Baby. Mama.

In December of 1975 my mama was sixteen years old. I remember when I was sixteen years old. I got my drivers license. I had a 1986 black and silver Chevy Blazer with a two fifteen inch subwoofers and an amplified sound system so loud that I actually got a ticket for disturbing the peace. So much for a “Happy Birthday.” I also had a mullet. Obviously I don’t remember my mother’s sixteenth birthday, but I have the pictures. I got a drivers license, a ticket and a bad haircut (freedom, accountability, frivolity), my mom got a baby.

Technically I was an early birthday present, born nine days before she would turn seventeen. If you have a sixteen year old in your life, look at them now and picture them with a baby. She was just a baby herself, and now she was a mama too. In 1975 there was no Teen Mom television show and no high school day care, so getting a baby meant she wasn’t getting a diploma. At least not for several more years. In 1975 having a baby at sixteen meant you were going from being a student to a housewife. While your friends were hanging out at The Hut or going to the Moon-Glo Drive In, you were changing dirty diapers and bandages on your slowly healing Caesarian incision. If you became a mama at sixteen in 1975 you were going to miss out on a lot of things, but to look in her eyes, and listen to her voice, you’d never know it. 

In June of 1995 I became a daddy. I was nineteen years old. It was hard, and required a lot of sacrifices, but not quite like being sixteen. At nineteen I was an adult, a high school graduate, working full time, and owned a home. As a sixteen year old girl she had none of those things available to her at that time. What she had was round the clock feedings, diapers, never ending laundry, and a teething baby. And she loved it. I don’t mean she learned to love it, or she made the best of it, she truly, genuinely loved. It. I’m not so naive as to think that it was always wonderful. She’s human and she had to have her moments, but I don’t remember them. Obviously they weren’t that often and they weren’t that bad because I can’t recall a single one of them.

What I do recall is that in 43 years I have never known one day when I did not know that I was dearly loved. I have never felt a moment where I was unwanted. Under her roof I never went hungry, without clothes, without my necessities, without most of what I wanted. She made sure that I always had what I needed. At sixteen she probably thought what I needed most was food, clothes, and toys, and I certainly needed those things, but they aren’t what I needed most. They were just manifestations of what I needed. What I needed was unconditional love, compassion, forgiveness, time, attention, support, and I always got it. I got it the day I was born and I still get it at 43.

Mozart was born to be a composer, and he started when he was just a child. Martha Britton was born to be a mama, and she too started when she was just a child. And like Mozart, she made motherhood into an art form. She took the simplest ingredients and elements, a tiny apartment, scraps of material, a few ingredients, a little money, and by mixing them with a lot of love and a little maternal magic, she created art. She created my childhood, which, as my writing illustrates, was overflowing with wonderful memories and experiences, and she created my heart. If I have ever loved it was because of how greatly I was loved. If I have ever served it was because I was raised by a servant. If I have ever shown compassion it was because my mama wore it like a fragrance. If I have ever been a friend to the friendless it is because my mama is a friend to all.

Today is her 60th birthday. She isn’t a baby anymore, and neither am I, but she’s still a mama. Occasionally people will tell me that I sound just like, or act just like my mama, so help me God, I hope I do. 

Freddy Krueger, Civil Rights, And Fried Pork In Mississippi

Much to the chagrin of my mother, I dedicated a significant portion of my childhood to watching every horror movie that could be rented on VHS at Berry’s Video in Pulaski, Tennessee. Being an only child, movies quickly became my friends, and being a ten year old boy, scary movies became my weird friend that my parents weren’t so sure they liked me hanging around. Nevertheless, more often than not they relented (never underestimate the power of the only child), so most Friday and Saturday nights were spent eating Domino’s pizza and plowing through as many movies as the video store would allow me to rent.

Having watched virtually every film in the Friday The 13th, Nightmare On Elm Street, Hellraiser, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween, Phantasm, Child’s Play, Evil Dead, The Howling, Poltergeist, Sleepaway Camp, Stephen King, and Candyman series, I am extremely well versed in the plot lines, characters, and tropes used to scare us into sleeping with the lights on. Because of my overexposure to horror films in my childhood, I seldom watch them as an adult, not because I don’t still enjoy a good “scare”, but because I know what is going to happen before it happens, which means they don’t scare me anymore.

Lately I’ve found myself mulling over these old horror movies and their themes, and mainly how they have real world application. Like nursery rhymes and fables, horror movies are often contemporary delivery systems for cautionary morality tales. Don’t trust strangers. Don’t stay up late. Don’t meddle in things that don’t concern you. Don’t be promiscuous. Don’t use drugs or alcohol. Regardless of genre or era, if a character in a scary movie breaks any of these rules they will not live to regret it.

In recent years the more cerebral horror films have turned the focus from warning randy teenagers about bad behaviors to bringing to light the real monsters that walk among us. Greed, jealousy, manipulation, exploitation, hatred, racism. Great filmmakers succeed in anthropomorphizing these abstract concepts of evil into something tangible and terrifying for all audiences — I’m looking at you “Cabin Fever” and “Get Out.” Not everyone is attacked by hatred or racism in real life, but if you can embody it as a monster in a movie you can make everyone experience that sense of fear and dread vicariously, hopefully creating both sympathy for those who do, and a desire to fight the real monsters in the process.

One thing you can always count on in a horror movie is that the bad guy/monster is never dead when you think he is dead. The monster may have been shot, burned, stabbed, chainsawed, blown up, or worse, but he’s not dead yet. Just as soon as the survivors let down their guards, the monster will rise up again and claim another victim before he is defeated once and for all, or at least until the sequel is released and the process starts all over again. These were the thoughts that filled my mind this past June as I was making the hour long drive from Oxford, Mississippi to Tupelo on State Road 6.

