For a society we live in

For a society we live in

Demands for every citizen

For the ones who stand out have the courage to face difference

Two heads are worse than one

One is best to change

We stand here in silence until one does something strange

We wish for the better

And we acknowledge we commit pain

For the pain we cause others is an action in vain

We are a superior race

But we are scared to face the unknown

But if we knew the answer to life

Society would be overthrown.

--Samwell Manjur (2015)

Planting Our Gardens

Planting Our Gardens

This was a week of planting flowers. 

A few days ago, I’m able to tend some flowers in our town’s community garden. Over a cup of coffee, a young man and I talk about changing attitudes in this community. Two street preachers have periodically shown up on Main Street, condemning homosexual love, accosting young people, telling them they are going to hell.  

One brave high school girl made a sign, and stood next to them on the street corner, contradicting their views. Her hand-lettered sign spoke of the idea that love is the highest human value, that everyone should be able to love who they choose to love, that homosexual love is an aspect of Christian love and compassion.  

She was joined by others, and a Facebook group was created, #TillamookForLove, its members now close to 3,000. The preaching and the counter demonstrations became the talk of the town. The young girl’s actions were mentioned around the world, tweeted by Ellen DeGeneres and becoming a featured story in the Huffington Post.  

The young man I had coffee with joined the girl and her supporters, taking a public stand on an issue dear to his heart.  As often happens in a small town, and across America, people criticized him, condemned him, telling him he’s a sinner because of what he is willing to say. His job was at risk for what he believed in, what he spoke about on his own Facebook page.

Yes, fear and bigotry and discrimination, right in his face.  Change his opinion or lose his job. The old beliefs, the old discriminatory, bigoted ways aren’t just something to talk about, not just some textbook First Amendment clash between freedom of religion and free speech. Now, it’s seeing the reality of imposing one’s own religious beliefs, and beliefs about who you can marry, to the point of crushing someone else’s right to their own opinion, to the point of getting fired.

Our coffee cools as we wrestle with his story, his pain and anguish, his moral dilemmas hitting his wallet and his conscience.  Being called out for what you believe in and threatened with losing his job, his challenges and choices aren’t just an academic debate. He’s on the battlefield, and the spears and the clash of swords on the front lines aren’t confined to a history book. The blood being shed is real.

Bigotry and fear run deep in our little town and across our country. He’s still in shock about how deep the cancer grows, how quickly the moral question got personal. The ugliness is something we both don’t like to see, don’t like to admit is thinking that is all too common. What is the price of his own conscience? 

Yet, he knows his own mind, and he knows his standards of ethics and morality. Quietly, firmly he speaks his mind, knowing that he can sleep well tonight, knowing he made the right call, knowing that his beliefs are truly his own, that getting fired for what he believed in was really the best response to his boss, his own epiphany for what we are facing.    

I shake his hand, seeing real courage across the table, feeling proud that he knows himself well enough to know his own mind, that he’s confident enough to follow his Truth, and live according to his own heart. 

This flower garden is growing well.  The weeds have been called out and named. Weeds are being pulled and beautiful flowers have been planted. Strong plants send their roots deep into the soil of this young man’s heart, his morality strong and fertile. 

Today, I plant some flowers of my own, going to a nearby prison and planting flowers inside the fence, behind the locked gate that slams shut every time I leave. 

The young men I visit, several other volunteers, and I weed flower beds. We work on setting the supports for a new arbor in fresh cement, finish the week’s projects, and tidy up the garden. This weekend, the young men will host a Family Day, with food and games, and tours of their garden. Proudly, they will show off their hoop house, their raised beds and chickens, showing off all the growing that has been going on.  

The youths clean up the garden and carry out their tasks, making the place shine, their flowers and vegetables thriving under their careful and meticulous gardening skills.  They are learning a great deal in their class, where they are studying a wide range of subjects.  I help correct their homework, and work with them, one on one, as they delve into the hands-on work of both the academic work and their hoop house and raised bed projects.  Their work is top notch, and their gardens reflect the pride they are taking in their agricultural work, and the rebuilding of their lives. It is garden work on many levels.  

We work happily together, asking questions, sharing our knowledge, expanding our curiosity about how sunshine, dirt, seeds, and tender care can produce vigorous growth.  The young men ask great questions, get their hands dirty, and do the weeding, pruning and fertilizing they need to change themselves, and move on with their lives, becoming healthy, and vigorous young men.

