Mysterion

            Lardas Johnson has a decision to make. Not an ordinary 'smoking or non-smoking' type of decision but one that truly troubles him. It perplexes and taxes his mind. There is a deep-seated doubt in Lardas that he cannot shake.

Faith.

            That is the core of his quandary. He cannot decide whether or not to send more money to Brother Carl Wayne Speck, the pastor of the Blood Bought Baptist Church Of The Risen Savior Who Bled For Us.

            Lardas is a big man, just a smidgen over 350 pounds. His suit de jour is a faded and oft repaired pair of bib overalls over a blue t-shirt. Unless he's going to work when he puts on his white mechanic's shirt under the overalls. Handsome is never used in the same sentence as Lardas. Except by Stormy. Stormy is the other half of the Johnson clan and built to fit Lardas. She knows he is a gentle man and always content with his lot in life.

            Until a year ago when the miracle happened.

***

            "But Darlin' I feel obliged. We pledged to send the money and we ought to keep our solemn oath," said Lardas.

            "I don't care. That man ain't nothin' but bad news. He is a liar and a cheat and I hope he burns in hell for what he done to us."

            "Come on Stormy we got to keep our promise. What happened was not his fault."

            "The answer is no Lardas. As long as there is a breath of life in me that man will never get another penny of our money."

***

            The Johnsons live in the middle of a barren field in Cumberland County, Georgia at the bottom midsection of the state not far north of the Florida border. Not quite the middle of nowhere but somewhat west of Hahira and the Okefenoke Swamp

            The doublewide is in Hidden Oaks, a community of trailers just off of State Route 188 between Cairo and Ochlocknee. In the yard there is a battered blue plastic swimming pool full of stagnant brown water and black bugs. A brindle mongrel dog, vicious now from the captivity, is staked in the middle of the yard. His only respite from the unflinching Georgia sun is a doghouse made from an oil drum. It has been seven human years since the dog has been free of his chain. He believes his name is Shut Up.

            Stormy and Lardas have been married for 10 years. They married because they both realized they had found someone they could at least tolerate. But over the years as they shared life they fell in love and Lardas, like most married men, wanted to perpetuate himself by siring a full brood of little Lardases.

            But despite their enthusiastic and not infrequent exertions the younguns were not coming. Both went to the doctors in Jacksonville and medically they were fine. So Lardas and Stormy started praying and seeking the Lord. Lardas was especially smitten by the program from the Blood Bought Baptist Church Of The Risen Savior Who Bled For Us.

            The show was broadcast from Valdosta where Brother Wayne Speck and his bee-hived wife Sister Angelica Jean preached a peculiar message they called plantation faith. They seemed to be saying that if you sent your seed (money) to God (but addressed it to them) then He was scripturally obliged to use all the workers on his earthly plantation to bring about doubling your harvest (usually money) and send it back to you. Brother Wayne and Sister Angelica Jean never came right out and said God was willing to swap favors but it was clear that Brother Speck was willing to grease any palms, even those with scars.

            But that was not what necessarily interested Lardas. He was interested in the miracles Brother Wayne performed. It was American primitive kabuki. The stock characters, the obese woman, the child in a wheelchair, the blind man or the gaunt heroin/crack addict Satan worshipper would be pushed into the frame and Brother Wayne would announce their malady. He approached them like a man with a newspaper ready to swat a cockroach and smack them dead center in the middle of their forehead with the palm of his healin’ hand while screaming with holy spittle thick in the air, “In the name of Jeezuz I rebuke Ye Satan, flee this child of God in the name of Jeezuz I command it!”  Suddenly the blind could see, the lame could walk, the mongoloids quit drooling.

Lardas, despite believing in his heart of hearts that some of the healees made repeat performances, secretly sent off a substantial love offering for a miracle prayer cloth and reverently placed it on Stormy's stomach while she slept.

            A month later she was with child.

            "See Honey, I told you it would work if we had enough faith," he said.

            "I wish you woulda told me you was puttin' that thing on my stomach every night," Stormy said. "It's kind of spooky is what it is. How do we know that ain't nothin' but an old cheap piece of pillowcase?”

            “That don’t matter. What matters is Brother Speck putting his healin’ hands on it and praying to the Lord. My faith paid off and God answered my prayer. And now we gonna have us a son.”

            “How do you know it’s gonna be a boy Mr. Smartass?”

            “Because that’s what I prayed for.”

            Despite her initial misgivings Stormy succumbed to the power of Mommyness. Her love for Lardas deepened as she slowly accepted the idea that here was the opportunity to create their own family and to break the chain of some of the issues that plagued both their families. Together they would raise their boy right. Wayne could teach him to hunt and fish, to respect the land to only kill what you can eat. Stormy would make sure he had good manners and treated women right. He would be a little gentleman.