Father’s Day weekend my youngest son was graduating college in Memphis and we were celebrating in Oxford over a Big Bad Breakfast. I’ve always had an affinity for Oxford, though I’ve seldom spent time there. To me it is one of those quintessential southern cities, like Birmingham, Memphis, Athens, Savannah and Nashville, that everyone should really explore at least once. To the untrained eye there is little to no difference between the landscapes of rural southern states, but to those who are natives there are subtleties to be discerned. Those of us who grew up traveling these roads for ballgames, vacations, and trips to visit our kin can pinpoint our location as surely as an interstate sign or mile marker, using only the rolling hills of middle Tennessee, the flat farmland of the Mississippi Delta, or the red clay of Alabama as identifiers. The most observant among us can differentiate between northern and southern parts of the states. A location in Georgia is known by the presence of bluffs or pecan farms. In Alabama it’s the difference between cotton fields and orchards, and in Mississippi it’s kudzu or Spanish moss. For those of us in whom this geography is as natural as water is to a fish, these changes shine like neon, while to the outsider they can be practically undetectable. But this isn’t just true for the landscape, the same could be said for the mindset of the South. 

       Chances are when you see a southern character, or the South in general, portrayed in pop culture there are overt references to racism, inbreeding, ignorance, poverty, and fundamentalist religion. God as my witness, you will find these things in the South, but I’ve traveled far and wide enough to know you are just as likely to find them in Boston or Michigan as Alabama. Stereotypes are tricky things. They are exaggerations, caricatures, but they also hold a grain of truth. If you come to Mississippi expecting to see a cotton field butting up against a mostly dirt yard with a mobile home on it, a barking dog chained up in it, and a pickup truck flying a confederate flag parked out front, you will see all of that, many times over. And if you head east through Alabama and Georgia and then cut up north through Tennessee you will see so many you lose count, and you may also lose perspective. 

Although I’ve traveled extensively in my forty-two years, the South has always been my home, and there aren’t many highways in the southern states that I’ve yet to drive. I sincerely believe that if you blindfolded me and dropped me at a random spot in the South I could tell you what state I was in just by looking at the landscape, and most likely what part of the state. But it’s not just the change in geography that I detect, it’s the change that is taking place in the South collectively. 

      Traveling these roads I listen to a lot of music and I’ve found that the musician is often more of a prophet than the preacher. Musicians talk a lot about change. Bob Dylan said “the times they are a changing.” Sam Cooke said “I know a change gone come.” Eddie Vedder once observed, “everything has changed, absolutely nothing’s changed.” You sing along with these folks long enough and you start to see what they were seeing. 

But it’s not just our poets and performers who make these observations, the guys eating lunch at the local meat and three do too. Some of them believe things used to be great but something changed, others believe things used to be worse but things are changing for the better, and some realize everything has changed and yet nothing seems any different. I don’t know exactly where I fall on this spectrum. It likely depends on the day. But on this day in June, pulling out of Rowan Oak and heading East on Highway 6, with pounds of pork in my belly, Elizabeth Cook’s Apron Strings playlist filling my ears, and the words of William Faulkner filling my mind, I was seeing change.

Our party of three was sitting at a back corner table, at “the brainchild of James Beard award winning chef John Currence” restaurant known as Big Bad Breakfast, as I began noticing things I haven’t always seen in Mississippi. What caught my eye first was the biracial couple sitting at the breakfast counter together. Although I’m completely comfortable with biracial relationships, admittedly I was a little surprised by the “normalcy” of it in Oxford. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised. Maybe I was just yielding to a pessimistic stereotype about Mississippi, but I can’t overlook the fact that we are only one generation removed from black and white people not being able to eat at the same lunch counter, much less do so as an obviously romantically involved couple. It was in my parents lifetime that Emmitt Till was mutilated and brutally murdered, seventy miles south of where I was sitting, just for whistling at a white woman, and his murderers were acquitted. My parents were school age when the “Battle Of Oxford” occurred. Less than a mile from where I was sitting Governor Ross Barnett had tried to reignite the Civil War in 1962 because James Meredith, a black, military veteran, enrolled in the University of Mississippi. So excuse me if I was a little surprised by the level of tolerance.

Perhaps even more shocking was the presence of an openly gay couple sitting at the table right beside ours. Completing the tolerance hat trick was the Muslim woman wearing a niqaab (head and face covering that has only an opening for the eyes) sitting to my right. Mississippi, Oxford, the South as a whole has changed more than Honey Boo Boo’s Mamma June, and like Mamma June, there’s still some work to be done.

On the way from tiny Looxahoma, Mississippi to Oxford that morning I’d passed more “Make America Great Again” signs and stickers than I could count. Sitting in this little restaurant I was reminded that what makes America great is our love and respect for everyone, not just those who are like us. Recent generations have demanded that our nation live up to the lofty standard it set when it declared, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” There may be plenty of Americans who hate what I saw in that restaurant that morning, but don’t fool yourself, that hateful attitude is un-American.

If the past few years have shown us anything they have shown us that the ghosts of Mississippi still haunt this land. Like Jason, or Michael Myers, or Freddy Kruger from the horror movies of my youth, just when you think the monsters of hate and bigotry are dead, they come back again and claim more victims when you let down your guard. Freddie Gray. Philando Castile. Alton Sterling. Walter Scott. Eric Harris. Tamir Rice. Trayvon Martin. Heather Heyer. 

I cannot deny that times have changed drastically, and yet, Trump rallies and Charlottesville, Virginia remind me, “everything has changed, absolutely nothing’s changed.” Colonel Reb, the archetype of the old South plantation owner, no longer walks the sidelines at Ole Miss football games, and yet the Confederate Flag still adorns the Mississippi state flag. Emmitt Till’s murder is near universally considered an abomination, and yet the sign memorializing the location of his body is continually vandalized, stolen, and riddled with bullets. The idea that a black man could be killed  for whistling at a white woman, and the murderers get away with, is hard to image today, and yet, I regularly see reports of black men being killed for things as trivial  and harmless as selling cigarettes, walking home from the store, selling CD’s, or holding a cellphone, and most of the time their killers go unpunished. 

Like a wounded animal in the throes of death, bigotry, racism, and hate can be ferociously dangerous when desperate for survival. When backed into a corner they will bare tooth and fang. It will fight to “make America great again” while demanding “I want my country back.” 