I’m given the task of adding several flats of marigolds to some bare spots in the flowerbeds. I create my own slice of Eden, being a role model for the young men, and adding some beauty to this world behind the fence and the barbed wire. A young man takes the time to admire my work, and ask me some questions about pruning. Our talk goes deep, until I answer what he is really asking.  

Lives are changed here. I’m thankful I’m able to dig my trowel into the receptive soil of these young men, and plant some flowers. 

This week, the gardens of our community have needed a great deal of work. Hard decisions have been made, and the spade work, hoeing and planting have made us sweat.  The gardeners have new blisters, some new aches and pains.  We’ve pulled the weeds and planted new flowers, and we are ready for a little more sunshine and truth in our lives.  

—-Neal Lemery, May 29, 2015

Restringing

Restringing

Together, we tear open the packages of new strings, gingerly remove the old strings, and replace them with new ones, all shiny and bright. The new strings don’t come with directions, and folks who buy violin strings are probably presumed to know what they are doing. Trial and error become reliable teachers, and our first experience in restringing a violin soon brings results. 

He tightens each string, checking the tuning, a smile creeping over his face as he realizes his violin now has a clearer, brand new tone. Yes, he can do this. He can restring his violin, a new task is learned, and a big accomplishment is made.

The violin has been a good teacher these last few months, offering challenges, and stretching his fingers and his fascination with making music with a bow, strings, and a centuries old design. My friend, "Jim", is finding his voice with this violin, a place to put his emotions, and his fears. He’s getting out of prison in eight months, and there’s a lot of fear in him now, about how to live, and how to be a man on the “outside”, for the first time in his young life. Six years is a long time behind bars, especially when you are twenty three.

His grandfather’s gift of the violin has brought him some genuine excitement, and a place for his emotions, his love for creating something beautiful. He is finding a voice for his soul to spread its wings and soar. 

We work quietly, offering each other suggestions, each contributing a finger to hold a string, or add a bit of tension, only a word here and there to solve a problem of a reluctant tip of a wire string, or finding the correct direction to turn a tuning peg, the right groove for that particular string. 

He retunes and retightens, again and again, as the new strings stretch, now becoming part of the violin, part of the whole of what he tenderly holds in his arms and under his chin, his bow finding its place, creating new notes, clean and bright.

We were supposed to work on our weekly task, reading comprehension and vocabulary for his college entrance tests. He kept failing the tests on the computer, and was getting frustrated. He’d seen me helping other young men here with their studies, and had finally screwed up his courage enough to ask me for some help.

In the past two months, we’d been faithful to our task, making progress, but today was different. As soon as I walked into the multi-purpose room for the prison camp, and its eclectic chaos of books, videos, craft supplies, a few beat up guitars, and "Jim"’s violin, he talked excitedly about everything but our work. He was a tea kettle getting ready to boil.

Our stringing task complete, I’m thinking we could get our studying done. But, the water’s still hot and "Jim" is ready to unload on something else. We move on to a new topic, and soon he is showing me photos of his family, and telling me their stories, and the stories of his young life, stories he’s never shared with me.

There’s the grandfather who sent him the violin, smiling, picking his guitar. 

“He’s real proud of me, for working so hard on the violin,” he says. “I got to talk to him on the phone the other day, first time in a year.”

As he flips through the album, he lets me deeper into his life, sharing some more sad stories, some of his pain, his worries about people he loves, and who he really might be, inside. 

And, finally, the last page of the album, the real reason he’s emotional today.  He lets me inside of his heart, and shares a deep, sad story, so intense and personal that the details, the intimacy, aren’t to be shared with anyone else.  Yet, he trusts me to listen, to hear his story, and why he is so sad, and on edge today.

I want to find a corner and cry my eyes out, the pain in "Jim"’s voice filling me with sorrow. But, I have to keep listening,  No one else is. 

It’s a matter of fact tale, just part of his young life, just what he has had to experience.  I lean in, and listen hard, my few questions telling him I’m really listening, really paying attention to him, and his Divine Comedy, taking me deeper and colder than Dante’s version of the deepest part of Hell.  