            And so they did. Darnell Wayne Johnson (they both called him Bubby) came fully into their lives as the days cooled and the world turned brown, red and yellow. It was love at first sight. Bubby was a handful, curious and gregarious. Lardas insisted he wear overalls and a Mohawk. Stormy insisted he brush his teeth and say Sir and Mam. Lardas took him riding on the four-wheeler. Stormy made sure he was buckled correctly in the carseat. Lardas taught him it was OK to pee in the yard so long as no one saw. Stormy insisted he lift the lid and wash his hands.

            The only thing missing was another one just like him. But as a girl of course. Stormy longed for tea parties and calico dresses. Lardas longed to meet a little version of Stormy, to watch her grow to be as beautiful as her mother. To be able to say, “That beautiful young lady is my daughter.”

            So they tried. And tried. They tried to count their blessings, to be grateful for the precocious boy who filled their days, who hijacked their lives and set them free with his unadulterated, unconditional, non-judgmental love. He saw only the good, still blind to their faults, still innocent. Still. Another child would complete the family picture.

***

            “OK, OK. We’ll talk about it later.”

“No we will not.”

“But Stormy I feel like I owe him for all he done for us.”

“And just what has he done Lardas other than bringing us more heartache than anybody oughta ever have?”

***

The call came at work.

“Lardas you gotta meet me at the hospital.”

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s Bubby. Just get to the hospital fast.”

The boy was in the grasp of many monitors. Unresponsive. Asleep. Lardas hated himself as soon as the thought crossed his mind, but it looked like a pit crew. They were checking the boy's oil, looking under his hood while others filled his tank and checked the pressure. The crew chief/doctor said it was like a coma but not. Such trauma was hard to treat but children are very resilient and can often endure much more than we believe they can.

Inside himself the boy was at peace. He was playing, running and jumping with his father on a cool November evening. Outside his inner reality, unable to pierce the veil, Lardas and Stormy were stunned, frenzied, unable to cope with their only son, their only child, reduced to this.

“What happened?”

“I’m so sorry. I was backing the truck up. I didn’t see him. I told him to stay in the house. He could not have moved that fast. The back wheel, it ran over him. It was the mudhole, the ground was soft but still I run over him. I am so sorry.”

“Oh my God Stormy how could you do that?”

“I didn’t mean to I love him just as much as you do don’t blame me please don’t blame me it was an accident oh God oh God please don't blame me.”

Together they stood lost on the tide of grief and unbelief.

            Next came the vigil. The boy was never alone. Always Stormy or Lardas were with him. Lardas began putting the prayer cloth on the boy’s head. Weeping in prayer, crying out to a deaf god. Stormy talked to him hoping her voice would pierce the veil, having to believe her son could hear her. Her voice was the voice of God for the boy. He more felt than heard her but it eased his pains, slowed his decay.

Lardas wrote a letter to Brother Wayne telling him what happened and asking for a new prayer cloth, a new miracle. Instead Brother Wayne came and stood all night with the father joining him in prayer, easing his mind.

Still. It was not enough. At shift change with Lardas and Stormy both in the room Bubby’s body jolted, his small body tensed and went limp and he released/set free a long slow breath as this life left him. Alarms screamed as all signs of vital activity ceased. Stormy’s soul erupted in a scream, a primal otherworldly blood chilling lament, the sound of all hope and joy forever gone into the ether, the cry of a mother left bereft and now childless by her own hand.

            Lardas found he needed to rest. He could no longer hold his body upright, he fell to his knees, his head slumped onto his chest. His mind slipped into a void of nothingness, the pain, the grief too visceral, too much.

The doctor and chaplain came. One offered only physiological reasoning, the other trite observations on our inability to understand God’s plans or his reasoning. In essence he told these two no longer parents that they would just have to reconcile themselves to the ways of an unknowable and unfathomable God and wait for time to ease their burden.

            The funeral was standing room only. Family friends and complete strangers gathered to remember the boy, to love the parents. Wayne Speck sat and wept unobtrusively on the back row. An unfamiliar sensation overwhelmed him. Prayer cloths and plantation faith were no solace as the fist of God held him.

Lardas arranged with the funeral director to have the prayer cloth that brought them Bubby put into the boy’s hand before they sealed the coffin. He felt the boy should have it with him over on the other shore.

            After the red-hot grief had cooled enough to speak the boy’s name without it burning his tongue Lardas continued the conversation with Stormy. She had resolved within herself that the trouble lay with that piece of shit so-called preacher in Valdosta. He had done this. If he had stayed out of their lives none of this would have happened.

            “But Stormy it ain’t his fault and I gave him my word.”

“If it ain’t his fault then who’s is it? Tell me Lardas, who’s fault is it?”