Perhaps I was just intoxicated by the mixture of the sacred ground that is Rowan Oak, the Southern charm of Oxford and the smell of sausage and bacon, but for a brief moment, one morning in June, I saw the South as it could be. As it should be. As it is becoming. The South is going to rise again, and this time it will rise above its past, and it will rise above those in the present who are clinging to that past.

There IS Crying In Baseball

(Note: I wrote this nearly three years ago after the Chicago Cubs won the World Series, but for some reason I never published it, so I decided to put it up tonight. Keep reading to the end where I have included an addendum that was written by my oldest son that night).

     Tom Hanks is one of America’s most beloved actors. Forrest Gump, Sully, Captain Phillips, Jim Lovell of the Apollo 13 mission, Walt Disney, Woody, he’s played some of the most iconic roles and endearing characters. Those endearing characters have given us some memorable quotes. “Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get.” “Houston, we have a problem.” “Wilson!” Despite these iconic roles, strangely his most famous quote may have come from his least lovable character, alcoholic, bitter, ex Cubs slugger, now baseball manager Jimmy Dugan, as the manager of the All American Girls Professional Baseball League team the Rockford Peaches. During a game one of the girls on the team gets very upset and starts to cry, to which Dugan replies, “There’s no crying in baseball.” The line is hilarious, quotable, but not entirely true. Let me explain.

Baseball and I have a very long and complicated relationship. I was introduced to baseball by my dad through the Napa Auto Parts tee ball team I played for when I was five years old. I laugh every time I look at the picture of the snaggletoothed kid wearing the mesh snapback trucker hat with the unevenly bent bill, awkwardly holding out the oversized glove like it was some exotic and terrifying animal. Within a few weeks I was in love. Saturdays couldn’t come around fast enough for me. The smell of the fresh cut grass, the smell of hot dogs and popcorn cooking, the stark contrast between the bright white chalk lines and the powdery smooth dirt. The creaking sound the leather glove made when you flexed and squeezed it. The jerseys with a number on the back and your last name at the top. Your friends and family members in the bleachers cheering you on and calling out your name or saying things like “Look alive,” “heads up,” “keep your head on a swivel.” Of course the fans weren’t the only ones making noise. We players loved to “chatter.” “Hey batter, batter, batter” or the bizarre “eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh swing!” I loved it all, but the part I loved the most was my dad. He loved baseball too, so much that he coached me practically every year I played. Baseball was “our thing.” There are few things in life as pure and beautiful as the love a little boy has for baseball. After his mamma, it is his first love.

     To this very moment I can still feel how much I loved getting dressed in my uniform for a game. Back then the uniforms were these terrible polyester things that came in small, medium or large and were passed down from year to year to the next team. It was a thrill to go up to the square in my hometown and shop for cleats at Sports World. Jerry Hibdon would always be working in the back of the store, building trophies or printing logos and numbers on jerseys. I would make a right turn and go past the George Brett and Dale Murphy posters on my way to the shoe section. The cool cleats were the colored ones that had the long tongue that hung down over the laces.

     For the better part of the next decade the one thing I cared about the most was baseball. I played baseball, not just in Little League, but in backyard games in our Green Acres neighborhood, and on Nintendo. I watched baseball, on television and in person on the rare occasion that I got to go to Atlanta Fulton County Coliseum to watch the Braves play. Though I liked girls, they just couldn’t compare to baseball. Baseball wasn’t confusing like girls. It was simple and predictable and consistent. People today complain about the slow pace of baseball games and want time limits and play clocks speeding up the time between pitches, but I always thought the slow pace was intentional. When you are doing something that you love so much, why in the world would you want to speed it up and make it go faster. For me, Ernie Banks famous quote, “Let’s play two” was practically Gospel truth. When I wasn’t playing or watching baseball I was organizing or trading baseball cards. Baseball wasn’t a part of my life, it was my life. It was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow who first wrote, “Into each life some rain must fall” and for me that meant sometimes there was crying in baseball.

     The first time I remember crying because of baseball was when I was in Little League and we lost the championship game. I was twelve years old at the time and had been playing baseball for seven years. During those seven years we had lost games, though not very many, but we had never lost a championship. I was twelve years old and we were National League champions, but we lost the overall league championship to the American League winners and I was devastated and I cried. Most people would find that completely understandable, but I also cried at other times. I actually grew up an Atlanta Braves fan, but in August of 1990 they traded my hero, Dale Murphy, to the Philadelphia Phillies, and I cried tears of anger, and swore off the Braves forever. My loyalty would now lie with my idol, and fellow second baseball Ryne Sandberg of the Chicago Cubs. Just a few years shy of being married and after I was old enough to drive a car, I remember crying because a game got rained out. I realize you may be thinking that is a bit extreme, and admittedly, perhaps it was, but I loved playing so much that once I completed my pre game dressing rituals and had on my “game face”, having the game canceled due to weather was emotionally devastating. My tears were a mixture of anger and sadness. The last time I recall crying over baseball was the day I played my last game in high school. Thirteen years of my life was coming to an end. From the time that snaggle toothed little boy in the blue jeans and Napa t-shirt put on a glove, baseball was his one true love. Girls had come and gone and broken my heart, but baseball had never let me down. Life can be scary and unpredictable when you are growing up, but baseball was something I understood almost instinctively. But now it was gone for good. Although I had a few scholarship offers to some small colleges, I passed on them and realized I’d never play baseball competitively again. Add to that fact the realization that my best friends and teammates and I would be going our separate ways with graduation just a few weeks away. I would be in Alabama, Jode would be in Louisiana, and Brad would be at Paris Island. It was all just too much for me to bear, and I cried. Standing at home plate at the Loretto High School field, having just been defeated in the District playoffs, I took one last look. Like a rain cloud, pregnant will so much moisture that you could smell it, taste it in the air, the clouds of my emotions burst forth. On that day, there most certainly was a lot of crying in baseball.

