The Crisis and The Christ

It seemed like everything was coming apart at the seams again. Like a baseball losing its cover. Amos was like a tire that’s lost its tread - slippery on a wet road. He’d thought that he could see, but all he saw was how blind he was. His plans to recreate himself on the coast were tripped up by his self same old ways. He was tumbling down the mountain side and hitting every rock and hard place on the way down; every soul he’d ever hurt, every selfish turn he’d taken was painfully clear and bruising him all over again.

Trying to slow the fall was as difficult as escaping a schoolyard circle of scorn. Once the circle is formed and the target identified, the anger of the crowd is a contagious fever that infects every child. Whatever the accusation, how it started, and whether it’s true, becomes unimportant. Once a self-righteous momentum of condemnation has begun, the smell of blood pulls back the screen of adult civility and a vein where shame and anger run is opened. Friends and allies are swept up in the blood sport and as you turn, looking for support, their scorn pierces the skin and hits bone deep. The flesh of trust is rent open and self love, love of the other, love of life bleeds out.

But Amos had left all that behind. Out here on the coast he’d cast off the effects of a fearful past, claimed a fresh start – wounds healed - and vowed to reinvent himself. So why was he still haunted by this circle of demons? It was as if all his minor faults and insecurities had got together and conspired to tear him down. Every time he tried to build himself up with memories of accomplishments, they’d turn sour on him. He’d see that what he was trying to take pride in was really just another selfish grabbing for ego-glory. The good that he’d done was really only all about Amos proving once again what a good boy he was. It was all an act.

Where was the backbone? What held his skeleton together? What mattered so deeply to Amos that without it – he’d puddle like jello in his bed – his muscle and will only resulting in a jiggle.

When he’d try to go to his comfort places of imagination, He found a self-absorbed little boy whimpering and complaining in the midst of comfort and wealth. His enemy was stabbing at his newly exposed flesh and he knew that the knives were of his own design – forged in the bowels of deep mountain memories.

You might say that Amos was feeling a little depressed. The Christmas season had descended like a low cloud over Vancouver. As the year’s days were running out, so it seemed, was his sense of humour. This was not a new thing for Amos. Christmas wasn’t spoiled when he found out that Santa Claus wasn’t real. (That was a relief. Knowing that it was only his parents judging whether he’d been good enough for gifts instead of some fat fairy elf made it an even game again. There were only four eyes between them and, if his siblings didn’t turn him in, he could keep his best side facing them most days.) No, his loss of Christmas innocence was more like an unrequested exchange for pubic hair.

It was early December and he’d been flipping through a Life magazine’s review of the year 1972. Along with the heroes of industry and politics and culture, there , in full colour, were the horrors of the year. The pages stopped flipping at a full page colour photo of a Viet Cong soldier holding two severed heads like dead chickens at his side. The heads - upon closer examination - were not American soldiers – that would seem like a horrible, bloodythirsty revenge – ugly but somehow rational. No, the heads were clearly Vietnamese. To Amos that was just crazed. It was an evil hatred turned in upon itself. To hate one’s enemy was a dark and ugly human trait. But to hate one’s self – one’s kin - was a black despair driven from a place even darker than the human soul.

If anyone had asked that twelve year old boy how the photo had affected him, Amos couldn’t have put it into words. But it went deep. It struck a chord in him that had never been struck before. It drummed a last vestige of childhood out of him and a shadow entered where an innocence had dwelt.

He was stung by the false hopes of a Christmas that celebrated “goodwill to all men”. Faced with the stark evil truth of war - naked without a Hollywood good guys/bad guys story – hope for the triumph of the good guys - hope for the redemption of the bad guys - slipped through his grasp like water in cupped hands. He lost a faith in human beings that he didn’t even know he had. He’d taken it for granted that good and bad were different worlds and not two sides of the same street. The bright lights of Christmas now only accentuated just how dark the human soul could be.

For the first time in his life, he wept tears that were not for himself. Those first tears of compassion were for the misery of his brothers and sisters. Sunday school had taught him well that on this small green planet we were all God’s children. The Apollo missions had captured a God’s eye view of our small round home. He’d grown up on the wave of Hippies’ songs of love and peace that were everywhere battling - and overcoming ignorance and fear and war. He’d been to the world Expo ’67 in Montreal and seen with his own eyes how happily all the world’s cultures could come together. He believed. He was a believer.

And then, a single photo had exposed the ugly truth that changed everything. He saw how human beings are their own worst enemy. The photo stayed with him as if he’d clipped it out and carried it around in his wallet.

A Christmas that claimed we were all happy, generous, people was now like eating too much cotton candy before the Wicked Whirlwind ride. Once he’d puked it up - he was off it for life. The sweet smells of Christmas now turned his stomach. Those tears of compassion he’d wept had a few sobs in there for himself too. He cried - knowing it without naming it - for what he’d lost. He was a child no longer.

For the next decade he managed to deal with this unnamed grief over the death of his childhood in a variety of ways. Christmas presents were still welcome. He began the practice of last-minute shopping –delaying the pain as long as possible. He gave presents always fearful that they weren’t good enough because no present he received was ever good enough. It could never fill, or even touch, that dark empty place inside. Nothing out of a box could convince him that he was a “good and deserving” boy.

