Mommsy

My cellies-"White-Bred and "Scar" were laughing at some inane thing I'm sure..I'm going in too because Gumby told me it is a man's sense of humor that keeps him at times of intense solitude. I've certainly proved out this theory in my life in case he was only joking about it. At 85 square feet between us three hulking men either in stature of weight, size, or time in grade (to appease those military folk within earshot of this). The guard unlocks our cell door after the standard 1600 hrs stand-up count (they want you standing to ensure you're not all stabbed up, or dead in you bunk from something) like a disgruntled ex-postal worker whose had his share of that loneliness aforementioned. This time as he unlocks with the clanging kerchunk, he sticks his head in and tells me I gotta go to the Chapel on the "rec move". I thought I was going to the gym to play handball...GOD had other plans though as HE so often does. This prison vernacular is as commonplace to me as stoplights, facebook, and shopping lists are to you folks lending ear to this ode to Mommsy from her Hound of Baskerville's son.

When the guard shut the cell door, the laughter left with him as if some pall smothered it out so neatly that the laugh lines on our faces, in a nanosecond, went from mirth to mourn, creasing harshly the grim rictus of reality that is going to take place now twice in my career of incarceration. The cell suddenly grew oh so small, and my cellies beelined it out to give me some space where there is none. Sam and Arnoldo (their real names) have had their sufferage over the years. Offering up what little comfort and condolences afforded them to give in the coin of our consequences that due diligence to selfishness brings when we store up our wages of sin in bags with holes in them. They've known of Mommsy's condition for about the same amount of time as I. Not much can be hidden when sharing quarters that dimes would covet.

As I make my way around the cell (how long could this take?), I turn around to see what I'm looking for; and it is a vacant thing from my heart that I can't seem to find that fell out a few moments ago when the Chapel call came. Collecting my thoughts because you know that I'm scrunching up my eyes and courage to face the brunt of all my years spent to catering to meism's....I'm searching for my pictures...culling out the ones I got of Mom with an assortment of folk--mostly of her with Dad, but some with those who will never know her effervescence...great grandkids as too little still. It's an attempt to pull out of this stack of humanity, where all my faux visits put me, at proxy, to feign an osmosis catharsis by way of a polaroid fixation that camera phones can't touch. These photos are taking on a weight that makes them hard to lift on to the next. Surreality taking on a whole new dimension that at once is arresting...not punny mind you. Each one revealing that patented smiling glow that I'll never see again except in these photos. A thousand words can't tell the face that has launched a thousand ships. Shame on me all the day as repentance tries to make this wrong as pretty as Mom. Not waxing poetically, though one of the many gifts Mom possessed and passed along to her brood. The prose of the parentage prancing about our thoughts as if all of us are surely the next Hemingway.

The snow is whipping hard and the biting howling wind is swirling about me as I take the dirgeful and purpose driven plunge toward the Chapel. This weather shooting me back in time to Billerica, Mass. 1970. I'm certain ole Dennisky can give us exactitude, to include longitude and latitude, as well the family's attitude to this winter of our discontent. But which of my siblings remember the April Fool's joke Mommsy laid on us? It was 0530 to keep it real for our military folk out there (there's quite a few for sure) when she came down to the basement where me and the three bros slept. Frantically rousting us up to the exclamation of: "Go check the car! The windows are all broken!! Hurry up! Hurry up! Save the day! Carpe Diem! Go Boys to Men!" All of us out the door in record time to the blizzard that had buried the car! How could this be happening on April the first? Only to hear the basement door slam shut as Mommsy danced around in her "got you again" jig, shouting out, "APRIL FOOLS! APRIL FOOLS!". We had to endure this from all the windows and doorways in the three-story house. My bros and I wondering  how long is it gonna be before...1)Mommsy let's us back in...(and I'm out here wondering where the heck is Patti-Sue!)...2)How many times are we gonna fall prey to this ridiculous, predictable, and perennial crapola of Mom's?...and 3)  Now...I sure could use it one more time.

Over the past few months as Patti-Sue and Big Bro, weathered with Bob, the eroding debilitating effects the various maladies have brutalized our cherished one with, I could only offer solace via phone from inside a Federal prison. By the way I own the hang-up avoidance tactic on this earth...the hat trick of phone dodging if you will. Certainly not casting dispersion...at times I don't want to talk to me! But my Mom owns the record of answering every time. Never too busy. Never too sleepy.. And at times weepy. No matter the shame I've put her through. Collect was never a problem I might add. I got into this habit of singing to her. Songs I wrote, or CHRISTian gospels she used to sing, or ones we sang and dance to together in her pre-Bob days. As her mental state drifted, I was ever being guided to just stay in the moment while on the phone. Never using the do you remember whens, or we just talked about that, or that's the third time you told me (trust me here she didn't have to be in that state to tell me things three times over as I'm certain my siblings will attest). I was better equipped to handle what was happening because I wasn't up close and personal to her daily struggles such as were Patti-Sue, Big Bro, Dennis, and Bob. I've been trying to reach Danny Boy, and have a talk with Dennisky, because their own pain is weighed in here as they suffer this passing of our Matriarch.

A few days ago, as I reached Patti-Sue in Mom's hospital room, she did something to me that was a bit unexpected. I heard Mom groaning in the background, a sound of such intensity as I leaned into the line, almost smelling the antiseptic rise in the mouthpiece of my little prison lifeline to Mom--and it's not a loud noise (only the battlefield could be as loud as a prison) --quite the opposite. It was so faint as to be the telltale heart that is fighting back this weeping I so want to do, but this stupid phone is in the middle of the day room in our unit (romper room is a more fitting name) and any weakness here may be misconstrued. I've been in three prison riots. The horrors of all that cacophony dwindle in decibel to the rasping struggles of Mom trying to make it. And then my sister tells me she wants me to sing a song to Mom as she puts me on speaker phone. I sing to her too when I get the chance. Big Bro is really missing out! And this could explain why folks dodge my calls! But now I finally have a chance to help! The sagacity of Patti-Sue's thought process here was clearly GOD ordained...not that I'm Perry Como....Tom Jones maybe..but still I have this chance..you know? And I give it my all. Starting with her Mom's favorite, Amazing Grace, and not making it much farther because as I'm going along I hear Mom's groaning stop...and then her semi-humming begin...singing along with me like she has done so many times before, and thus bringing this man to that place where I don't really care if my tough-guyness shows a chink or two because my FATHER in heaven with JESUS on HIS right is standing to see HIS servants praise HIM in the best way they can...given present circumstances. Me, in the prison proper physically, way free mentally and spiritually...Mommsy in her prison physically and mentally, but now way free spiritually. And ain't that cool beans?

Over the years I have tried to discover what are the things worse than being in a place like this. I've had at my disposal ample reading material (not to mention the tales and fables of epic renown spun out from these men in here) and through this HE has shown me, although not high up in the living chain of goodness, many are those whom are living it lowlier than I.

My Mom's vibrant elixir of elan which she poured out upon all who knew the chutzpah and fortitude of her spirit, will forever be the reasons why I survive a place like this. I make it day to day because of who it was that brought me to bear. One fine day as she would sing oft of it...in the sweet by and by...I'll see her again in GLORY. An incorruptible, immortal, and indestructible soul that combines with the most indomitable SPIRIT of all time. It will be on that shore across the Jordan where we'll sing once again. There's a shadow in the valley of death because there's a light needed to bring about the casting of darkness. That light has gotten stronger now my friends because Margaret Louisa Gonier has walked on through. PRAISE JESUS!

...later in all love mustered by Mommsy's for me and her children..dougie boy...Dwouck

In the story of...

..the prodigal son we are to look into how JESUS is teaching these diverse groups.

Luke 15 tells us (ain't it neat how the Bible is the only book that can "tell" us rather than read to us?..anyway as I digress right from the jumping off street...) "Then all the tax collectors and the sinners..(Heavens to Betsy not them! Who is this Betsy anyway?)...drew near to HIM to hear HIM. And the Pharisees and scribes complained saying, 'This MAN receives sinners and eats with them.'"

Oh how I love JESUS! Do you see what eclectic a group HE always has at HIS disposal? Yet also in the Gospels HE is singularly with the woman at the well. No restraints on HIS contact with humanity at large...after all (you know it)  HE is the INCARNATION...and HE loves us for us--certainly not contingent on what we do. I'm thanking HIM daily for this astounding GRACE. For as some writer hath said (every once in a while I divert into old timey English) "The heathen have witnessed to the comfort of a good conscience: 'Be this thy brazen bulwark of defence, still to preserve thy conscious innocence.' And yet to the terror of a bad one: 'No lash is heard, and yet the guilty heart is tortured with a self-inflicted smart.'" GOD came in a bod to prove out  that sin is an insurmountable diversion to a relationship with HIM. Hence the CROSS. It is to be with HIM that HE desires of us. If it was to do for HIM, then we all would remain the most miserable of folk--"with" is a bigger deal than "do." 

