Punishment

     I held a wailing little girl.  She was tearing at her hair due to her fear, having learned in her short life that terrible things will happen to her.  I handed her over to warm, soft hands and a cooing voice in a safe quiet room with a large fish tank.
     More difficult was sitting in the police substation listening to the statement given by the girl's father.  He had been renting out his young daughter for gas money.  The beer in her baby bottle kept her quiet he explained.
     "Why don't we take him out back and shoot him," an officer said.  Everyone seemed to be considering it because no one laughed or nodded their head.  At this time I believed that the only appropriate use of capital punishment was for certain sex offenders.  I considered the suggestion seriously.  Perhaps where this man grew up, such behavior was acceptable in a father.  He was surprised and upset when informed he was going to jail.
     So that left me to think about what punishment would be appropriate for the crime.  The girl looked as if she had been exposed to alcohol while in the womb.  She had suffered all manner of horrors in her young life and looked malnourished.
     The little person will suffer the consequences of her parent's maltreatment for the rest of her life.  Abuse, abandonment, hunger and a damaged mind that will struggle to make sense of it all.  As a young man involved in the case, I had a difficult time making sense of it.  Threatening to shoot the father was silly, but I was involved in lots of silly things.  I valued tests of strength, endurance and my fists on a heavy bag.  I thought of testing my fists against the father's jaw.  Vengeance only works in the movies and the rest of us understand that it is only a recourse for the helpless and hopeless.
     As a social worker, I look for the positives.  The child was introduced to caring and safety.  I hope that while she was in the emergency shelter where I left her, she would hang on to such hope as she found it like she had hung on to the back of my shirt while I carried her.
     What consequence should her father face?  There is nothing that could be done to the man that could equal what his daughter went through.  Eye for an eye seems silly.  Our thoughts should be of the girl.  She should never be exposed to him again.
     What she needs is our humanity as her offender was society.  A society which will offer her some sympathy as she grows, then turn away as she acts out displaying her confusion and fear.  Place her father in a cell, stripped of his title and its responsibilities.  Human beings hardly get the simple things right.  Leave vengeance to the Lord.  Find a new family and let her new community know that she is a gift and deserves an infinite gentleness.
     That night I went home to distract myself with my college troubles.  I had been instructed to do so in order to be able to return to work the next day.  In my last moment with her I touched her head and offered what was certainly my first prayer to God.  Peace child.

Wild Ones

The Wild Ones is my second novel. It is quite different from anything else I have written as it is a story that takes place in a fantasy world.  I loved Tolkien and Brooks as a kid and began this project in 2008 as a way of expressing ideas with the total creative freedom that the genre allows.

Broken Son

Broken Son is my first novel, inspired by my work with youth.  It was fascinating to learn about their lives, sometimes horrifying and ultimately inspiring.  While the experts like to pontificate about how we are to best respond to our troubled young people, the most useful response I learned was to offer lots of time and attention.  In other words, form relationships.

Charles and Faith

I have several years of experience in the mental health field following a good education; however, I have to admit that I understand less now about mental health than I did upon entering college.  This may be due to the fact that there are mysteries about the mind that we will never fathom. I have also learned that most troubles we encounter are human caused and that the solution is sharing God with others through our relationships with them.

A particular experience with an individual with mental illness helped me to understand the importance of relationship.  Charles was diagnosed with Schizophrenia shortly after returning from Vietnam.  Like the vast majority of people who develop any psychotic disorder, Charles endured a nightmarish childhood of violence and abuse.  He returned from war a troubled young man and spent the next twenty or so years homeless, trying to minimize his time in hospitals and jails.  I met him after the police were called to a grocery store to investigate the behavior of a large, partially clothed man cooling himself in the frozen food section.  Charles later explained to me that doing certain things, such as enduring extreme temperatures helped him to ward off Satan’s attacks.  So I began by introducing myself and trying to determine how we might together help him to feel more comfortable and less susceptible to the devil’s influence.

