Hello there my friends...

...again I must say that it's been a while for real this time.

Many things have transpired since I last blogged out to you all. A friend died in his cell...a horrible way to go. Alone fighting for breath as the machinations of prison took its toll by a life's ransom. But I did share JESUS with him as frequently as I could, yet maybe not as much as was possible.

It got me thinking on the crucifixion of my LORD and SAVIOR....and since Easter was coming at the time, clearing out the horizon of death's exacting revenge, I had to ponder on life eternal offered to all. Attendance upon WHOM was cast all our sins. It's funny in a strange way how what is deemed a work of time in our society at large, that JESUS was brought before the chief priests at the break of day (Luke 22:66), after that to Pilate, then to Herod, then to Pilate again; and here there seems to have been a long struggle between Pilate and the people about HIM. Are you too in that area, or domain of preponderance? HE was scourged, and crowned with thorns and contumeliously used, and all this was done in 4 or 5 hours..six at the most for HE was crucified between 9 and 12. Never anyone was chased out of the world as CHRIST. No stays in a due process carried forth with such vehemence and alacrity that it puts to port all embattled ships of justice that harbor ill will towards the cry of look how wrongly I've been treated.

In the book of 1 Corinthians chapter 15 verse 19 it speaks to me of the validity behind when HE walked, what HE did, and how HE still lives...."If in this life only we have hope in CHRIST, we are of all men the most pitiable (miserable in some texts). So please, you must understand that even though imprisoned for quite sometime now I am not miserable, but joyful even to the point of my sister's profession that I am a goober...a happy goober for I possess what all can: life eternal because of JESUS' enduring love for us...for me...for you.

Hopefully I will embark on keeping better updates with you guys. Softball season has kicked off and the amount of material to write about is prolific to say the least. I was hit by a line drive the other day...it black and blued about 2 square feet on my lower torso. I had a glove, but I was pitching batting practice and I had three balls in it..dorky me...but I play on! Okay my friends..I love you all tremendously from afar with prayers and fastings for you and your families...oh gosh I almost sound like Paul...I can think of worse things to be...

Check out Amos 4:12 and Hebrews 9:27

...later...dougie boy

Good day to you guys...

...just wanted to let everyone know that JESUS loves you and so do I and there's nothing you all can do about it!

I know things are extremely tight out there with the economy..I pray that since GOD always provides a WAY, that reaching for it becomes our priority. Sometimes I've discovered a lack of provision is a provision in and of itself.

I woke in my cell late (or should I say early morn, at 2:45...so yeah, let's say early morn...the amount of education in here!)....anyway I stared out from my bunk almost 10 years deep in my contrition looking at my cell block number. I was reminded of a time (although constrained now within 80 or so square feet and another man three feet from me) of when I was out there running and gunning on the mean streets. Shot and bee lining it to the emergency room hoping to GOD that I don't bleed to death, homeless and cold seeking any form of warmth...even the cardboard in the woods and under the bridges to stave off the cold...jumped by a gang of well..gangsters...a gaggle of them that's gotta be the new catch phrase...and the worst feeling of it all...nay I say (who talks like this?) the granddaddy of emotional distraught, loneliness...a darkness that could be felt.

So I must concur with some who profess that they weren't arrested, but rescued. As a tear leaked out and I brazenly sucked it up to brave my punishment for my sins, I had the stark understanding that GOD truly loves me. And it's as tough a call to make late in the life of myself yearning to hold my newly birthed yet not seen nor held grandchildren, as it is for those of you not recognizing the very real providence of GOD as HE places some life upon the POTTER'S WHEEL shaping and fashioning it according to HIS PURPOSE.

I so dearly miss my little boy...Dojo..who in spite of his old man is revering a lifestyle replete with the chivalry that has yet to die in a man's challenge for goodness in a world fraught with despair of epic proportions. And my wife...Rosemary whom I've refused to call that accursed "ex" word so flippantly strewn about for common causes from which struggle was too much to endure. It is through better or worse that I've drug her through, yet now in the precipice of the autumnal...so they say (whoever that estranged group of folk are) part of my life, she's come full circle to banter with me over the cyber lines of a tethered and tenuous umbilical commonality, to offer up solace from whence (there I go again) she'll not realize, gains chuckles and smiles in a place bereft of this all important character bounty that reigns in the hearts of those who never give up. I'm grateful to a GOD who can do all that I can not...

Praise HIS HOLY NAME!

...later...

dougie boy

Hello my friends...

..it has been a while as you may know how that song goes. But I've been thinking always on you all. Last night was an unusual night for me and my cellie...of course a few of you know that I speak of the man residing three feet from me. The term familiarity breeds contempt flourishes in such dire circumstances as these imprisoned walls and cells can wrought upon a man seeking a different way...or THE WAY.

It started out as a normal lock the cell doors at 10 pm kinda night, but quickly regressed into an argument about whether one of the two of us turned off the radio, moved the radio, had any relation with the radio from which we enjoy comfort and solace through the advent of NPR and an eclectic taste ranging from oldies...(don't ask...) to some hip hop...opera....talk shows..Los Lobos last night. Anyway I swore that I got up at 4:30 am to turn it off (batteries don't you know) and Sam says that he did something to it (moved it...turned it off...etc.) well I wasn't going to give one inch up there because this is a REALLY important issue! And being the older man by 25 years, I had to be right. During the course of our heated discussion (on my part anyway...he has this excruciating habit of remaining calm--ever since I've known him as a matter of fact--how irritating is that!?! I mean throw out some form of engagement other than this quietness!) But I knew I could show him how to get the props I deserved. As I tried to search my mind of the previous evening's activities (did I get up to turn the radio off? Or like he insinuated was he defense- that he must've been hallucinating..said with a placidness that shames the lake's namesake...okay you want to play it rough then huh?) So I went way back into my worldly self and dropped the one argumentative ploy that would rile his feathers for real. I mean once he threw at me that he was just being logical--that was the hay...the straw if you will--and out it came: The "F" bomb. I said with the true vehemence wrought from years of actual arguing within the ranks of military folk, "you can stuff your f------ logic!" Yeah! Take that mister serenity. And of course I need to add that rarely has anyone heard me use profanity of such acquired ilk as to belong to the prison populace at large, so I knew I had him then. And then he looks at me--all the while he's been calmly (go figure) folding his laundry, and laughs--not uproarishly...rarely has that ever happened, but almost as a chuckle...and this had an effect on me that I can't quite explain. After all I'm a CHRISTian dammit!

