“In my arms, you’ll find your peace” (from A Wretch Like Me) is as good of a line as any for a holiday season where so many are hurting.

Since I first listened the other day, that one line is the one that I come back to the most. It reminds me that our (my) peace isn’t permanent outside of the arms where we (I) belong.

You can download the EP here.

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I remember learning to pray in Sunday School when I was five or six. My class met in something called the FamilyLifeCenter – which was the church word for gymnasium – in the room next to the coke machine. Our room had concrete walls, brown carpet that wasn’t soft, and a chalk board. Three doors down was where they kept the roller skates with dirty orange wheels that were off limits except on Wednesday nights.
     Our teacher told us that we could ask God for anything, because He was always listening.
“What are some things you would ask God for?” she asked us.
“To keep my family safe,” one kid said.
“To help me not get in trouble,” said someone else.
She wrote everything we said on the chalkboard, and put our names beside what we were praying for. When it was my turn I told her I couldn’t think of anything right now, and she told me that was okay.
“Now,” she said, once the chalkboard was full, “let’s get in a circle and ask God for these things.
We grabbed our folding, light brown metal chairs and put them in a circle.
“Who would like to go first?” she asked?
I raised my hand.
“You don’t even have anything to pray for,” my best friend, Travis, told me.
“So what,” I said.
“That’s fine,” our teacher told me. “John can go first, then Travis, and then we will keep going around the circle.” She told us to close our eyes.
I sat there for seconds, minutes, days, unable to think of anything to say. All I knew was I didn’t want Travis to have anything to pray for, either, so I finally prayed for his prayer request.
 We were all holding hands, so when I was done I squeezed his hand, because that’s how our teacher told us to let the person next to us know it was their turn. He looked at me with his eyes wide open, shaking his head. He didn’t say anything. After a few seconds I started praying again; this time asking God for everything else on the chalkboard.
I prayed for Melissa’s cat, who was older than her, and who was sick and might have to go to kitty heaven. I prayed for some new kid, David, who lived with his grandmother and had to wear an eye patch because a mosquito had somehow bitten him on the eyeball – I asked God to please not let him have to wear glasses when the eye patch came off. I prayed for Will, that he wouldn’t be in trouble anymore for pulling his pants down in daycare and showing everyone his ”he-he”. Everyone laughed and the teacher told them to keep their eyes closed and be quiet. When I was done with the things on the chalkboard, I prayed for our teacher, that she would have a good day, and then I said “A man”. We all opened our eyes and class was over.
My Sunday School teacher told my parents that I was such a good young man, and that I was more worried for everyone else than I was for myself, and told them how I prayed for everyone in class that day. I remember how good it felt when my mom said, “I know he is,” and my dad laughed a little bit and put his heavy hand on my head.