“It ain’t nobody’s fault. We just have to remember the time we did have with Bubby. They were good times Stormy, the best times of my life.”

“I’m telling you right now and you listen good Lardas Johnson. You send that man another dime and I will leave you. You gotta decide, me or him.”

Lardas decided his wife, blind in her rage was wrong and he took the biggest gamble in his life. He sent cash money to Brother Wayne to get another prayer cloth as full of the anointing of God as Brother Wayne could make it.

            At night when left with only his thoughts and his regrets and the sound of his forever wife succumbing to the solace of sleep he took the cloth from it’s hiding place, unfolded it like an altar cloth and laid it on her belly.

 © 2010 William Terrell

A Killer Poet

I distinctly remember the first time I worked a full shift at the Sheriff’s Office. I was driving northbound on the interstate enjoying the sensation of being THE MAN. The Poe-lease. The Five-O. I was armed with a 9mm Smith & Wesson semi-automatic firearm, pepper spray, a ticket book and just enough experience to be dangerous. A poet I was not. A warrior I was really trying to be.

Then, reality. My mind began trying to embrace the reality that whatever came out of that state-of-the-art super-duper Motorola radio would be my responsibility. Whether it be a burglar alarm, a murder, a broken down vehicle, a rape, a funeral escort, a suicide, a stranded traveler, an armed robbery, an unruly juvenile, a molestation, a hazard in the road or any of the other innumerable versions of malice and mayhem I would have to respond.

My mind might have the luxury of having a few minutes to formulate a plan en route. Or it might not. It could erupt so quickly right in front of me that my body would respond quicker than I could think. And either way I would have to get it right. And fix it. Or at least contain it till the fixer could get there. This was heavy and I was suddenly not sure I could handle the weight.

What to do? I could trust my instincts. Believe in my training. Clear my mind. Respond to the situation at hand with flexibility and react appropriately to even the smallest changes.

Sounds easy enough.

Except it isn’t.

It’s life and death.

To be unprepared is to be defeated.

How did I get myself into this? Am I as ready for this as I can possibly be given the amount of mental and physical preparation available to me? Many times while practicing aikido I have asked myself the same questions.

One of the reasons aikido attracted was the notion of being a gentleman warrior, to be able to defend myself without resorting to unnecessary violence, to possess the latent ability to respond to a threat quickly and effectively, to be a coiled spring. To contain the dichotomy of the calm, polite, well-mannered berserker.

There has been a great deal written about the concept of the warrior-poet, just exactly what the term means and the role of such a person in different cultures. It is an interesting concept but I am too much of a novice to speak intelligently about anything but my own experience.  I profess to be no expert. My thoughts reflect a great simplification of a very complex concept and are not my final thoughts on the subject. This is just one of the ways I have examined the idea of a warrior poet in my own life.

For me the concept of the warrior poet can be fairly straightforward and not necessarily an esoteric dissertation (although there is a time and a place for such things) on mind and no-mind. Simply stated in this train of thought the poet is my conscious mind, the warrior is my body. Training the mind is much harder than training the body.

There are times when my body takes over with reflexive movement faster than my conscious mind can formulate. Call it instinct. Call it training. Call it muscle memory. Either way I know that in some threat situations my body will respond independently without me knowingly/deliberately willing it to.

One day at the office a co-worker came up behind me wielding a pencil as if it were a knife. My arm rose in response so fast I drove the pencil lead into my arm where it promptly snapped off. I do not remember seeing her until after I responded. My body acted of its own accord. There was no time to dash off a haiku. No time for mushin no shin (a relaxed but hyper alert state of mind). No time to decide which stance I should assume in response to what was basically a shomenuchi  (overhead blow to the head) attack. My body responded in defense of itself, true self-defense.

In this situation it is to my advantage to have a body that is flexible and strong, to be relaxed but alert. The kind of body developed through the steady practice of aikido, the situational awareness fostered through the consistent practice of aikido techniques both on and off the mat and the mindset of not expecting a threat to be around every corner but to be prepared for it nonetheless.

One night while again patrolling a stretch of I-95 I pulled over a passenger car for speeding. The location of the stop was miles away in either direction from the nearest exit. Any backup would be at least 10-15 minutes away.

The driver got out and so did five other adult males. Then to really jack things up the driver proceeded to urinate right in front of me. He was saying he believed himself to be the alpha male and that I was just another dog.

My first response was to notify dispatch to have my brothers in arms coming to me. Just in case. In this case having a strong and flexible body would help. Aikido technique would help a great deal but if this situation escalated the S&K .45 semi-automatic high velocity projectile tsuki (a straight punch) would have been my optimum technique choice.