So today I wanted to share some of this lesson plan that GOD brought to me via this altercation...albeit one-sided thanks to Sam, but still friendships are so rare on earth. It means identity in thought and heart and spirit.

There is a great deal of sin devised and designed that is never executed. As bad as things are in the world they are not so bad as the devil and wicked men would have them. The FBI just changed the law defining rape to include a broader use that brings men with men into the picture (see Romans 1)..shoot... we of such long time prison lore know all about this. It is GOD that restrains men from doing the ill (such a nice word don't you think?) that they would do (see Genesis 20:6). It is not from HIM that there is sin but is from HIM that there is not more sin, either by HIS influence upon men's minds, or by HIS providence taking away the opportunity to sin...hence some incarceration. In Romans 12:2 there is a stark reminder of how we ought to be..."be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind". See to it that there be a saving change wrought in you, and that it be carried on. "Be not conformed to this world..." me syschematizesthe"..do not fashion yourselves as it means. Those are best able to prove what is the good, and acceptable and perfect will of GOD, who are transformed by the renewing of their mind. The sweet smelling savor- serving the LORD...that is, improving your opportunities and making the best of them..(see my recent example)..complying with the present seasons of grace. Worship is giving GOD the best that HE has given you. If you hoard a thing for yourself it will turn to a type of spiritual rot, as the manna did when it was hoarded. Some of us receive HIS blessings and know HIS WORD, but do we really know HIM? Genesis 18:3...my LORD if I have now found favor in your sight, do not pass on by your servant. Like the song..."Pass me not oh GENTLE SAVIOR...hear my humble cry....while on others THOU art calling...do not pass me.....by....

with all my love to all that is yours...

...later

dougie boy

Merry Christmas!!!!

I want to tell you guys that JESUS saved me from me...it's not too sad waking up in prison on this wonderful morning that we celebrate the ONE and ONLY by which all might be saved....THE CHRIST....I love you guys...you know Luke 2..good tidings....good will toward men/women /children...the pets too!...later...dougie boy

Hello out there...

...I have been out of pockets in sort of a peculiar fashion. In searching for reasons for my discontent I come back to me..."Surely after my turning, I repented; and after I was instructed, I struck myself on the thigh...(all about the head and shoulders in my case too!)...I was ashamed, yes, even humiliated, because I bore the reproach of my youth." Jeremiah 31:19 delivers such a stark realization of my plight..and fight. When sinners come to a right and sure knowledge they will find the right and sure way. Sinners could become saints if they would but show themselves men...Isaiah 46:8...if they would but support the dignity of their nature and use aright its powers and capacities. "But on this one will I look on: On him who is poor and of a contrite spirit, and who trembles at my word." Trust me here friends when I say to you that GOD brings fears by making our sins our punishments--beating us with our own rods when we at first hurried to ruin by wroughting out delusional behaviors which we should of been afraid of yet thought to escape via sinful shifts in carnal desire. You can tell where a man is going in the hereafter by what is going after here--my prison time and experience is the mentor of all this. Ponderibus librata suis- Poised by its own weight.

Praise HIS name though! "Fear thou not....neither be dismayed." GOD'S servants must not give way to disquieting fears and difficulties before them. They must not sorrow as those who have no hope for the troubles which they presently lie under. If you look to the world for help soon it will fail. Either through a societal boredom, death of such a one, or the advent of something more appealing than aiding the suffrage of any. (Who talks like this?..me!) Carnal confidences fail. Creatures created are physicians of no value. Be the disease ever so dangerous, the patient is safe if GOD undertakes the cure. JESUS is like that!

Lately I have been coming to the computer fully expecting a plethora of messages from all whom I stay in regular contact..but alas! To my dismay little have been the electronic missives from which I derive semblance of normalcy in this razorwire land. Not to fault those maintaining relations. After all they have families and bills and work..and just a general life to speak of. But me? I got this standstill existence--a groundhog day life from which even the littlest communique tossed my way will send me head over heels and agog with the thought that someone cares. And don't get me wrong, I have carved this nefarious niche to which I owe my prison stay, so I can say with much aplomb that gratefulness is my posture of need when I do get to hear from you all. I don't write these blogs to garner response (though that'd be neat if they did), the folks that do send me their e-mails are in my history book of learning, for it is they who visit me in my most dire downtime. A special thanks to Patti-Sue...Tara..Sophie the Six...Kim...all women....that's who JESUS appeared to first after HE was resurrected. "Quit ye like men be strong"...the Scriptures tell me...my son Dojo does this passage justice..a real man that I was not...way to go David..I pray for all you guys..I'm here willing to reach out and discourse on whatever crosses your beaten path...or just "Crosses....the one less chosen has taken me years to hack away the foliage fraught with a rectitude of self and not the reliance of CHRIST...it is there where I do find true comfort...it is there where HE sends me friends to talk to like this.

...thanks for listening.

...later...dougie boy

I pray for...

..an hegira from this place of prison. Over these years of incarceration I have been privy to all licentiousness that man can invent within the confines of a desperately wicked heart. Jeremiah tells of this at length in his prophecy. Even the example of Lot who/whom (you make the call) for not wanting the men to sodomize his guests, offered up his daughters as a stave to protect the men who were sent by GOD to direct him to safety. What a paradox we have here. Still though it bespeaks (who talks like this?) volumes about how bad company corrupts good manners. Homo Homini Lupus (no play on words intended) "Man is a wolf to man". To traduce further the company I have been keeping these years (to include myself at times) although the inculcation should extrapolate those infringed by such wanton hardship from that road of hard knocks, still we keep coming back..."as a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool to his folly"...so Proverbs own pedagogy lays out for those wanting to be exercised by it.

There are those who are so dastardly as I dare not come near..I can't say miles because proximity is the business that rules us prison folk, but I can run athwart of dirty deeds done dirt cheap by circumspect of a different ilk learned through diligence of study in HIS WORD. "Can two walk together, unless they are agreed?" Amos 3:3. Where there is no friendship there can be no fellowship; if two persons be at variance, they must accommodate the matters between them before there can be any interchanging of good offices. It's true being straightened out is painful, and often times lengthy, but being left crooked will ultimately hurt even more.