He now knew the truth. He was a piece of shit just like everyone else. Some were just better at pretending it wasn’t so. It’s only other people’s shit that stinks isn’t it? Christmas – he noticed - really seemed to bring out the bullshit in the culture. Charlie Brown’s sad and unloved Christmas tree came close to naming it. But Amos’ loss went deeper. Cynically pulling the tinsel off of consumer’s spiritual hyprocrisy was fun - but it wasn’t enough. It helped to be “above it all”. But it never took away the shadow left where hope had once lived.

Amos became a fan of whatever could cut through the phony and expose the ugly, or laughable, truth. He was in good company of course. In many ways, Amos was only riding his generation’s wave. From Mad magazines to Monty Python, the Seventies youth culture developed a cynical, mocking sense of humour that slammed into sacred cows at every opportunity. From the Black Panthers to the Sex Pistols cultural tastes turned angry. It was cool to be angry and show it in all kinds of creative, destructive ways.

Self-destruction was Amos’ favourite method. His creativity went into living out a double-life. While maintaining a thick veneer of socially acceptable behaviours (school grades, after school jobs, even volunteer leadership work) he spent the rest of his waking hours destroying brain cells in suburban basements and risking his life in cars tearing around streetlit suburban corners.

After a decade of honing this attitude, Amos had declared himself bored by his cynical self-destruction. It was now time for a change. The power and authority of manhood hung like tools on a basement wall. It was up to him to pick them up and use them to make something of his life. Thing was, as he looked over the parts and pieces of his life, he was dismayed by the raw material he had to work with. It simply wasn’t good enough for what he wanted to do.

The Writer’s pad and pen that he’d been carrying around with him all fall were still empty. The lone artist on a mission, had become the same old party animal in a circle of misfits and funky friends that had gathered like dryer lint in the tumble of days. It was the same old Amos in a new setting.

He had hoped to re-create himself. He saw qualities that he honoured in people all around him. But those qualities seemed beyond his reach. He wanted to find a new way of being. He wanted to shed the old skin and – no not just skin – he was hoping to transform from caterpillar to butterfly. He ached to let his inner writer fly above all the suburban Scarborough mediocrity – especially his own mediocrity - that had suffocated all attempts - but not the desire - for this little worm to soar.

It snowed Christmas day in Vancouver that year. Many Vancouverites were not impressed by their White Christmas. Anyone trying to travel around the city without the aid of snow tires – not to mention skid-control skills – was in for some stress. Amos couldn’t have been more happy with the snow. He’d booked a cab for the day and there were more calls to keep a cabbie busy than cabs to meet the demand. Talk about a kid in a candy store.

The whole day was filled with ferrying merrymakers around the city. While driving was slow going, the generous tips made up for the lost time. It was a good thing that there weren’t too many cars on the road. He slid through more than one stop sign and only narrowly avoided several fender benders with a little gas on the pedal and counter-spin techniques learned in Ontario parking lots. His usually nasty Christmas mood was kept occupied by mostly happy drunks.

He did his share of skid row runs that day too. These were trips to the bootlegger for lonely turkeys trying to kill the day with a quart – lucky if they had friend to share it with. Unless, of course, their friend’s mood was as ugly as the one Amos was nursing.

He put in a shift and a half. By 3 am the calls had finally slowed down to a trickle. Sixteen hours behind the wheel was enough. With a good wad of cash in his jacket pocket, he dropped off the cab and flagged a ride from another cabbie back to his Kitsilano basement. Danny was asleep. Helen was away home for Christmas. He cracked open a beer and put a quiet album on sat on the floor back against the wall beside the stereo.

His parents had mailed out a care package that was still unopened sitting in the corner of his room. He hadn’t opened it partly because he didn’t want to expose himself to Danny’s scorn over his soft and happy family’s past, and partly because he was afraid that the comforts of that family would lull him back to sleep. Amos had gone to great lengths to get his miserable self out here all alone. He was determined to turn his angst into art. Falling back into the arms of his family would spoil his misery for sure.
How does it feelHow does it feelTo be without a homeLike a complete unknownLike a rolling stone?
You've gone to the finest school all right, Miss LonelyBut you know you only used to get juiced in itAnd nobody has ever taught you how to live on the streetAnd now you find out you're gonna have to get used to itYou said you'd never compromiseWith the mystery tramp, but now you realizeHe's not selling any alibisAs you stare into the vacuum of his eyesAnd ask him do you want to make a deal?
Bob Dylan

Still, it was Christmas – or no, it wasn’t any more – he’d made it through Christmas without family comforts and now it was Boxing Day. Okay, he thought, time to open the box. He sat on the floor of the basement beside the stereo and opened up the box. The box was filled with smaller packages wrapped up in colourful paper. There was a card with care-full notes written by his Mom and Dad telling him of their love and faith in him.

