A New Year Comes

The New Year Comes

“For last year's words belong to last year's language

And next year's words await another voice.”

― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

            The new year is almost here.  I’m ready for a change, to go with the new calendar on the wall.  Soon, there will be a new month, a new year, and the rest of winter.   But, I’ve been adrift, not quite able to put words to this feeling, this restlessness for looking at life in a new way, with new words.

            A new friend and I meet, sipping coffee milkshakes, as he tells me of his life and his hopes for the future.  He is full of optimism, and hope for a new beginning.  His life is changing, much for the better, as he distances himself from chaos and anger, to curiosity and new vocabulary. 

            He thinks I’m wise, and I can teach him much.  Truth be known, he is my teacher, my spiritual guru today. Like him, I need to free myself from old patterns, old demons, and look ahead. I need a new vocabulary, and fresh eyes to see the world unfolding before me. 

            “I want to explore so much,” my friend says. 

            I could easily define him as a failure, a cast off, for something he did several years ago.  His family has rejected him, and society has sent him to prison.

            He’s a prisoner, I thought, but really, he’s free now. He’s been released, and can now truly live his life.  One person’s idea of prison is another’s university of life. 

            A paradox. Yet, he feels free now, for the first time, to be who he wants to be, to stretch himself and move ahead in his life.  For the first time, he is with people his own age, making friends, going to school, and learning to write. He’s waking up every morning in a place where he is not beaten, screamed at, or kept away from the world. He’s escaped from the darkness of his family’s chamber of horrors, and has come into the light, joining the world as a real person. 

            He searches for words to express himself, and the words for his waves of emotion, all new to him.  This coming year is a new beginning for him, a gift to be opened and cherished, with words and emotions he has never known before. 

            We discover we are both gardeners, in every nuance of the word. Like me, he’s browsing the seed catalogs, and placing his order, dreaming of the coming springtime, where one plants and brings forth new life. He yearns to nurture the garden of his own soul.

            “Who am I?” he asks. 

            “Anything you want to be,” I reply.  “You can choose now.  The world is yours to explore.”

            And, not just for him, I realize.  It is my choice, too.  I, too, am in this world, and I also can make those choices and have those opportunities. We are both gardeners and poets, thinking of spring. 

            And we are both prisoners, of our thoughts, our old perceptions of the world and how we fit into the mold of what others expect of us, how they think we should act and think. 

            Like my buddy, I too can be free, and move on towards the coming newness and freedom of the new year, and be who I really want to be. 

12/28/2015

Neal Lemery

Apples and Young Men

I was there to teach, to demonstrate how to care for apple trees, getting them ready for a season of growth, of new fruit.  The young men gathered around me, curious about the sprayer I had brought, my long plastic gloves, my eye goggles.  

Usually when I come to the youth prison, I bring coffee and food, and visit with one of two young men, listening to their stories, giving them a bit of direction and encouragement, trying to help them move on with their lives.  Sometimes, I bring my guitar or a book.  Sometimes, I bring my drum and listen to their worries and hope in a drumming circle, connecting with them in a deep, intimate way, the drum beats opening all of us up to our spiritual paths.  

Today, though, I am the gardener, and so are they.  They gather around a big work table in their greenhouse, all the shelves and plant tables filled to the brim with trays of their seedlings and cuttings.  Eagerly, they show me what they’ve done, what they’ve planted, techniques they’ve learned to bring forth new life.

The chickens they’ve raised from eggs are now about to lay their own eggs.  They tell me the stories of each of the hens, and how they’ve grown.  The chickens are now a big part of their garden, eating scraps of lettuce, decimating slugs, and adding their nutrients back into the garden soil.  

The circle of life is vibrant here, everyone involved in the daily routine of new life, hands on experiences with dirt, manure, sunlight, new plants, harvest, decay, renewal.  

Their lives, too, nourished, weeded, fertilized, pruned and guided into healthy new growth, strengthened by the sunlight they are now letting into their lives, becoming strong, healthy men.  I see smiles and bright eyes, as they tell me about their plants, their chickens, this place in the world they have made their own, a place of beauty and growth, of new life.

