The Death of Shame

I, more than most, am repeatedly reminded of the depravity this generation is laced with. As much as I try to stay away from categorical railings against society at large, I've noticed a pattern in the attitudes and behaviors I see in people - not just the ones I have to mess with, but ones I hear and read about in other places. In my opinion, people aren't engaging in mischief and mayhem because the world is becoming inherently more evil...I think it has to do with the apparent death of shame in our society.

From time immemorial, shame has been the great check and balance that has guided behaviors within societies. In ancient cultures, family was paramount, and to willfully transgress a relationship with God or man meant bringing shame upon your family. This dynamic obviously doesn't come into play much any more. For one, "family" has so many meanings that it means nothing. Not when I see more love in foster homes than within nuclear families sometimes. Not when probably 85% of the calls I work involving 'families' include only one parent.

The single parent aspect is of extreme importance. This is a daily observance for me, and it's more subversive than we give it credit for. Most people, when they think of the concept of divorce within families with children, picture a season of trauma followed by a slow but steady process of healing. This may be true in some cases, but it's not what I'm seeing. More often what I'm seeing looks something like this:

Two people who have what should be obvious incongruities and incompatibilities marry anyway and then, for some reason or another, choose to have children. Perhaps they don't give themselves time to settle into their married lives; maybe they don't see themselves for who they are as a couple; possibly they think that a child will magically fix what is broken within their marriage. Whatever the reason, a dependent entity is created.

At some point after this, the fissures begin to turn into chasms. Perhaps once settled they realize they cannot function connected to the other; maybe something makes them realize who they really are; possibly they look up from changing a diaper or packing a lunchbox and realize that falling in love with their child hasn't caused them to fall in love with their spouse.

And so they destroy their bond of promise and go their separate ways, with great financial and emotional cost. Or, increasingly, because they are already financially strapped they have no choice but to co-exist in a venomous environment, remaining married only because their checkbook holds them at knifepoint. This obviously provides a horrifying paradigm of domestic life for any children pattering around the house.

Either way, from that point forward, their children no longer have a unified entity known as 'parents' but rather separate entities known as 'my mom' and 'my dad.' I'm going to my mom's house; I'll be at my dad's this weekend. And, as a seeming rite of passage, each usually seeks to mollify the trauma by gift-giving or, more insidiously, a softened disposition toward discipline. Thus come the choruses of "Mom always lets me do this" and "Dad gives that to me all the time."

This is a killer on two fronts. First, mom and dad usually don't understand that love does not mean acceptance and tolerance. Love for them seems to be sheltering Junior from the impact of reality. Second, Junior, especially if a teenager, gets a new nuclear weapon called volitional residency. Translation? "Oh, yeah? Well maybe I'll just live with Dad/Mom." The fruits of both sides are awful.

They're what produce the teenagers I'm seeing on the street. The seventeen year old girl with over two thousand dollars in cash in her purse and no clue about how to start a savings account because mom owns a business and "takes care of that stuff." The fifteen year old who didn't just sneak a random beer, but shoplifted a bottle of liquor, drank the whole thing, then stumbled drunk across five lanes of traffic while cars dodged him. The fourteen year old girl who sucked her teeth and rolled her eyes at me when I suggested that she was in the wrong for, you know, stealing things.

I harp on the teenagers. But they're just the poster children. Their parents don't have any shame, either. No shame in lying. No shame in drunkenness. No shame in infidelity. No shame in acid tongues and erupting tempers. Why? Because shame requires that the one shamed be in the minority. To be a sore thumb among their peers, someone to look upon with pity and disdain. The problem today is that lying, drunkenness, infidelity, and anger are, in a wealth of circles, normal behavior.

Many of us think 'normal' relates to some standard, but we forget that normalcy is subjective, and requires only that 51% of a group exhibit the trait. If most people lie, is there really any shame in lying? Who is left to judge? The odd people are suddenly the ones naively telling the truth. They are the ones scorned and laughed at and pressured to conform to the group's collective behavior. And since the human heart yearns to be accepted, this is all too often what ends up happening.

So what's my grand, sweeping solution this time? Well, I guess it's just being weird. If 51% of people are doing something wrong, it suddenly becomes normal, but it doesn't become right. Distill truth from chaos and drink deeply from its depths. Figure out who you are and anchor yourself there - for it would be sorrowful indeed to look back at your life and realize that in trying to live by others' lamplight, you became a thousand things to a thousand people - but you were never you.

In the end, if you whore your integrity out to the whims of others, shame will live.

But you will die.