As I sit here writing this there are no less than 100 men not but a Buick's throw away...as I said "proximity" at its most perilous precaution. Tomorrow in retrospect of our last September's riot the gang responsible, which have been in protective custody since then, are going to be let back out on the compound. I can't wait! Agog I tell ya! For some strange reason the BOP believes either one of two things (both of which are bad): that the gang in question although entrenched (dare I say mired) in its belief system that all whom are not of their ilk, and display a proclivity of such ludicrous denouncement must suffer the brunt of like activity that got them hemmed up September last. They are assuming a "peace treaty" has been struck with the other rivals, and it'll be just peachy-keen when they release the "Cracken". Silly BOP! Violence is for inmates...tricks are for manipulation. It may not be right away--biding time is a pastime of all denizens in a prison proper. Hopefully I will a great distance from it when it does jump off. I've seen my share of murders, maimings, stabbings, and pummelings to last several lifetimes. They have already told us that we will be locked down for a least two days in order to properly assimilate the bangers back into population.

To me gangs of any fashion are mostly rife with cowards. Strength in numbers as the saying flies about here as if a locked up lottery bin will get an edge come fisticuffs. But in this place shanks prevail even though guards do their level best to discover all the nooks and crannies. But they just work here...we live it out day to day. So I dare to take up the CROSS of CHRIST and discharge my duty to HIM less I run with the desperation of malice into all manner of abominable wickedness. Mainly because I know the punishment for those unwilling to accept THE TRUTH...an eternity to always be dying. Thus the misery of the damned will illustrate the blessedness of the saved, and the blessedness of the saved will aggravate the misery of those that are damned. But my friends it is the charitable heart not the voluble tongue that is acceptable with GOD. Both ends of the spectrum, be they minions of gangland warfare, or saintly crusaders for the lost, have a tractableness that is assuaged by our alliance to what motors our boat in a sea of malfeasance. I can't help but see Scripture that beckons me to a Holy lifestyle. "Sure," my family and friends may say, "now he wants to do right!" It's true though...wisdom is learned through much grief and suffering. I want my holiness to not just be merely external and in outward fashion, so as to prevent blame from men (in some cases incur it), but I need it to be internal and real.

On one of Paul's epistles from prison some have observed that what this apostle wrote when he was a prisoner had the greatest relish and savour in it of the things of GOD. When tribulations abound, consolations and experiences did much more abound. So we may see that the afflictive exercises of GOD'S people, and particularly of HIS ministers, often tend to the advantage of others as well as to their own.

Okay my friends (I love to call all you guys that...even though the Red Sox didn't make it to the play-offs..haha) reaching to you all in this way lifts me in an unspeakable joy that CHRIST has reserved for me. Thanks for listening! Always here...if you write back and you don't hear from me for a minute, remember: the cracken thing could confine me in my cell, but my mind roams about in prayer for all...

James 5:16

...later...dougie boy

Thoughts on Things...

..yesterday I came back from the second game of the championship best two out of three series in softball here in prison. We were battling back from the loser's bracket..been there, got the shirt..and stripes...we won. Which leaves us to fight another day for the season's coveted convict appellate of being the best here where none of us has been that. So needless to say in an effort to make a name for yourself where the sea of anonymity washes about here with mordant lubricity, you really strive for some sports notoriety. The other stuff we're experts at being notorious for.

Well...Sam and I have been cellies (rooming together) for over three years now, and the journey has been fraught with enduring riots, standstill happenstances, and just your basic prison nomenclature from which some derive their knowledge from the media, magazines or the menace we caused. Cell changes are probably the worst thing one endures here after being ensconced for a decade...hate even being able to come close to comprehending that. As I walked up the unit steps the turnkey (guard of housing unit) tells me that we have a new cellie. He furthers this with a type of admonishment that will soon be fully felt as I enter the domicile from which I hale as a solitary Christian man fighting the good fight..

Sure you must think: Jail-house Billy Graham here (that's cool..it's a big boat), but the true Christian saint walks alone--JESUS preached it so, and I see it in here up close and personal...frequently. "If I say 'my foot slips,' YOUR mercy will hold me up. In the multitude of my anxieties within me, YOUR comforts delight my soul."(Psalm 94).

The guard tells me in that conspiratorial whisper reserved for those who want to tell of secrets others have, that Sam and I's new cellie is a scared one, and that I might need to show him the ropes--"hopefully," he says "the man isn't up there using these to hang himself," he retorts...expecting some witty repartee from me. Compassion is not lost here, it's just hiding out in the form of malice. As I enter the unit no less than 100 men turn my way to see it's me; and exactly how I'm going to handle the new cellie situation. Which of course gives me that pause convicts are known for  that says something's going on to which I am fixing to find out about proper. They've been in here talking it up; some disguising their true feelings towards the likes of me and others whom aren't affiliated with the ilk of ill-reputed gangland garbage which is just a playground philandering of their little minds stuck on stupid (arrested development has got nothing on these Neanderthals). I immediately sense the waywardness of it. I too, have been stuck on imbecilic meanderings.

Walking in the direction of my cell. I contemplate a few things...one being that Sam always misses out on these initial deals. What does he know that I don't? His spidey sense must be more acute than mine. The other that perhaps it's a black man they put in our cell (Heaven forbid!)...or a sureno...or an ms13...or blood...or crip...or white supremacist...or, if worse comes to worse, another CHRISTian! How is Gonier gonna act? Let's lie in wait to see. "Our secret sins... in the light of YOUR countenance." Those which go no further than the heart, and which are at the bottom of all the overt acts.

See the folly of those who go about to cover their sins, for they cannot do so. "It is often the case that the paradoxes that so typified JESUS' teaching are expansive, complex, and nuanced...if you'll allow me that. It requires mulling and wrestling, it forces huge shifts in paradigm and eventually, practice." Culled from Carolyn Arends' "Wrestling with Angels". I mixed it up a bit...what else is new?

