10 March 2011
Dear Anne,
Cole came and said, come on let's play volleyball. Volleyball? Volleyball, he said. Volleyball, I said? yeah. Volleyball? And I thought of nothing as the white globe floated and stopped and hovered. Then techno beat and acid trip hallucination. My hands set the ball. It came, it went, and it went over. Steve said, "We're playing three on three." Cole and I waited to the side; we waited with need for Elijah. And my weight settled on the automatic running machine and to stay on I walked, to stay on I jogged, and then I ran sprinting. My heart was back in Africa at the beginning. I felt ancient. To live I put my hands down on my friends, the railings, and lifted up my feet. The worrying stopped, permissive again. "Okay, let's go," Cole said and I enjoyed.
"Hey Spicer, you gay? There's a debate in the unit. I don't care if you are, just give me a straight answer. No pun intended."
It's been said before but is worth saying again. Brilliance is the ability to hold in the mind the possible at the same time as the impossible and not be paralyzed. Ghandi said that if --in the case of a youth who wrote him that he had been verbally assaulted and antagonized to fight -- that if the youth had not pitied the opponent from the beginning, and for a moment flinched under the insult, then the battle had been lost already. Thus he advised the youth to fight for his honor since he had already lost it. Friends, you intervened like angels and it was a beatific sight. Instead of seeing his bald head and snake tattoos, I saw your faces. I smiled and said nothing. He laughed at his own pun and was satisfied.
Thank you, Lord. I asked you for humiliations and you give me just enough to learn my weakness. I cannot undo all the homophobia of a man's life nor a culture of it. You will show me the way of noncooperation; I trust in you.
Chris
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
A new celly
After a bit of time with his roommate Cole, Chris gets a new celly named Matt. Celly is the term for cellmate.
--------------------------------------------
10 March 2011
Dear Anne,
"Everybody drinks it but nobody makes it," says Cole of alcohol. All the orderlies had to do UA Urine Analysis. They checked out. So about that bit of rebellion, yeah, I've come to peace with the fact its just one more aspect of inhumanity I can offer up to God. Giving the UA in itself is not a bad thing Fr. Watson says. Pray in thanks for him, anne! He celebrated Mass, the last in six weeks for us unless the visiting deacon arrives with Eucharist.
Well, I've prayed for my dormmates and joked again with that thug. Guess what? I met with Stratego Matt; classic one personality on the enneagram. Yet good, incredible; I liked the sterile clean of his room. He has good boundaries saying I can be messy in my areas. He snores. He works in the mornings. "Somebody says you sleep all day," he says. "No, I just tell people that."
Time to lock up and shut up,
Chris
--------------------------------------------
10 March 2011
Dear Anne,
"Everybody drinks it but nobody makes it," says Cole of alcohol. All the orderlies had to do UA Urine Analysis. They checked out. So about that bit of rebellion, yeah, I've come to peace with the fact its just one more aspect of inhumanity I can offer up to God. Giving the UA in itself is not a bad thing Fr. Watson says. Pray in thanks for him, anne! He celebrated Mass, the last in six weeks for us unless the visiting deacon arrives with Eucharist.
Well, I've prayed for my dormmates and joked again with that thug. Guess what? I met with Stratego Matt; classic one personality on the enneagram. Yet good, incredible; I liked the sterile clean of his room. He has good boundaries saying I can be messy in my areas. He snores. He works in the mornings. "Somebody says you sleep all day," he says. "No, I just tell people that."
Time to lock up and shut up,
Chris
Water for Elephants
A slice of a letter from 7 March 2011
* Peashooters are his biceps, according to the inmates :)
--------------------------------------------
"If only you would put up with a little foolishness from me! Please put up with me." 2 Cor 11:1.
Never could I have punched a concrete wall and felt in the echo on the other side; never can I guess what love in a prison cell when you forget time is so good interrupted. Then an unexpected bumping morse code -- should I ignore it? I timidly bumped with my left hand. It was Matt corresponding on the other side. I never that it could feel as wholesome as a hug.
"He scrutinizes me, shoots an oyster of dark brown tobacco juice out of the side of his mouth, and goes back inside." Water for Elephants, p. 33.