On one hand in this parable we have the behavers and on the other side are ...well...me for one...and the other misbehavers. So I  get compelled to ask at various times: "Does GOD even like me?" Or as Andy Stanley, Charles Stanley's son, put it so succinctly: "What does GOD think about when GOD thinks about me?" Our behavior is not how GOD views us (so a big welcomed deep breath for those whom have fallen under this "works" perversion of the Gospel at large). After all if JESUS truly came to rescue me from what I cannot save myself from (although diligently trying until I am beyond blue knuckling) all my feigned piousness in the pigsty with the lost one and his big bro. I mean nobody wanted to come to the party that the DAD was throwing for his lost one except the servants. Strike a message here? The younger wayward son wanted his FATHER to give ear to his speech of "wasn't I wrong and hire me as one of your servants" spiel, yet when ABBA saw him "afar off," HE came running to meet him...not one bit concerned about the preparations he prepared for justifying his woes by telling all his "don'ts." True confession is good for us, because it brings us near to GOD like HE likes us to be. It's where HE does HIS "wet work" well.

On the other hand we have the older sib that wanted his FATHER to know all about his "do's"--don't much care for those either I can attest to--thumping my chest on the regular around in this camp of ill-repute. Still HE is looking for us to love HIM as HE loves us...without fear of reprisal for wrongs that are surely gonna come, and without begging for the attaboys/girls that we so desperately seek after. No not there do we find the solace of our SAVIOR. Only in "seeking ye first the KINGDOM of GOD" do we locate the perfect LOVE that cast out all that worldly love that besets us so.

If you are looking to see if GOD holds sway to those who seemingly are better folk than yourself, then check out that parable in Luke and decide for yourself if the CREATOR of the universe is in a fit over your misdeeds. HE wants you to love HIM back for the gift of life that HE gave when HIS SON (and here I go with that NAME) JESUS CHRIST died for my/yours/and et al sins. HE wants to give you that ring, put that robe upon your shoulders, kill the fatted calf...for at once my son was lost but now he is found.

...

I have been at odds lately my friends..suffering from the worst of sins...self-pity. The profundity of my loneliness after Patti-Sue's visit has tried to wretch away my joy. Fortunately I don't generate this joy from the world...it's an other worldly thing that I got going on (Nehemiah 8:10), but still this darkness can almost be like one that can be felt. But PRAISE HIM! I have you guys to write to, and that is an uplifting moment of respite that I can dwell upon at this very crux...thanks for listening...I'm alive and kicking!

later...dougie boy

Courage I've only read about...

..it's what compels me this morning.

I was reading the most current issue of Sports Illustrated yesterday...thanks to my lovely sister-Patti-Sue...

She came to visit me here in prison on Saturday by the way. We haven't seen each other in almost 9 years. Although we chucked around the compliments of how well one another looked, also what was not avoided was the missing teethes...her with the bridges and the dental work befitting good medical coverage..me with the gap in my choppers that has me still ejecting scraps of food meant for mastication while I went about gesticulating...great are we Goniers at this fine forgotten art form of getting our point across... And if you won't listen after I've thrown half a Mr.Goodbar at you, well, what can a guy do?

For sure though my sister turned heads to the point of guys telling me later on the yard that I had a great looking wife (and ain't it funny how our spouses come to resemble us after years of being together). It was my sister I tell 'em. And then they proceeded to pry into whether or not she's single. Does she cheat on her husband? (audacity has not a chance in this camp.) Finally after dislodging their wayward requests for her risque history they are convinced she must have, I get back to my cell for a nice evening of recuperation. Not only from the ridiculousness of fielding inquiries into Patti-Sue's sexual history (my gosh I tell this one guy she's been married for thirty years...to a cop! Ha! That did it! Off they scampered! Proving that once again these guys dress up with all this purported tough-guyness, and for real they're just boys...mostly alone, scared and scarred from life's reaping and sowing laws--GOD'S law is what it is though--Galatians 6:7-8.)

As I settled into the aftermath of PTVS (post traumatic visitation syndrome) I laid back to peruse the old Sports Illustrated...a reliable candidate that gets my vote for escaping (albeit temporary) the incessant droning of my prison sentence with all its acroutements. Then I happened upon "The Courage of Jill Costello". A 5' 4" buck ten of a woman that spun such a web of intestinal fortitude from which I shant untangle myself for years to come.

At the tender age of ..oh 10 or 11 I'd say from the article's view, she wanted to be the coxswain for Cal Berkeley. A dream she pursued with enough due diligence to put to pasture all laws that line up with physical endurance and mental perseverance, smashing down the ends which most could not fathom justified the means. She was to me (or should I properly say "is to me" for she lives on in my thoughts--as well the women who stood by her--teammates and rivals alike) "a light that shines in a dark place" (2 Peter 1:19). Here I was basking (if you'll allow me that, from my sister's visit), reading along when out of the blue (which in this case the blues did show themselves strong) the cancer hit her from nowhere--a stomach ache mestasizing into a brutal attack on her integrity as a leader and a go-getter.

These men in here I hear complaining about various wrongs done them by being punished for their own sins...what about her? As I thought on my GOOD GOD (the article weaving its way along the tracks of my tears as Smokey Robinson would lament from lost love), but this little woman...Oh man the strength! As she got her opportunity to "man" the coxswain spot at the PAC 10 Championships, and, as I knew the writer of the story was setting me up for her death--especially when in the last time she wielded that handsfree mic and cadenced her crew on through though her rebellious body not wanting it so--halfway through the race blood starting leaking out of her nose and as one of her faithful oarers was told to focus on "Jill's strength"...by her coach. She saw it alright--an indomitable spirit that that wretched disease could not shake--she took the back of her hand and, as the writer put it so, "wiped it away with disdain".

Man, did you catch that? With disdain she battled an all consuming cancer that wanted to rob her of a dream she was now sitting in the catbird's seat of. So take that you cancer you! I couldn't finish the article at first because I knew where it was heading...and when I read that line about the blood in the middle of the race, I was glad to be in my cell without my other two cellies to witness as I pulled the blankets and sheets over my head to weep uncontrollably for this woman I've never met and for her friends and family who cheered her on in the worst of times (but you just didn't know that by her...and I can't take a cold without telling 100 people how bad I feel...) I finished up the story later that night when we were locked in tight--a mistake of course because my crying wasn't done as I knew it would come when the writer stitched me up into her death. But I had to do the silent eye scrunched cry...hoping these big bad convicts don't see me as weak.

Oh we're weak alright by Jill Costello's standard--gangs and the like trying for macho. No sir, that don't cut it. What's unbelievably macho is what came forth from this little woman. I hope this will serves as a wake-up for those of us think we got it so bad. We don't. Do you see? Love always...

later..dougie boy

I have found a key...

...to witnessing: helping others! When we do this with no ulterior motive, GOD opens way for the WAY.

It's really awesome to have seen this at work in my life since I've been in prison where ulterior motives is the norm (what!..get out of town!). No, for real my friends...just yesterday I was showing some men (if you must know.... a murderer and a drug dealer) the way to make a more excellent presentation for their college business class, and then wham! I was able to segue into CHRIST...the indeed and extreme of most EXCELLENT! So get on out there and do some good!...Psalm 103

later in love for all...dougie boy

"If the SON therefore shall...

...make you free, ye shall be free indeed". Personality never says "I can't," but simply absorbs and absorbs. Personality wants more and more. It is the way we are built. We are designed with a great capacity for GOD; and sin and our individuality are the things that keep us from getting at GOD. Do not say- O LORD, I suffer from wandering thoughts--DON'T suffer from wandering thoughts. Stop listening to the tyranny of your individuality and get emancipated out into personality. (Galatians 2:20)

     I am sitting here in prison dealing with any number of strange behaviors. Just yesterday I was earring into NPR (Patti-Sue's favorite as she drives about doing her goodly duties as wife/mother/caregiver/..and most excellent sister...and not because she sends me things..to include money...but this is definitely a high ranker!) anyway..I hear of this pastor from a big old church down in Georgia who finally came to the individual conclusion that GOD created him to be a homosexual. I was livid. The color of red all over me because this man whom they were interviewing was telling..I'll say..his church body about this "secret" he's been cuckolding (definitely no pun) for decades. Not a last week epiphany mind you where his unbridled lust may have overwhelmed him at the spur, but calculated choices that galloped all over the very WORD he has to professed to follow. The requirements of a Bishop are plain and clear...."a man is to be the husband of one wife..."(1Timothy 3:2)..there are countless others within the confines of the freedom GOD bestows on those wanting the accountability of Church overseers, but I picked this one not because CHRISTians the world over are notorious for lambasting folks with rocket theology, or some estranged pet doctrine, (we can be in ignorance to this malady..and we shouldn't because then our witness can be of no effect) but because the fact remains: One wife...a woman...a glorious creation of GOD'S for the purpose of HIS LOVE towards us men. And trust me here folks the hardness of this place begs for the softness of her femininity...certainly not her counterpart.