Okay back to the cell dilemma. As I walked into my cell shedding the chameleon eyes upon me, I see what all the kerfuffle is about. Standing before me after he had to use the toilet because he's been on a Bureau of Prison bus all day to get to this mountain top, was a man that fit perfectly into the pre-conceived appearance of the most hated of all prisoners...a child molester. A deep breath explodes out of me as a kind of gag reflex, which I immediately regret because here before me is a truly hurting soul, that may have committed heinous things beyond my understanding, and I'm okay with the hundreds of men outside my cell door that are robbers, murderers, gang-bangers...even extortionists. But this type of prisoner is what other types of prisoners are horrified at. So you take the dregs (that'd be me) of our look-orientated society and you pit them against you. There is no chance you can survive (literally) in this place with that jacket welded to your flesh. And all those men outside my cell want to see what I plan on doing about it.

Friggin' Sam! Always ducking these fun-filled adventures.

The status-quo of these ill-fated liaisons is vetted out by discovering if the man is in here for that crime. Just because he looks the part doesn't mean he's done the part. I've met men whom I've conversed with for quite sometime before discovering that they shot three people in a mall, killed a whole family, raped countless numbers of women, sold meth to grade schoolers, engaged in human slavery... all these things are okay though, but this guy here in front of me just won't do.

He reaches out his hand to me to introduce himself as if I am the keeper of the Holy Grail. He is desperate for acceptance...this in and of itself is not the clincher for labeling him with the umbrage of convicts everywhere, but it's a start, so they say. The psychology of inmates goes well beyond AA, into the confines of the mind where platitudes of glory are handed out for the gory. I feign dirty hands from the softball game (which is partially accurate, at least I want it to be that) in order not to familiarize myself too quickly. After all, 100 men are waiting... I'm in a state here now because I am a CHRISTian and a tortured and tormented soul is before me.

I spend about five minutes getting my shower stuff together. I put to him about his crime...usually most proffer this as rite of passage into the prison lore of badness. Most lie as much as this guy is fixing to do. He tells me he's here because of "drugs"--only it isn't so much a statement as it is a trying out period for him...on me. Kinda like "drugs?" I think I am the first person he's giving it a go on, given these instructions by his lawyer to lie (imagine that) because they too, know what treatment he is headed for in here...a meanness he wishes he could equate to those children he hurt, but it's a rougher go...strapped over a 55 gallon drum..hands tied to feet...you get the ugliness I'm sure.

His try fell on my deaf ears as I think for the quickened time when I wanted my sins washed away too. I leave him wallowing in that questionable state that strikes fear in him because as I exit the cell, the 200 eyes firmly affixed on Gonier, he beelines straight to the guard to ask for political asylum. The "proteco" of the inmate's social standing...protective custody. In the shower I am defeated in a way I can't quite explain. Ineffable to the max. Why couldn't I witness with some brief kindness about the love of CHRIST I so often tout about to the judgmental bastards herein? Was self-preservation that tantamount to my very existence here?

It was then (and maybe again) GOD gave me strength as I wept silently in the shower stall..spilling my tears with the water that was washing away the dirt from the hands I didn't want to welcome him with. "Out damn spot!" "For HE is coming to judge the earth....and the peoples with equity."(Psalm 98:9) It's even difficult for me to use Scripture right now...how convicting of a work is that by the HOLY GHOST? 

As I exited the shower that man was being escorted out of the unit to protective custody. And the other men were giving me their stained looks of approval: Way to make him check in Gonier...Good job...No chomos (short for child molesters). Never have I felt so sleighted in my walk with my LORD. Because it wasn't a good job by a long shot..and so those who persist in a sinful life sufficiently demonstrate that they are not born of GOD. Is that me? The Scripture tells me to examine myself daily...and so I did...weighed in the balance and found wanting. Hind and quartered by that sanctimonious behavior that excels other sins well and far above what mine are all about. True CHRISTianity establishes that which is of common concern to all mankind, and is not built upon such narrow opinions and private interests as sects commonly owe their origin to. The regenerate person is happily disabled for sin. There is a restraint, an embargo, if you will, laid upon his sinning powers. It goes against him sedately and deliberately to sin. "You who love the LORD, hate evil"(Psalm 97:10)

Well my friends I had a go of it all here as of late. The victory on the softball field paled in comparison to my failing attempt at true agape as was, and is bestowed on me by JESUS. Hopefully if given another chance and I'm certain I will, perhaps I'll handle it differently. I love you guys...love me too...please...

later...dougie boy

...and pray I ask for that man. I didn't at first and the taste still resonating in my mouth the day after is sour.

"Jiam nova progenies coelo demittitur alto, te duce, si qua manent sceleris vestigia nostri, irrita perpetua formidine terras aspice, venturo laetentur ut omnia saeclo."

"A new race descends from the lofty sky, thy influence shall efface every stain of corruption, and free the world from alarm, see how this promised age makes all rejoice."

It has been...

..a definite while since my last blog. I was wondering as in writer's block, if a type of "blogblock" exists. If so, then I've picked up the virtualness of such a thing recently.

Many things to write on my friends, and where to begin is the troubling spot. One of our APAP men was beat up pretty badly yesterday. He was involved in unsavory things (get out of town..in here?). Although I tried with desperation to warn him repeatedly of the lie down with dogs get fleas axiom of such  predictable anathema in here, still, like me...(it's important to remember but for the grace of GOD go I) he has to find out where that school of hard knocks firmly holds counsel. And found out he did.

Gambling is a pernicious addiction that can create a whole new genre of rationalizing to those unsuspecting of its gambit. Laying the footwork within the foundation of lies. One never knows that the worst thing that besets a gambler is winning. Then illusions of grandeur build that mendacious house of cards from whence the wind will blow it down with such a gentle breeze..instead for me now.."A mighty fortress is our GOD". The most heinous of crimes I ever commited was in Las Vegas (just going there is a felony). I won't get into the machinations of it because I told my sister of it one day, and she didn't talk to me for six months.

Oftentimes men in here will go about purporting how "good" they were at being or doing bad. I now point out the oxymoronicness of such..well...moronness..many think I have gone the route of senility. You can never be good at doing something bad. Still I must say in efforts to thwart wrong doing in my life, the evidence that demands a verdict is thusly put in apropos which tells us that ...Lot was sorely vexed by the behaviors surrounding him..(paraphrasing the book of Peter)...when in the throes of besetting sinful actions on a daily basis, it is a tough call to remain faithful to one's walk with our SAVIOR JESUS. Impossible? No. But when pornography/gambling/violence/deceit, is not only thrust at you all over this place (including the myriad avenues it travels over the six flat screen televisions we got) then lusting, as well the accroutrements that follow suit to this, and all disrobing fleshly assault to the senses, it is a full-time battle. Should there be anything less though? I think not.."For in this world you will have tribulation." The warfare of spiritual fidelity is all in with its benefits giving sway to remaining in HIM at all costs.

