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.