     Which brings me full circle to strangeness that I can do my best to explain, but won't have the impact as it did in real time because suspending disbelief here is often difficult..so many things just seem weird...Like standing in line to await my turn at the console at large to emit my musings. With 145 men and 3 keyboards it's kinda like the patience needed at your local DMV...I ain't been locked up that long! Next to me was a man that has been into hormone therapy out in the streets and has about a 34C cup working that keeps him not wanting for smokes or candy bars. I fall into my can't wait for the door of opportunity that GOD inevitable opens, and I might add often do not want to step through...I'm off to Tarshish like Jonah...but Nineveh is always on the waterfront...and sure enough the handle turns and in steps a man thinking he's a woman. He looks my way and says my name (rather coyly; a learned behavior of purported coquettishness that is supposed to be enticing) but I know he has testicles, so he cannot convince me otherwise..after all showers are here...and as much as he may want to think himself a gal his guyness is exposed. He continues in that fake flirting that, trust me here, brings some in. The saying in prison is "one lies down two get up". Ya gotta love how the coinage of double entendres get slaughtered in this camp. Anyway as I was saying (the digression as those whom know me...is whom correct?..I don't know for real!) This man asks me if I know  his name. All I know of him is "Valentino" (I can't make this stuff up). Surprisingly enough it is his real middle name. He tells me that his full name is "Rudolpho Valentino Pena"...and adds "doesn't that sound too macho?" At which point GOD has fully swung open the portal of truth for me to disclose up close and personal as our sinning gets what this man's dilemma seems to be...and make no mistake I got a pocket full of stones..I am after all typing this to you guys...and gals from prison.  I know the diff though...it's in the way you girls truly are...that wonderfulness I miss like a second skin. I say to Valentino, "well your parents had you being this type of man, and it seems that this butch roll you are divvying up for those of us who have pretended to forget that it was Adam and Eve, has you in derision as to your true identity." He's ruffled now for sure...because frankly a lot of men in here play his game...hetero and homosexual alike. And I'm not sure whom...(is this right..whom-who?) is the sicker of the two. We are parents...most of us anyway... and the WORD (yes here I go again!) warns us to "Train up a child in the way that he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it" Proverbs 22:6. Needless to say the conversation was not going as he had planned so I had the sudden urgency to press on...got that gene down pat! I told him that no amount of laws passed, societal acceptance, or hormonal therapy is going to eradicate your very maleness that GOD decided to grant you with. It's your choice to go that way...HE did give us that...limiting HIMSELF to our decision making processes...be they of the worldly intent, or of the JESUS Manifesto inspired teachings. We all go astray of these tenets laid out in HIS WORD...'tis why HE came for us..'tis why HE died for us...'tis why HE Loves after us...to win HIM...to know HIM...to be found in HIM. As Valentino cruised away, ( he had enough of my crap), I couldn't help silently praying for him...it's what compels us as CHRISTians....to come to the THRONE of GRACE for others who are hurting, confused, and alone..it is the locus of SCRIPTURE that begs our obedience...we ask of this from our own children to keep them from the wayward way..yet they will still choose wrongly...here I am to proof out that anomaly. But it is in the bounty of CHRIST'S LOVE for me that I have discovered HIM to be all that the SCRIPTURES say HE is.

        My sister is coming to visit me next week....I haven't seen her in 8 years. I want so desperately to win her over to JESUS because she has the epitome of benevolence coursing through her as if the CROSS was her WAY too. I can pray that I won't be too brash...not that she would allow me that...or that I will be effective enough to persuade her to relook at JESUS as my LORD and SAVIOR...or I can just soak up the trueness of fellowship that will reek of HIM through us both no matter my efforts...and that my friends is the GOSPEL spelt about in the renascence of the GLORY of HIS MAJESTY! If you are gonna preach, teach or reach for the GOSPEL, then be the GOSPEL. I love you guys!

later...dougie boy

One of the signs of aging...

....(at least in here..out there you have options).

If you have a wayward tooth, then one of the only solutions here is for you is to have it pulled. Especially if it is borderline abscessed. Today I was granted the thrill of being in the thrall of this activity, truly, madly and deeply..and love was not coming to town. As the dentist initially started giving the anesthesia (which I see as an oxymoron now--why should something that numbs hurt so bad?) I was remissed about a part of me that has been hanging in there for so long (at least on through Panama and the years of the military) the fights!...the flights!...the wrongs and the rights! The situ in here is such that once slated to see this elusive dental person, you better go lest you find yourself in a serious world of hurt and months from relief, yet an hour from tying the old floss around the cell door (they weigh in at 300lbs) and having your cellie slam it because you just can't muster up the courage to look it straight in the face (no pun mind you but I did say a mouthful).

So off I went this morning at 0630 hrs to pay the pied piper's wage of the prosaic prison price that can cost one much in the collection plate of pity. He's wrenching and I'm trying to act the big boy. I'm praying fervently, I might add, because this big boy stuff is a load of crap--especially when he stops yanking and twisting. I look at him and sweat is forming at his brow right above his nice trim teeth (yeah I can see all 32). I gander to the right and there with all her choppers is the diligent hygienist using that face shield now splattered with you know who's blood. I decide on a witty remark (what, me?..get out of town). Actually I quote Hemingway (I think...after all I was under a bit of duress) "What's wrong? Will it not gently into the night?"...coming out like whoommwmomweinnmskea? Still though the hygienist looks at me like, 'unbelievable! A convict quoting a classic'...as if we all are morons. I am--for being in this chair--at least the cell door would've been a one hitter quitter. This debacle is closer to loosing my bowels then all those banks I robbed.

The dentist takes leave to beeline to "the other room"...I'm hoping he didn't hate old Papa's line because he comes back with what looks like a pair of lineman's pliers...as a matter of fact it looks like the pair I took to the pawnshop 15 years ago! Oh the irony! That's like a double irony don't you think? Back to work and after another..say 17.45 minutes...I'm getting drenched now by his prolific water shedding running down the edges of his face shield and into my ..well mouth probably , but shirtfront for sure. My legs are doing their own thing now...that terrible tango of repressed pain while reclining in the chair of torture. Soon he withdraws his weapon of periodontal destruction and I go for Shakespeare. I stammer (everything is that now), "out damn spot, eh doc?" He gives me the withering look, that certainly says that I have done a goodly job in flossing and caring for my formidable little teethes. Still though it is only the hygienist that queries across her face the recognition that I have now moved on to Lady Macbeth in my terror packed stupor of tooth removal. Believe it or not it is only another 25 minutes before I hear the break...and I ain't talking 'bout coffee either...crack! What a horrible feeling! The tear leaking down my cheek is not for the pain--although deserving of it for sure--it is because a part of me is gone now...that is after he has to do some drilling ...splitting it into threes he says in order to facilitate a more easier removal. I'm thinking about putting his head in the cell door location by the way, but my violent days are behind me, and mostly I am grateful as he plucks out the remaining pieces of an otherwise salvageable tooth had I been in a dental chair out there where you guys are.

As I sit up to wipe away the blood from my face, there is an inmate whose been lying in the chair next to me all the while with a look of abject terror on his face because he's next. Perhaps though he didn't listen to his father... he told me you don't have to floss your teeth, just the ones you want to keep...an adage that went through the best of times and the worst of times in a very short time span today. I got up and asked the dentist if he ever saw "The Marathon Man" with Dustin Hoffman and the Angel of Death Josef Mengali as a deranged German Gestapo dentist...he replied  with a pretty good impersonation of a sinisterly implication that yes he remembered that movie...So there you go..from Hemingway to Shakespeare to Hollywood.

As I hobbled from medical, GOD reminded me that losing that tooth, albeit tragic on its own merit, can't compete with those whom are losing limbs in wars, minds to disease, loved ones to divorce...and so in HIS infinite compassion pointed me up to think on HIM, and all I have to look forward to once rid of such corruptibleness as this old flesh. PRAISE HIM for that always. Beside he says if that foot offend thee cut it off, better to enter in halt and lame....

later..dougie boy

Softly and gently...

...JESUS is calling...calling to carry you home...won't you all come with?

love as always...dougie boy...it's getting late

And the subject is...

...major frustration! I am having to pull on all the resolve CHRIST has wrought in me in order to weather this most recent storm...but! HE is the storm driver....PRAISE HIM!