At no time did I lecture him about the efficacy of antipsychotic medications or the importance of working with mental health centers.  I just sat and listened to him and if he had to jump up all of a sudden to do some shadow boxing and glare at someone, I just figured it was something he had to do.  He had been homeless for a long time and had the scars to prove it.  Homelessness, like war, can be a violent business so being aware of his surroundings at all times was an important skill for Charles.  Patience with one another allowed us to accomplish a lot.  We sat for eight hours outside the VA one day to get an appointment and we prayed, flipped rocks with our fingers for distance and talked about God.  I think he was able to relax and he even consented to stay in the shelter at night as he had discovered that there was a holy vault within my office, so I emptied my trash can and he kept his valuables in there. 

This man was eligible for benefits through the VA although that system and Social Security were things he avoided like the plague.  What I discovered is that the man’s torments might be expressed in delusional terms, but they were real.  In the matrix of bureaucracies in terms of how torturous they are to deal with, Social Security and the VA may well be at the top.  We spent two hours once, most of the time on hold and Charles had to explain to a variety of people that his address had changed.  My own sanity was tested and I remain impressed that Charles withstood the experience.  After hanging up the phone, it immediately rang and he jumped up, nearly fell out of his chair and picked up the receiver before I could get to it.  He shouted out this explicit string of profanity to the caller and I cringed and asked for the phone.  Luckily it was just one of my coworkers calling, who was often irritating to me anyway, so I just said I would call him back later.  I figured I would explain Charles and his profane rant later or maybe not.

Charles was what mental health providers describe as “religiously preoccupied.”  And this is usually considered a serious impairment.  However, in talking to him I learned that through all his trials, he believed that God loved him and would never abandon him.  His faith was something to be encouraged and that gave meaning and hope to his life.  He described our time together as a “Holy Ghost party” to his mother on the phone one day.  This helped him to tolerate me even after I had to testify in court about some of his behaviors as the police persisted in charging him for his public indecency in the grocery store.  Our relationship survived his forced hospitalization and perhaps it was a good thing as they discovered he had a heart condition which was easily treated and improved his health tremendously.  He eventually was discharged to a group home and ended up clearing up amazingly well.  Charles would come to visit me at the shelter at times and expressed gratitude that the program I worked for had been so tolerant of him.

It has often been individuals from outside the field of psychiatry who have done the most good for folks struggling with mental illnesses. The faith community has been responsible for many of these advancements.  The Quakers in the US and England developed some humane hospitals hundreds of years ago that have success rates better than our own modern day hospitals.  Anabaptists that served in hospitals instead of joining the military during war time saw the horrible treatment of the mentally ill and became advocates for improvements in treatment. 

Mental illness, I believe, is not just a medical disease.  A medical focus has led us to search for medical cures, from immersion in ice cold water for long periods of time to yanking out people’s teeth, ice pick lobotomies to prescribing medications that do not have good long-term outcomes and may in fact be worsening the chances that a person with mental illness will ever recover.  Mental illness is a human problem, and, like anything else, requires a human solution through relationships.  There are some countries, like Finland, where they are reducing their rates of certain mental illnesses due to simply talking to people who are first showing signs of psychosis and helping them to develop a way to communicate about their lives for them and their families.

Third world countries generally have better rates of recovery for schizophrenia than developed countries.  That very fact should have the field of psychiatry scratching its head and perhaps kicking its own behind.  The WHO (World Health Organization) has documented this in three studies over three decades of research and follow-up.  The reason people get better seems to have to do with the fact that less developed countries rely on relationships.  In the west we describe someone as “Schizophrenic” and order treatment.  In Colombia, India and Nigeria they work with people who are first sons, daughters, sports fans, engineers, parents and artists who also seem to have some issues with their mental health and may need some extra support.