It was my strong and flexible brain, the poet, the thinker, the rational, conniving part of me that kept me alive. The aikido training, the breath control, the soft focus, the confidence. No panic. Staying calm and cool and waiting for backup. Keeping all of them in sight and not let them get behind me. Use my training and experience both on and off the mat to place my body in the best possible defensive position. To keep my weapon guarded but available

And to talk. The five passengers leaned against the car and broke out the cigarettes. I kept a running conversation going with the driver, consciously trying to defuse the conflict, to avoid the use of deadly force. But if they had bumrushed me the warrior, the instinct, the training, the muscle memory in me would have taken over and I would have fired at them. I would have done everything possible to go home and not to the morgue at the end of the shift.

Of course the best possible way to avoid conflict would have been to never have put on the badge. Or the gi.  But where’s the fun in that?

This essay was also posted on my dojo's blog and on two prominent aikido websites.

Come Listen To My Story . . .

How I found myself sitting in my driveway at 1:00 in the morning with a loaded rifle across my lap is a short story that can be summed up in one word.

Armadillo. Or more specifically the nine-banded armadillo (Dasypus novemcinctus).

He drew first blood.

I’m sitting here in my small town Georgia bliss minding my own business when out of nowhere, divots. All over my pristine, immaculate lawn  divots the circumference of a saucer. The sod torn up leaving a hole just big enough to be very, very annoying.

I tried mediation. I sealed up every spot under my fence through which he could launch his nightly raids. He only redoubled his assault mocking me with his ability to appear out of the ether to continue his nefarious nocturnal munching before vanishing back to whatever hole he called home.

            I considered using a trap but scuttled that plan when I realized I didn’t have one. There was only one option left. I would have to launch a projectile at more than twice the speed of sound into his abdomen with extreme prejudice. A bushwhacking was in order.

This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My rifle is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life. My rifle, without me, is useless. Without my rifle, I am useless. . . Oops, sorry, flashback.

It took about two weeks of nocturnal missions until last night I finally had him in my crosshairs. He crossed my perimeter not realizing his nights of digging divots were about to cease.  But he didn’t come alone. Another armadillo from his squad came with him. There was no safety in numbers.

In the end it was not really a fair fight. My ruthless cunning, my well-honed killer instincts, my bigger brain sealed their fate. They are now a part of the circle of life taking a dirt nap in the empty field next door. I love the smell of de-lifed armadillo in the morning.

In A Surrogate Tomb

D___,

I have a visitor.

I possess a deadly seed. The doctor, young and arrogant in his omnipotence, told me It had spread.

It.

The cancer. This is, I suppose, the ultimate irony. A body that has always been clean, almost immaculate, would turn upon Itself. What triggered the malignancy? I smoked for a lot of years, ate too much red meat and was as sedentary as a tree. Or maybe it was the bran muffins, the vitamins or the sun screen.

Carcinogen. Car-sin-o-gin. Such a ghastly word. It is inside me now, blind and voracious in Its' hunger and unaware that the host It feeds upon is Itself/Us. By consuming me It consumes Us. The damage is done. Inoperable. Malignant. So do not weep, do not pity. I do not need or want your cheap consolation, your words, your unbearable sorrow. Do not come to me with tears, or cards, or flowers, or cheer.

But, if only. The memory is forever etched in my mind of the shafts of summer sunlight slowly slide up the wall as the sun dipped away. The room is quiet, the dust slowly swimming in the sun's amber beams. Outside boys played a noisy game of basketball oblivious to our presence. Many days we spent there forgetting the world moving on around us. Or the embrace of my child, to watch her sleep. Her unadulterated love and energy held at bay only by sleep. Do not think me vain or shallow. I know the embrace of a good thought, the immeasurable joy of a solid book as well as I do the pleasures of the flesh. But in those arms, in the embrace of my child I was whole.

No. Enough already. The past has passed and the future is futile. Please accept my apology. I have been feeling sorry for myself again. My intention was only to let you see that I am well and to describe this odd habit that I have recently developed.

I like to grow cold as the warm soapy bath water gurgles away down the drain. I lie still as a corpse, forgive the morbidity, and concentrate on the sensation of the minute ebb and flow of the water as it follows the unalterable principles first articulated by Johannes Kepler and spirals down and away. I bathe because I can. The bath keeps away the ghouls. Every trip to the tub is potentially a matter of life and death. So I am careful. I bathe every night. I keep my home so cold the hot water makes copious steam clouds that flow out into the hall like a cheap magician's act. Step right up folks and see the dirty old man perform his death defying act before your very eyes. Watch and be amazed as he soaks beyond any measure of human endurance and then soaks some more.

But I digress. When I have soaked until my fingers are prunish I slide down into the tub and pull my head under. I would pull my whole body under but the tub is short and I am long so my old knees stay exposed like gnarled Cyprus roots in some bubbly primordial swamp. I bring my head out of the water and kick open the drain.