Prison life is all about routine. As a matter of fact there are a couple of men that are receiving this very message that have been well acquainted to such a thing and they are going strong...doing what is neccessary to stay out of these dastardly confines. I want to vent here so bear with me...not too much as I am low on the computer funds...not "poor-mouthing" either...just fact relating, so keep all your millions....haha). To the chase of my existence my friends...

"Go ye therefore, and teach(disciple) all nations." (Matthew 28:19) JESUS CHRIST did not say, 'Go and save souls' (the salvation of souls is the supernatural work of GOD). The great essential of the missionary is that he remains true to the call of GOD, and realizes that his one purpose is to disciple men and women to JESUS. There is a passion (as my sister will agree) that does not spring from GOD, but from the desire to make converts to our point of view. The challenge to the missionary does not come on the line that people are difficult to get saved, that backsliders are difficult to reclaim, that there is a wadge of callous indifference, but along the line of his/her own personal relationship to the MASTER.

"Believe ye that I am able to do this?" Do I know the RISEN LORD? Do I know the power of HIS INDWELLING SPIRIT? If I take up any other method I depart altogether from the methods laid down by our LORD..."All power is given unto ME...., therefore go ye."...much love out there guys!

later...dougie boy

Hello my friends...

....That word is often chucked around in our society as a relational comfort for us seeking to increase our social networking that identifies as up and coming. But for real denizens of this endearing appellate, it is way beyond that superficial reach. JESUS said (there he goes again with that JESUS stuff! Ain't it cool?), "Greater love hath no man than this but to lay his life down for his friend." You have got to be kidding me..die for somebody that I have conveniently chummed around with...buddied up to in the office gossip...played a round of golf with...(How I didn't want to go there!). This thing called friendship is serious.

I have been in prison for quite sometime now, and the facts are these: some stay on with a man for a few years, some ditch him immediately, some wait until he is close to getting out...and (trust me here I have seen this strange anomaly take place often enough to tell on it)...women. I'm only able to testify as to where I've been--an old saying: You can't teach what you don't know, you can't preach what you don't show, and you can't lead where you don't go... Anyways these gals will desert a guy initially, and then (we're talking years now, and even for some cases, a decade or two) will pick up on communicating back to a guy that they at once referred to as a friend. It's weird. But at times I think it's okay to do. I mean what's a girl to do? Well if she is married to said offender then her vows should make it clear. Now of course if this guy was an abuser of her (or as I know from these men's rap sheets) her children, then he deserves every bit of alienation coming his way as if Ray Bradbury were his next of kin. But if not then sticking it out through the worse side of where better left off is the standard.

Unfortunately all the societal pangs that encroach upon one braving the storm virtually mate-free prove too much for the woman...and off she'll go to unhinged pastures. Which is her decision to make. I certainly can't fill up those shoes with my reckoning. But still, I must say...stay away! Don't come calling when release is imminent because now hopefully this man is cleaned up...prayed up...sobered up..and in the best cases, educated up. You want the guy who truly loved you but lost his way. And you left him swinging. Sex they say is overrated, and some think if a man hasn't "had any" in so long a time that he'll be putty in your hands, well take heed that I am here to say that Joseph had it going on when he fled from the likes of Potiphar's wife who wanted to sex him up for her own good pleasure. I can hope that I, too, will have in me the intestinal fortitude to have learned two important lessons while languishing here..and these are to have learned to walk truthfully to those whom I regard as friends (be they family or foreign) and to walk away from those who are not.

later...dougie boy

I can't PRAISE HIM enough!

It's true! HE has given me this incredible opportunity here in prison to do the one thing I won't be able to do in heaven...witness!

True faith is having confidence in what HE has done for you. Often we will wallow about thinking..."But I find it hard to believe that a troubled, failing CHRISTian like me could be precious to GOD. HE has to be disgusted with me because my life is so up-and-down. I've got problems I can't seem to get through. I believe HE still loves me, but surely HE is disappointed in me." What is GOD'S  motivation for wanting to deliver you from whatever ails thee? (Sorry sometimes I get all King Jamesy!) Is it because you have done something to appease HIM? Have you increased your prayer time? Do you spend more hours reading Scripture? All this is good. But Isaiah had the TRUE revelation: "since thou wast precious in MY sight, thou hast been honorable, and I have loved thee...fear not..for I am with thee."

Yesterday I missed a medical "call-out" because I lost a bit of focus on the routine of this incarcerated life because of the recent riot. One man did die that we know of so far. His nickname was "Sleepy"...and as I witnessed to him over these years he seemed opened to what the WORD had to say, but the la vida loca that drew him in was too strong an influence...and it cost him his life. At least that is the info I have gottten so far as to the fall-out of that horrid event. I digress to pay homage to those trapped in that gangland garbage. I just hate it with a perfect hatred carved out of losing a friend to whom had a chance if perhaps given one more day... Tell someone today about JESUS will you? You may be the last ditch effort by GOD to reel them in...after all how did you find out about CHRIST?  It wasn't from the crib that's for sure. Someone told you!

Okay now back to the missed call-out from medical...around here there are 1800 men to deal with, so when they schedule you for medical or dental, you want to get there! But I was distracted since the riot and the moving to a new unit, and lost focus on the daily ritual of checking the sheet that has the call-outs. This is by far no excuse to the hierarchy here in prison management, so I got what is called "written up". Been in prison for 13 years of my life, and barring defending myself physically I have never had a write-up. (Oh sure now I want to abide by the rules! Where did we get this guy?) Anyhow I had to go to the Lt's office to get served. Take into consideration that many see you walking that dreaded lone stretch to the "bench" where you sit and wait for the Lt. to come at his whim to handle you up. Many chortles and cahoots followed to see the "preacher man" getting his due. Oh the stones! Still though I was undeterred because I serve a MIGHTY GOD from whence (gotta love that word!) the Lt. gets his empowerment.

So I sat there and the wind was kicking off the mountain side, biting and howling as I watched 2 others show up to answer with an excuse riddled alibi in order to stave off the always inevitable commissary restriction/ phone loss/ e-mail-ban. (oh no!) that comes from the bench participants--even loss of "good time"--the worse by far punishment for us aching to get out as soon as possible...and that'd be everybody. These guys plopped down to exhaling of breath and posture defeat even before speaking up to say what they were here for. Radios is what they had in their possession that did not have their prison number on them...what are you kidding me?...a black market in here? get outta town! No it's true...men lose in gambling (again in here?) and instead of losing something far more valuable...use your imagination...they give of personal possessions in order to keep their more personal possessions. So guys buy these already engraved things with another's number and end up inevitably getting caught...some just can't get enough of that...I was one likened unto this behavior, 'tis why I have a pocket full of stones.

I go off into my "old school" advice...it's free and these men are 23 and 25 years of age, so they partly are attentive. In here you must give sway to those of us that have done enough time to saddle up to Big Ben and give him a run for his money. I tell them to be truthful...tell the ugly truth instead of that already manufactured beautiful lie that you are in no way gonna get by with. At first they were in the bucking mode as if the rodeo was right up their alley, but soon as I discoursed on what could happen to them further (not farther...as it were in increment of severity), if they were to get nabbed (pun all day for sure) for lying as well the contraband radio. I also let them know that I could aid in their up-coming radio-free days (not to be confused with the Woody Allen story) with an extra of my own which I keep for times such as these. Then I asked them to join me in a little prayer to move things in a GODLY fashion...amazing how receptive folks are when in the straits that dire allows free reign. Then the Lt. finally got with us one at a time, letting both of my bench buddies go with radio in hand (a first I tell ya that I've seen) and then a brief encounter with me.

As I didn't feign any ignorance...just told him I'm guilty...he was left with nothing to question me on. Off I went...still write-up free...ain't GOD cool...

later...dougie boy

"And these are they which are sown...

...among thorns; such as hear the WORD. and the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in, choke the WORD, and it become unfruitful." (Mark 4:18-19)

You hear a lot of people able to quote certain passages of Scripture...even folks who never read the Bible are able to do so. Perhaps we can chalk this phenom up to the lore, or wives' tales, or even colloquialism of society. But the TRUTH of this matter lies in the fact that HIS WORD is alive and powerful; speaking through whomever HE chooses. Just ask somebody today to complete, shall we say, famously known Biblical sayings such as "you know what they say...(my old man use to tell me that there were two types of people in this world...those that said there were two types of people...and all the rest)...money is the root of...? Trust me here and know that "they" will complete it for you if you give time for the lead-in as if you were forgetting your lines in a stage play. Yet it is not money that is the root of all evil, it is the love of money that does you in. Check out 1 Timothy 6:10. It's a similar error if we can use such an easy application to something as all powerful as GOD'S Word that cuts to the quick all our foolishness. As well to purport to be  upright and stellar examples of our society at large, and see that people will about what the truth will do...it will...? Not set you free as so many try to speak it into existence. John 8:32 tells us that it is "..KNOWING the TRUTH that sets you free..." not just the TRUTH.