I talk about apples, how humans have tended them for thousands of years, continually improving them, new varieties, new techniques.  There are stories of grafting, pruning, thinning, making living things thrive because of a person taking a little time to care.  

I talk about disease and blight, of the need to prune out the parts of the plant that were harming the health of the rest of the tree, of adding lime to the soil, to help the tree thrive, to yield juicier fruit, growing stronger.  Today, I’m attacking fungus and bugs, things that are hard to see, but still harm the tree.  There were nods of understanding when I weave the care of apple trees into our lives and our dreams.

Eagerly, they watch me spray their trees, explaining each step, why I’m doing what I’m doing, helping to grow healthy trees, bring forth a bigger harvest, make this part of the world just a bit better. Their questions are thoughtful, to the point, raising issues I hadn’t thought about.  Together, we explore new questions, new solutions.  We are all students here.

They’re orchardists of their own lives, and the concepts of opening something up to more sunshine and fresh air. Thinning out disease and refocusing energy are familiar ideas.  

These men are gardeners of their own lives.  Their questions and our discussions about apples teach me about the real agriculture that is going on here, behind the fence that surrounds their home.  

“I learned to take care of a garden.  Now I can take care of my life,” a young man said not long ago to one of the teachers there.  

That wisdom helped him in the weeding and pruning of his life.

His story, told while we are snacking on some of the vegetables they had grown, brings nods of understanding from the young men there, gathered around the table.  It is a lesson they know well, a way of thinking that is part of the routine, part of what they do every day when they water and tend their plants, feed their chickens, and make plans for how their garden would grow in the coming summer, and the summer of their own precious lives.    

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

Defining Success

On Christmas, my wife and I visited one of our young men in prison.  Of all my friends, he’s the one who enjoys Christmas the most, especially the anticipation, the expectation, and the promise of a happy time, a brighter tomorrow.

After five and a half years in prison, his spirit is brighter now that it’s ever been. He’s grown in so many ways, and achieved many of his goals.  In prison, he’s actually had goals and found ways to achieve them.  Before that, life was just survival, slogging through chaos and drugs, of being treated indifferently, without love, and not knowing who he was or where he was headed.

Now, he’s found purpose and meaning.  He’s making peace with the demons in his life, and has found the strength and courage to look deep inside of himself, and to finally love himself, and all the possibilities he has in his life.

He wanted socks for Christmas, making sure everyone knew it, too.  Now, he’s a wealthy man, Mr. Big in the world of socks.  He’s the happy recipient of forty pairs of socks, socks of nearly every size and color.  He has socks everywhere now, new socks to try on every day for over a month.  

Yes, he had a successful Christmas, all the socks he could ever want.  In the telling of his story, his laugh and his big smile light up his face; he knows now that he is loved and respected by so many people.  He’s figured out the magic of Christmas, the reason for the season.

He’s successful in so many other ways this year.  He’s taken charge of his life, looking deep inside of himself, and taking charge of who he is, and where he is going.  He’s embraced his new maturity.  He’s taken on his self confidence and is moving ahead.  He’s found his courage and is nourishing and loving his soul.

He’s the person Robert Louis Stevenson was writing about when he said,

“That man is successful who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much, who has gained the respect of the intelligent men and the love of children; who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; who leaves the world better than he found it, whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul; who never lacked appreciation of earth's beauty or failed to express it; who looked for the best in others and gave the best he had.”  ~Robert Louis Stevenson

This year, many people I know have taken stock of their lives, summoned their courage, and moved ahead.  Their accomplishments are many, and I’ve been applauding their journeys, and marveling at their determination and sacred intentions in their lives.  It has been a year of transformation and a year of dramatic and momentous growth.  Old demons have been called out of the basement, new directions has been set, and the tough, sweaty and hard work has been done.  And, in that work, our communities are stronger, more vibrant, richer in so many ways. 