At first there is no sensation as the molecules fight gravity. As my warm skin is slowly exposed a ring of chill starts on my neck and knees. It is an eerie, ethereal sensation. The sensation grows as the water continues to fall away. Eventually my shoulders, calves and thighs feel the creeping chill. The water spirals full force now, pushed down by gravity, the drain choking with the flow. The soapy water slowly reveals a faded prison blue tattoo of a snarling bulldog on my right forearm. A constant companion in my journey to stupidity. The flow slows because I sometimes put my foot partially over the drain to extend the sensation.

As the water drains, more and more of my body chills. Old age has not been particularly kind. You are as old as you feel. Forget the platitudes. Old age sucks and then you die. My memory is shot, I can barely hear and my glasses make me look like an owl. If only the memories faded as fast as the flesh.

My torso is prison camp gaunt and unearthly white. I look, and feel, like the victim of a personal holocaust. An unholy ghost. Spindly legs, with ankles like rocks under my opaque skin. Oh, such ghastly horrid flesh.

Epiphany. Last night as the last of the water drained I realized what I have been doing. These long baths letting the water drain as my body chills.

I have been practicing.

© 2010

This is a work of fiction. I am healthy and whole.

Icarus Too Young

Melville/Ahab

"Not a word he spoke; nor did his officers say aught to him; though by all their minutest gestures and expressions, they plainly showed the uneasy, if not painful, consciousness of being under a troubled master-eye. And not only that, but moody stricken Ahab stood before them with a crucifixion in his face; in all the nameless regal overbearing dignity of some mighty woe."

This post was inspired by Matt Kish at his http://everypageofmobydick.blogspot.com 

Far On A Dark Wind

A depression settled on me this week the likes of which I have never experienced. Every movement, every endurance of every moment was an agony. At night I alternated between sweating and shivering and driving my wife crazy. No real sleep, no real rest for either of us.

When these depressions come each is more severe than the last. I don’t know how any could be heavier than this. No life. No interest. Having to do something every moment to take my mind off how deep I am in the fugue state. An old friend recently sent me an article about how depression, mental illness and addiction often go hand in hand. Those afflicted resort to a variety of dysfunctional practices to keep the day-to-day, moment-by-moment horror of life at bay.

I have endured addictions of many sorts. I have to be careful of everything to make sure I don’t begin to like it too much. I can/will grasp at any distraction to keep from seeing my life the way it really is, to keep from feeling the pain my decisions cause others, to avoid see the mess (literal and figurative) all around me.

Like many others I also turn to art, the process of creation. Trying to re-create? This urge/drive/need to forge the ugly dysfunction into something at least I recognize as a thing of beauty has been with me for many, many years. It is truly a blessing and a curse because any solace it provides is transient, only the passing over of the eye of the storm.

I struggle to get at the heart of it. Genetic? My family is living proof. My father and my mother’s father died from the long-term horror of alcoholism. Both sides of my family are riddled with cases of addiction and the inherent dysfunction. But for me it is also the weight of November. My father died on the eve of Thanksgiving in 1971. It was bitterly cold and the end of his battle with the bottle. At the age of 36 he died in his own piss and blood. My four siblings and I watched as his dead, emaciated body collapsed, pinning our mother to the couch. I was eleven. Following his death our lives of poverty, disgrace and abuse actually marginally improved.

His death has proven to be the axis mundi of my life in many, many ways. It is the event from which I cannot free myself. To compound the issue (as I was reminded recently) I am pretty much physically identical to my father. I guess in other ways we’re also the same. He was a talented man and an artist in his own right but the weight of it all was just too much.

How long is his reach? Why? Why? Why? Thirty-nine years later and still I sit here in tears trying to put the ghosts to bed. Sleep well Dad. I wish I could.

In The Gloom

These photos were taken on a very foggy day on or near the Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia. All three have been modified to highlight not how the scene through the viewfinder looked but how it felt. All three are darker than the originals and gloomier. Although not faithful to the light and shadow of the moment they are faithful to the somber beauty of the Appalachians.

Or perhaps it is a reflection of the gloom that seems to permeate my existence of late. November is yet weeks away but already I feel its cold grip and cache of memories better left buried. The elasticity of memory. Some seem to remain forever attached like barnacles, hard to break loose only to come back again.

A Great Loss

Pictured above is Col. Charlie Easterling and his beloved wife Wanda. Charlie passed away a few days ago after a short battle with cancer. He was only 57. Charlie was one of the two dozen of us fired by the new sheriff when he took office in January. Charlie worked in law enforcement for more than 30 years and served as Chief Deputy for the last two decades. I'll write more about Charlie later but please pray for his family as they try to come to grips with the realization that their patriarch is dead. Pray especially for Wanda, his daughter Renee and his granddaughter Candice.