You know my Mom in her hey-day (which could put "The Fonz" from Happy Days out to pasture), had all these little axioms such as "the Cobbler's children got no shoes"...of course her grammar I have taken liberty with and for sure she would correct me if she knew...I have, over the years of studying the WORD here in prison, discovered the Spiritual TRUTH hiding (lurking for some), within the bounty of this old-timey maxim (I'm into words that have x's in 'em today..haha)...we can skirt around the Bible denying it's TRUTHS to fit our boxed-out existence--or just feign plain ignorance--but it will discover you..keep at it and see...

later ...dougie boy

"My Kingdom is not of this world" John 18:36

The great enemy to the LORD JESUS CHRIST in the present day is the conception of practical work that has not come from the New Testament, but from the systems of the world in which endless energy and activities are insisted upon, but no private life with GOD. We have to get rid of the plague of the spirit of the religious age in which we live. The central thing about the kingdom of JESUS CHRIST is a personal relationship to HIMSELF, not public usefulness to men. You have no idea of where GOD is going to engineer your circumstances...but if where you are just now is utilized for soaking up HIS word by being spent in getting rooted and grounded on the unpractical line, you will remain true to HIM whatever happens.

Mostly these teachings from me are culled out of the various devotions I read through in a day's energy wheeling about this prison compound. It's not the stoplight life that the majority have that's for sure, yet it is yielding up HIS marvelousness around me.

I had opportunity to witness in the "store" here yesterday evening after my Accounting 1 class from which I am struggling--could be since this class is taught by a banker professor that his idea of accounting and mine were vastly different as I relayed to him to the raucous laughter from he and the class (I love making folks use that awesome sense of humor bestowed upon us by the CREATOR) his being the lining up of debits on the right, and credits on the left...with a plethora of double accounting, adjustments, accruals, and an assortment of other technical journal ledgering that had me as confused as the day I was shot by a drug dealer whom I was convinced didn't have any bullets in the big old 357. I told him that my idea of accounting (especially after he relates how the bank virtually pillages most through interest bearing usury) was so much easier. He in the bank has the money which I wanted without all the hubbub of approval...my methods of withdrawal, although not unique, still cut through all the red tape. Of course, as always, the decisions to follow through with such outlandish felonious ideas does have its drawbacks. 'Tis why you could be at a stoplight and I am here. The reaping and sowing that Galations 6:7&8 speaks volumes to me now. I should've tried the paperwork route...

I love you guys and am being called to work as I finish this up. What a blessing it is for me to be able to write these blogs/bloggetes/ bloggites to you all. I'll explain later how I've come up with these little blogger things..gotta go!

later...dougie boy

"And greater works...

...than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father."

Prayer does not fit us for the grater works; prayer is the greater work. Never allow the thought- "I am of no use where I am"; because you certainly can be of no use where you are not. What an astonishment it will be to find, when the veil is lifted, the souls that have been reaped by you, simply because you had been in the habit of taking your orders from JESUS CHRIST.

There is no fog out this morning and I am looking forward to our first APAP (Accountability Partners Against Pornography) meeting in over five weeks. PRAISE HIS HOLY NAME!! I love getting together with men who are on the path of change wrought about by my SAVIOR. As our prison life has begun to resemble a more methodical and patterned cookie cutter way as its design was intended...standstill society as it were...I am pleased that we as CHRISTian folk are happy to see it! Even though a type of droning can set up as if bees were following us about, it allows for the "normal" movements to be done so we can meet and share our faith. Acts 2 is all about this WAY from which many get brought into the fold.

I was checking out "JESUS Manifesto", a book just out recently and found a most excellent help within its writer's bounty of discovery. It had to deal with all the mystery surrounding GOD'S behaviors as... well...GOD. Quoting Oxford scholar G. B. Caird..(nothing I like better than to quote big time known college grads..haha) "We must know GOD or perish. But unless we know GOD as ultimate mystery, we do not know GOD at all." To the person who walks in the Spirit, paradox, mystery, and uncertainty propel him forward instead of bogging him down. G. K. Chesterton (here I go again!) put it this way: "The riddles of GOD are more satisfying than the solutions of man."

-----------------------

Okay folks, I have just returned from the rec yard. It's funny how through the coolness of writing venues we can get up from the desktop, laptop, or tabletop, and be out of pocket from it for days, weeks and even months for those of us suffering from the perrenial "writer's block"...then pick up as if we never changed seats. But I'll let you know we had a most excellent group meeting this morning...men sharing how they weathered the 2 week lockdown. Some getting through it unscathed as far as physical damage was concerned, but most experiencing the impact of emotional, mental, and the big daddy of all...spiritual growth, which is always a neat thing when we are able to peep see the wonderment of how HE engineers our circumstances, testing the resolve HE places in us for a time such as this. Good men these APAP guys...I love them and ask the same from you all. Can you pray for this for us?..thanks

...later dougie boy

Things are Trying...

..to return to normal. Although I'm not sure what one would call that in this environment.

The prison, in its effort to quell the continued uprisings of the particular gangs that perpetuated our last 2 riots, have put all into a modified type of segregation. Just yesterday we watched as the goon squad (not that I want to call the men and women who are basically here to protect those of us who are truly striving for change, that seemingly insulting phrase...but there you go...some parts of me are ingrained with the institutionalization that sets up house in its malicious effort to not rid me of all that is the bane of my existence in the rooms where CHRIST wants in to do the 360, and not the standard jailhouse 180 that has many contributing to the revolving door of retention. Okay you know about my digressing already so I won't ask for your patience...) the folks with the riot gear in tow...( see how quickly I learn!)...stormed over to our newly manufactured confinement...prison inside of prison...(look Ma aren't I the cat's meow) because the men in there were tearing apart the cells that were supplying them with the meagerness befitting their rebellion-- chomping off not only the hand, but gobbling up what little is left up to the shoulder.

Ripping off the sinks to cause flooding...they think anyway....shut-off valves obviously escaping (no pun) their understanding of how America builds and prepares itself for such childishness (1Corinthians 13:11). It is ingrained in our system of justice. Be it as flawed as one may think, we are the only sheriff this world has got to corral such demonized debauchery. And to think I am one decision away from landing in it with both feet firmly planted in that, or you name it, sin. CHRIST came for those men as well. So offer up those prayers my friends for the men and women who are entrenched in the very activities that are blinding the minds of the children of disobedience. Could be the next evangelist is bearing the brunt of change even as I write this in that cellblock where I'm certain the cacophony is ear-splitting and mind-boggling to comprehend...prison is loud as heck!

Lock up those locked up and they are given over to the proclivity to believe all has been stripped from them so the worst is being done...why not kick it up to the high gear of resistance? Soon though, the weaker of the sort...there's always that, will give in and either rat out those perpetuating (i.e.leaders) these atrocities, (a broken wooden broom was used to gouge out eyes during that last foray into prison rioting) or try to rid themselves of the moniker they got tattooed all over their bodies...'gee how do they know I'm in a gang?'  So much is going on around here that it is a constant to keep vigil of your religion less you start tearing it up in the same fashion. GOD grant me the serenity...as it goes for some.

On a more lighter note..if such occurrence were possible in this camp of miscreants...( I've been one it's true)...I was able to go to work and carry out a few regular details for the Safety Department from whence (I love using that word!) I work. Checking on the fire extinguishers we got on this compound...168 of 'em (I know because I was able to develop a program to check them all once a month). Anyway I was walking around...quite the privilege at this juncture I might add...doing my thing when all of a sudden I looked up to the "hills from whence (two times in one blog...gotta love it) cometh my help"and the trees are in grand splender exposing GOD'S palette from...(I can't do the threepeat)...where artists over eons have tried failingly to emulate HIS broad strokes of color never quite getting it the shade or hue that would positively identify it with HIS signature. But giving their all as some could say gazing upon Monet's "Waterlilies"...I'm guessing that it was he..surely I know Warhol's Campbell's's soup can though so give a convict some credit. After the grandeur of the Fall foliage, I was contemplating the great scheme of things, sure now I want to think on my actions and where they may take me...I was overwhelmed with the emotional impact that perhaps GOD will keep me here to witness. With a little over 13 years left I was kinda hoping for HIM to get me freed up a bit ahead of time..by say 13 years, three months, and sixteen days worth... (but who's counting?)