Just a few weeks later I finally got to sit in the bleachers at Wrigley Field in Chicago to watch my beloved Cubs. This trip was part of a graduation gift and it was a dream come true. I stood on Waveland Avenue, I got to see Harry Carey. I was with my parents and the girl who would be my wife just six months later. Little did I know it was the pinnacle of my baseball life, and that less than two months later baseball would break my heart like no girl ever had. I was at work at my Uncle Fuzzy’s lumber yard, Old Mill Salvage, on a Saturday in August when I saw the news that Major League Baseball was going on strike. The strike was bad enough, but when it continued into October and resulted in the World Series being canceled for the first time in 90 years, I was crushed. I couldn’t understand how men who were privileged to play the greatest sport ever invented, and get paid millions of dollars to do it, could betray the integrity of the game over more money. Twelve year old me wouldn’t have been able to believe it, but on that day, I didn’t cry for baseball, I walked away from it and didn’t watch another game. But like any great love affair, you break up, but something always brings you back. For me that something was the home run race between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. 

     In 1998 one of the great baseball records seemed destined to fall, the only question was who would break Roger Maris’s 61 home runs in a season first, McGwire or Sosa? In a moment that seemed to be scripted by Hollywood, McGwire’s Cardinals faced off against Sosa and my Cubs in the friendly confines of Wrigley Field, with the power hitter sitting on 60 home runs. In the next two games he would hit 61 and 62 and Sammy Sosa would charge in from the outfield to hug McGwire in celebration. Brandon and baseball were back together again. They say love is blind, and I certainly was. Within the next few seasons something even more shameful than the strike would plague the sport I loved. Barry Bonds would electrify fans with an astounding 70 home runs in a season, but then Sosa was found using a corked bat and by this point the rumors were swirling that he, McGwire, Bonds, and essentially every other “great” player from my childhood was using steroids to achieve their unprecedented success. The one thing worse that quitting is cheating. And to borrow a phrase from George Jones, “This time, he’s over her for good. He stopped loving her today.” Other than my children, that was the last time I watched baseball, until tonight.

     For many years sports were too important to me. Now they are just fun hobbies to enjoy, but I don't live and die by them anymore and I'm not obnoxious about them. I always remind myself it's just a game, but every once in a while you get reminded, it is a little more than just a game. It's learning how to lose and how to win. It's never giving up hope and giving it your all until the very end. It's about teamwork. It's about crushing lows and exhilarating highs. It's about traditions. But for me, most of all, it's about friends and family, making memories, just being together and being reminded you are on my team. 

     Tonight I sat here thinking about a 12 year old second baseman with his Ryne Sandberg poster over his bed. A 16 year old new driver with an airbrushed Ryno tag on the front of his Blazer. A 17 year old senior wearing the Cubs hat in his senior pics. An 18 year old newly graduated “adult” with his soon to be wife in the bleachers at Wrigley. And tonight, a 40 year old father of two sat next to his firstborn son and witnessed what none of those others guys ever thought he would see. My Cubs won the World Series! Tonight there most certainly was crying in baseball.

Addendum: I'm not a Cubs fan and I won't pretend that I am. I've been a die hard Red Sox fan for as long as I can remember. With that being said, this World Series was the first time in my life that I witnessed my dad willingly watch a pro baseball game. Growing up loving baseball and coming from a family of men who loved baseball, I never understood how my dad could have fallen out of love with a sport he had once practically dedicated his life to. He always told me that he lost the love for baseball because of the 1994 strike. To 9 year old me who sat watching the 2004 World Series in a hotel in Mississippi as the Red Sox won their first championship of my life, it still didn't make sense. I didn't understand how the actions of anyone, not even the players, could ever influence your opinion of the game. In my eyes, baseball was pure. Baseball was fun. Baseball was methodical and strategical. I never understood how anyone could "fall out of love" with the sport. 

Tonight, however, I sat beside my dad as he stayed up until 1 AM to watch his Cubs win their first World Series in 108 years. I watched him cheer, clap and shout with excitement over base hits and strikeouts. I watched him overcome with joy for a sport he had once loved, for the first time in my life. 

I didn't root for the Cubs because I'm a fan. I didn't root for the Cubs because I wanted them to win. I rooted for the Cubs because I knew a championship in Chicago would restore the faith and love of baseball into the eyes of the man who taught me how to play. I rooted for the Cubs for my dad, because he spent countless hours rooting for me, teaching me how to bat, showing me how to field ground balls, and teaching me how to love a sport that had once meant everything to him. I'm glad your Cubs got a win, dad. You and Chicago deserved it.

The Music That Is Moving Me This Year

Early in life I discovered that sometimes I lacked the vocabulary to express the complex emotions I was experiencing. Announcing that I was happy, sad, angry, afraid somehow failed to exorcise the feelings from my heart. As I’ve mentioned before, around fourth grade Fordie Franklin put a tool in my hand in the form of a pencil and instructed me to write whatever I felt. Over thirty years later I still am, but admittedly, sometimes I still lack the adequate language to explain what I’m feeling. Thankfully there is music. Music has been a frequent topic of my musings, but I haven’t written about it in far too long. That ends tonight. Below is a list of music that has moved me and meant even more to me this year. Hopefully, if you find yourself in a mood to go on a journey to explore and discover some new music, you will give some of these a chance. Not all of them are new, or even new to me this year, but all of them have spoken to me when I needed them, or for me when I needed to get out what I was feeling. Grant Peeples, one of the artists on this list, said it best when he wrote, “The reason that most songs ultimately fail is that they are written from the perspective of the writer rather than the listener.” At various times this year these songs were definitely speaking for this listener.

“The World Is On Fire” by American Aquarium, if you are a fan of Drive-By-Truckers you need to check out this band.

“Ramon Casiano” by Drive-By-Truckers, speaking of DBT, the line “someone killed Ramon Casiano and Ramon still ain’t dead enough” just cut me to my core. Not to mention the brilliant diagnosis that is, “He had the makings of a leader, of a certain kind of men, who need to feel the world’s against him, out to get‘em if it can. Men whose trigger pull their fingers, of men who’d rather fight than win, united in a revolution, like in mind and like in skin.”

“Heroine Addict Sister” by Elizabeth Cook, I don’t think I’ve ever listened to this song without crying.