We’ve gone so far today, from mentor and prisoner, to tutor and student, to amateur violin restringer and tuner, to spiritual surgeons, working on a broken heart.   My job now becomes the listener, the friend, the other human being in the room who gives a damn about this young man and his pain.  

He tells his story, letting me hear his pain, and his deep love for what he had in his arms, and then lost, and how he has gained from all of that, and become a loving, good man, at peace with God, and content in his life.  Oh, there is still some bitterness and some righteous anger, but instead of poisoning his soul, he uses all that to feed his soul, and nurture his gentle, peaceful spirit, and give himself guidance and purpose in his life.

There are angels in this room now, surrounding us, and filling this space with love and a sense of serenity and comfort.  I think “Jim” senses them, too, and his shoulders drop, and he is, at last, becoming at peace with his story he has just shared.  In the telling, he has found some acceptance, and compassion, some support in his journey. He is not alone, now, in that story, that part of his life that nearly pulled his heart out of his chest.  

I grab him and hold him close, and he holds me tight, and sobs, at last. Together, we grieve, the soothing words we both need now not spoken, but filling the room, and healing his heart, resounding loudly in our souls.  What I try to give to him now comes not from me, as much as it comes from the angels in our midst, the air heavy with the unconditional love of the universe. 

Our time is up, now, and I have to go. We’ve worked on our vocabulary,  the words that really matter today, and we’ve restrung a violin, giving both "Jim" and his violin a new, brighter voice. We’ve put in some new heart strings, too, giving me a chance to love this young man a little harder, a little deeper today, giving him some space to play his songs, and be loved.

—Neal Lemery

4/10/2014

Precious and Painful

Life is precious and wonderful.  

I learned that lesson again this week, a week of turmoil, grief, and new beginnings.  

A good friend, suffering from a deadly, debilitating disease, moved on out of this world, taking charge of his life, and saying his good byes, and teaching us about life, its joys, and the wonderment of each day.  His final days offered new lessons to me about courage, and what one person can achieve in their life, about relationships, and the sacredness of a simple act of kindness.

I never got to express everything I feel about him, but then, we never do.  Life is like that, never having enough time to really fully communicate what another person means to us, how precious is our relationship with someone.  Too often, we live in the moment, and dance around the profound, the universal truth of the gifts others bring into our lives.  

A family member ended their life, leaving us with deep questions, and the pain of sudden grief, paradoxes, and the reopening of old wounds, and old questions about life.  Pain wracked my heart, bringing me closer to family, and reminding me of the importance of how we all need to care for and parent the survivors.  Two young children now don’t have a mother, but they do have our family, and we have a deeper appreciation of the time that we have with each other.

I helped a young man being released from prison.  I walked with him out of the prison gate, having him hear that metal slam behind him, and I drove him into the rest of his life.  Five years behind bars, ten years of foster care, two failed adoptions, the emptiness of no one visiting him these last five years. 

We loaded up all of his worldly possessions into my car, and drove off into the early morning gloam, the heavy rain attempting to drown our joy of that moment, and the prospects of a bright life ahead for this young man.  

We greeted the dawn at the beach, his first view of the ocean in five years, his first hour of only the sound of the wind and the waves, not sharing the dawn with twenty five other inmates in a prison dorm.  

There was ice cream with breakfast, and buying a new book by his favorite author, and a long drive through the forest, where each turn in the road offered yet another view of the world, without bars and fences.  

We dealt with bureaucracy, mind-numbing forms and questionnaires, more waiting, and more interviews.  Yet, in all that, I witnessed his courage, his determination to move ahead, and begin his new life.  He knew where he was going, and he was prepared to forge ahead, on his own at last.

Through his eyes, I saw the world anew, and got a glimpse of what opportunity and hope can mean for one’s soul.  When all things are possible, and when you now have freedom to move ahead, and to take your first steps into a new world, to create your life, and move towards your dreams, then life is sweet and amazing.  

I walked with him, sitting in the dank waiting rooms of the probation office, transitional housing, the world of food stamps and public assistance.  I felt the cold stares of the security guards and the bureaucrats, their unfeeling hands as they searched me, judging me as a suspicious troublemaker, labeling me without knowing me.  This was just another day of institutional life for my young friend, and he flashed me a grin, letting me know that you can endure the labeling, the indifferent bureaucrats, and mind-numbing waiting, because today was his first day of freedom.  