I got a friend recently released who is struggling because he has started to engage in sex outside of marriage. I know this trap all too well. The spirit of harlotry inundates our society at large, and it is just the ticket used to trip up many a strong man in CHRIST. The old saying of "liquor, ladies, and lucre" comes straight from 1 John 2. I will attest that it is a man's stubbornness in recognizing fornication as the numero uno lead in to these other vices that put more work in then an anvil in a steel shop.

Do I want out of prison? You betcha! Does GOD want me here as a light in such dark confines? Sometimes I pray it isn't so. But in the casting of our crowns at HIS feet one GLORIOUS day, if I could have a few convicted felons along for the ride...perhaps one of whom was converted on the last of my remaining sentence, then as the CHRISTian rock group that sports the name, leave me here LORD for "Who am I" to determine where it is best fitting for me to serve but YOU. All my glory, all my honor, all my praise to you JESUS for you love me ...the Bible tells me so...and how awesome is that?

...later..dougie boy

There is a blog that will change me...

On September 23rd I was out on the rec yard here in prison playing handball. It's close to 1800 hrs (6:00pm for non-military types). I'm playing with"Peanut"...aptly named for knocking off (robbing) the Planters factory that he was employed many years ago. No matter how long ago the things you did out there, in here they seem to attach monikers as if a jacket welded to you was easier to slough off. Our opponents are two Hispanic men...good-natured fellows that have a wicked game of handball. "Kiwi" for smuggling birds and "Coffee Bean" for sticking up Starbucks all over California. Me? I got a whole bunch of 'em..."Preacher boy"(my love of witnessing for CHRIST), "Magic man"(previous adeptness with being a magician on the streets..my ex-wife telling all who'll listen that my best trick was disappearing), true dat, "Coach"(a persistent fervor for all that is softball), "Dougie Fresh"(not a rapper, but I do sing...certainly not well), "Safety Man"(it's where I work here)...there's a few more that we'll get to later...this digressing is quite a habit of mine please bear with me.

These guys are beating Peanut and I pretty handily as we go into the fourth round. Out of the corner of my eye I catch some men huddling up over at a corner of the fence. This is not too unusual if it were not for the fact all were wearing the steel-toed government issued boots, and we're in the rec yard where sneakers are the norm. Several were being a shield from the eye in the sky for a few which were digging up, like a chicken scratching out corn, something catching sun in that all too familiar glinting promising itself to be soon imbedded in a man's side, eye to a hope that he would die...shanks. Since we have a move on (an activity where if you want to go somewhere in prison now's the time) in about 5 minutes; I plan on taking leave from the rec yard...if I can get out of here.

Then all of a sudden as if called for a long awaited visit, Kiwi and Coffee Bean walk off from our match and head over to where other steel-toed men are gathering like those ominous clouds scudding about and dropping out the fang of a tornado funnel. Peanut and I look at each other with the sudden realization of what we know is fixing to happen. Snatching up our stuff we make a beeline to the exit gate...and I don't mean a slight jog...full out sprint less we get caught behind enemy lines. The Sword of Damocles is just as tenuous in here as it ever was back in the medieval times.

Our main objective is to get back to the unit, into the shower, visit the "storeman"...so named because he stocks up on things that one runs out of before making the once a week trek to commissary...usury has got nothing on these guys! But you know that if things are going to get to  "jumping off"..(I'm using these quotes because I'm not sure how prison savvy some may be from the faux vernacular that tv land brings your way)...then a lockdown is imminent. Plus along the way to the unit you do your convict duty by letting many know that things are heading to the south quickly (denoting that the Mexican rivals are at it...again) giving heads up to those in the know. When a seasoned veteran of this tattooed landscape makes an effort to give you a privy look into that hindsight you'll be regretting once ensconced in that 80 square feet..with no coffee...no "zoozoo and wham whams"...(sweets)...then you should take heed to the utmost...we usually have a feel for these types of things.

I was able to get my shower, pick up an extra bag of coffee...thank GOD...oatmeal pies, honey buns, a couple bags of M&M's--it was all he had left or I would've bought 'em all!--and then word started coming in droves through our officer's walkie talkie..."secure the compound! secure the compound! all inmates get down on the ground now!...get on the ground now!"...followed by the loud explosion of flash grenades.

Now the inmates are frantically searching for a safe haven. A prison riot is one scary scene let me tell ya...so many variables from which you can get hurt in a bad way--from convicts and guards alike. After all the guards are outnumbered and just as freaked out as...or even more so...I'll go with more so--especially those that are absolutely bereft of compassion for the prisoner's plight...and some prisoners deserve it it's true...but picking and choosing should be taught from the perspective of training prison personnel. That way if something of this magnitude comes your way as a guard, and you find yourself cornered by...say 150 men that you have made it a point of making it more miserable for all along, then the sphincter muscle will get more of a workout than you would've thought possible...and that picture is rather ugly. Some institutions are well prepared to handle these outbursts of gangland strife..hence the exploding of grenades...but to the credit of fighting men everywhere some men are just hard to put down.. and we got our share I can tell you that much. Once I witnessed a man getting stabbed repeatedly...and I'm into double digits here...but he kept coming, dying in the arms of medical staff only after choking out his assailant. Such is the eye beholden to things once looked upon can never take away from memory.

Soon we were in our cells, with the men stranded out on the rec yard whether part of the gang war or not....hence the sprinting by Mr. Planters and I...my cellie didn't make it back...I almost feel a bit responsible because in my effort for self preservation...so contrary to CHRIST in my life but there you go...meism overriding Himism...I missed seeing if he were in earshot. It's a little before 1900 hrs and I am wondering after seeing (my cell faces the rec yard and although a ways off)  all the flashes of the crowd controlling grenades--as well the whole population of the guards running to the rec yard--that  this will probably be a good clue that this was a doosey. One to ensure a lengthy stay inside our 80 square feet. At about 2230 (10:30pm) they started bringing the men back...at least those whom were ambulatory. It was being done according to ethnicity..see Matthew 24:7...it says, (because the Bible is alive don't you know)"that nation will rise against nation..." and this word "nation" is where "ethnos" or the more common appellate: ethnicity derives its meaning.

My cellie...Sam...made it back at 0103 in the am of course. I was watching for him because he's shared these years of incarceration inside this cell, and you learn to look out for one another as much as possible...except of course if you are running for your life to get off the rec yard (still a stigma of my selfishness in retrospection). In he comes with all the info about what went down, further confirming what is fixing to happen to us over the ensuing weeks. He was glad for the extra bag of coffee..my handball opponent "Coffee Bean" won't be that ever again...  Sam tells me as he was involved in the thick of things...like espresso so one said later.

The weeks I speak of are over now as I sit here in another unit because they had to make an entire unit a lockdown community due to lack of space for all the malefactors involved...stretchers aplenty needed to clear away the human fall-out of little minds in big boy bodies...the malevolence meteing out its revenge as was its intention. Lost a few folks...not to death, but to maiming and transferring of these men to other places where the Bureau of Prisons hope to quell their thirst for violence by relocation. But their bedfellows of badness are wherever they send them--until change comes individually, there will be no salve in Gilead. I am now (as well as Sam) in a three man cell...5 extra square feet to accommodate another man.

The area is claustrophobic at best, but the reaping and sowing of GOD'S laws will not be denied. My poor decision making, which muddled about my mind as to what bank to rob back in the day, is the mainstay of my current living arrangements. I never want to eat another bologna sandwich for the rest of my life! They kept shoving  them in our little "beanshoot"..the slot cut out of our cell door. Oscar Meyer..I hate you!

One of the castles in this particular lockdown, (I always look for where they are due to the clouds that so often are brought into my periphery, begging the epic storms that were the rec yard as of late) was the opportunity to witness to Sam and I's new cellie..."Scar"...you could guess I'm sure once meeting him face to boxcutter from his ear to the corner of his mouth face as where his particular moniker originates. But it doesn't stop there, I can attest to, as removing his shirt to climb topside, he looked as if a gaggle of pixie sticks were strewn across his torso...both front to back. He's done 17 "calenders" and is gonna go back to the streets in 6 months.

Many things have changed since the now 35 year-old man was the then 18-year-old boy. Guess what he didn't quite have a grasp of as he no longer wants to deal in the atrocities that brought him here for so long, and that have ran the map-filled welts and trenches etched into his body? He has little knowledge of the saving grace of JESUS. Am I here for him in that capacity? Did GOD in HIS omniscient put him where at the last leg of a boatload of incarceration could give him the cure from what ailed him for years. I can hope so because he is very receptive to listening to all that the MASTER has taught me and is still bringing it ten-fold. Sam helps too as he has cast aside the hip-hop culture he was trapped in and, is himself a startling example of transformation done CHRIST style.

