It Matters: A Holiday Riot Against Despair

I’m walking away from my house, as a teenage boy and teenage girl embrace on the pitcher's mound of Davidson Field in spite of the single-digit weather, taunting each other he grabs and tickles her, as she slaps him jokingly in the belly. And he embraces her without a jacket, warmed by an adolescent love, some innocent and naïve courtship on a frozen baseball diamond.

I met unwell man on my birthday just a few days ago-- a danger to himself and maybe a danger to me and the people I was with at that McMenamin's pub. He believes he's the reincarnation of Jesus Christ. He is a former student of my school, before I had started teaching there.

That morning, my birthday morning, a woman several blocks away from where I live was brutally raped. The man, with his knife, grabbed her long flaxen hair, and when he was finished, sheared her hair at the nape of her neck. He is still on the loose, the canine unit following a trail gone cold. How did I know this? Carol watches the baby of a police dispatcher. She called said “keep the doors locked and your eyes open.” Thursday morning, dear woman ruined, on my birthday.

Birthday night, later that evening after singing karaoke to Ray Charles The Blues Brothers and Jon Bon Jovi, my work buddies and I headed to the McMenamin's pub. There, the man who claims to be Jesus Christ found us. Told us to look deep into his eyes, that he knew it was difficult for us to believe, but that he had a DVD recorded of some, as he put it, “serious shit” that would blow our minds and help us believe that he'd come for us.

I knew he was unwell. I knew he suffered from his delusions. I got the memo at work warning all of us. That he was a danger to himself and to us. That he was troubled and potentially violent. I listened to his conversation. I changed the subject when I could, without sounding patronizing. This man was troubled, but intuitive and intelligent. He would know if I was trying to get him off the trail, to make his trail run cold, whatever cold destiny awaited us.

And here is my delusion: when I first read about this young man's struggle, and our potential for danger, I knew that I would meet him face to face, and that it would most likely be the end of me. My grandiose imagining of me dying for what I believed in, dying to protect what I loved. Self-sacrifice. Agape love.

And here is my secret: dying for what I believe in is easier than living for what I believe in. It would be easier to die for my children than to daily live for them. These little deaths every day... I am too weak to be that noble everyday. True agape love. True self-sacrifice. And I think about this young and troubled man, and his delusion that he is the Christ, that he is come to save us, judge us.

This morning, I watched his DVD. With his upscale video camera, how he pointed to the Sun as if he were in pain, but making sure he was still in the shot -- arm reached out toward the sun receiving some audible message that I could not hear. A voice maybe like my own as I speak on this lonely road, cold, hearing my voice in my ear from this headset. As I watched him in the first person, walking jerkily around the building of our parent company, shiny brick building, shiny windows, shiny people. How polite he was to everyone in the lobby, chanting politely with an Asian woman in the elevator, and as he walked, as if I were a voyeur to something terrible about to happen, he screamed to the people in the office, “This is Friday the 13th and I am here to bring justice! I am the reincarnation of Jesus Christ and I am here to judge you for what you've done to students over all these years, how you, in your supposed wisdom removed the calluses from the products of a hardened world and release them into the wild, vulnerable and unable to cope in such an evil world! You make them feel again! You strip their calluses and make them need love again, strip them down to their innocence, you take away their armor, and for this you will be condemned!”

I could see the looks on the office people's faces -- fear -- mice in a glass cage. These people’s gifts are administrative; they've never worked with the kids in the trenches. Their paperwork numbers on lists are tiny acts of faith. Tiny acts of faith, beyond paychecks, beyond the reports, a riot of hope. They read about the crises of our youth as if they were the audience to a novel of their lives, silently and desperately rooting for them, hoping for them, hoping to equip those who have a direct influence upon them.

I hear the quaking in the young man's voice, and I hear how he has lost his grip on reality. I hear how at any moment he could break, become violent toward these people who are frightened and do not know how to help him. They are not healers. They are people, living out their own quiet desperations. They have read the newspapers. They know things like this happen. They find themselves in their own drama, imagining their names on the news, seeing a camera that will perhaps record their final moments, who knows, who knows what's left of them? Certainly they don't know what the next moment will bring. They have no fast-forward button. Instead they will be sad and brave. And as I watch this video, my mouth open, I leave my hand off the remote, afraid for them. I've seen this man face-to-face, shook his hand, tried to calm him down, knew that he was unwell, kept my mouth shut, kept my body slow and still. He would know all too well if he was being “dealt with.”

I keep thinking about what I was thinking when I sat at that table with him. That this would probably be it. Secretly wanting it to be my time. And how ashamed I was of that secret.

He hit me hard. Not at the table, not with his fists, no tangible wounds on my body, no physical violation. He did not grab my hair and shear it off at the nape of my neck. It was his belief, his delusion that he was the Christ. So close to my fervent desire for visions, desiring to hear God's voice, to hear a direct message, to be set apart and chosen for something special. How I still secretly wish for that. And how narcissistic it must be of me to have ever believed that I am loved beyond measure by the maker of the universe, how this maker knows every hair on my head, and every dream -- I mean, what is the difference between that and this troubled man’s proclamation?