“Wild Blue Wind” by Erin Rae, sometimes this one is too real to enjoy, but it sure can lance a wounded heart so that the pain can escape.

“This Could Be A Long Night” by Grant Peeples, I can’t say it better than John Conquest did, “Peeples is unusually honest, unusually literate. He’s the only songwriter I have ever thought to call ‘ruthless.’”

“Romeo & Juliet” by Hobo Johnson, unfortunately I know way too many young people who have a similar narrative. Don’t blame the broken, blame those who broke them, or better yet, help pick up the pieces.

“Ice Age” by How To Destroy Angels, this song is several years old but it is truly haunting. Trent Reznor like you’ve never heard him before.

The entire “KOD” album by J. Cole. My students in the prison know I quote J. Cole like he was a prophet. This album is like a hip hop version of Ecclesiastes.

“Anxiety” by Jason Isbell, everything Jason Isbell does is poetry.

“One Day” by Matisyahu, I was probably the last person in the world to hear this song, but once I did listen it just made me smile, and it still does every time I play it.

“Sunday Morning (Thinkin ‘Bout You)” by Royce Lovett, this is one of those songs that finds you rather than you seeking it. And it couldn’t have found me at a more needed time. Jade connected with him through Twitter and he guest listed us for his upcoming show in Gainesville. I can’t wait.

“WalMart” by Tank And The Bangas, You’ve never heard anything like Tank and the Bangas, and even though I am a man, I can’t help but imagine this is a song every woman wishes every man would listen to.

“The Fruitful Darkness” and “Free” by Trevor Hall, these two songs perfectly bookend this whole playlist. Trevor always knows how you are feeling.

“More Than Enough” by Tubby Love, it’s a simple song, but the message bears repeating regularly.

“No Good Time” by Trombone Shorty, he is much, much more than just a trombone player, he can write great lyrics too, and this song just tells the truth.

I hope you’ve got Spotify, because I doubt you will ever hear many of these songs on the radio

Privileged Information

Son, allow me to respond to your question. Was it even a question or more likely just exasperation at the daily dose of race issues? Why does it always have to be about race? Why is it my problem when a policeman shoots an unarmed black youth? Why can’t people talk about this stuff without using words like “white privilege” and “institutional racism”? My child, give me a minute to explain why.

In the four hundred years that your ancestors were acquiring land, starting businesses, amassing wealth and obtaining education, power and influence, being groomed for even greater things, his ancestors were being collected, herded, sorted, sold and bred like cattle, stripped of any possessions they had, forced to work land they legally could not own, barred from entering businesses unattended by your ancestors, and taught to fear even the simplest education, reading and writing, by the threat of the whip, powerless, nameless and disposable. It was a fear that was so successfully and deeply ingrained that education is still shunned generations after their right to it is no longer forbidden. The fear is no longer enforced by the sharp tip of the whip, but by the sharper sting of the tongue, chastising not the back but the brain with the pain of being labeled an “uppity n-word” by your possessors or “boujie” by your peers. While your ancestors were founding and attending and sending their sons to Ivy League halls of education, theirs were in chains. To quote a black man as he wrote to his own son, “Never forget that we were enslaved in this country longer than we have been free. Never forget that for 250 years black people were born into chains—whole generations followed by more generations who knew nothing but chains.” Because of this, you, me, we, have a four century head start, a four hundred year foundation upon which to build. This is a privilege.

And yes, before you raise the point, our ancestors struggled too. They fled the monarchies of Europe and the religious intolerance they imposed. Those earliest white, European, pilgrim settlers were in a strange and hostile land, unprepared and ill equipped for the unique and debilitating challenges that lay ahead. Many of them did not survive the journey, the winters, the hunger or the illnesses and those who did, did so because of the benevolence of others, strangers, the red man, the Indian, the native American. They had been here for centuries. They had a foundation and a head start and were settled and stable and secure and because of that they shared what they had and what they knew. They did not resent or reject these immigrant minorities, but shared what they had, both physical and intellectual. How did your ancestors repay this kindness? By turning around and biting the hand that fed them. But much more than just biting, mauling, tearing and ultimately devouring the hand and the whole body, leaving only the bones, which were then used to forge weapons for enslaving. Bones that became their spoils of battle, which we have made into jewelry to garnish and decorate our bodies and homes, a mocking, taunting, blasphemous homage of faux appreciation for a culture they pushed to the brink of extinction as a show of their gratitude. 

Sometimes I wonder if that is why we push back so abruptly and viscerally. Perhaps we, like the philandering husband who always suspects and accuses his wife of cheating, instinctively fear that we will reap what we have sown. Do we subconsciously fear that in sharing what we have acquired and learned during these four hundred years that we will empower these dark skinned, African pilgrims with the knowledge and tools to rise up against us and over take us? Not with the rifle or small pox infected blankets our forefathers used, but with real power and influence and wealth, with businesses and property. Even if this was the case, we wouldn’t be left with nothing, just less, but what could be more shameful to the cult of caucasian capitalism than allowing our children to not have it better than we had it growing up? 

So, instead of replicating the kindness of our forefathers saviors, we beat them to the punch and repeat the sins of our ancestors, not in specifics, but in substance. We too offer worthless trinkets (gold chains, designer shoes, flashy cars and the ability to “own” your own label, which in reality is just a subsidy of a larger, white owned media conglomerate) in exchange for the priceless commodity of their music, talent, physical prowess and culture. Then were turn right around and adopt, or more accurately, market (primarily to middle class white suburban teenage 

boys), those same symbols in mock appreciation, therein glorifying the caricatures we created rather than the culture which we appropriate, prostitute, parody and dismiss. 