On a more somber note to wrap this incredibly long blog up...One of the men who was transferred over here with us has been struggling with a mental disorder that the lockdown wreaked havoc upon. Since we lived with him, as I'm sure all can testify to the quirks of a family's blacksheep...we got 'em in flocks..we were able to help him stay out of trouble in our unit. But once they let us out after two weeks, he was really in a mess and I dropped the ball as the men who were not aware of how bad off he was, starting laughing and making jokes at him (as I said earlier some men in here deserve it a whole lot more than others). I was so caught up in trying to not only get to the phone, laundry, shower (and of course I had to blog you all) that I saw what he was dealing with, ignored it, and soon they called in the goon squad to take him out. I should've done the thing that was anti-Doug and pro-Jamie...cuz now I won't get to witness to him again...perhaps ever. It was a lesson twice plucked that will forever be in the reels of me as I look around at what I am striving to be and what I used to be..as the projector life rolls on.

Okay folks this is quite a bit I know, and I sure appreciate those who take time out to pray for those men hurt, those who did the hurting, and those of us who could've done a little better during this crisis other than the all about mine mindset which is overtaking this society by storm, hook and crook...literally in some aspects. There, as always, remains a plethora of things, be it oddities or just a stretch of normalcy  that I leave out only to remember it as I lay in my cell...having to weep more quietly into the night as I have another soul in there that might take it wrongly that I have this love for all. Last night it was for Jamie because I didn't go to him when I should've...perhaps tonight will be free from that ...it's hard to say..still early enough for things to get rocking and rolling. I pray it stays as calm as possible.

agape furnished love fashioned from above...

later...dougie boy

This Whole "About Me" Thing...

....although only GOD knows me better, I'll try to do it up for the blogites.

First I want to compose a type of pro/con...let's not be punny with the appellate.."con"...I felt this would be a unique way of seeing what was what, what has been, what could be...


 PROS                                                        CONS          

-little boy                                                   -thief
-brother                                                    -manipulator/abuser of little bros
-son                                                          -dishonorer of parents
-athlete                                                      -bully
-entrepreneur at 11                                   -used skills as magician to steal
-played sports                                           -got addicted  
    like nobody's business...                            like nobody's business...
-football/baseball/soccer/                          -stealing/pornography/sex/
-basketball/hockey/wrestled/                    -skipping school/marijuana/alcohol/
-volleyball/swimming/diving                      -drugs/cocaine/crack/gambling
-postal worker(imagine that)                     -armed bank robber
-painter/carpenter/                                    -inmate/felon/convict
     small business owner                           -non-believer...

thus ends what I used to be...

...and now as for those not knowing who delivered me from such derision I stand before you (well actually sitting) as a born again believer in the LORDSHIP of JESUS CHRIST. I mean look at all my crap! Who could deliver me from such shame, humiliation, and lostness? HE has taken time out to get to work on me when I called upon HIM...jail housing some could purport...that's okay to do...I've been in that true...but now after almost a decade behind bars I have seen HIM do marvelous things through me...around me...within me...without me. I know full well that a person is not what they do for a job, yet it is how we act on that job...how we act with our loved ones..how we treat the stranger..the dark ones..the light ones..the little ones...the big ones..this is what makes us who we ultimately become. And CHRIST taught me in a mighty WAY where these interactions of ours on the daily grind prove whom we believe in.

So "about me" is this and much more..I hope to peak your interest to look see what the TRUE SAVIOR of this world is all about ...HE'S the one for me.

later in agape love..dougie boy...aka...prisoner unchained

I Am a Blogger

I was moving about this compound contemplating when to blog next. Since it costs us to get out e-mail, I was sucking wind as I had no coin left in my account to reach out to you guys. But who knows that sisters are awesome, and mine is one of a kind...I'll argue that point with the best of those whose semantics can't compete with a convict who has spent the better part of this past ten years parrying words around with those who've talked themselves out of the most heinous situations imaginable. So bring your best!..haha. She sent me enough to get back on this blogging phenom..and some books to read to boot. I think I've read close to 100,000 books to date ...not counting, mind you, although most spend massive amounts of their sentence doing just that. As for me, I'll pass on the exact date of my release with all the computations running about for good time deductions, purported law changes, some "friend" on the outside that I may want to tell on (I ain't got no worries there because I did all my stuff by myself).

So... My cellie and I were doing a crossword--New York Times--we're pretty good at them most times and it passes a few moments...events that we line out to get by the loneliness (not spoken of too often because we could get the girly moniker--besides he never does. I'll break down once in a while, but it'll be late at night when the felons are off the beaten path of hurt by sleeping away in dreamland the things that we don't like to confront). Okay as I have told you before, I am a notorious digressor...and maker upper of words too! The crossword puzzle...convicts are extremely good at the following (save committing ludicrous acts of stupidity that get us here) chess, scrabble, dominos, any card games you care to bring, sudukos..and I already mentioned semantics. Thing is board games of any ilk are played in here as if the very compound was a huge Milton Bradley circus.

Oh yeah, did I add fighting? Some are good, but can you be good at something bad? How about that little oxymoron? We had one today over in C-block that started atop the two story berthing area and managed to scrabble itself on down to the grassy knoll where it was transplanted from Dallas...Zapruder and all. But these guys didn't really want to hurt each other..if so the fracas never would've left the top tier..unless one of them left it...in flight that is. All we got here is concrete and steel, so if you get to rolling around, you're going to get hurt...whether you win or not. I saw a guy get stabbed 9 times with a pencil by a homosexual--those guys can fight! I mean I think some of these men in here forget when you stood next to a homosexual in a strip search what they really had down there..wake up!

Okay...back to the crossword. Here we were stuck on the whole right side (a first for us professionals). Everyone in here was a pro at something. Me? I was a pro at screwing up. After much frustration in trying to fit words in where clearly they didn't belong. I kept going back to the clue of what grandparents do over their grandchildren. I knew it had to be "dote", but only three boxes existed for the answer...and the funny thing about the other clues was that they, too, were missing almost to the number one letter. We were flummoxed I tell ya...that is until instead of blaming it on the maker of this particular conundrum, I flipped the paper over in disgust of our collective ignorance, and soon realized that it wasn't a collective dumbness. I owned it all because I folded out the last column of boxes when getting the prepping done for the event passing endeavor. We pretty much solved it from there with, mind you, havin' to endure a thousand yard convict stare from my cellie...surpassing the stages of idiot right into moron..skipping savant altogether. But! We were able to get some time tucked away...so we got  that going for us...

later....dougie boy

The Truth will...

..set you free. Most folks can repeat that phrase with the aplomb of an accomplished Bible scholar. However, when you search out this passage..John 8:32...you will find that the essence of it is not the actual Truth that is doing the setting free of the prisoner in bondage to some wickedness replete in all of us, instead we must realize that GOD sent HIS SON to prove out the Truth. So no matter how much I can memorize this little axiom of both the worldly folk , and those of the religious ilk, it will remain an old wive's tale until I recognize it for its True worth.

What is that?

I'm glad you asked...GOD'S TRUTH has never changed and never will. We can spend a whole bunch of time skirting about it (see Hebrews 10:26-27) and still not seeing it. The facts are these: The TRUTH stands off by itself and will not set you free just because you see it, or recognize it from afar. It is only when we draw near enough to it that it'll eviscerate all what we believed it to be in the first place. Residing within the actual application of this TRUTH is the freeing up of what my restrictive senses has grounded me down in. Do you see? Until I accept to walk this WAY, then I stay incarcerated..no pun there folks...to my own whimsical notion of some purported nuance that I chuck around the feel good about me places that in truth have no good feeling at all.

The NFL has kicked off here in prison. The cacophony I am enduring right now to type this out is an enduring testament that if you can't do the time, then you won't hear that dime being dropped on you.

I was sitting next to a man in Church service today as we were getting ready to take The LORD'S SUPPER in..which we do once a month...and I leaned over to ask if he knew what we were getting ready to do. He professed no...which is a word used a lot in here (no I didn't do it...no I didn't know she was 16...no I didn't shoot those 45 people) I then went on to explain as the inmated ushers passed out the crackers to the crackers (which has been a running joke in here as well) and the grape juice (and yes once someone replaced it with hooch which made for quite the rollicking service)...anyway as I was telling him about JESUS (what me?  Get out of town!) He listens intently...I'm thinking..."got me one!" And then a most extraordinary thing happens... I stop my dissertation (what me? Get out of town!) on the likes of this HOLY COMMUNION..and ask if he has a study Bible. He says "No but I sure could use one." Since Ni River has as recently as last week told me to put an order in I am agog with it at this point and want to hug him and say "Yes I can do it!" But I remain in my seat...jumping up suddenly to grab another man around here is not such a good idea if ya know what I mean...and if ya don't then I can't help you there.