My pastor once asked me if perhaps we all had the potential to show signs of Schizophrenia or Bipolar Disorder.  I thought at the time this was not so.  Now I think differently.  I think we all have some issues or imbalances.  Sometimes anxiety runs in a certain family, some have temper problems or tend to be shy.  People in my family have a tendency to struggle with depression.  Like everyone else, I have learned about ways to help myself with my mood.  Even though it is hard, I work not to isolate myself and to instead share what is going on in my head.  My writing is a way of processing the world with a brain that seems to be all Right hemisphere.  All imagination, with poor ability to rationalize or process things logically.  And I thank you God.  It is the way I am.  What has helped me is to have people who experience my oddities and love me anyway.  We are all as God made us; it is just that some of us struggle in more obvious ways.  I think about Charles to avoid excessive professional arrogance and remind myself about what helps people to change.  Relationships.

Other Words for God

 

Getting up in the morning, when even this old world feels new

Before the hate preachers can open their mouths or even smirk

My feet are on the pavement, skin taking in morning air.

It is still safe, although the day’s heat can bring our hatred to a boiling point

My walk this morning involves a request, an admission and many thanks

            For peace, of guilt and for all the world, no exceptions.

The sunrise, another word for God.

The beautiful game on the telly inspires exuberance that launches a little  

            body off the couch.

There is nothing passive about his pursuits.  Watching a game involves live

            replays, exercise, drawings and costumes.

A staring game at bedtime between a father’s tired eyes and a boy’s

            busy eyes that have not yet taken everything in this day.

The game is interrupted by a kiss on his forehead which slows nothing     

            down, only adds an element to the play.

This connection to the boys exhausts me and fuels me at once,    

it is another word for God.

From her I learned the language for speaking to God.

I knew the words perhaps, just not how to feel them.

The words must be felt like the tears in your eyes,

            an ache in your heart, the blood in your mouth.

We go walking through the bible, hand in hand through the savage,

            graceful and loving parts to continue the story.

Laughter is our food and a quick comment or gesture from her

            makes this adventure worth it all.

Her love and laughter, other words for God.

The song says, ‘Go to the country and learn to know Jesus by yourself.’

Perhaps He can be known, even seen on your own.

The company of others is required for you to feel Him.

Life finds us in the pit at times, full of howling and darkness.

Reach out, that would be your church folk standing with you,

            shoulder to shoulder.

You will need to climb out when you are ready, until then, your community will bear it 

with you, even for you when it is required.

God, is more than a word, it is an experience.

We come into the world, exercising our voices, giving the world our light.

We feel the hands, arms, both strong and clumsy, which are tolerated, even loved.

Before the words are understood, we feel their welcome, their love and wonder

            and know it is for us.

We grow on the words, whispered in our ears: Go! Do it! Fly! And hear them echo          

            in our heads for all our lives.

Before we understand God as a noun, we feel God as a verb.

Mama, Dad, a child’s first words for God.

My Psychology

I crossed the bridge out of poverty blindly and holding on to my mother's hand.  If only it were that easy.  The thinking, lessons and fears crept right along with me.  The skills taught by poverty served to confuse me and were no use on the other side.

Why think about tomorrow?  Today and all its challenges are overwhelming enough.  Food for today and some type of escape or even a numbing are the only priorities.  And respect.  Respect is everything.  Even jokes were offensive to my wounded mind.  Everything was personal and needed to be squared or responded to.

Poor people, rich people and everyone in between, understand that nothing is guaranteed.  It is universally held.  Being poor, however, one understands that it is our fate that things can always get worse.  So if I had anything, I held it to me so tight that it seemed a part of me.  What saved me was that I held on to what my mother gave me, the hope for something better.  I clamped down on it like a bulldog, so certain that life would beat me so that I might drop it.

Thank you mama.  I am not trapped in today.  I can think about the future now and sometimes even the past without fear.

Your Mother's Song

Close your eyes boy, listen to your mother sing.
You'll hear God move through her, you and every thing.

You'll mark your life by your mother's song.
They will soothe your mind, fill your belly, make you strong.

You'll find hope in the work of your father's pen.
Come Sunday, find comfort in your mother's hymn.