To a chase of a different sort....softball season is in all its regalia here. I wish I could send off snippets of the antics that take place out on the field. Short stories abound! I hope to capture some of the hilarity, as well the heinous, of what can happen in a day's play on the diamond. Above and beyond I tell you of what is considered America's past time. Our team, The "A" leaguers, are in first place...5 and 1 so far and the talk of the compound is everyone wanting to take us down a peg. We are the "Rangers" (of Texas ilk) in honor of my son's Dojo's favorite squad...never the Yankees! Rosemary's fave....mine of course being the indomitable Red Sox..which is the name of my "B" leaguers...we're 2 and 2...struggling for sure because I got me some gangbangers on the team that are having a hard time understanding and accepting coaching from a guy who looks suspiciously like either the Judge that sentenced them, or the cops that arrested them...but I'm working on winning their favor..might take a hot minute..but it's always in my periphery that perhaps I could win some to JESUS. And so I press on...helping me along this pathway are a few good men who want change too...accountability is one of the toughest accepting endeavors a CHRISTian will always face if true change is gonna come.

Okay my friends..I am praying for all...including family ties (not the sitcom for those reaching back that far..haha) Me...I'm gonna keep on hitting the ball and touching 'em all until they wheelchair me...

Until then...agape...Psalm 27...

later..dougie boy

Happy Resurrection Sunday!

I would blog to you all a lengthy dougie boy type message, but low on funds will keep me at bay for now. Soon though I'll send out something. In the meanwhile...HE IS RISEN! Yeah!

GOD bless you guys!

I'm alive and kicking here in prison...can't keep a good man down...and when you all find one...haha...Psalm 27 has been a good read for me lately...love to all...

later..dougie boy

The Painting...

I called my beloved sister, Patti-Sue, on Friday the 19th. She and her son Brett were over at Mom's house collecting up the stuff that still remained since her passing in December. Not wanting to talk due to...well just being amongst her Mom's stuff. Memories are a tough business in those circumstances. She talked briefly with me to let me know that the painting which was left to me in Mom's will was going over to her house to await my release from prison. At which time I can firmly affix it to my abode, wherever that may be. Couldn't say much more, I can tell when my sister is in her feelings about things..now if I can just corral that unique intuition when it comes to other women...well maybe I would be on to something.

Anyway we hung up, but not before (to his credit) my nephew Brett gets the phone and tells me he loves me and misses me. That is not said much to me so a special kudos to my man Brett.

I walk away from the phone thinking about the difficulties of what those situations I missed being a part of affect all the rest of the folks other than my self-centered universal on-going 'what about me?' thought processes that consume the best of us..and the worse. I decided to occupy the remainder of my ground hog day existence here in prison by diving into the softball field. We often escape to that which we feel most adept at in order to align the onus firmly laid upon the shoulder of an ill-fated destiny because of our choices.

I went out to the softball field on the rec move at 5 pm. Our field is a mess, but it's all we got. If we don't take care of it...and there's not a whole bunch of men in here wanting to honor what is given them in an American Federal prison. I tell guys who are chronic with their complaining, (and I can get there too..as a matter of fact I'm complaining about them complaining right now don't you think?) that if you were to get put in some third world country's prison system for about three hours, well your whole outlook about this place would change dramatically.

I grabbed a hard rake(it's got inch prongs to dig in to the field, which has been cut out of a mountain so mostly you're digging up shale and rocks) and proceeded to turn the whole infield over in my attempt to ease the pain of what my sister is dealing with, and what is going to be Mom's first posthumous birthday tomorrow the 20th. I went after it for 3 hours...only because "recall"...a term used to bring all the inmates back to the housing units at any given time...is always at 8:30. They want us in before the street lights come on. Sound familiar? Several inmates came up to the field to witness me (sure now they want to be a witness) toil away to the backbreaking labor of digging up this earth...so says our GOD in the book of Genesis (and Tara and Paul can attest to as well). I could've used some help, but they wanted to look and stare instead."Look at that idiot out there trying to do the whole field by himself..."

They didn't know what was happening as the wheels of that painting were etching its way across my mind. Once on the other side of the pitcher's mound I thought I could make it...my parents did a heck of a job in instilling a work ethic that'll never have a Gonier in the welfare line if he/she can put the deltoid to the grind. But time got the best of me (not punny) and I managed just a bit of...oh say...a 4 to 5 foot swath on the very back of the field undone. And I was too! As I lay in my bunk that night, nursing ye old sore back, the paradox of memory upon my conscious opened itself up to the pandora's box of recall, and try as I may I could not eradicate where that painting had come from.

I was eleven and we had just returned from a three year tour in Panama. All in the military will agree that when the head of the household goes out to the dutiful call of service, then the rest of the family comes along for the ride. We had the summer to spend in Massachusetts (all of our relatives live there). My uncle had a little league baseball team, and I tried out for the catcher's spot. Did a good enough job to make the all-star team, and since Dad had came back from wherever he was..Greenland, Panama, Grenada, Suez Canal...he sent for us all to come back to 'ole Virginny--Mommsy and Gumby(Dad) abdicated many years ago their New England roots. But the all-star game--which was a precursor to the Little League World Series if we won--was in a week. So everyone else went, but Mommsy and I stayed back to cater to...me. We ended up losing, but not after I hit a 4th inning homerun to tie the game. Mom was cheering as if I was her son or something.