************

I walked around the Battery for over an hour that night, watching the red and green lights of boats passing each other on the silent water. I thought about my stick figure, and writer’s-block, and how worthless I felt. I thought about everything bad that had happened over the past year and a half.
I had caught my wife with another man. She left me to be with him. The church I had started fired me when I told them about it. My friends abandoned me. I lost my house, and most of my savings account.
I lost who I was.
That night, I grew tired of thinking about myself.
What am I doing? What a stupid thing to believe… that my worth and my identity is dependant on my ability to fill a page with words…
or my job as a pastor…
or a house with a palm tree…
or someone else’s commitment to me.
If Christians are right, that God really did become a man, and if I believe that, shouldn’t I feel worthy just because Jesus said I was worth dying for? Is there anything more defining than that?
At some point in my life, I really did start thinking about others more than myself. Why was I letting what happened in Columbia make me spend so much time thinking about myself?
I worked my way back down East Bay Street. It was Friday night, and the sidewalks were filled with shaggy-haired guys and girls in heels walking in and out of bars.
I saw a man I had met a few weeks earlier named Leroy sitting on a concrete step outside a tobacco shop. Leroy is in his fifties, tall, powerful, with a voice like Barry White’s. He doesn’t have a home. His wife threw him out- I’m not sure why. He also doesn’t have a job. He was sick for a while, he says, but “I’m getting a construction job on Kiawah Island. The boss say’s he’ll pick me up for work in the morning and start me out at $10.50 an hour.”
 I don’t know if this is true or not.
People usually walk by Leroy, looking the other way so they won’t have to feel guilty when they tell him they have nothing to give. Sometimes I do, too.
That night, I saw Leroy the way God saw him. I didn’t look down on him, or want to help him out of pity. That night, I saw Leroy as the son of a King, named by God.
I asked him if he wanted to go eat some chocolate cake. I don’t like cake, and I’m sure there are things homeless men need a lot more than chocolate, but it just felt right.
“You know I do,” he said, his smile full of dirty teeth.
We went to a coffee house; I ordered a piece of cake and coffee, Leroy got cake, a piece of apple pie, and hot chocolate.
“And don’t forget the whipped cream,” he told the girl behind the counter.
We sat at a table beside the window, $27 worth of pointless calories in front of us, and talked about nothing. We laughed for an hour; at stupid things we had done, at people tripping on the uneven sidewalk outside, at how bad of a dancer this woman was who was moving her body to the Damien Rice cover a guy was playing on his guitar.
“I’m the epitome of a white boy who can’t dance,” I told him, “and even I think she’s bad.”
We left the coffee house and walked back to the tobacco shop I had seen him outside of earlier. He sat back down on his step, like it was his La-Z-Boy, and the street was his television.
“I’ll be right back,” I said, disappearing inside.
I came back with a pack of the same cigarettes I had seen him smoking weeks before. He took one, and I told him to keep the rest. We sat for a while. Neither of us said anything. I remember thinking it was the most fun I had had in a long time.
Before I left, I reached across and patted his knee, as if we had been sitting on those steps and looking at that street since we were kids; lifelong friends with mortgages already paid. Then I put my hand, now heavier than my father’s, on his shoulder.
“I had fun tonight, Leroy. Be looking out for me… let’s do this again soon.”
I got up, wondering if he thought it was weird that I had touched his knee. Maybe it was, but I once read that babies can die if they aren’t touched enough… it had something to do with not knowing who they were. Maybe it happens to the homeless, too. Maybe it happens to all of us.

“God fashioned man out of dirt from the ground, and blew into his nostrils the breath of life. The man came alive – a living soul!”
Genesis 2:7

mothers wrapped in burqas
waiting with children across the street
for an approaching yellow bus
and the 43 metro- along with the vibration of distant,
heavy machines- add to
and take away from the city.

Stories are read, disturbed by
the constant observation of dog owners walking and
joggers breathing heavy and
the glow of the sun hiding behind buildings.

and questions are asked like
What, if anything, do we believe? only that
today can be the very best
if we choose.

The rain has stopped, and I need to escape. I throw my mountain bike on my rack and drive off, leaving my house, leaving my memory behind. Thirty minutes later I’m riding down a trail. It’s hot out here. God it is hot, but I soak it in. I need it. I need every bit of humidity in the air, need to feel like I’m breathing underwater. I’m amphibious. I’m an amphibian and I’m in the woods and I’m underwater.
Every one of you should see me ride my mountain bike. I can go so fast you wouldn’t believe your eyes. My calves are like pistons the way they pump up and down; they’re a blur, they’re like the drawing with the bird on one side and the cage on the other and if you spin it fast enough the bird looks like it is in the cage, but I’m not a bird I’m a beast and my bike is my freedom and my calves and the bike blur into one.
You should see me go so fast. I can bomb down a hill like you wouldn’t believe, my arms gripping the handlebars and vibrating while the bike tries to throw me, but I am my bike, it’s a part of me, and I can pedal that effer into the ground- and when I reach the bottom of the hill I will climb right back up to the top of the other side. I can climb like a goat, like a goat being chased by a bullet, and it would take your breath away to see because you would swear I was going the same speed as I was when I was going downhill- no, faster, “He’s going even faster, my God, he’s going so fast!” you would say and you’d be right because I would be at the top before your eyes even made it to the top, and I would breathe in so deep, just to feel my lungs expand inside my chest.

It ends, and begins again, in the same place. The field just off of Rutledge, between the basketball court where neighborhood men run shirtless in the late afternoon sun and the enormous white columns with dirty smudges from fourth graders’ slapping hands at the entrance to Mitchell Elementary.

That is where I heard him last. On the last day of school, standing in the field, saying goodbye to all of his friends and all of my friends that spent time with him every single week for the entire school year.