We too slaughter their defenseless youth by colonizing their lands with government funded genocide deceptively packaged and labeled as “choice” or “planned” parenthood. The food they grew for us we return to them through rationed “benevolent” programs. Rather than providing blankets to escape the cold, which were infected with disease, we provide an escape from the cold realities of their lives by infecting their neighborhoods with narcotics, a much slower death no doubt, but still a disease that slowly infects and kills their lives, their souls and ultimately their communities, forcing them to rely upon us for survival, not on reservations, but in ghettoes and “projects” (such a strange choice of words don’t you think, since “project” implies building and improving, not enslaving and decaying). How does a civilized, educated, Christian society justify such oppression? By creating a false sense of danger, turning them into a threat exacerbated through the employment of code words like “savages”, or lately “thugs”, and with conscience clouding catch phrases like “they behave like animals”, a slogan that has aged well like a fine wine these past four hundred years.

Is all of this “your fault”? Does this make you a racist? Does this mean your heart is irreparably filled with hate? No it doesn’t, but if you close your eyes, plug your ears, turn away, ignore, do nothing, say nothing, feel nothing, could you reach any other conclusion if you were on the receiving end of racism and hate? You may not be the problem, but are you trying to solve it? It may not be your problem but does that mean you should ignore it? Before you allow the self defense mechanism built into your heart to answer, I urge you to go back to Sunday school. To countless Vacation Bible School’s you’ve attended where you were taught about the Good Samaritan. Don’t focus on the Good Samaritan, but the bad priest and Levite. The two, who played no role in beating and robbing the man, but also played no part in coming to his aid. Which of these three men do you identify with? Which of these three do you want to be? You don’t have to use the “n-word” to be culpable. 

So yes son, there is such a thing as white privilege and institutional racism. Of course I could be wrong, I mean hey, after all, we had a black president and some of my best friends are black.

I. You. We.

I. You. We.

I was ten years old in 1986 when I learned about the Klan.

Marching down our Main Street on the birthday of the man,

Who gave his life trying to set things right.

Like Dr. King, our town took a stand.

The only thing I’ve got in common, with the KKK,

We were both born in Pulaski, that’s all I’ve got to say.

But when our Tennessee town decided to shut down,

Brotherhood burned brighter than crosses that day.

Giles County won’t ever be perfect,

But by God they were gonna try.

If the birthplace of the Klan can change, so can I.

Oxford, 1962, Governor Barnette wants to start a Civil War.

Because  Sargent James Meredith, did something they hadn’t seen before.

All you could see were Confederate flags as he,

A black man, walked through Ole Miss’s front door.

Today I’m eating breakfast, not two miles from that very space,

Not two feet from a couple, in love, although they’re both a different race.

Plus a gay couple and a woman in a burqa,

And no one batted an eye in the whole place.

Mississippi, it sure ain’t perfect, 

But at least they’re trying too.

If Oxford, Mississippi can change, so can you.

Sunday, Bloody Sunday, Selma, Alabama, 1965.

George Wallace unleashed his troops, 600 marchers were lucky to stay alive.

But something changed that day, that gave hope for a better way.

And now today there’s an MLK Street you can drive.

None of these towns are perfect,

And none of us will ever be.

But if places like this can change, so can we.

Mister Rogers For President

      Computers operate in a binary world, meaning they store data, perform calculations, and execute commands using only zeros and ones. Everything, from telling time, to creating a spreadsheet, to launching a cruise missile, is executed through a series of zeros and ones. 

     When I was a small child I too operated in a similar world that was governed by my parents and executed through a series of binary commands: yes or no, good or bad, right or wrong. Eventually a virus infected this program creating all kinds of havoc: free will. At first the glitch was simple. A command was given by my mother or an answer was given by my father, but instead of obedience they got a question. “Why?”  

“Pick up your toys.”

“Why?”

“No, you cannot go to Bryan’s house.”

“Why?”

Nothing has been simple since.

For a very long time now I have operated in a very complex world. Although many things can still be governed in binary terms (yes/no, good/bad, right/wrong), there are a whole host of other factors that must be taken into account when trying to determine an appropriate response or make an appropriate decision. 

Motive is an important factor that can transform an action from simply being “good” or “bad.” Is the motivation for a particular action selfishness, greed, pride, control, fear, or exclusion? Is it wrong to purchase batteries? Obviously not. But what if I purchase all of the batteries in town, far more than I need, leaving none for anyone else, ahead of a hurricane? Purchasing batteries isn’t wrong, but selfishness is. Is it wrong for a store to sell products for whatever price they choose? No, but in a competitive marketplace it might not be wise, which is why most stores have similar items priced in the same range. What if a store decides to raise the price of gasoline or generators 500% during a natural disaster like a hurricane? Charging whatever price you choose isn’t wrong, but greed certainly is, not to mention exploitation of the vulnerable. 

Another factor that can transform right to wrong or good to bad is the eventual outcome of a decision. Human beings have a long history of failing to see the ultimate consequences of today’s actions. Good intentions don’t always produce good results. Admittedly, some outcomes aren’t just unintended but unforeseeable. For example, for many years Christians in the United States have sent benevolent relief to places like Haiti in the form of clothing and shoes. There was a need, there was obviously a loving desire to meet that need, but there was also an unforeseen consequence of this “good” deed. Local economies have been severely disrupted due to an influx of donations from the United States. Local industries that produce clothes and shoes have been forced to lay off employees, or even close factories and stores because no one is buying from them anymore. Clearly no American Christians had this in mind when their church initiated a “Shoes For Haiti” drive, but when we learn better we should also be compelled to do better.

In other cases an outcome was known from the beginning but because of the previously listed motives — selfishness, greed, pride, control, fear — an action was executed without regard for the impact it would have on others. Some of the worst offenders in this area have been oil companies, tobacco manufacturers, pharmaceutical producers, and the auto manufacturing industry. Products have been sold to the public despite the manufacturers having knowledge that they were addictive, harmful, or even fatal. Environments and communities have been contaminated, destroyed and irreparably altered for the sake of profit. There is nothing wrong with making a profit, but to profit at the expense of others can turn good to bad.