At dinner, we toasted his freedom, and the future that he now held in his hand.  He chatted with the waitress about looking for work, about being young and moving to the big city.   He laughed and grinned at the idea of a menu, and a linen table cloth, and a candle on the table, real silverware and real plates.  And, when the giant piece of chocolate cake was too much for him to eat, he laughed at the idea of taking the rest home to his new room, a midnight snack just for him, to eat it all by himself, his first night sleeping alone in five long years.  

This week offered me many lessons, and many voices on how life is precious, and wonderful, and not to be taken for granted.  In all of this, I played many roles, and was called upon to be the best of friends, the best of uncles, and the best of the driver and companion of a young man whose world was opening up, his life ready to fully bloom in the glories of the coming spring.  

Neal Lemery 3/30/2014

A Courageous Dilemma

We often think heroes are the folks somewhere else, the people on the front page or on the TV news, people who have done something amazing.  They’re the people meeting the President, getting a medal.

But, we have heroes here, right in my town. And, sometimes, I get to be a witness to some amazing acts of courage and determination to just do the right thing.

A friend of mine is facing a serious dilemma.  Their work, and their values and morals, and what is truly in their best interest are now at loggerheads.  Life isn’t working out the way they want it, and there’s a lot of conflict, a lot of strife.  

And, it’s becoming clear that the right thing to do is make some big changes, and to move on.  That means giving up some things that are near and dear to their heart.  Yet, they aren’t able to fully live their morals and values the way things are now.  

They are at the crossroads, and the road is muddy, and there are a lot of questions, and not as many answers.  

My friend has wrestled with all of this, and keeps coming back to thinking they need to live their morals and values, and be true to themselves, to honor their core values.  And, when they’ve looked at their dilemma in that way, the choices become clear, and the path ahead opens up, and they can move forward.

They’re unstuck, now, and they’ve figured it out.  Do the right thing, be true to their values, and find the courage to move ahead, to embrace change.  Once they’ve come around to living life according to their beliefs, the choices are a lot easier, a lot clearer.

This conflict hasn’t been easy.  There’s been a lot of sleepless nights, a lot of conversation over coffee with friends, a lot of wandering in the desert of uncertainty and doubt.  And, in that darkness, they’ve found their stars again, and they’ve refocused on their beliefs and morals.  Their compass has found True North again, and they are ready to make their move.

I’ve helped, just a bit, in that journey.  I’ve listened, and put my judging and second guessing to the side.  My role as friend in all this has been to listen, and to repeat back to them what they are saying, so they can hear their own words, their own values, through another voice.

My friend has figured it out.  I don’t need to decide for them, and I don’t need to analyze the dilemma through my own values and beliefs.  I just need to let them hear what they are saying, and let they say and hear their own advice, their own solution to their dilemmas.

I’d want that for me, when it’s my turn in the box of paradox, dilemma, and conflict.  Someone to hold up that mirror, and let me see myself for what I am, and for what I believe in, and want to achieve. We all need that person in our lives to give us permission to get out the compass, and find our True North.

My friend is moving on, taking steps now in the direction they’ve chosen, and feeling pretty happy about it.  They aren’t expecting to get a medal from the President, but they deserve one, for being courageous and for doing the right thing.

Neal Lemery   11/5/2013

A Letter to My Young Friend in Prison

A Letter to My Young Friend in Prison

Dear ____________:

It was good to go deep with you today.  

As always, I found you working on several difficult issues, and moving forward with all of them.  You have healthy goals, and you have worthy dreams.  You always do.  

Young men worry about who they are, and what they want to accomplish, and what is their destiny.  And, actually, we all worry about that.  At least, I do.  

I don’t always count my blessings, and I can worry about things that I have no control over, or things that turn out to be pretty insignificant.  I struggle with feelings and emotions, and I get myself tied up in knots about things.  Another young man I know calls that “catastrophizing”.  A good term for that “tie my stomach in knots” feeling.  

So, when you struggle, and doubt, and worry, you are not alone.  And, when you see some people and situations in your life that need some fixing, and things aren’t getting fixed, that is normal.  