And school is about to start back, but he won’t be on the field.

Because he’s there. He’s right there. He’s right there, twenty feet in front of me, laying down, and he will never stand again. I’ve been to funerals before- to my grandfather’s who died after a long fight with cancer, and, worse, to my niece’s who died after a very short fight with her heart. But this was different. Corion wasn’t family.

I chose to be a part of his life. I chose to go to his class every week. And my friends chose to, too. We chose to go when we could have been working an extra shift, or spending the morning at the beach, or sleeping off a hangover, or any of the other things people our age in a city like Charleston are expected to do. We chose to be there. With them- with Corion and the rest of his classmates.

Every week we sat in chairs too small for us, crowded around a table with a group of kids whose faces were exploding with smiles. Everyone put their hands in the middle- “Hands in the middle. Does everyone agree to work hard? If we work hard for ten minutes we can goof off for two,”- and then we wrote silly stories.

Stories we believe will turn into college entrance exams.

And every week Corion was ready. Ready for all of the volunteers- especially for Kiki, his absolute favorite- to come.

Corion: always smiling, always willing to help, always last in line for a high-five on the way out because he was always the last one to leave.

********

I live 3,000 miles away now, in a city in the Pacific Northwest, and still I make it to Mitchell Elementary every 8 weeks, just to see the kids, and the volunteers, and the work that is still going on. I come back because this school and these students and these volunteers are such a big part of who I am, and I can’t stay away. I come back because when you’re there – when you see Barbara, a retired teacher, and Mandy, a young college professor, and Mark, a server at a popular restaurant, all investing in the same kids’ lives, it’s just too much to leave.

********

I’m back at Mitchell elementary now, and the school year has just started.

I’m walking across the field to the school, a few hours after the students have left for the day. The Board of Directors is about to have a meeting. Budgets and events and fundraisers and programs. Two kids are playing football. I don’t know either of them.

“Can I get in?” I ask, and hold up my hands. One of them throws me the football.

“To me!” his friend yells, and I throw him the ball. It bounces off his chest.

“My fault. Bad pass,” I shout, even though it wasn’t. I want him to look good in front of his buddy. “What’s your name?”

“Corey.”

“I’m John. Do you go to school here?”

He does. He asks if I want to play a game. I’m early for the meeting, and do.

I’m voted all-time quarterback.

Corey lines up beside me.

I’m thinking about Corion, and how much it sucks that he isn’t here, too, and it’s not ok, it never should be ok, it never will be, but, -.

We’re standing here, on the field outside of school, several blocks removed from the tourist-filled streets where Corion’s classmates sell flowers they’ve folded from sweetgrass. We stand here dreaming and hoping and playing, breathing–as if through blankets–the heavy summer air.

We’re standing here, and Corey is about to run, his hands pressing against one of his knees, calves ready to rupture, “twenty yards out and cut right” I told him.

My shirt is starting to cling to my back and I can feel sweat dripping down my forehead, the salt about to burn my eyes. I’m not acclimated to this humidity anymore but goodgoditfeelsgood because I can hurl a football half the distance of a football field if I want to and I know exactly where it’s going, a tight spiral, right into Corey’s path, and I’m thinking that this is where I saw him for the last time, this is where I said goodbye to Corion, and this is where I’m seeing him, for the first time, this is where I’m saying hello to Corey, and what is this year going to be like? and which one of our volunteers is Corey going to be standing at the door for, waiting to see? and shouldn’t we all be here, not just be here, but be happy to be here, to be giving and giving and giving?

Shouldn’t we all get to experience this- to marry our souls to a neighborhood, to feel its growth and its loss, to make a family out of a group of kids on a ball-field, to be invested in somebody else?

Because, when? None of us know.

********

Last week my friend Andrew told me he always respected me for how much I put myself out there and gave, and the whole time he was talking I felt so selfish because the truth is so different. The truth is I’m given so much more than I give.

in memory of Corion, a SideWalk Chalk student who passed away July 10, 2011.

Now it’s time to honor the men that have been a father to me.

When I think of my birth father, John, three things come to mind: hope, suffering, and baseball.