My peashooters are shot after four shabby sets of diamond pushups. Met Anton, the young guy shaved bald, pimple pocked, nose like a mole. Says he doesn't work, he only has six months to do and will maybe get a halfway house. This morning he gave me his breakfast tray. "I don't eat that shit," he says. "Monday morning is the worst." The biscuits were huge though. "Where I came from they give us quarter size ones like this," I counter, pinching the air. We've completed the lap and taken our positions, splayed our fingers apart on the polished cement. I flop on the seventh and sputter a few more. "That's it?" says John, seeing us break up. "Already done?" "That's it," I say. In his hand he carries a plastic chair from his room. "You doing a set?" "We're doing backs." "I'll join you in a bit," I say.
* Peashooters are his biceps, according to the inmates :)
--------------------------------------------
"If only you would put up with a little foolishness from me! Please put up with me." 2 Cor 11:1.
Never could I have punched a concrete wall and felt in the echo on the other side; never can I guess what love in a prison cell when you forget time is so good interrupted. Then an unexpected bumping morse code -- should I ignore it? I timidly bumped with my left hand. It was Matt corresponding on the other side. I never that it could feel as wholesome as a hug.
"He scrutinizes me, shoots an oyster of dark brown tobacco juice out of the side of his mouth, and goes back inside." Water for Elephants, p. 33.
My peashooters are shot after four shabby sets of diamond pushups. Met Anton, the young guy shaved bald, pimple pocked, nose like a mole. Says he doesn't work, he only has six months to do and will maybe get a halfway house. This morning he gave me his breakfast tray. "I don't eat that shit," he says. "Monday morning is the worst." The biscuits were huge though. "Where I came from they give us quarter size ones like this," I counter, pinching the air. We've completed the lap and taken our positions, splayed our fingers apart on the polished cement. I flop on the seventh and sputter a few more. "That's it?" says John, seeing us break up. "Already done?" "That's it," I say. In his hand he carries a plastic chair from his room. "You doing a set?" "We're doing backs." "I'll join you in a bit," I say.
Monday, March 28, 2011
talkin with the ladies
Thanks to Catherine for typing and sending this to me!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
7 March 2011
Dear Anne,
"Since we have such hope, we act very boldly and not like Moses, who put a veil over his face so that the Israelites could not look intently on the cessation of what was feeling." 2 Cor 3:12-13
Seven of us from echo-charlie just went to the psychologists for our formal intake interview. Peter complains to even be here. They should go to the facility at Lake Placid in upstate New York. But the treaty transfers get the once over - "so you're fine, right?" I meet with Dr. James again and sense she's a little tired. She wears contacts today and her skin glows. I'm struck with shyness and clam up, refusing to tell her about the whatchamacallit I got. "You can just tell me that you don't feel comfortable answering. Are you getting treatment?" "No." "Then you'll need to put in a 'cop-out.'"
"Do you know how to do that?" "Yes". Am I sheepish? What did Gus say to me when I visited...Don't be bashful. That's it. I've heard of guys who after a long time in prison fall head over heals with the first female guard who speaks to them kindly. I've also heard that "the first one you date (when you get out) is a victim." Yikes.
If it were one of these interviews with a female for application to the Society of Jesus, to examine your manner with the opposite sex, I wouldn't have passed muster. Transference, how does that work again?
Anne, I've brought back two books from the well-stocked psychology library. You wrote that print about authenticity encouraging me to trust your discretion. I've selected Uncoupling: Turning points in Intimate Relationships and Coping with Anxiety: Simple Ways to Relieve, Anxiety, Fear and Worry. Next I want the one on Boundaries.
Chris
Sunday, March 27, 2011
A footnote
I pulled this from another letter written the same day, March 5, 2011.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Anne, I don't mean to accidentally appeal to the pitiable them of unrequited love. To clarify my last letter, let it be said: I do not consider myself worthy of the Society. No, I least of all its men show the talent to multiply ten-fold that is required for the Society's way of loving. She is a pure evaluative animal and I a beastly performance. She wants, and has had, men who through her formation were made from avid Manicheans into tart, saintly Augustines. Her disciplined institute housed the secret the works of the Kingfisher, Hopkins types living for God in obscurity, only posthumously Chardinian discovered, renowned because they lived free of ego. Full of Christ, their cups spilled over. I write to prove how faithful I am. I want you to believe in me Christ reigns.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Anne, I don't mean to accidentally appeal to the pitiable them of unrequited love. To clarify my last letter, let it be said: I do not consider myself worthy of the Society. No, I least of all its men show the talent to multiply ten-fold that is required for the Society's way of loving. She is a pure evaluative animal and I a beastly performance. She wants, and has had, men who through her formation were made from avid Manicheans into tart, saintly Augustines. Her disciplined institute housed the secret the works of the Kingfisher, Hopkins types living for God in obscurity, only posthumously Chardinian discovered, renowned because they lived free of ego. Full of Christ, their cups spilled over. I write to prove how faithful I am. I want you to believe in me Christ reigns.