Each of us can only fix ourselves.  We aren’t the mechanics for other people.  We don’t lead their lives.  And, we aren’t the boss.  Well, we are the boss of ourselves.  We do have the ability to direct our own lives, and to manage our own affairs.  And, what other people do and what other people might think of us --- well, not much we can do about that.  

You are a normal guy.  You have normal worries, and normal doubts and normal insecurities.  You get frustrated when relationships and other things don’t get “fixed”.  That’s normal.  

I see you accomplishing a whole lot.  Certainly more than most 21 year old men I have known.  OK, you are in prison and you don’t have a lot of “freedom”.  Yet, you have done a great deal of hard work in getting your own house in order, and healing yourself.  You have educated yourself a great deal about who you are, where you come from, and who you want to be.  

Most young men haven’t done that.  Most young men haven’t laid out the high moral standards and ethics you have set for yourself.  The work you have done has been very valuable, and very important.  I think you see that, sometimes.  In a few years, you will see this time as a very rich, and a very valuable experience.  

As you do your heart work, know that I support you, and I believe in you.  I am grateful you have this opportunity, to know yourself better, and to gain information which will lead to even more self discovery, and to more healing of whatever wounds you discover. 

Part of that healing work involves forgiveness.  

I hope that you are doing some forgiveness of yourself in all this.  Forgiveness is a very good gift to give to yourself.  It is part of that struggle you have with accepting a gift.  

You want to “pay off your restitution”.  “Restitution” means “to restore, to put back”.  Part of restitution is forgiving yourself.  That will be harder to do than sending money off to the State.  But, more rewarding, and more freeing.  

You are doing all of this work for the right reasons: self understanding.  

Most every time I leave prison after a visit with you, I say to myself “Wow.  I don’t know if I could deal with that.”  

A lot of the stuff you talk about that you have experienced, well, I think I might just want to find a dark corner and pull a blanket over my head, and slip away into a bit of self imposed craziness.  

But, you don’t take that cheap route.  You dig in and work through the crap that you have to deal with sometimes, and you get it on.  You sort through it, and you do what is needed to be healthy, and sane, and whole.  

You may think you don’t get much support from other folks on what you are going through and what you are doing.  But, you do.  Your Team is out there, cheering you on.  

I try to be a good cheerleader, a good support person for you.  I don’t always do a great job, and I often don’t have the tools and the pompoms and the special cheerleader cheers that work for you.  But, I still show up and I still cheer you on.  

I believe in you and I believe in your journey.  

And, you teach me more about courage and decency and character than anything else in my life.  

I thank you for that, from deep in my heart.

Sincerely,

Neal C. Lemery

Courage--A Letter to a Young Man

In you, I see courage. You take your experiences in life, and where you are at, and you move forward. You move into the unknown, knowing that you take your past, and where you are today, and you feel you must move on.

On down the river, on over the wall, on up the mountain. Ever onward.

There are steps to take, challenges to face, explorations of who you are inside. And, you go.

You look backward, a bit, figuring out who you have been, what you have experienced, and what that all means. You try to make sense of it. You try to understand it, and what all that means, for the man you want to be. You do not live in the past, as you cannot change the past. You can only understand the past. That understanding gives you power.

Growing into manhood is hard work. It is not just taking each day as it comes, and being content to do the least amount of work to get by, to park yourself in front of the TV and not be engaged, to just let life go by. To snooze. If you snooze, you lose. Instead, you are awake, alive.

Instead of taking the lazy path, the path of least resistance, you step outside of your comfort zone, and you dig into your troubled past, and you dig into your gut, and you crack open the door of the dark stuff that lies buried, deep and dark, the scary stuff, deep inside.
You are curious of what lies there, in the dark and stink of your life, and you are readying your broom and your mop, and maybe your shotgun, getting ready to wrestle with the monsters that lurk down there. You are tired of the stink and the slime, and you want to clean house.

You soak up knowledge, hungry for news, hungry for challenge, hungry as your mind desires new ways, new approaches to life. You want a new world to explore, a new world in which to live, and fresh air to breathe.

You said this week that you’ve “been around the block”, and have sampled much of the dark side of what life has to offer, and there remains in your mouth the bitter taste of dissatisfaction, of emptiness, of shallow thinking. It is not enough for you, that bitterness, and you crave more, something sweet, substantial, meaningful.

