Or The Difference Between Humble and Invisible
Or I Report to the God of Creative Non-Fiction
On Thursday evening, August 1st, @ 7 PM, my sacred partner and myself will sign books, sing a little, tell stories at the Laughing Bear Bakery, employing ex-offenders. Laughing Bear is located at 4001 Utah, street, south St. Louis (south of Arsenal).
I calculate I started going into the jail houses in 2002. There was a small stake in the beginning and a few helpers, but frustrating for those trying to assist so I was brought to the gate and left there. You’re on your own, said a specially created voice.
The keepers of the community purse strings took recompense off the table right away. What kind of people are you visiting? I was asked. I don’t know what you are asking, I said (I knew) but I’ll tell you this: They are the best students I’ve ever taught. The keepers of the community purse found no reason to support this work. One of the biggest donors said to me, “it’s not very sexy work.”
I didn’t know how to argue for the work other than the purity of the deed. How to make that case in a way that makes sense? If it doesn’t make sense, I can’t make it make sense or I wasn’t willing to try.
There was too much to learn to give it up. I ascended into silence and pushed on af tsu lokhes (in spite of) all obstacles. I wrote about everything I did to keep my sanity and to remember what I have been taught. I consulted with my teachers over the divide and I heard: This is precisely what we prepared you for.
So I went.
In the beginning I taught fifteen African American men and several former yeshivah students traditional texts at the highest security institution in my state. It started with one person, an ex-yeshivah boy and all his prison acquaintances.
Later I sat with an Alawite Syrian related to an OPEC oil minister who I taught Hebrew. I gave a talk to 200 white supremacists on spiritual recovery from drugs and alcohol. I was accompanied in and out more than several times by large savvy Black men who knew how to protect me from neo-Nazi threats, as real as it gets in my state. I wrote everything down. My fingers flew over the keyboard. I was often exhilarated and exhausted by the experience. I received much more than I gave, always learning.
I tried to engage an organization in my town that received excellent publicity for saving the criminal justice system. I heard nothing back from them. I sent them my stories and a few test requests to help some of the inmates I visited, no response. I was frustrated every time I turned to someone else so I shut up, made my visits, wrote about what I learned inside the various jail-houses from the variety of individuals I was teaching. Writing was freeing, a sanity preserving necessity and in some sense also a kind of revenge.
When I first started visiting the prisons and jails, I wondered what could I give over? What did they want from me? I figured they would ask for this for that, maybe a connection with a lawyer, maybe make a phone call on their behalf, maybe trying to lead me somewhere I had no business going (I had watched too many prison movies) but I fielded none of that. They wanted to learn precisely the things I could teach. What a surprise: they wanted what I knew.
They asked of me only that I give over what my teachers had given me. They wanted the language of inner life, they wanted to learn the original texts, they wanted to talk ideas and they especially wanted the holy language. Almost everyone wanted me to teach Hebrew. They wanted me to read the Sources with them. Spiritual extremists, just like me.
I did what they asked. I taught them what my teachers had taught me. I listened. I wrote about it. I ascended the mountain alone and silent; few responded to my efforts to engage anyway.
Everyone who had been in this project with me was gone. My community showed almost no interest in it. The professionals in town were getting good press but didn’t respond to my efforts to connect. I was alone with my shoes and I kept going, plodding away making time to go inside, sitting on the mountain writing.
I was going to a job in an alternate universe. I had a newspaper under my arm and a job description and a challenge to show up, something real happened every time I went, but there was no ad no newspaper there was no office there was no pay there was no job. There was only the story. Thank goodness I had a day job so to speak though these stories represent a large chunk of my time.
Of all my work-roles, I was showing up for the one that was the greatest challenge, I learned the most from, I was best prepared for, for which I received no compensation, no one knew about it, I reported to no one other than the God of creative non-fiction. It was some sort of glorious secret joke designed by a playful deity that kept me alert humble and incredulous.
I haven’t had many jobs like this. None, actually. I had no one to talk with about it but the screen and my sacred partner, the sheet of paper, the keyboard, the musings in a story that I thought more than a few times: nobody is interested in this other than me. It was an affirmation of a message I picked up from every individual I visited every time I went inside: we are invisible. We are the most forgotten people you will ever meet. I lost all sense of self consciousness and eventually self pity; at the end of the day, I was going home. I could leave. Still I wondered: what am I taking with me?
What I learned was this: give it over. With or without return, give it away. Anybody paying attention? Give more. The holy collapsed into the profane; what I thought holy, profane. What was assumed to be profane, lustrous in holiness. I showed up.
Thank You