Ironically, in more recent years it has been the computer which has been the vehicle for unintended outcomes. The creation of social media was intended to be a way for friends and communities, often separated by great distances, to remain connected and involved in one another’s lives. If only that were still the case. Soon our online communities were being targeted by advertisers wanting our money. Next the social media providers themselves turned us into a product to be sold by compiling every conceivable piece of data about us which they would sell to the highest bidder. Eventually foreign entities would exploit our interactions for the purpose of shaping opinion, swaying elections, and creating conflict amongst us. Presently, our friends are our opponents who must be proven wrong, defeated, insulted, and ultimately silenced. The likely future is that our once large communities will continue to get smaller, divided again and again over any and every difference of opinion, until our circle is so small that it only has room for me.

If you are wondering “which side of the debate” I’m on, you are missing my point. When this latest debate and outrage is old news, and it will be very, very soon, there will be another to take it’s place. And another. And another. There is always something to be outraged about, and it seems there is no shortage of people who make it their agenda to keep us stirred up. This isn’t to say we should’nt be outraged. When we see evil we should confront it and unite to defeat it. When we learn better and know better we should do better. Sadly we live in a climate where the word evil has been tossed around so flippantly for so long that many can no longer recognize true evil when it is right in front of their faces. Equally tragic, many choose to equivocate evil with other imperfections, as if the existence of one justifies the existence of the other. Evil and hate has never been defeated by more hate, it just results in more hate.

Like you, I have opinions on all of the issues of our day and although my instinct is to speak on them in binary terms, I realize they are actually very complex — too complex to boil down to a simple, binary response. There is a reason why friends, family, church members, differ drastically on these issues....the answers are not simple. There are many potential outcomes for each decision, some good, some horrific, some unforeseeable in the present. Complicating these issues are the many motives behind the suggested solutions — selfishness, greed, pride, control, fear, and exclusion). Our greatest hope is to stop vilifying those who disagree with or differ from us and start seeking common ground upon which we can build a better future. Stop with the ultimatums and threats. Calling your neighbor racist, evil, liberal, stupid, un-American, homophobic, communist, et al, will only build the wall that separates us at best and imprisons us at worst.

Computers can do amazing things, but they have limitations because they can only operate in a binary world. Computers can be programmed to say “I love you” but they cannot love. We can. We must. We limit ourselves when we reduce everything to a binary response. Our world is complex and solutions aren’t always easy to reach. If we aren’t on speaking terms with “the other side” we are far more likely to come up with solutions that create bigger problems. What is good for many may be outright catastrophic for many others. In those situations what do we do? 

There is still a binary system that works pretty well in these “impossible” situations. Love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself. Every action, from buying a product, to operating a business, to immigration policy, would do well to express these values in all their variations. When I love God with all my heart I seek to do His will above my own and I check my motives in the process. Am I being selfish or greedy or prideful or am I acting out of fear? When I love my neighbor as myself I don’t just consider what is good for me, but what is best for us. Love for neighbor leads me to consider my motives in the process. Am I being controlling or exclusive or am I exploiting my neighbor?

In this system there is God and there is everyone else. Everyone else is my neighbor, and even if they consider themselves my enemy, the proper response is always love. When our response is to label and separate (immigrant, gay, illegal, racist, Republican, Socialist, Millennial, animal, deplorable) we stop viewing others as our neighbor, and excuse ourselves from our responsibility to love them as ourselves. Things were simpler when I was a child and no one said it better than Mister Rogers, “Won’t you be my neighbor?”

When The Saint Came Marching In....To My Yard

Don’t you just love it when God taps you on the shoulder? It doesn’t happen everyday, and I can never predict it, but I’ve come to love it when it happens. Today He stopped by for a visit. Just a little reminder, “I am always with you.”

Today was supposed to be dedicated to reading. I had scheduled fourteen hours of reading today. My stack of books is getting oppressively large and I need to log some serious hours reading, so today was the day. It started off great, 8:00 am and I’ve got a book in my lap. Within minutes my towering stack of books was one chapter shorter. Just as I put chapter two in the crosshairs, the phone rings and a guy who recently visited the church was on the other end. I’d offered him some handyman work and he wanted to know if he could come by this morning and get started. A couple of hours later he was finished and gone, though I had to force him to take some money for his labor. My plan was to pay him forty-five dollars for the two hour job, but he would only take twenty, objecting, “Minimum wage is only $8.25 an hour so this twenty would make it ten dollars an hour.” He wouldn’t take more than an honest days pay for an honest days work. That extra twenty-five dollars would come in handy very soon.

In the process of this two hour break I had inadvertently shifted from reading mode to working mode. I’ve been working since before I was a teenager, and I have done my share of digging ditches and picking up trash. Though I’ve never done it for a living, I’ve roofed, fenced, hauled hay, and built mobile homes. These days I do more working with my brain than my back, but I still know how, and still enjoy manual labor every now and then. Office work certainly has it’s perks, but there are also occupational hazards, one of which is you tend to get “soft.” Pillsbury doughboy soft if you’re not careful. Apparently I’ve been about as careful as Evel Knieval. An hour of digging, pulling, dragging, and struggling left me sucking wind and seeing stars. Briars had scratched me like a feral cat, bugs were feasting on my flesh, and I’d learned a bush in the hand is worth two ibuprofen. Just as I was ready to wave the white flag, I heard someone yelling “Who Dat!”

For the sake of the uninformed heathens who are not Saints, allow me to explain something for clarity. My favorite pro football team is the New Orleans Saints, and their battle cry is “Who Dat!” — think: Go Big Orange, War Eagle, Hotty Toddy, or better yet, Roll Tide! Saints fans are called “Who Dat’s.” The phrase comes from a chant/song, which says, “Who Dat? Who Dat? Who Dat sey dey gonna beat dem Saints?” When Saints fans see one another it is socially acceptable to loudly yell “Who Dat!”

Back to the lecture at hand. While working today I was wearing my Saints hat and I also have a Saints logo on the front tag of my car. I’m exhausted, sweaty, filthy, bleeding, defeated, and wishing my boys still lived at home. Just as I’m ready to surrender I hear someone yelling “Who Dat!” In North Central Florida I hear a lot of “Go Gators!” a few “Go ‘Noles!” and after last year’s playoff run I’m actually hearing a “Go Jags!” every now and again, but “Who Dat!” is unheard of. My initial fear was that I was in the midst of a hallucinogenic heat stroke, or that the lack of oxygen reaching my brain was producing delirium. I maneuvered myself out from behind the bush to see a man walking into my yard with a gas can in his hand, a smile on his face, and one shirt sleeve lifted up to reveal a bicep tattoo of a fleur de lis surrounded by the words “Who Dat” and “Saints.” I’m not sure who was more happy to see whom.