What Springs from Heartbreak
March 5, 2011
Dear anne,
"When the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified. 'It is a ghost,' they said, and they cried out in fear." Mt 14:26
So sensitive am I about hurts you've never once asked me to write - how do I say this? - why I left the Jesuits? Why I crossed the line? They are the same, an answer to God's call. I contemplate still signing my name Chris Spicer, SJ... but no, I have crossed out the SJ. I do not belong. Yet, and this is what makes it so hard, I know that I am a Jesuit in the true sense of the word, an offense to the Society. I remain a member of the body of Christ, a companion of Jesus. And how plain my heart bleeds with Ellacuria and companions -- that yes, of course my witness at the Ft. Benning gates bled in pain and suffering at how US Imperialism could spill the brains of the defenders of faith, paragons to the virtue promulgated by Archbishop Romero to be the voice of the voiceless. Like he, then the four US church women, the UCA martyrs shared in the fate of the poor.
What do I mean "offense?" The weaker notion is that I am not an offering that had an odor of sweetness for the Society. The stronger notion is that I am the vanguard. So I see myself, one blessed by God to go out on my own under cover of night to enter the camp of the enemy and, by dagger, wound the Kind of Darkness. To accept this mission I so resolved to accept the path outward bound, knowing that crossing the line at Ft. Benning in good conscience would not jeopardize a future application to re-enter the Society I love. I believe God would invite me to finish the work He started in me, allowing me with grace to entertain such a fantasy, burning zeal to endure a repetition of the more humbling stages of formation so that one day I emerge a fully formed man of the Exercises -- a trustworthy administer of the faith that does justice.
Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam.
Chris
Dear anne,
"When the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified. 'It is a ghost,' they said, and they cried out in fear." Mt 14:26
So sensitive am I about hurts you've never once asked me to write - how do I say this? - why I left the Jesuits? Why I crossed the line? They are the same, an answer to God's call. I contemplate still signing my name Chris Spicer, SJ... but no, I have crossed out the SJ. I do not belong. Yet, and this is what makes it so hard, I know that I am a Jesuit in the true sense of the word, an offense to the Society. I remain a member of the body of Christ, a companion of Jesus. And how plain my heart bleeds with Ellacuria and companions -- that yes, of course my witness at the Ft. Benning gates bled in pain and suffering at how US Imperialism could spill the brains of the defenders of faith, paragons to the virtue promulgated by Archbishop Romero to be the voice of the voiceless. Like he, then the four US church women, the UCA martyrs shared in the fate of the poor.
What do I mean "offense?" The weaker notion is that I am not an offering that had an odor of sweetness for the Society. The stronger notion is that I am the vanguard. So I see myself, one blessed by God to go out on my own under cover of night to enter the camp of the enemy and, by dagger, wound the Kind of Darkness. To accept this mission I so resolved to accept the path outward bound, knowing that crossing the line at Ft. Benning in good conscience would not jeopardize a future application to re-enter the Society I love. I believe God would invite me to finish the work He started in me, allowing me with grace to entertain such a fantasy, burning zeal to endure a repetition of the more humbling stages of formation so that one day I emerge a fully formed man of the Exercises -- a trustworthy administer of the faith that does justice.
Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam.
Chris
Quote from Socrates
"Will you not allow that I have as much of the spirit of prophecy in me as the swans? For they, when they perceive that they must die, having sung all their life long, do then sing more lustily than ever, rejoicing in the thought that they are about to go away to the god whose ministers they are."