After it was all said and done we packed up soon to be Patti-Sue's 1972 Chevy Nova and lit out for the homestead in Woodbridge, Va. My Mom had a real affinity for paintings of seascapes and surf spray beating on the rocks of the shore. She bought one right before we left. Since we believed it couldn't ride in the car with us, we got a roof rack with those little not very good gripping hooks that let the painting fly on the Delaware Turnpike--bouncing all over the road as cars took their chances of pummeling it into an oil spill of a thing. We pulled over (not an easy feat on a turnpike I can tell you), but Mom really loved that painting. And since I want to defend her at all costs (not many have gotten away with those "your momma" comments) she went into a frenzied panicked sending me out to... "get the painting! get the painting!...be careful!!" This thing is looking like Alladin's Carpet! The frame skittering across the multi-lane highway and picking up its own speed as cars swerve and duck their way by it or through it. I'm readying myself for a mad dash into the speeding onslaught of metallic thunder. Fortunately some of the pieces started making their way towards me as I did the double dare ya's to Detroit's finest. And then all of a sudden as if a big vacuum sucked all the cars off the planet, there were none for as far as I could see. I ran for it! Scooping and grabbing as much as I could till I heard off in the distance but closing fast the horns from hell! I was through for Mommsy then, but I got a bunch of what was once P. Ellinshaw's "Surf Spray". As I made my way to the car which now had Mom screaming at me for being "such an idiot and what in tarnation was I thinking?! Running out in the middle of the freeway like a crazy person! Are you okay Dwouck?"...I'm like ...my parents are psycho.

I didn't know the depth of Mom's love to find the perfect waves crashing upon the rocks fetish, but soon discovered it as she took what I rescued from the macadam madness and had it reduced from what was once a 5 foot long ocean scape during a storm, and had it cut down to about 2 and a half feet..the name tag still bearing the scratches from its perilous journey of its own into my clutches on that memory filled afternoon.

So as I lay in my cell that night, I had all that to think on because Mommsy won't go gently into the night...not for me....not for Patti-Sue....not for Big Bro...Dennisky..or Danny Boy....more on what else happened on that fateful journey shared by mother and son....I love you guys as much as I can. You all pass that along....JESUS Saves...pass that along too!

later...dougie boy

Side Note: I apologize for the delay in getting this posted for Doug...I thought I posted it when I first got it and just realized that I hadn't. So, I apologize for this being a few days late ~Tara (the one who posts these for Doug) 

Been locked down...

...again!

You would think we could get some act right in this camp--I think there is not enough plays on Broadway for this to happen. I would love to tell you the reasons why we were shut out further, to increment our social diffs, from all that is considered in this...this...prison environs. (Okay so I don't always turn a good phrase.)

As I have told you guys previously, I cell with two other men in 85 square feet. The man on top I call "the cicatrix dude"...translated "Scar"...way too many Al Pacino flicks, or real to his conviction of conspiracy to commit murder. He's on the last of a 20 year sentence. Be getting out shortly (hide the silver!). The other guy, "White Bred," so given this moniker because he's white and grew up in mostly black neighborhoods... "Wonder" must of been taken. We've been "cellies" for over three years now and know each other pretty good (you think?).  The whole lock down thing has been wearing upon us like a steel welded jacket that can't be sloughed off no matter the soddened state of the acidic and acerbic amongst us (I'm back in the "A's" in my Spike Lee search for oneness).

Well...things got a little hot over a spades game of cut-throat that we were playing to pass the time. What was I thinking? I'm playing a game called cut-throat with...well...cut-throats. But in acknowledgement to my own claim to fame, I am a convicted armed bank robber so I fit right in don't you think? However, we need to take into account that I am a bought-by-the-blood, born-again believer in JESUS...still though...I don't ever forget what manner of man I not only once was (1Corinthians 13) and can easily segue into on a daily basis if my proclivity to do so overwhelms my walk with HIM.

Meanwhile...which is indeed a mean while in the instances brought about through the various big boy games playing about men's minds that want control of things out of control to begin with. Such was the case when I won three games in a row. Looking back I could've let one of those guys win one, but sometimes I got this wicked spirit of competition dwelling within my members that war against...well common sense. Things got heated up as if a large microwave was set on high and dropped over us in such palpable fashion that well done would've been rare to those ignorant fools whom believe that this wicked spirit of competition lurks only in those not saved by HIS wonderful grace.

I have yet to disclose to you guys that although my family right privy to this...you need to be as well given the nature of said blogpost heretofore (really...who talks like this?) I was out there where the stoplights are a professional magician...yessiree. "Doug's Magic" was the name and my ex-wife (which, I might add, I take umbrage to saying that cursed "ex" part as if it were not so) would say that my best trick was disappearing from society (sense of humor she) Unbeknownst to some felon folk that cards were my forte--could even spin the deck to such a setting so that I receive all the aces and most of the spades (get out of town!). You wouldn't do that, would you? If you could? Just for funnsys?

So as I was saying, my three trumped up victories (pun intended for days on locked up days) were not well received within the 85 square footage where us mean folk can get...well...mean. Tell me if you can how to diffuse the conspiring  to murder and the dealing of danger wrought about over a silly card game. I've seen men get nixed for less. So I was kinda in a quandary of sorts. I had in my favor 230 pounds of wrestling behind me, but I am 52 so it is pretty far behind me. I have the old school appellate firmly and ineluctably tattooed on my head, and I had (I hoped anyway) White Bred in my court if it came to Scar and I tossing about the cell, but he lost too! SO it came down to the only alternative left..."LORD teach my hands to war"...a Psalm recited of that great warrior King David. I've drawn upon its canvas for strength I ain't got many times over and, as is the case most times, GOD steps in and handles it...if I really let HIM do so. I opted for it this time because (for real) I've seen enough violence in this life to avoid it at all costs. And so HE gave me HIS instructions to lie down and say nothing. Oh yeah...and quit playing cards during lockdowns. A simply effective remedy for me...for my cellies. And fortunately we were let out of the cell the very next day. That always brings about reconciliation of some ilk to those of us trying to add more time to our lengthy sentences by cracking each other's skulls on the concrete and steel.

Satan desires to sift you like wheat the Scripture tells Peter and he crouches at the door ready to pounce upon the unenlightened. He was trying that old crap on  me yesterday...and I was a step away from inviting that destruction on in. We all can do it..maybe not as severe as physical stuff like the aforementioned, but still we, as CHRISTians, will face off against this foe as if the NHL were our mainstay. Keep in mind however that the book of James warns us .."That every man is tempted when he is lead away by his own desire..."....that means more of me is responsible for my actions than Satan ever could be.

I love you guys! Keep pressing....Psalm 61...

later...dougie boy

My friends...