We laughed for a minute and talked about the Saints, and he explained that he was born in Mississippi and raised in Louisiana, to which I replied that my wife was born in Mississippi and that Louisiana was our adopted home. Over the next couple of hours I would learn his name was Leonard and he was having a bad day. While I’d been battling bushes he’d been beaten by bad breaks. Leonard recently learned his wife of twenty-three years was cheating on him and he’d made the decision to head back to Louisiana. I’ve known more guys like Leonard than I can recall. Like the guy who helped me this morning, Leonard was lean, sinewy, but muscular. He had a mouthful of bad teeth and a past full of bad decisions. Leonard was tattooed and scarred. Guys like this are tough — survivors. The kind of guy that is best described as “a working man.” I’ve worked with tons of these guys, and I’m kin to a bunch more. Their lives are littered with regrets but they “ain’t afraid to work” and will give you the shirt off their back. 

Working with a church, I suspect I get to spend more time with the folks who live on the fringes of society than the average man does, and I’m pretty good at discerning what kind of person I’m dealing with. Though they tend to get lumped together, people who survive on scraps, begging for the crumbs from the rich man’s table, are as diverse as any other socio-economic group. A lot of the people I meet are mentally ill, and without an amazing, patient support system, they simply cannot function in traditional society. Quite a few of the people who ask for help are addicts of various vices. As a man with two oppressive addictions under my belt, and a third “socially acceptable” one I’m presently waging war with (food), I don’t judge. There, but for the grace of God, go I. Some of these folks aren’t mentally ill, but they are simple minded, be it because of a lack of education, parental neglect, or mental disabilities. Occasionally you get the lazy person who just doesn’t want to do anything and wants everyone else to take care of them. You get those, but they are in the minority. Mostly you get people who don’t want charity, or a hand out, they want to work for what they get. I had no doubt Leonard wanted to work for what he needed. He explained to me that he was living out of his van and working his way back to Louisiana and wanted to know if there was anything I would be willing to hire him to do.

Leonard came to be standing in my front yard through a series of providential events. His van had run out of gas about a mile from my house, so he grabbed a one gallon gas can and started walking into the first neighborhood he came across. His plan was to go door to door asking if he could do any work for anyone in exchange for some gas money. The first house he came to was mine and as he approached he witnessed me struggling with these bushes which were obviously winning the battle. Nearing my yard he first saw the Saints tag, and then my Saints hat, and excitedly yelled “Who Dat!” He told me his story and asked if I needed any help. I don’t know which of us was more thankful to get help. We got the bushes out of the ground and piled up near the street and then went to fill his gas can. As we fill the can we are talking and he tells me that he knew he was getting low on gas, so he got off the interstate to see if he could make some gas money in town, having nowhere near enough to reach his destination. In fact, he was practically empty when he took the Lake City exit. He had stopped at the church next door to the gas station and asked if there was any work he could do for gas money. The secretary told him no, but offered to contact one of the deacons who oversees the benevolence program. Their protocol is to give people food if they need it, counseling from the minister if they want it, and connect them with one of the deacons if they have needs that exceed this. She explained that the minister wasn’t in the office, and the deacon responsible for benevolence worked during the day, and wouldn’t be available until this evening. Leonard didn’t want to just wait around all day, so he set out in search of other opportunities to make some gas money. In the process of searching he ran out of gas and then ran into me. 

By this time we had gotten back to his van, which was sitting in the parking lot of a popular sandwich shop called Skip’s Deli. I suggested we go in and get some lunch and it was during this time that I learned all the details of his ordeal. When he finished his story I smiled as big as a Cheshire Cat. Confused by my grin, he asked what was so funny, to which I replied, “I’m the minister at that church.” He now looked like what I imagine I looked like when he walked into my yard — about to fall over. He made quite the scene with the packed, lunch hour crowd at Skip’s when he shouted, “Are you serious?!? You are the minister at that church? And I just walked up on you and saw you’re Saints stuff? Wow! I think somebody is trying to tell me something”, he said while looking up. We finished up at Skip’s and he came back to my house and wanted to know if there was anything else I needed help with. I assured him that I appreciated his offer, but this preacher had gotten soft in the days since he was last known as a working man, and was ready to hit the showers. We went back to the gas station and I filled his tank up, then on to the church building and loaded him up with food. I kept trying to give him more food and he kept putting it back, not wanting to take too much. Leonard had a box of Vienna sausages and crackers that someone had given him, and he tried his best to give me half of them for the pantry. He’d already given some of them to a few homeless guys he’d run across in town, and wanted to leave some with us too. The guy getting food from our pantry wanted to donate food to our pantry. As he got in the car I gave him the twenty-five dollars I had in my wallet, left from when the other guy refused to take more than twenty dollars. We took a picture together showing his “Who Dat” tattoo and my Saints hat. He took my business card, and a Bible tract and promised if he ever passed through again he’d give me a call. As he got into his van he laughed and shook his head, looking up to the sky. Apparently Steve Martin was right in the movie The Jerk when he said, “The Lord loves a working man.”

This type of thing happens all the time. I can’t ever predict it, but I’ve come to expect it, and I always enjoy it. Sometimes it makes me laugh, sometimes it makes me cry, sometimes it makes me worship. It always makes me grateful. For years I didn’t know what to call it, or even how to explain and describe it, but awhile back my buddy Jode turned me on to an expression they use in his family. “It’s just a God thing.” The first time I heard that I loved it. It just seemed like the perfect way to capture the event, the emotion, and the atmosphere of such a thing. Leonard and I agreed, this was just a God thing. For him it was a reminder that even though his world seemed to be falling apart, he wasn’t on this journey alone. For me it was a reminder that God is always right on time. And that He’s obviously a Saints fan.