-- from Phaedo
-- from Phaedo
Thursday, March 24, 2011
The journey of James
Dear Anne:
"But the hair of his head began to grow as soon as it was shaved off." Judges 16:22
Just back from 30-minute cardio exercise with James in the always accessible rec room of "echo charlie." We cooled down walking around the half court-sized square room. He said that he has been able to run again. One of the unexpected blessings of involuntary arrest and kidnapping from Mexico, dragged in front of a US court without intervention by his Canadian government. Since he got the three year charge he has also discovered who his real friends are. Before he used to go after six, eight girls without a pang of contrition. Now he is buoyed by one faithful girlfriend. "You find out who your friends are when the chips are down," he said. One friend came from Canada to Santa Ana, CA: he flew down without telling James. Then he put $300 on James' commissary account, allowing him a significant improvement in standard of living. "I told him he didn't need to do that and he said 'I just did.'" As a result, James could begin to eat right and work out. Over time he had dropped from 220lbs of steely muscle for his rugged expeditionary lifestyle to 170lbs with flab and cholesterol concern. He would eat every bit provided, half what they provide per meal here at Seattle Federal Detention Center, to the point he would crush up chicken bones and eat them for iron and save the orange peels -- given the orderlies hadn't stolen that week's ration -- to make tea later. Trying to reason with the steadfast girlfriend, he told her to take care of herself. "She chewed me out good for that," he said. Like her unexpectedly loyalty, the ten and a half months cooped up surprisingly restored James' knee. How unexpected the return of God's glory: God's justice is not our our justice.
Chris
"But the hair of his head began to grow as soon as it was shaved off." Judges 16:22
Just back from 30-minute cardio exercise with James in the always accessible rec room of "echo charlie." We cooled down walking around the half court-sized square room. He said that he has been able to run again. One of the unexpected blessings of involuntary arrest and kidnapping from Mexico, dragged in front of a US court without intervention by his Canadian government. Since he got the three year charge he has also discovered who his real friends are. Before he used to go after six, eight girls without a pang of contrition. Now he is buoyed by one faithful girlfriend. "You find out who your friends are when the chips are down," he said. One friend came from Canada to Santa Ana, CA: he flew down without telling James. Then he put $300 on James' commissary account, allowing him a significant improvement in standard of living. "I told him he didn't need to do that and he said 'I just did.'" As a result, James could begin to eat right and work out. Over time he had dropped from 220lbs of steely muscle for his rugged expeditionary lifestyle to 170lbs with flab and cholesterol concern. He would eat every bit provided, half what they provide per meal here at Seattle Federal Detention Center, to the point he would crush up chicken bones and eat them for iron and save the orange peels -- given the orderlies hadn't stolen that week's ration -- to make tea later. Trying to reason with the steadfast girlfriend, he told her to take care of herself. "She chewed me out good for that," he said. Like her unexpectedly loyalty, the ten and a half months cooped up surprisingly restored James' knee. How unexpected the return of God's glory: God's justice is not our our justice.
Chris
CS Lewis and the Gangster
March 2, 2011
Dear Anne:
"Volunteer!" shouts the guard.
[10:30am] We stand in line for chow. Garrett forfeits his place in front of me. "That guy is hideously sick. I want to give him all the space he needs." I keep reading Screwtape Letters, raising my eyebrows about the uncle's point to Wormwood that both the avid warhawk and the arden pacifist make easy prey. The guard ejects me at the kitchen. "We're doing bottom tier" and I wander off through the tables recognizing now the inmates on the first floor. Then a guy says "What you know about that?" He has the whole series, he says, and I'm thinking Narnia, the Magician's Nephew, etc. "The Screwtape Letters is probably the best one," he says. "You a reader?" He hands me a set titled The CS Lewis Classic with Miracles, Mere Christianity, A Grief Observed, The Great Divorce, The Screwtape Letters, and The Problem of Pain. "I might look like a gangster," he says, "but I'm a smart gangster."
Chris
Dear Anne:
"Volunteer!" shouts the guard.
[10:30am] We stand in line for chow. Garrett forfeits his place in front of me. "That guy is hideously sick. I want to give him all the space he needs." I keep reading Screwtape Letters, raising my eyebrows about the uncle's point to Wormwood that both the avid warhawk and the arden pacifist make easy prey. The guard ejects me at the kitchen. "We're doing bottom tier" and I wander off through the tables recognizing now the inmates on the first floor. Then a guy says "What you know about that?" He has the whole series, he says, and I'm thinking Narnia, the Magician's Nephew, etc. "The Screwtape Letters is probably the best one," he says. "You a reader?" He hands me a set titled The CS Lewis Classic with Miracles, Mere Christianity, A Grief Observed, The Great Divorce, The Screwtape Letters, and The Problem of Pain. "I might look like a gangster," he says, "but I'm a smart gangster."