That's Charlie peeking in the window. He and I were out riding around looking for photo opportunities. Though not a native of Camden County Charlie knew the county and its people very well.

Charlie had long since made his peace with the Lord. May his memory be eternal.

Mother Of Despair

Oh, Mother of despair

A mind unquiet

A mind dis-eased

Desperate in loneliness beyond measure.

Stumbling, fumbling

Tripping through life’s darkness

Her lantern of deliverance long since lost

Her guide, her companion cruelly cut off.

Crying from the other side

Too soon, too soon.

A refugee in the land of the dead

Give voice to the defilement

Cry out!

Too cruel, too cruel.

The wait too long

The weight too great

To bear.

A prose companion to this piece is at The Bosom Serpent

Love The Little Children

As Orthodox Christians we are called to follow our Lord’s example and to refrain from casting the first stone, we are enjoined to judge not. And our American criminal justice system rests upon the Constitution’s bedrock guarantee of a fair hearing and of being treated as innocent until being proven guilty. What I learned today made it very hard to leave that first stone at rest, to not cast it in anger. I suppose you could say I am casting it now.

Earlier this week we arrested a husband and wife for abusing their 23-month-old son. From all appearances and from interviews with the parents this young boy lived a life of horror, subject to severe beatings, beatings bad enough to produce the deepest and most dangerous bruises. There was deep bruising all over him, on his abdomen, his buttocks and even his scrotum.

The mother admitted to striking him with a closed fist in the past. She also admitted to throwing her son down so hard this week that the impact split his skull and caused swelling and bleeding of the brain. She also stated that she went outside to smoke a cigarette before calling 911. This incident led to the arrests. The child is in intensive care kept alive by a ventilator. The doctors want to do a full body scan to discover the full extent of his injuries but cannot because of his reliance on the ventilator. In the most bitter of ironies the mother is six months pregnant.

The father admitted to knowing that his wife was severely abusing their son and also admitted that he conspired with her to keep her actions hidden. He said he feared coming home one day to find his son dead. Under Georgia law they are equally complicit and face similar charges.

This young boy was truly a child of wrath, born into a world of pain, pain dealt out at the hands of his mother. I know that most of you who read these postings never come close to such evil. Many times these stories become a window with a view of the slaughterhouse. If these writing offend you please forgive me, but I feel compelled to tell these stories, to shed a brighter light on the evil with which we share this world. The least I can do is tell the stories, to lift up their names up in prayer.

I believe God created us to be especially sensitive to these issues, to lay down our lives for our children (as He did for us) without question or hesitation. Children are our greatest treasure, the storehouse of our memories, the mirror in which we see ourselves as we really are. There is no reality check quite like having a child mouth obscenities and to know full well you were his teacher. Children are quite literally our future. They carry with them a distinct, individual combination of genes handed down from parents and grandparents. We are all individuals but we are also all the same. Each of us is a being created in the image of our Maker and as such worthy of all the love we can create.

Our own salvation was purchased at the price of a Son. We understand this sacrifice so well because the thought of losing a child resonates deeply, at the very core of our being, the one nightmare all parents dread. Could we willingly lay down the life of a child?

Such barbarism, especially between a mother and her child raises many questions. How could a loving, omnipotent, omniscient God allow such horrors to happen? This question tripped me up for many years. Having suffered abuse and having seen the depths of depravity into which we can fall I rejected the notion of a loving, caring God. How could he not lash out in holy anger? How could he stand to hear the wailing of his children?

God does love us and Jesus is the proof. These horrors are not of God. This evil is man’s brutality to man and it wounds our Creator at least as much as it wounds us. Still, some days this answer is not enough. Some days I still doubt. On these days I fall back on prayer, on expressing my pain, my questions, on asking Him why. Eventually I always come back to the calming wisdom of Psalm 46. “Be still and know that I am God.” Lord, forgive my disbelief.

Here is a link to the story in our local newspaper.

Love's Legacy

On the way home from Cairo (pronounced kay-roe) on Saturday we (my Primitive Baptist pastor friend Chris and I) stopped to visit with Chris' relatives Tom and Joyce in Moultrie. It is a heartbreaking story. Tom’s most recent checkup initially found that he was free of disease with no cancer cells. They were on their way home after receiving the good news when the cell phone rang. It was the hospital and Tom’s doctor wanted him to return to the hospital immediately. It was very bad news. Contrary to what they initially believed the cancer was not dead. Monday morning Tom went back into the hospital to begin an even more rigorous round of chemotherapy and to determine if he would be a good candidate for a bone marrow transplant.