When he’d finished opening up all the gifts, he sat for a time in the midst of presents and strewn paper and felt – how did he feel? He tried to feel beneath the anger and cynicism – down there – how did he feel?

Just as empty as the boxes lying all around him. Not sad or lonely or miserable – just empty. Amos felt kind of like you feel after a good cry. After the tears - the way your mind goes through all the reasons you’re crying until you run out of reasons, and the tears slow and you blow your nose and then there’s a final big sigh. Amos didn’t know it then, but the tears that had started flowing ten years before - had finally run out.

He decided to go for a walk. This feeling was too real to waste on sleep. He put on his black Kodiak boots and leather jacket – his urban defiance gear - and walked up into the alley and out to the street. The clouds had cleared finally and there was a full moon shining on the snow covered streets. He walked down the few blocks to the little park at the ocean’s edge. The moon over the English Bay harbour drew him like a moth. Without hesitation he jumped the steel fencing that ran along the little cliff’s edge and scrambled his way down onto the beach. The tide was out and the ocean floor was black and shiny like an oil slick.

Amos stumbled along the stony shore beneath the wealthy homes that lined the million dollar view. In most places the ten to twelve foot cliff provided enough protection for these homes. But when he came across a concrete wall built all the way down to the shore, he truly felt like an intruder in this city. He looked across the bay to the city skyline and knew that there was no place for him here. He would always be an outsider to the people who lived behind such walls. The moon put his shadow against that wall and he stood tall to see his height and breadth. The wall could have his shadow - he thought - but it couldn’t have him. He turned his back to it and began to walk out towards the water.

It was a long walk out across the stony tidal flats. With each stony step it slowly began to sink into his head that he had literally reached the bottom. He was out among the very dregs of the city. These stones were like coffee grains at the bottom of the cup. All his travels, all his searching, all his hopes, all his mistakes, all his ego-driven desires had been sucked out to sea by the pull of the moon – the world’s biggest mirror.

He stopped and looked up at that moon. The light it shared was not its own. It had no fire of its own. It was a rock that became a beacon only because it was in the right place at the right time to reflect the one and only light of the world.

That was when he felt the Presence there just behind and beside him. It was like someone was standing there letting him know, without words, that he had a friend. He felt that the Presence knew him inside and out – maybe even better than he knew himself – definitely knew the real him – without the masks and the lies and the bravado. He knew, somehow, that this friend would never judge or fail him. Amos felt this as truly as a bell sounding somewhere deep in his bowels. The Presence knew him inside and out and – and – and loved him as surely as the sun shone. Amos felt as deeply loved as he knew how to love – and more.

And yet, Amos felt - somehow got the feeling - that it was a meeting of friends – that even though he was in the Presence of an amazing, timeless, source of knowing and love – that Source had chosen to be his friend. For Amos, the only adequate response to such a gift – a response from the heart and the guts and not the polite conniving head – was to choose to call the Presence “LORD”.

The moon was dropping down behind the mountains now. It told Amos that the journey wasn’t over. He still didn’t know what was to come or where he was heading but he had found what he was looking for out here.

He had thought he was looking for a new self. Instead, he discovered that he was looking for someone to serve. Only after he’d emptied out all the possibilities that he’d filled his life with, did he find his Lord and Leader there at the bottom of it all.

You find me
and offer…
grace to forgive
to begin again
spirit to guide steps through self-love’s confusion
receiving as mine the power of Your sacrifice
senseless service as the road to
no tomorrow’s
grace to forgive
to begin again…

Jesus had been patiently waiting for him. The Father’s son. God’s chosen one. The only one who really didn’t give a shit what people thought of him, or did to him, but lived for one purpose only – to reflect the light and love of the only power that mattered. The power of life that turned forever – forgetting the day gone by and always welcoming the new beginning so full of growing, changing, creative possibilities….

Amos baptized himself five days later skinning dipping from Wreck Beach on New Year’s Day. Danny was there to laugh and bless his crazy white ass with hoots from the shore. Amos had tried to explain the experience on the tidal flats to Danny in the best words he could find - but knew were failing him. For once, Dan didn’t argue. He just listened and looked at Amos with a tilted head and quiet smile and nodded. His silence acknowledging that Amos had found something worthy.

The gift he’d received was the message that it wasn’t in changing that Amos would find his purpose. What the Christ had taught him with his friendship was that it was only by becoming more of who he already was that Amos would find his path to follow. He’d been given a touchstone experience that he could return to time and again. It reminded him that his choices, his efforts, his mistakes, his life is not really about “Amos”. He was in service to a far greater power than his small sense of well-being. What Amos would do from that day on is try to reflect - in his own moon-rock way - the light of the world.

Mediocre, silly, selfish, lustful, lazy-ass that he was, God could use even a dull rock like him to shed light in a dark world. Creative, imaginative, intelligent, funny - God can mine and refine what’s good in anyone. And anyone can do their small part to add some food to the table in hungry places.

No matter where I roam
I will find my way back home
I will find a way to return
to the Lord

I was heading for a fall
and I saw the writing on the wall
Like a full force gale
I was lifted up again
I was lifted up again
by the Lord

Van Morrison
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