I’ll start with the last. Each spring when I was growing up, my dad pulled me out of school for a few days and drove me down to Florida to watch the Pittsburgh Pirates play a few spring training games. My first t-ball team was the Pirates, and I assumed this meant I was part of the Pittsburgh organization, and that soon, I would be playing on the same field that Andy Van Slyke, Jose Lind, and Sid Bream ran onto each spring. Every year was the same thing: for five days he drove me all over Florida while I played my Game Boy, took me to a baseball game every day, out to pizza every night, and a movie after. It was what I looked forward to the most every year. He even wore a Pirates hat and cheered for them, even though I think he had been a Yankees fan when he was a kid.

But he’s given up more than just his favorite team. Throughout my life my dad has suffered for me and the rest of my family. Sometimes I think “suffering” isn’t the right word, but it is. Just because you take joy in it and do it without complaining doesn’t mean there isn’t suffering.

That’s the way it is with him. He works hard. Really hard. He has all of my life. He’s worked as a principal, spent countless hours owning and managing a restaurant, and been a pastor. He’s often had more than one job at a time. He doesn’t have much money, because he’s given most of it away. Given it away to help me when I lost my job. To help my sister and her husband raise three boys. To make sure my mom is always taken care of. To help the homeless find a place to sleep and have a meal for the night. I honestly don’t know what he ever does for himself, except read a paragraph or two before he falls asleep.

He isn’t close to his parents, isn’t in contact with them at all really, and it’s so evident that he makes sure his children don’t have to have the same type of relationship with him. He wants for our lives to be better than his so bad.

Mostly when I think of him I think of hope. Of the way he told me on Father’s Day a few years ago that I was his hero. I wrote more about that and the trajectory it set my life on here. I think about how good it felt to stand next to him a few months ago at my wedding, when there was so much to celebrate. I think about all of the times he’s told me that things are going to be OK, and even though we both know that a lot of times they won’t, I know that he’ll bear as much of the burden as he can.

How lucky am I that not only do I have him in my life, but I also have someone like Buddy?

Buddy is Barbara’s husband, so it makes it easy to consider them my Charleston parents. I met him at church over ten years ago, and then found out he had been a classmate of my father’s in college.

Everything I’ve done in the past ten years, Buddy has supported, not just financially but with affirmation and prayers, too. He’s someone else, like my birth father, that gives away whatever he can, and goes out of his way to help those less fortunate.

There has never been a better model of patience and wisdom than Buddy. No matter what I’m going through, the good and the bad, he has something constructive to say, and offers some insight to point me in the right direction. Even if it’s not the easy direction. I love him for that. He’s taken a bigger interest in my life more consistently than any person outside of my immediate family, and for that reason, there’s no other choice than to consider him my immediate family, too.

I know a lot of people that have had to go through a lot of trials and heartbreak in their life. I’ve probably been through more than most. I think that’s why I was given two great men to carry me through. I don’t take either of you for granted.

I’m really lucky. I have two: my birth parents- still together- John and Vicki, and my “adopted parents,” Buddy and Barbara. They didn’t adopt me. I adopted them.

I could write about all the ways both sets have been there for me. But, it’s Mother’s Day weekend, so dads are getting the shaft.

My birth mother: still over-protective, still supportive, and still lets me know all the time (through words and actions) that she would do anything for me. She still sends me cookies- all the way across the country- and still spends all day in the kitchen making my favorite foods whenever I come home. Sometimes I like to antagonize her, to tell her about skydiving and mountain bike crashes and voting democrat. She likes to tell me she loves me.

She was there that day, when everything fell apart, and she cried even harder than I did. She’s been there to help me rebuild a life.

I’d be pretty lucky if she was my only mother.

But Barbara’s been there too: always smiling, always enthusiastic, always believing in me. Last time we had dinner she asked me what my three hopes were for the coming year. Then she wrote them down- she wrote them down- and said she’ll be praying they come true and help in any way she could. And the way she said it made me believe she would.

I know that any time I’m home, in New York or Charleston, there’s a bed, and food, and a lot of love. And it really means a lot.

Moms, know that I tried to scrape together money for flowers. I promise I’m not cheap, just poor. Be proud of me because I used the “flower fund” to do laundry at the Laundromat instead of washing my clothes in the shower. You’ve successfully civilized me. I love you both.

I don’t know if either of you have seen this video, so here it is (just click the triangle below to play it.) Thanks for walking with me through the bad times and the great, and thanks for being there for the celebration.