Tom and Joyce see the end of the road, they know how this will most likely end. But it was not the specter of death sitting quietly in the room that moved me, it was their manners, their genuine-ness and the love that filled them both. I had just met them but I was treated as family. My hyper-vigilance set off no alarm bells (which is rare indeed) so I knew I could trust them. We went to them to offer assistance and prayer but we were the ones who were comforted. In the midst of what some days must be a nightmare they were genuinely concerned about us, about making us comfortable. It was not an act, no polite show of manners, it was genuine concern. I am in awe of such courage.

The terrible irony is that the cancer radiation treatment Tom had twenty-five years ago probably planted the seeds of this cancer. Tom injured his back and somehow it seemed to trigger the malignancy laying dormant in his cells.

Many times in our culture there is great emphasis put on how we die. Was it an honorable death? And I hope that when the day comes I will face my own death without flinching. But I now realize that the real test is how we live. What legacy are we leaving behind? Did we love our enemies? Did we love and honor our spouse? Did we raise our children? Do we feed the poor and clothe the naked?

While I spent only an hour with Tom and Joyce I have rarely spent an hour better. In their own time of need they offered love/comfort to a stranger. And I suspect I am not the first. Theirs is a legacy of love, of kindness, of sincerity. Before we left we stood in a circle and held hands while Chris prayed for healing, for endurance, for grace. Holding Joyce’s hand for that brief moment was like holding the hand of my mother.

A Death Most Abrupt

I was stunned again today by the abruptness of death. At about 10:00 this morning I received a page stating there had been an accident involving a motorcycle and that the air ambulance was en route from Jacksonville. Before I could get to the scene the air ambulance was cancelled which meant the patient perished. The ground ambulance carried him to the local hospital where the formal process of pronouncing him was done.

On a flat straight stretch of road in clear weather a woman driving a minivan pulled out in front of a man riding a motorcycle. The man on the motorcycle tried his best to stop (as evident by the skid marks) but to no avail. No one in the van was physically injured (the passenger side of the van was smashed and the windshield broken) but the driver was inconsolable. She was on her way from her home in a subdivision to a yard sale in the south side of the same subdivision. Her failure to yield will forever haunt her. She and this stranger/victim and his family are now inextricably tied together. As I stood there and tried to gather information and take photographs the husband of the van driver was trying to make sense of it all and find out what possible outcomes faced his wife. Some of the outcomes would not be good but there wasn't much I could tell him until the investigation was complete.

I don’t know the story of the man riding the motorcycle other than he was only 34-years-old. Helmets are mandatory in Georgia and it looked like his took a pretty good hit.

This particular stretch of road holds a number of bad memories including several other automobile related deaths. In one case the victim was my nineteen year old neighbor. He had no ID but I knew who he was. I went to tell his sister at work at Wal-Mart. As I was telling her she called his cell phone repeatedly and left messages, messages he would never receive. I was certain death had arrived but she needed time to take it all in. It was one of the most emotional moments in my life and I hope to never again have to make a death notification. This road also reminds me of the death of an 11-year-old girl on an ATV, three suicides from self-inflicted gunshot wounds to the head (one of which we listened to live on the radio, another was the conclusion of a chase as the driver killed himself with at least 15 cops looking on) and two young brothers who died in a house fire.

I guess the moral is that we should remain vigilant and pray as the angel of death can manifest himself anytime anywhere. Don’t carry grudges or hatred in your heart. Be the first to say you’re sorry, the first to offer the olive branch. Tell those you love how much they mean to you. Don’t assume they know. And lookout for motorcycles, they’re everywhere.

Honor And Old Glory

I took the top photo at about 8:15 this morning. The river is the St. Marys River and the green horizon beyond that is Florida. It was one of those moments that held me transfixed as I was overcome by pride/joy/sorrow. I stood offering silent thanks to our Creator, to all those who have come before who held fast to the dream of a place where freedom reigns. The sight of our flag waving in the cool morning breeze reminded me once again that freedom is not free.

I don’t consider myself a super patriot. On probably too many occasions I criticize the Federal Government in general and the Bush administration in particular. But I understand just how blessed I am to live in America, to have the right to vote, to enjoy the freedom to live my life as I see fit, to worship free of government's grasp. And today I was once again struck by the simple beauty of our national flag. I think too many times it becomes ornamentation in our lives, just the backdrop to some group function. In our daily grind we forget just how important our Old Glory truly is.

Simple symbolism. Seven red stripes and six white represent the thirteen colonies at the beginning of our journey to nationhood. Fifty stars in a blue field for the fifty states, each separate yet integral to the inviolate whole. Our flag demonstrates our unity as a nation, as a people. It reminds us of who we are and from where we come. It is a symbol of our might and our commitment to right, of our compassion and of our steadfastness in the face of adversity. It is the reminder of the blood spilled, of the lives lost in our defense.

As a proud American and a former Marine the Iwo Jima image is for me and for many of us particularly potent. The Greatest Generation's fight on two disparate and but equally deadly fronts. We were still a nation in the making until the slumbering giant awoke to the sound of guns, the scream of battle, the looming threat.