We just got off a lockdown...6 days in a cell with two other men. Fortunately the 2 others have done a lot of hard time as well, so it wasn't as difficult as it could be in here. You get into 85 square feet with bundles of humanity within (well within) the comfort space that gets even the best of us claustrophobic. Between the three of us we have 35 years of prison done, and close to 20 more left to do. Not woebegoneing it for sure...but weathering this storm can only be wrought in me by the STORM DRIVER. When in the past I have strayed from JESUS, HE checks me in the most uncomfortable and mostly harsh manner.

And it should be like that.

Ecclesiastes 5:4-5 tells me to "Learn hence to vow (I love that! Learn hence..sounds just right)and pay to the LORD our GOD, for HE has no pleasure in fools." How greatly would the Sanctuary of GOD be enriched and beautiful if all would in their places do their part towards it, by exemplary purity and devotion, extensive charity, and universal usefulness. In expounding of Scripture one passage must borrow light from another, reference if you will Matthew 5:15. The lights of the world, the lights of the Church, must shine as lights. Therefore we have light, that we may give light. Providence gains the same end in different ways, that we attend its motions with an implicit faith.

During this time I was engaged to study HIS WORD. I love being married to HIM.  It is within the bounty of HIS LOVE that I find this patience to endure. I am grateful beyond measure for it.

We were lockdown because there's men in here wanting to stage a compound refusal to eat lunch in order to bring attention to purported injustices done to living men complaining about being punished for their sins. And it was on chicken patty day of all things! I love me some chicken patties! So (and I can't make this stuff up) they banded into what is now a defunct "Coalition for Concerned Convicts" (I say defunct even though they got what they wanted) literally over a thousand men did not go to the chow hall at lunch. And that's what they thought they wanted (big assumptions often get trounced around here). They thought they would move the hierarchy of a Federal prison to "c'mon we're dying here with the air conditioning, ice machines, microwaves, 7 flat screen televisions, enough rec equipment to open 4 community centers, education out the wazoo (sans tuition and text costs) and of course chicken patties (did I mention that they come with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes...enough fixings to shame a Big Mac?) Well only about a handful of men went to eat--that now have to endure all kinds of ridicule for bucking the CCC.

Mid-way through this staged event...say around 1145...the Warden put the word out to lock us up. And she didn't even need a coalition! Within 30 minutes we were tight in our cells...without the chicken patty. Good sense of humor she has though because they fed us the exact same thing six days in a row...and still we ate better than about 2 billion people the world over. It truly pisses me off. Not the lock down. If there were legitimate concerns (that can happen in a place rife with trouble from that infamous jump street we all leapt out from to land us here), but the CCC had its goose cooked--pardon the fowl pun (that's a double pun isn't?)--because we ain't got nothing to complain about in a Federal prison in America!

I must say with an ineluctable stand for JESUS, that GOD is able as ever to supply HIS people with good things, even in their greatest straits and in the utmost failure of second chances. ALMIGHTY POWER can bring water from a rock, has done it, and can again, for HIS arm is not shortened. Those that are of a fretful discontented spirit-- perhaps your way is rough and uneven, or foul and dirty--will always find something or other to make them uneasy. I shant do it my friends! The best have their infirmities, and far more sometimes in the exercise of that grace for which they are most eminent. But GOD...I love that passage all by itself..."But GOD!"...can overlook such heedless, nay I say purposeful passion, and therefore we must not be too severe..."for those that would improve in knowledge must be made sensible of their ignorance."

Okay...I've been to school and back (in more ways then you can imagine) English 102...gotta write a bunch of essays in this class...who knows that it's my favorite one so far?! We got an assignment to read 5 stories and do a cause and effect essay on one of them. "The Prodigal Son" in Luke 15 is one of them...can GOD map out a life or what? I was so excited when the Professor gave out that one. We have several Muslims in our class, as well as some pros at Dungeons and Dragons..the game and the actions. I hope and pray that somebody else takes up the mantle of the awesome Luke story...pray with me on that, won't you?

We do a lot of discussion in our classroom about what we write. Half the class thinks I'm plagiarizing everything...I can't even spell it! The other half has been around me long enough to let me make it. A guy asked me if I would write his class work for him--a Muslim fella. I was tempted, but a big nix to that form of learning. It's what did me in to begin with...cutting corners. In telling him no I had to be gentle and wise...the same thing said and done with meekness may be justifiable which when said and done in anger or spite may produce in me a culpableness I ain't prepared to handle. Authentic CHRISTianity leaves an unforgettable impression on those who encounter it. CHRISTians are responsible for the enduring impact they make. Believe that.

Well my friends I must be getting this off to you. Once we were let out to our first hot meal in 6 days, I was greeted at the chow hall with a reheated up old chicken sandwich (as I was saying our warden's got her a grand sense of irony..I wonder if she's a writer?) But I did enjoy it nonetheless!

I pray for you all..always..all my friends up on this trailer of a send-off, as well your families because some of you are mine for real...and some by the TRUE VINE..love in a way hardly able to constrain..shed abroad in my heart...Psalm 119:63.

later..dougie boy...alive and kicking

Everyone is looking for JESUS

Sometimes in prison deep funks can overcome oneself and then you get kind of withdrawn away from everyone and thing. My Mom's passing put that to work recently and I wondered around here for a hot minute trying to remember her best attributes. That's why it's been so long since I last wrote--she has so many of them that I have went back in time to my little boyness all the way up until our last conversation. Interesting thing when you try hard to recall everything that was said. Was I kind? Did I tell her that I love her? Did I ask her about her instead of about me? Did I listen to her woes as she so often took mine in? And finally...did I learn all that she has been trying to teach me these 52 years? It's not that I'm racking my brain, or myself for wrongs committed in the name of Doug (heavens no..retribution would hold no quarter then) it's just that I could've done better had I made different choices along the way in my life when it concerned how went my relationship with the one whom reared me.

"In any given situation, we have a whole continuum of choices...ranging from really rotten choices, to the mediocrity of average choices, to choices that are good, and then to those that are excellent. GOD wants us to move across the continuum, past our natural impulses, all the way to excellent choices. Often it is challenging to make the most excellent choices..." (Daily Bread Feb. 18, 2011)

...obviously from whence I write this (gotta love that old English) my life's pick and choose methodology has well... sucked. But hopefully as I seek a more excellent lifestyle, the choices I make in the present will be forthcoming of my SAVIOR in my life.