John + MJ from Pistil Films on Vimeo.

A beat up truck pulled into the middle of the field in Afghanistan during half-time, and a man and woman, both blindfolded and screaming, were pushed out. Another man, holding a microphone, told the crowds watching from the stands the sins of the two prisoners. Before he finished speaking, the guards escorting the two picked up their stones. They hurled them at two faces, two backs, two chests.

The whole thing was hard to watch, really, even in a movie theater when you knew the people were actors. I glanced over at my friend Nicole. She was obviously having a difficult time, and seemed like she was trying to focus on the floor, or the seat in front of her, anything but the screen. I should probably tell you that Nicole is one of the Godliest people I know. I’m sure there’s sin in her life, just like in everyone’s, but still.

I turned to the screen again, and saw another stone being thrown. It made me feel angry at those throwing them. I mean, sure the people being stoned had done some bad things. They needed to be punished. But they didn’t deserve that. Being angry at the people throwing the stones made me feel better, like I was a more merciful person than they were. I looked back at Nicole. She wasn’t hiding from watching it anymore, but at every stone thrown I could see her flinch. Tears were coming down her cheek. Not just one or two, but she was crying.

“Are you ok?” I asked

“I’m just so glad He came. I am so glad He came.”

I spent the rest of the movie thinking about the different way we saw things. I looked at the sinners and saw their sin and wanted mercy. She looked at them and saw herself.

********

Before I wrote this, I read through the ten commandments in Exodus to see how I measured up. There were only two of them I haven’t broken. Then I remembered those were the two Jesus set a new benchmark for when he talked about anger and lust. I can’t even get one of them right, and I’ve been following God with everything I have for twelve years now.

I don’t want that. I want to live in a world where Muslims aren’t the bad guys and Christians aren’t the good guys, but we’re all just people; broken, scarred, hopeful. I want to be in a community that doesn’t bash our leaders, sacred or secular, for failing, but instead tries to help them make things better. I want to belong to a church that doesn’t just ask me to value and support their expression of mission, but values and supports mine as well.

I’m an idealist. I recognize that. Sometimes I’m glad about it. but just as often, it’s frustrating. Nothing is ever perfect.

I’m trying my best.

********

I sat in my chair in the kitchen listening to my neighbors above me laughing and stomping around, and I felt disgusted at myself for my capacity to blow it, and for the way I sometimes judge others even when I think I’m being merciful, and the way I sometimes look at others’ sin and fail to see my own.

But He came. He came for me. He came for you. He came for the man and the woman kneeling in the patchy grass while stones were being thrown. He came for those that were throwing them. I am so glad He came.

John + MJ from Pistil Films on Vimeo.

video: jade sullivan
photo: ben williams
song: kurt vile

I understand Mortenson’s claim of and right for “literary license,” and if the purpose was to just to sell books, the practice is questionable at best. But when the story is spoken as truth at fundraising events, and then money given to charity is used to promote and buy more books to keep it at the top of the bestsellers’ list, there’s no logical justification.

An excerpt from Judd’s article:

Mortenson’s “nonfiction” tale, used to solicit tax-free millions from donors who include penny-saving children, is repeated as gospel before sellout crowds across America. The Korphe experience is the heart of his story.

Korphe injects the element of fate into the plotline — as if some unseen hand guided this purposeless drifter, his spirit flagging, to that time and place, and made Mortenson its messenger moving forward. It also created a sense of Mortenson “giving back” to repay the selflessness of Pakistani villagers.

But Krakauer writes that, when Mortenson claimed he was forming a spiritual bond with children in Korphe, he likely was chilling in a comfy motel elsewhere in Pakistan. He did travel to Korphe and begin charity work a year later, reneging on a promise he had made to build a school in another village.

Without the Korphe epiphany, most of the magic in “Three Cups” goes poof.

Mortenson now admits the timing of events in the book was “compressed,” and indirectly blames his co-author, David Relin, for mixing things up while he was tied up working 20-hour days to save the world.

“In order to be convenient, there were some omissions,” Mortenson told Outside magazine.

He now says he truly did visit Korphe that fateful 1993 day, but through an increasingly foggy memory (odd, for such a life-altering event), believes he spent only a few hours there — not days, as the book implies.

You can read the full article here.