Despite ourselves, despite the shoddy treatment we have too many times given our veterans we are blessed beyond all measure.

To ALL the veterans out there, thank you.

The Soul's Lament

Sadly, this posting is not a work of fiction.
The staccato dirge of gunfire shattered the serenity of a quiet neighborhood early Monday morning as a husband and wife were shot and killed in their own home. On the 911 tape you can hear the woman screaming. Then, just before the last gunshot rang out you can hear her say, “But I still love you.” The killer then got on the line and very calmly told the dispatcher that he had just killed his parents. He told the dispatcher to make sure the responding deputies knew that he would be unarmed and waiting for them in the front yard.

This was no crime of passion, no uncontrolled fury, no blind rage. The 22-year-old son stole the murder weapon from the home of a friend the day before the killing and then bought ammunition for the .357 six-shot revolver.

Ironically the parents had just hours before filed a missing persons report on their son’s behalf. It seems they knew he had the gun. Perhaps they worried he might use it for suicide. Instead he committed patricide and matricide. Murdered in the place where they should be the safest. Dead in their home in a quiet affluent neighborhood on the marsh with a view of the river.

What could possibly explain how a son could plan and carry out the execution of his parents? Perhaps nothing. Unfortunately such crimes are not all that uncommon and this generation certainly has no monopoly on horrendous crimes and homicidal killers. It would appear as if murder is part of who we are. Cain, meet Abel.

Some hold that owning weapons is our inalienable right, that bearing arms is one of the pillars upon which our nation rests. In fact I was speaking just last week with a friend (born and raised on France) about weapons in our society. He said this aspect of American culture id difficult for him to grasp. Our is a culture of violent video games and violent television, a culture rich with killing both real and imagined. A society thoroughly imbued with the cult of the gun. A society where a young man can shoot and kill his loving and supportive parents in cold blood then calmly and with little emotion admit to the deed.

The victims’ married daughter (the killer’s sibling) lives directly across the street from her parents’ home and wanted to see them before they were removed from the scene. As the second body bag was loaded in the hearse she began wailing, crying “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy.” It still brings me to tears just thinking about it. I have heard that cry before but it has always been the cry of a parent losing a child. It is the sound of anguish, of grief unbearable, the soul’s lament. Pray you never hear it.

Beauty Lurks

Lately I find myself seeking out photographs of industrial objects or objects deliberately taken out of context (See photos below). Some objects if framed/cropped correctly appear to not be what they are and conversely may appear to be what they are not. With the proper (improper?) perspective different shapes/forms/colors/textures/visions emerge. Many times the beauty, the separateness lurks in the everydayness. Sometimes it is simply that I/we see things that I/we have seen innumerable times before but never really acknowledged. It is that initial moment of confusion, that epiphany that I seek. Objects that are somewhat familiar to the eye and things that never get even a second glance get their moment of exposure. The beauty is there, I simply seek to bring it into sharper focus. This narrowing of my/our vision allows me/us to expand my/our horizons.

Railroads, rail cars and rail yards are rich with targets of opportunity for these out of context and industrial encounters. In the midst of a railroad yard, in this chaotic place full of rusting trains and rusting equipment there are patterns, repetition, beauty. Fortunately there is a short line railroad in our county that once served the local paper mill and still serves the submarine base. When the mill finally closed (that’s a whole different story) the railroad began its long slow slide toward oblivion/obsolescence. Much of the mill’s paper making equipment, infrastructure and much of the railroad’s rolling stock are being dismantled and sold as scrap. Ironically it is the railroad that carries out the bulk of the scrap iron.

At the railroad office was an old flatbed rail car laid over on its side with the wheels and undercarriage removed. The first photos I took were of the railcar when it was for the most part still intact. Lame and stranded but still intact. Like a pack animal it offered its underbelly, demonstrated its submissiveness, acknowledged its defeat. It has no place in the development to come.

The next photos were after about half of the ribs had been removed. At my last visit most of the car had been cut into pieces and carried away. The dismemberment was over. But the train will have the last laugh. Through the smelter it will go on to be resurrected and enjoy life after death, perhaps as another train, or its track, or an I-beam, or a set of pots and pans. The metal made anew will once again take on a beauty of its own.

Click on photos for additional detail.

To Eat You I Must Kill You

No arrow of enlightenment fletched with the feathers of truth,
No ruthless predator preying on the slow, pruning the herd
No metaphorical eternal struggle
And nothing like a simile.

No mustachioed Marlin Perkins,
No battered Range Rover,
No tawny lions of the Serengeti,
No howling hyena bitches.
No circle of life.

Just one hawk,
One dove,
In my front yard.
The dove lost.