This morning on the rec yard we had a good APAP(Accountability Partners Against Pornography for those not in the know) meeting. A few men braved the howling biting wind and cold--that's 35 degrees Tara (that's my editor who lives in Phoenix where she said 50 was killing her...a desert rat from Iowa no less)--we shared our falling downs and rising-ups. Most of us want, nay desire, to give a good report of our weekly actions. Still though what men deem as recreational activities in here would jaundice the eye of community centers everywhere. Just picture your wildest imagination of what men can do to each other, and then give it free range to enter into the insane zone.

I have been hot on preparing myself for the up coming softball season. Actually I have been gearing a lifestyle change as aforementioned. Dropped 8 pounds to date, and it's true..a lot harder to get it off later in life. As you may remember I am dedicating this season to Mommsy and Christina (the little second baseman from Tucson that was killed in that shooting). I hope to do them both justice on the field...and off.

It all has to do with being a good witness for JESUS. Every Christian knows he or she should witness for CHRIST, but most are reluctant to speak HIS NAME very often....fear of ridicule, or loss of prestige or position. One of the saddest rebukes that could come to a CHRISTian is the indictment lodged against those believers who, because of their high position refused to take an open stand for CHRIST. Philippians 2:5-8 sums up what should be going on in us 24/7..."Let the same mind be in you that was in CHRIST JESUS...read it out to get some of that on you! Check out Mark 1 while you're at it...right around verses 35-38...JESUS went to a solitary place to pray, and then HIS disciples searched for HIM. When they found HIM they told HIM that "everyone was looking for HIM." This is our posture of need in HIM--to be searching for communion with HIM, because no matter what the seductive lies Satan is telling you, everyone is looking for JESUS.

 I love you guys! Pray for all during most days...Psalm 103...

Later..dougie boy

Hello my friends...

..as the song goes..."and it's been a while"...

I have been in the midst of storms--both inwardly and in the outwardly parts as well. But PRAISE be to my GOD who always delivers me even if it means hard times.  Since the GOSPEL requires an urgent and radical response then I must come with the same zeal I first rallied when learning of HIS saving GRACE. Relying on not any strummed up secular concept, but rather submitting to spiritual reality. When GOD discovers to us what is amiss in our lives we must give all diligence to amend it speedily and particularly return to the duties we have neglected...'tis why I am penning (can you say penning when clacking?...you make the call!) The putting away of our sins is indispensably necessary to the removal of GOD'S judgements. This is the voice of every rod, it calls to us to return to HIM that smites us. When we return to GOD in a way of duty HE will return to us in a WAY of mercy; thus taking away the cause and effect of our disobedience.  HE'S cool like that! When the disease of sin has become epidemical, it is fatal to any place. (Isaiah 1: 5-7, Romans 1:26-28) I live amongst men who are thoroughly convinced there is no GOD save themselves. Often I have felt a failure when witnessing because I don't see some of the fruit I'd like to see, but it's an inside job. I usually won't see the preparing of how the LORD breaks the spirit to get to HIM...that all important posture of need many run from instead of to.

Okay off to Church...

   ...and back....

I plan on dedicating this upcoming softball season to two people (GOD willing it gets here): my Mommsy, of course, who had a love for the game, and as most of you know passed along to the slice of heaven we are yearning for this past December; and a second baseman that was also into ballet and all sorts of girly things--because she was this precious girl swiped from us at the hands of evil. I've read countless articles about her little life and the impact she left in her wake is as big as a rip tide that could drown the very best of all our well-thought out intentions to do some good--Christina Taylor Green. I can only hope that I am able to do her justice as I give up the coveted shortstop spot to move over to where she played at last (since I coach in here I can play anywhere I darn well want to!). And I started out as a second baseman because Big Bro was the catcher...and man did we throw out some guys trying to steal! So hopefully this season will be a winning one. Even if not, I will PRAISE HIM.

On my way back from Church just a few minutes ago a young gangbanger came up to me to thank me for letting him read "The Shack"--a book Patti-Sue sent me, and I completely forgot what happened to (forgive me sis)--but here was this young black man telling me how much it helped him understand the HOLY TRINITY. And I was all down on my sucky witnessing efforts...that GOD...HE can really put you in check in good and bad ways. I love HIM. Won't you guys love HIM too?

...later...Psalm102...all day...agape...dougie boy

Those were...

..the good old days. As some are in the habit of pronouncing to whomever will give ear. 2 Corinthians 6:2 tells us that ..."Behold now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation." Even though the past may very well be better off in the rearview for some of us, still the future for CHRISTians is a far more exceeding benefit of the eternal glory type that we press towards in the unprecedented hope that lies in store for those that love the LORD.

Believest thou this? 

Some read the Bible and really don't accept all that is written in it...professing the quirky secularism that man wrote it for real (well, for real man did write it), but it was through the guidance and unction of the Holy Ghost that he did so. Since Mommsy's passing it is not that I have become more attached to the Scriptures to help me through this devastating period, on the contrary, I continue on just as before because my belief is not founded in this old world system that is passing away. If it were why every circumstance that came along that held in its outcome in adversity, then shakeable would I be in the facts of JESUS. But I'm not my friends. I'm firmly grounded! PRAISE HIM! Don't get me wrong...I ain't jumping for joy right now due to the first holiday experience without the perenial Motherly assurance that came with...my Mom. But she could bring that earthly guidance for only so long, even though certain goodly teachings (for which she had many) will live on in her children and be passed on, but finite they were regardless of how we revere those whom we cherish so. Not the case with CHRIST. Timeless. Faultless. Relentless. HE constantly draws me to HIM with cords of love that are everlasting.

In these downtrodden prison holidays (trust me here in that old axiom where depression reigns for those with the proclivity given into self-pity) men will take their lives. Can't say I haven't thought on it, but it was way before I had CHRIST. Now I keep on encouraging those who might do that very thing because they are not able to see through the haze of incarceration how clearly HE saves us from ourselves.

Okay my friends and always loved ones in my prayers. I am heading out to work in this dark place where I must be a light (have to be exhuding the very ONE that keeps me in hopes that I can show others who can't but see darkly), but I also keep in mind the manner of man I once was lest my witness becomes in need of protection. My next message will come soon...until then...Psalm 30.

later..dougie boy

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