I pull out my pen and a scrap bit of paper from my Bible, and as I reach over to give it to him, I notice all the tattoos up and down his arm displaying out the colors from which are his gang affiliations--along with a few RIP's with the dates along side--and here I am probably resembling the white cop that busted him--or more along the lines of the white judge that sentenced him to all his years--and make no mistake he owns up to them in our short version of the digest that becomes what you know of each other behind the razor wire ...some embellished truths (well you know...lies...) which we tell each other to puff up our lowly life esteem that got steamrolled somewhere along the way when we thought manhood existed in who you had sex with or robbed or killed or swindled...go ahead and fill in the blank for whatever may push your little piece of construction equipment from the lofty perch of never being in here. That's okay we all must have a bit of that to face that man in the mirror.

So as I was saying..he writes down his name and number..not the cell type although we do have one, you just can't fit it in your pocket or purse..unless it's an 80 or so square foot one! As the service comes to a close and he hands me back my pen (which is cool beans because I've lost about 274 at last count by "lending out the little coveted Bic...and at 50 cent..not the rapper the cost...I am carefully monitoring not to break the record of 296 lost pens in a ten year "bit"..pronounced "bid" by most because it's cool like to slur off the t into a d. Practice it for a while with me...) I can't help but hear him as he thanks me (another record I'm setting only in the opposite direction...it's amazing the ingratitude dwelling here..get out of town!) And then that's when it happens...the extraordinary thing I was getting to before digression became my blogging lifestyle...maybe I am on this earth just to get this guy his study Bible so he can read about WHO saved me from the blood, guts, and the beer. That would be my family's long time assumption that maybe GOD wanted me in here for this man...in not giving them the satisfaction of that possible TRUTH working in my life, then perhaps I, too, am ducking and dodging the True freedom...only now it would be at the expense of another. I certainly can't go through the rest of my life with the responsibility of letting yet someone else down when it was in my power to help...no sir..not me..as for me and my house...

I hustled to my cell to fill out the Bible order for the gangster..and picked up a few more takers along the way..all it took was to ask if they wanted one. Imagine that!

It's been a good day...

later..dougie boy

The WORD in Me

This whole communicating with the outside world while doing time is fascinating!

Last night as I was cell bound..not by a phone mind you..80 square feet with another man just three feet away..in another bunk mind you again..directly above me...in the top bunk mind you yet again...anyway my sister..GOD bless her philanthropic self...has got me several rags to read through the riches of my incarceration. One of these happens to be "Golf Digest". Most of my family engages in playing what Mark Twain professed to be a good walk spoiled..what the heck does he know anyway?...writing about leaping frogs and crap like that! But hey the guy could spin a yarn big enough to tantalize any cat.

So I'm perusing this mag with all its advice on how to use the wedge..I sure could in here at times utilize one of those. It came upon me out of nowhere...the scrunched up eye and quiet cry of the felon forlorned..all those courses! The beauty of GOD'S work manicured to perfection with 18 holes cut out as my heart was because I can't get there from here.

Seriously that statement has never been truer to me than while in prison. Many places I can't get to from here. To my boy's graduation..the birth of my first grandson..the tee time with Big Bro. Oh the reaping and sowing of the LORD'S law cannot be eradicated unless HE deems it so!

And as I wept..into the pillow firmly..less my cellie awakens to the rough man being soft....it all came crashing..the decisions that determine my direction...the left behind series ain't got nothing on us in here. Not lamenting though. I left it in the sodden pillow late last night. It's a good thing to have a GOD who feels our infirmities...been through our flesh as we went through HIS. Although I could continue in that self-pity mode, it is a danger to do so when looking into the life of newness that HE grants us ( II Corinthians 5:17), and even if I can't get to the tee box where the verdant and rolling hills of some course snakes its way through an 18..I can still know that HE cares enough for me to comfort me in that late night watch where big boys do cry and HE supplies all my needs according to HIS riches in glory...so I got that going for me.

later..dougie boy

What's the Big Deal?

Hello out there in the land of the free..home of the once in a while brave. I say this because I am approaching almost a decade of being "down"..the vernacular in this place is all its own. As I've traversed this standstill societal time, it has been hard to see those outside falling quickly to the easy way out. And trust me here I am  faits accompli to this style of choice. I am not seeing much of what existed in Brokaw's "The Greatest Generation" meted out amongst us. Could be why he coined it so. Either way I search around into that change bag trying to find the heroes of yesteryear come through today. Certainly there are some I can not, due to my limited access to the world, find out about.

Of course I can get the run-of-the mill variety that CNN chucks at us. Skeptical there because their idea of hero worship is skewered and bias..I wonder why this is so? Should I be more attuned to liberalism? My older Big Bro would be at arms with me if I was to do so.

I am at a loss..why do we care if a mosque is built that could very well provide jobs to hundreds needing it? If our country was founded on religious freedom..which it was..if our country was founded on the right to choose...which it was..if out country was founded to release those in bondage to taxation without representation..which it was...by the way are we allowing things of England into our society...things of the Orient? If so then what is the big deal? We look back on the Revolutionary War..World War 1 and 2...Korea...Vietnam..the list is not complete of course... Still I am as much a patriot as you can find, but, (and this is an important conjunction that'll wrap up the thoughts of this man's quandary) my Christianity goes well before all.

Folks that say they read the Bible..live by it..swear by it, dare I say...and then pour millions into advocating some sacred ground stance that we are probably going to build countless of ungodly stores, movie houses, and fast food places enough to choke a pig..which I might add that I love me some bacon! It is tragic that a man feels the need to burn books to get attention to his cause...not I say HIS cause I can tell you that. We are to be loving, but to the extreme right amongst us, not naive either. You can take me out to the war torn zones of any nation other than the grand USA..and it is only here...should be only here, that those living within the confinement of religious persecution flee to have the right to choose whom they will serve.

I'll leave you all with this from the book of Joshua..."as for me and my house we will serve the LORD"

....later...dougie boy.

My Story

That smell. There is no mistaking its strange concoctions, the unique elixir of paint, blood, sweat, and tears. Its aroma is a familiar scent to convicts, cops, lawyers, and those soon to be amongst their ranks. It smacks full force as you step into the corridors of the neighborhood jailhouse, assaulting one's senses like a broken sewer pipe in the backyard. I inhale it for the umpteenth time in my mucked-up life. Shackled and fettered.

The hardest time you do for a crime is done in the little city or county jails—waiting to get to the "big house." You just sit and wait! You wait for court. You wait for mail. You wait for visits. You wait to get out of the claustrophobic den of thieves. It is a collection of all the wickedness in society, concentrated in a very small area. There is a lot to be said for the adage, "If you can't do the time, don't do the crime."

Of course, a lot of first-time offenders don't know about prison's proximity of violence, the realization of ready rape, the brutality of isolation. Perhaps if they did, then they just might relinquish their crime-ridden thoughts. Unfortunately, it is impossible to grasp the fact that surviving your first sentence makes one impervious to the shock that is slammed into life at one's first step into the halls of justice. So I am writing this to forewarn all that there is no life in here. Prison is simply a game of survival, meted out daily with various forms of viciousness wrought out by users and abusers of our corrupt society.

Mine is the story of a petty thief crack-smoker turned bank robber. The ugliness replete throughout is told because I do not want to decorate my sins—I am through hiding from my past. I dare my Christian brethren to delve further into my story despite its harsh realities. Life is full of cursing, sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll; as was my past. The veracity of my story is needful, for without the unvarnished truth I could not hope to help others beginning my sorrowful adventure.

I have spent over 25 years battling addictions. I allowed them to corner me: sex, drugs, alcohol, pornography, and finally gambling. We all danced together in a ballroom of deception, where instructions for steps were checked at the door—especially that elusive 12 that so many of us addicts have tried "cutting a rug" to. Perhaps through my story, some of you might learn how to avoid the ballroom altogether.

I do desire to perhaps make you laugh. You may empathize, sympathize or demoralize. The sardonic ways you may see or read in your perspective are a product of my sense of humor, which has been my greatest friend throughout times of intense solitude.

My story is also a story of Jesus Christ revisited in a life that ran from Him. That sweet smelling savor is joy unspeakable. It is a story of the race I truly want to run, not the one that crippled me, strapping me to Satan's gurney and wheeling me about to do his bidding. It's a story living out what someone once said, "Sin always takes you farther than you want to go and keeps you longer than you want to stay." And it is a story of how God turned me around on the tail end of a bank-robbing spree that spanned four states.

My prison stay is still going on for a lot longer than I want, but I chose to give up a life that was death. I chose to quit running from God and turned myself in to dance to that music of courtroom cadences, judges' jingles, and prison blues. I am free now, even behind bars. That is priceless. I now count the cost of convincing others to not go the way of this addict; instead, I reach out to the only Way, the only Truth, the only Life, Jesus Christ.