Some people look to Washington politicians to make the big changes they want to see in the world and in their lives.  Yet, the real change and the real work is done right here, inside my friends and neighbors, the farmer, the waitress, the young man in prison.  The real change makers are right here, and the work is getting done. People are becoming transformed, people making a real difference.

Like my young friend in prison, people are taking inventory of who they are inside, and grasping the power they have to change.  And, then, they are stepping out, and doing the hard, gut level work, and moving ahead.  

They see the richness in their lives, not by the number of socks they got for Christmas, but in the way they love and are loved.

Learning Gratitude

Learning Gratitude

I always seem to learn my lessons in the most unexpected places.

This week, I was with a number of young men who are prisoners in my town.  They have long sentences, locked up for crimes they committed when they were anywhere from twelve to seventeen years old.  Their home lives were chaos, riddled with the violence, drugs, and sexual behavior that is the seed bed for most of our society’s woes, and the root of our country’s high rate of putting people in prison.  

Much of what we might think of as “normal” just not existing in their youth, before they came here.  And, many become abandoned by their families; no one comes to visit them.  So, a few of us come, to listen, to just show up in their lives.  

Rather than really dealing with those issues, society locks these boys up, without much regard for who they really are, the prison terms computed by a chart of numbers, devoid of any sense of compassion, or rationality.  

At least we can boast that we are “tough on crime”.  And, tough on souls.  

We are, after all, the leading country in the world as far as locking up our population.  Yes, more than Russia, more than China, and other places we think are oppressive, undemocratic countries.  The prison industry is growing, and is a significant chunk of our economy, eating up more tax dollars than what we spend on schools.

The subject of gratitude came up, as we talked about the real meaning of Thanksgiving, and how that holiday came to be part of our heritage and one of our biggest holidays, full of food, family time, and, yes, expressing gratitude.  

One by one, these young men spoke humbly of the things in life they were grateful for.  The list was long, and ran deep.  People who cared about them, support for their treatment for their sexually inappropriate behavior, their attitudes about drugs, violence, manipulation of others, degrading their own self worth, their work on getting an education, and improving their lives, and their relationships with their family.  

They also spoke of being thankful for getting in contact with their heritage, and finding a place in a culture that supported their sobriety, their healthy thinking, and their hunger for healthy, balanced, and emotionally satisfying lives, lives filled with purpose and decency.  They were finding their souls, moving into manhood whole and complete, their wounds healing.  

As I sat there, I recalled listening to the radio on my drive over to the prison, the “news” filled with the latest political sex scandal, and the latest celebrity drug and alcohol crazed dysfunctional public spectacle.  I’d come from the grocery store, where piles of cases of beer are arranged in recognition of this weekend’s big college football game, just before aisles of cheap Christmas decorations and gifts.

A billboard along the highway invited me to come gamble and drink on New Year’s Eve, and the usual gaggle of misfits stood outside of the local dive bar, smoking cigarettes and dealing a little weed and heroin.  

Yet, inside this prison, these young men calmly talked about how grateful they were for their lives, their sobriety, their hard work in dealing with their pasts, and the strengths and wisdom they now had in their lives.  They were strong men, preparing themselves for going back “outside”, into our crazy, addiction tempting society.

The midday boozers and smokers outside of the bar weren’t talking much about what they were grateful for, and gratitude wasn’t the focus of the talk show radio show that came on after the “news”.   

And, apparently, Thanksgiving doesn’t do much for the retail stores.  Gratitude and thanks and personal achievement aren’t something you can wrap up in paper, next to all the glitz and sparkle.  

I listened, listened hard to those young men, realizing that I really was in class, that I was the student and they were the teachers that day.  I go there to be a giver, an offerer; my role being a mentor, a teacher, a leader, a person of wisdom.  Yet, now they were the mentors, the teachers, the wise men imparting their truth, and their knowledge, their experience.  

Wisdom and gratitude were spoken, and I was grateful I took the time to open my heart and hear the truth tellers in my life.

--Neal Lemery 11/17/2012

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