Twilight's Whispered Whispers

There is something inherent within the heart of man, something as passionate as it is pervasive, that will forever cast the aspersions of discontent within his soul, mercilessly tormenting him with the shadows of fear, raspily whispering sweet discord into his ear. Promising the promise of transcending his turmoil, but ever reminding him of the scores of present absences in his life. The great question of our existence is not one of how we have become, for we are; nor is it one of how we shall depart, for depart we shall. No, the question is simply this: shall we regard this pervasive passion as friend, or as foe?

This passion, like most others, is a quiet thing. It is not like lust, that blind and obnoxious beast with no regard for the delicacies imbued within the finer emotions of our lives. No, this passion speaks loudest when it doesn't at all - when it makes itself known simply as a gravity, new and foreign, gently but insistently tugging upon one's countenance. Happiness seems to no longer be defaulted to, but rather seems a series of momentary diversions from a brooding state of contemplation. Most despise this state of affairs, and will expend seemingly boundless energy and resources in order to overthrow its influence. We rail against the dusky twilight of the unknown, unmindful that it harbors our whispering passion. Neglecting that while the whispers are inherently neither good nor ill, they lace the very air we breathe with their aroma, and cannot be ignored.

Our great issue with the whispers whispered by this pervasive, passionate something is most often not one of perception, but of discernment. We usually know that they are there, but they are so frequently lost in the maelstrom of our circumstances that we exhaust ourselves with the strain of attempting to gather their message. The frustration this engenders within our spirits usually fosters a sense of resignation to our present circumstance as we simply learn to tolerate the gentle insistences of these passionate whispers. As we commit the atrocity of allowing the joyful, dreaming child within us to become jaded. Realistic. Logical. Of allowing our gaze to forsake our horizons in favor of our toes or, God forbid it, our traveled path behind.

And thus we are again faced with the question of how to regard this persistent something that whispers in the shadows. There are those who regard the whispers with acrimony - but these people usually mistranslate the message they render. You see, they permit the unfounded assumption that the unease the whispers create regards their temporal circumstance. Unwilling to discipline themselves toward the end of mastering the fears that swirl within their chests, they use their hands to make seismic changes in an effort to mitigate the restlessness they feel. Those who regard the whispers with such animosity wrongly judge that their message is to abandon their beloved, or to buy things they cannot afford, or to set fire to the bridges that span some chasm or another in their lives. They judge that their unrest points to a need to change something that surrounds them.

Those who count the passion as an ally, though, those who have mastered the craft of harnessing their emotions, know that its whispers bid them change not what surrounds them, but what suffuses them. What lies within. This passion that makes us discontent with where we are wants us to change ourselves.

Every time you hear the whispers, listen carefully. Forsake the temptation of considering what they are calling you out of, and focus instead on what they can lead you into. Use their message as a stimulus for growth, not escape. Much has been made of changing the world, but I know firsthand that it's a fool's errand. Change yourself.

There is something inherent within the heart of man that insistently whispers to him from the twilight.

The whispers whisper a message of hope.

The whispers whisper a message of woe.

The whispers whisper, "Friend or foe?"

Silent Shadow

People often marvel at how quiet I am. They tell me to lighten up, or that I take myself too seriously, or that I need to talk more. My responses vary depending on who I'm talking to, but range from a grunt ("Huh, yeah") to a cutting quip ("That's just because I communicate so efficiently I only have to say ten percent of the words you do") to a rhetoric piece citing university studies and Scripture, with a couple of quotable quotes thrown in ("Researchers have shown that many talkative people are only talkative for one of two reasons: vanity or insecurity. I suffer from neither. The Bible says, 'Even a fool, when he keeps silent, is considered wise; when he closes his lips, he is considered prudent.' Mark Twain summed it up nicely: 'It is far better to remain silent and appear a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.'")

Truth be told, though, I wonder sometimes, too. I think for the past year or so, it has been a function of my job. I'm getting a bit more adept at it now, but for months I've worked on the art (which is more of a laborious chore for me) of making small talk with people. I mean, I don't have to make small talk, but people generally get a little antsy when a police officer stands there and stares at them for minutes on end, so I make a go of it.

And so, I find something to talk about. If I'm scrutinizing them, it might be about how much they've had to drink. If I'm just getting information, it might be about...well, anything I can manage, to be honest. And so for ten hours a day, four days a week, I struggle to manufacture pointless conversation to keep people somewhat relaxed. The problem doesn't lie there anymore...the problem is going home.