Chris
Sunday, March 20, 2011
shiny little snippet!
Here's a little piece of another letter from Chris dated March 4.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
The dorm is empty.
Yes, we all get locked in our rooms.
What do you want to know, that the guard's cubicle has steel roofing? Does it interest you that we have a certain amount of four seat tables like a circle attached? Well, about these things we care. We sit on them, and as Daniel Berrigan, SJ says, faith is where your ass is at.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
The dorm is empty.
Yes, we all get locked in our rooms.
What do you want to know, that the guard's cubicle has steel roofing? Does it interest you that we have a certain amount of four seat tables like a circle attached? Well, about these things we care. We sit on them, and as Daniel Berrigan, SJ says, faith is where your ass is at.
Play as Prayer
March 4, 2011
Anne,
I thank God for you. Your prayers have speeded my reunion with the Son! Fr. Watson came today with a generous heart, offering the sacraments of reconciliation and communion! Yee haw!
I asked if he could use a hand in making rounds since he works as full-time chaplain here. Last month the facility put the kibosh on Mass for inmates as one general congregation. Now he makes the rounds... He can use help from the wider community since volunteers are needed to run Bible study. He just can't handle it all by himself and unfortunately no inmate can lead Bible study. He attributed the policy to radical inmates.
Tonight just before lock down, I got a knock at the door. "Everybody calls him Cuernos," Cole says. Why, because he's from Honduras? Because he has a job that makes $28 a month? (That's upper class in contrast to the $14 made by a guy who quit his post in the kitchen, explaining "I was sick of it.") By the way, Cuernos means Horns; immigrant does not. He has no family in the United States, thus no money on his books, no letters, not that mail from a village in Honduras could be impossible, just inconvenient. Once a month he uses the commissary cash he earns to call home at a price of a dollar a minute.
Ach! I nearly fell over getting out a soup for him. "There you go, friend," I said, fair pay for his advice tonight about how I could call a cell phone or email. Check that, a dignified wage is....any suggestions, anne? Cute guy, slender face swallowed up by an oversize XXXL jacket and headphones. He listens to 93.3 KUBE on his taped up radio. He lights up when I tell him I play pool. "OK, amigo, tomorrow we play."
Anne, once I read a column in a Seattle newspaper by Pat Howell, SJ reflecting on the prayer of play. Yes, we forget God takes delight! I might boldly abuse my lay status to claim something in play Eucharistic, or at least sacramental. You?
Chris
Anne,
I thank God for you. Your prayers have speeded my reunion with the Son! Fr. Watson came today with a generous heart, offering the sacraments of reconciliation and communion! Yee haw!
I asked if he could use a hand in making rounds since he works as full-time chaplain here. Last month the facility put the kibosh on Mass for inmates as one general congregation. Now he makes the rounds... He can use help from the wider community since volunteers are needed to run Bible study. He just can't handle it all by himself and unfortunately no inmate can lead Bible study. He attributed the policy to radical inmates.
Tonight just before lock down, I got a knock at the door. "Everybody calls him Cuernos," Cole says. Why, because he's from Honduras? Because he has a job that makes $28 a month? (That's upper class in contrast to the $14 made by a guy who quit his post in the kitchen, explaining "I was sick of it.") By the way, Cuernos means Horns; immigrant does not. He has no family in the United States, thus no money on his books, no letters, not that mail from a village in Honduras could be impossible, just inconvenient. Once a month he uses the commissary cash he earns to call home at a price of a dollar a minute.
Ach! I nearly fell over getting out a soup for him. "There you go, friend," I said, fair pay for his advice tonight about how I could call a cell phone or email. Check that, a dignified wage is....any suggestions, anne? Cute guy, slender face swallowed up by an oversize XXXL jacket and headphones. He listens to 93.3 KUBE on his taped up radio. He lights up when I tell him I play pool. "OK, amigo, tomorrow we play."
Anne, once I read a column in a Seattle newspaper by Pat Howell, SJ reflecting on the prayer of play. Yes, we forget God takes delight! I might boldly abuse my lay status to claim something in play Eucharistic, or at least sacramental. You?
Chris
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)