And, so the light of understanding and the hunger for digging deep into your emotions and your gut now comes into your life. You realize there is more, so much more, in life. You are ready for this new adventure, this new calling, this need to be the explorer, the adventurer, and yes, the surgeon.

You are taking control of your life, and your mind. You are deciding not to live life according to someone else’s plan, someone else’s expectations for you. You are writing your own movie script, your own stage play, and you are now walking out onto the stage of your life, and taking the leading role. You are becoming the star in your own movie.

The journey into your heart and into your gut, into the emotional universe that lies
within you, scares you. That place has been off limits for so long. Taboo. Forbidden. Too scary for words. It has been much safer to simply ignore that place, and not go there, and to fill that place with garbage and horror, and lock the door.

Yet, men do go there. Men crack open that door, and discover their heart, and their gut, and the emotions and feelings that are there, inside. For that is who we really are. We men are emotions, we are feelings. We are the currents and forces of conflicting and churning stuffs.

In you, there is anger. A lot of anger. I would call that righteous anger. Not anger for anger’s sake, or simply rising out of the hormones and stress of growing up in this often crazy world. Your anger is deeper, more complex, more intense.

As it should be. You have a right to claim your anger. You have a right to express your anger. You anger is earned from all the horrible and nasty experiences you have had, experiences that have tried to dehumanize you, to steal your manhood, your manliness.

My hope for you is that you claim your anger, to seize it, drag it out of its dark, filthy hiding place, and bring it into the light. Rip off its covers, and dump it out of its stinky box, and see it for what it is. Give it air. Give it light. Give it voice.

And rage, and yell, and scream, as you give it a name, and give your anger its voice. Express yourself and let it be known that you are angry, that you claim your anger, and that it is earned. Declare that it is a poison in your life and you are becoming free of it, that it will no longer have a claim on your manhood.

It is a righteous thing to do. It is seeking Justice.

And, when you do this, you will not be alone, and you will not be defeated. You will gather around you those people in your life who give you strength and support and love. We will be at your back, and we will cheer you on. You will draw from us the strength and determination you will need to give voice to your anger, and let yourself be heard.

There will be fear and hesitation and doubt. Yet, those are the sinister tools of your anger, the tools that anger uses to keep its power over you, its power to keep claiming your manhood.

And, knowing that will give you strength and courage.

We men are called to the river, and we are called to put our boats into the raging current and paddle out into the rapids. We are called to gauge the currents, and find the rocks and boulders, and hidden logs, and we are required to navigate the river, and to come to know its song.

And, as we run the rapids and as we come to know the river, and make it familiar, even beloved territory, we are finding our own song, our own rhythm, our own drawing of what our life is. The river song becomes our song, our melody. We men sing our song loudly, and with pride. It is our song.

As we men go into our hearts, and into our guts, and as we find the words and the songs to express what is inside of us, then we find our own songs. We find our strength and we find our gold.

In that journey, we open the windows in our soul, and we air out the stench of the ugliness, the bad times, the things that were so bad, so awful that we put them in black boxes and sealed them up with tape, and hid them in the darkest part of our basement. And, instead of letting those blackest, most evil things lurking and hiding in our basement, stink up our lives, we toss those boxes out onto the front lawn of our lives, and rip the boxes open. We let the wind carry off the stench, and we let the bright sunlight of our courage and our knowledge and our self confidence burn into the rotten garbage of the past.

We take our hose and flush away the filth, and the blackest slime and ooze, and make it all clean and fresh.

We call that stench, that filth, for what it is and we give it a name. We shout its name out loud, so that all our friends can hear. We do this so that the stink will know what it is, and so it will have no more power over us.

We feel clean, refreshed, pure. We feel that we are sacred and holy, for we are men. We are children of God, and we are good.

And, all of this is taking power, taking control. Becoming a man in your own house, your own soul.

None of us takes this journey alone. We bring our ancestors, we bring the strong, healthy members of our family, we bring our good friends. We bring our cheerleaders, our allies. We bring our armor and we bring our spears. We bring our courage.

You are the Captain now. You are the Man. You are the Boss. Not me. Not anyone else. And, definitely not the slime and the filth that has clogged and polluted your soul.
Be free.

And, be a man. Be the man you want to be.

--Neal Lemery 3/19/2011