You see, after all of this pointless chatter, I'm done. Sometimes I feel like I'm one of those airheaded girls in the mall on her cellphone, bobbing her head side to side as she gnaws on gum and injects her stream of inane blather with random occurrences of 'like,' 'totally,' and 'ohmigod':

"I was, like, down at the gas station yesterday *chew chew*, and, like, ohmigod, this guy totally butted in front of me in line! *chew* And I was like, 'Uh, like, excuse me!' And then the guy made some, like, lame excuse about his wife being in labor, or something stupid like that, and totally, like, ohmigod, blew me off!"

Because there are some things I say so often that I just go into macro mode. I initiate the sequence and words just start spilling out. There's the shoplifter sequence:

"Okay, I need to get your side of the story, but before I do that, I need to read your rights to you. This doesn't mean you're under arrest right now, I just need to advise you of your rights when you're talking to me, so listen carefully..."

The aw-shucks-gotta-give-you-a-ticket sequence:

"Okay sir/ma'am, there's your paperwork back; unfortunately, I am going to have to cite you for _________. There's more information on this envelope. You also ___________, but I'm just going to give you a warning on that this evening. I do need some information from you..."

And the accident sequence:

"Okay, here's your license and insurance back. This is the case number I'll be writing the accident report under; it'll be available in three to five days on the city's website, listed here at the bottom of the slip. If you go there, you'll see a pane on the left with an option to view accident reports...just click on that, enter your report number, and you'll be able to see a full copy of the accident report - everything I know will be on that report. Basically, though, if you just give this report number to your insurance agent, they can take care of everything behind the scenes...it's pretty hands off for you. Do you have any questions for me?"

So when I go home, not only do I not want to talk, I don't even want to listen. All night long I listen, to excuses through drivers' windows, to whiny teenagers in loss prevention offices, to a constant stream of radio traffic. I just want a nice, sensory free environment, where I'm free to listen to ambient noises like distant trains and computer fans and the slight whistle my nostrils make when I breathe.

Unfortunately, this is exactly the opposite of what Kimberly wants. While I'm at work gathering reasons why I do not want to talk or listen, she is at school gathering reasons to speak and be heard. She gathers observations and wants to share them with me; I gather observations and wish I didn't even know them. So, as you can imagine, more often that not this dynamic makes for a delicious little conversational impasse.

Beyond the job, though, I've just got a threshold thing. If I say something, more often than not I've already said it two or three times in my head, carefully parsing exactly what words I want to use. This is why I'm awful at comebacks - I always craft an impossibly witty response, but it's invariably about ninety seconds after you said your piece, by which time the moment has almost always passed. Everything's got to be a magnum opus with me.

Maybe deep down, though, it's just a defensive thing. Words are always clues - they're insights into someone's makeup, no matter how seemingly insignificant. The words I use and the way I say them give you information about how I tick. I guess in some microscopic way, that gives you power over me, and I resent it. I also know that you can't unspeak a word. There are a lot I wish I could wring out of the air. The written word is inherently destructible - paper is flammable and bytes are corruptible. If I decide I don't want you to see the very words you're reading in a week's time, you won't, and I can deny they ever existed. And while it's true that nothing published to the Internet is ever truly deleted, I can definitely make retrieval beyond your means.

So why do I talk so little? Probably because most people talk so much. I prefer to think. Few people think too much. It gives you a calm sense of focus. If everyone in a situation is talking, the cacophony is logic-blinding. If everyone is thinking, things begin to sharpen in resolution. I am out talking to people a great deal, but between dealings I have a respite in my patrol car. Even in stressful situations, I can still function because nobody is breathing demands in my ear. (This is probably why I so often tanked so hard in Field Training.)

I simply begin to assimilate data. 'I should turn my lights and sirens on. Check for traffic. I am going 130 miles per hour. The ice cream shop is open. The suspension is beginning to float. I wonder what would happen if I hit a raccoon at this speed. Check for traffic. A blowout would be really unfortunate here. That car has one headlight dimmer than the other. Hit the airhorn at the intersection. Check for traffic. Why does this person think they should stop right in front of me when I'm running code? There are three officers on scene now. Primrose turns into Westview west of Campbell. License plate begins with ADZ. Check for traffic.'

Struggle that it is, though, I still need to work on it. Kimberly deserves an ear and a shoulder, and my friends deserve more than silent ruminating and nods in passing. Silence is ultimately the cloak that veils everything about me except what I want you to see - the identity that I have so very carefully crafted. It's an extremely heavy garment at times, but it's comfortable, and it's what I've always worn.

Marvel if you like. But no matter how much you talk, you're wearing one, too.

