,
Samsara
[digits @ Stumble]
Dear Barry;
There are groanings in my spirit
that cannot be uttered. Thank you for sharing Father's wonderful gift He has given you
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