How long I have believed my life matters! That the contents of my life would matter, but how easy it is to be prone to despair, a day after day after day brings my commitment to my family, to my students. In many times I wonder, if I'm ever doing any good, if I'm ever truly building something up, and if any of it matters at all.

Crisis of faith. Constructs under attack. Maybe it's all just a story. Some gospel fairy tale. Maybe the existentialists are right, that we should pursue the life of a saint without the assurance that there is a God who loves us and who is present in our daily lives. To be a saint on my own requires more nobility than I have. It has always required a belief in some grace delivered by someone beyond all of this. The one who, so I thought, spelled out my name in the blue crevasses of ice on a snowy mountain across that British Columbia inlet. The same God who blew the wind over 100 mph over Mount Hood over those three stranded climbers, over the mother invoking God, saying that it was her birthday and that her son would care enough about her to come down safely. Faith that knocks the wind, knocks the faith out of me.


But delusion or no, I still remember and cling to that grace, in the northern lights up high on the place we called Beyond Heaven, in the newborn eyes of my baby sister, in a baseball with my chosen sister's quote inscribed on its leather surface, in the face of an inebriated homeless man who called himself Little Brother, in the ebony hands of that Romanian Carmelite nun, who cupped my face in her palms, and in the students that I may have helped.

As I think of those graduating students in white robes, tropical flowers flowing around their shoulders, I wonder what their future will hold, wondering if I had done enough, wondering if I had done anything at all, anything that mattered, and if this were the day I were to die, would I be happy with the way I had lived?

It's getting colde,r my face growing numb, but I am nearing home. In my jacket pocket is that baseball, with that quote, from my chosen sister, about why it is important to her to write that story about Boston, about baseball, about her family. That it matters. It matters. The baseball I twirl in my pocket, in large letters, in bright red with her quote swirling around it, following the pattern of baseball's thread, and swirling inward toward the giant words, IT MATTERS...

Such a proclamation of faith, these two words! Faith that breathes faith into me. It matters. I have two blocks to go before I am home, and I can see it now. I can believe it now. The sun is down, and Christmas lights shine, a riot against despair. It matters. It matters that I am walking toward my home rather than away from it. It matters that I have friends who love me. It matters that a friend clear across the country thought of me all day on the day of my birthday. That she thought of me in the basilica in Philadelphia, lighting two coin operated electric candles, and crossing herself even though she didn't remember how to do it. How she thought of me outside, purchasing soft peppermint sticks from an Amish man whose hair was colored like mine. It matters that another friend, unwell, feels a little bit better when he thinks about me. It matters that Cody survived, even if he is a fictional character. It matters how my sons’ faces look at me when I return from work. Those looks where you can tell how in love they are, how innocent and uncorrupted that love is, when they try to say something to me, but can't. Instead, they just giggle and smile those big horsey grins. It matters. It matters. It matters.

Now Introducing, The Ochoco Review!

Collage by Nicholas D. inspired by Sherman Alexie's "Fire as Verb and Noun"

http://ochocoreview.blogspot.com

It's here, finally! The Online Student Literary Journal from Mount Bachelor Academy has just released its inaugural issue, featuring student poetry, flash fiction, nonfiction, reviews, and short films. The work is finished just in time for our December graduation.

Featuring:

Poetry: John A.// Jennifer B.//Michael L. //and Bradley C.

Flash Fiction: "Lucid Dreams" by Glenn E,/ "Backflip-it" by Andrew F, / "The Cliff" by Chris B,

Nonfiction: "The Kid" by Josh L, // "I Remember, I Wish, I Believe" by the Sophomore Class of Mount Bachelor Academy, // and "9/11, Five Years Later" an MBA student collage

Reviews: Megan J. reviews "The Interpreter of Maladies" by Jhumpa Lahiri // John A. reviews "Candide" by Voltaire // Alex P. reviews "The Godfather" by Mario Puzo

Short Films: “Entering, With All of Our Senses”// “The Watchtower: A Parody of American Xenophobia”

Disclaimer: The creative impulses, thoughts, opinions, etc. shared in this online-literary journal do not necessarily represent those of its sponsoring school— Mount Bachelor Academy, or its parent companies, Aspen Education Group, or CRC.

Logistical and content oversight for The Ochoco Review is provided by Lisa Fairman: Special Education Director of Mount Bachelor Academy. The Ochoco Review is a product of the Mount Bachelor Academy English Department.

Additionally, students' last names have been concealed to preserve their confidentiality to the public.


Check it out!

A Direct Quote From One of My Students

"You're a Master in Fine Arts? Wow, does that mean you know Kung Fu and shit?"

Hmm. Maybe that would be more useful....