Inoculating Against Reality

As a police officer, you're trained to look for patterns in behavior. This is often difficult, but not last night. The first four calls I went to last night involved intoxicated people. People driving into trees while intoxicated. Stumbling through parking lots while intoxicated. Lying on a sidewalk while intoxicated. Slamming into other vehicles while intoxicated. The allure of alcohol, I understand. The allure of drunkenness, I do not. Yet every night I see people defying what I consider perfectly sound logic. Logic that says, hey, if you're ignorant enough to drive drunk, at least stop driving after the first curb you run over. If you can't stand up, maybe you shouldn't attempt to walk. And if you don't have clean clothes or anywhere to stay, perhaps booze shouldn't be on your ought-to-purchase list.

For hours last night, inner Justin shook his head and rolled his eyes and tsk-tsked these people who couldn't negotiate those challenging sidewalks or use established parking lot exits or hold their bladder. As I later reflected on their choices, though, I realized something. They're not especially unique - they're just the poster children. Their means are decidedly liquid in nature, but they are only doing what we all do at some point or another: inoculating against reality.

Think about it. What are we told by marketers every day? We need to escape. We deserve to get away from it all. We need to lose ourselves in whatever they're selling. There is this perpetual idea that other is better. Somewhere else would be more exciting. Someone else would suit you better. Something else would provide more fulfillment. And we buy into it. Whether it's a vacation or a drug, a shopping trip or a porno, it seems we want to be anywhere but here.

And I'm often just as guilty as anyone else. But here is good.

In our fevered quest for other things, we tend to forget about the magic of here. We inhale meals that should be contemplated and savored. We take for granted people whom we should be learning and enjoying. We despise the quiet and the humble in favor of the flashy and the ostentatious. The blessings in favor of the fantasies. The real in favor of chasing the wind. We don't know our neighbors. We don't know our spouses.

We don't know ourselves.

I was in Colorado Springs with Kimberly a few weeks ago, and I was wanting to get some of the weather conditions for Pike's Peak. I flipped the television on, and was quickly courted by a commercial imploring me to visit beautiful...Missouri. I realized we all live in someone else's vacation destination. Live like it. Enjoy the vicissitudes of everyday life. Cherish the people around you. And quit sheltering yourself from real life.

"Don't worry about life. You're not going to survive it anyway." -- Unknown

Mirrored Expectations

(I probably ought to apologize for not posting anything for almost four years. And I would, if I had more devotees than limbs. But I don't, so I won't.)

I didn't expect much from the day.

I drove down to Dora on Sunday to preach at Needmore. I really wasn't expecting much out of the trip. I had about 48 hours' notice, so I didn't expect the sermon to go over especially well, and I figured I'd grab a bite with the family and hit the road to come back home. Thankfully, for once, I was wrong.

I struck out at around seven in the morning to great weather. After a fill up at the gas station, I was on the road. Road trips are actually a delight now thanks to my Slacker G2 - I was listening to great stuff from Ben Folds, Jimmy Eat World, and Metric. I rolled into Mountain Grove and realized I was pretty early, so I decided to stop and grab a bite.

I initially hit the left lane to go to Wal-Mart, but then I remembered the Country Mart just off the highway. I decided I didn't want to trek over five acres of Discount City for a cheese danish, so I veered right instead. I hopped out and went inside, expecting to settle for a premade pastry of some sort. As I walked in, I noticed the deli was on the west side of the building, and I thought, 'It would be cool if the deli was open.' Then, to my surprise, I saw the deli was open. I wandered over and found the next of the day's many delights: hot biscuits and sausage gravy, just waiting to be ordered. Not the cardboard hockey pucks covered with runny flour-water most places pass off as biscuits and gravy, but homemade biscuits with fresh, thick sausage gravy.

I asked for two biscuits with gravy and braced myself for the cost. I knew the flour-water pucks across the street at McDonald's were relatively expensive compared to the rest of the menu, so I could only imagine what these things would cost. The answer? Two bucks. I rarely smile when relinquishing money, but I couldn't help it. I ate them with joy in my car while I listened to a little old-school Silverchair.

I eventually found my way to Dora and the Needmore Church of God. From infancy to the time I was twenty years old, this was my church. I spent hours in that building being formed into who I am today, learning the old hymns of the church, the poetry of the psalms, and the power of quiet faith in simple people. I often balk at the idea that I could ever tell these people anything about how to live their lives, but they are kind enough to listen to me, anyway.

I only had a couple of days' notice, so I only had a six by eight legal pad scrawled with rough notes of what I wanted to say. I was fully expecting to burn through my material in ten minutes and to be forced to retreat to my notes over and over. To my happy surprise, though, I relaxed and just talked to everyone like the friends they were, and didn't have any problems with time or content.

After church the family gathered at Mom and Dad's house for barbecue, where I had my fill, of course. Then in the afternoon I decided to head out for a spin on the ATV. I buzzed around and got to one of the river bottoms, and this is where I had a realization. I had to swim.

I had changed into board shorts at the house, and it was way over ninety degrees. The water looked deliciously refreshing. I decided to go to one of my favorite swimming holes and take a dip (thanks to Kyle Kosovich for the picture). Silly me, though, forgot the undergrowth had already erupted in the woods this late in June. Thus I found there was suddenly a ticket price to get to my swim: sweat and pain.

I pulled the ATV off the dirt road and parked it in the weeds. As I looked, though, I realized they weren't benign greenery. They were the dreaded stinging weeds of the forested river bottom. If you've never walked through a thicket of them in bare legs...well, you're better off. I decided I would not be deterred, though. I high stepped through them Deion Sanders-style, then got to the small brook that empties into the river. I slogged and splashed though, sometimes deftly leaping log to log, sometimes plowing through thigh-deep water, but always pressing forward. After nearly breaking my face when a half-rotten log snapped in half under me, and after vaulting over a fallen log that likely grew up the same time my grandparents did, the ravine I was in opened up to the spectacular view of the Martin Ford shoal shimmering in the Bryant River valley.

I sloshed through the water of the shoal, which was easily twenty or thirty degrees warmer than the spring water I'd just left in the ravine. I stripped off my shirt, because that's just how you do, and my watch, because I really didn't care, and dove into the water. Standing neck deep in the river's water, I drew deep the aroma of my favorite smell on the earth: the scent of the river at the water's surface. Some of you know exactly what I'm talking about; others of you have no idea. If you don't, there's no way I can describe it to you. It doesn't smell like anything else, and it is what it is. For me, it's one of those smells that removes you from your present circumstance and takes you back to years gone by. It reminded me of a time when the most important decision I might make in a day's time was whether or not I wanted more mashed potatoes. As I exhaled that sweet breath, I settled into a sense of contentment and belonging. I settled, ultimately, into a worship experience.

There, alone in that lapping water, so removed that literally nobody could have heard me scream, I had the distinct feeling come over me that I was exactly where I was supposed to be. There were thousands of places I could have been, but only one where I should have been, and that was in that water. I looked around at the leaves lush on the trees, the minnows flickering within six inches of me, the dragonfly hovering delicately above the water's surface. I felt torn by my own presence - somehow guilty of interrupting the symphony of circumstance swelling around me, yet assured of the fact that I somehow needed to participate in it, to allow myself to be a small part of it.

As I bobbed in the water, though, I wondered how on earth I was enjoying myself. I had another bout with the stinging weeds to look forward to. I was being attacked by mosquitoes bigger than horseflies and horseflies bigger than...well, bigger than they needed to be. I had crashed through stagnant, frigid water, listening to unknown critters scurrying in the underbrush around me, only to get to the river and pick about a dozen biting ticks off of my legs. Most would have declined to take the trip, and the rest wouldn't have enjoyed themselves once they got there. I mean, I was taking deep breaths, walking around neck deep in sediment-laced river water, for God's sake.

But I cherish that water. The journey was composed of steps worth taking.

I think there are ultimately a lot of things in life we cherish, or would cherish if we could. Invariably, though, things crop up in your path. People buzz around you threatening to drain the life out of you. Stagnation threatens to discourage your steps. Parasites attach themselves to you and consume your resources. The issue we must face is whether the journey to our goal is composed of steps worth taking. I know mine certainly was. For in that current, in that moment, I was allowed a sage's wisdom and a child's joy.

The sun's long rays bid me leave that emerald pool, and suddenly I was six years old again, begrudgingly trudging out of the water, which was already becoming palpably cooler. I took one last dip, finding a sturdy rock in the swift water of the shoal and holding myself under the surface, feeling the force of the water undulating and pulsing around me as I'd done countless times in my youth. At long last, I arose, heading back for the ravine. Before I plunged into its shadows, though, I paused and looked back.

The sun's light was beginning to take on a tangerine glow as it prepared to set, its warmth softly glinting upon the peaks of the undulating water. It was the bittersweet parting of one friend who must stay and another who must go. I silently promised my return and departed from a friend who will never leave me. I mounted my steed of steel and zipped back between the trees, splashing through standing water and relishing the abandon I thought I was too jaded to ever feel again.

I didn't expect much from the day. Little did I know that the day expected a lot from me.