Coming Away From The Adolescent Male Brain Workshop

This week, I attended a workshop on what science is figuring out about the adolescent male brain. It was a good place to get some affirmation about what I have experienced in working with young men, and also to think about my male brain…

I took a lot of notes. They are kind of a jumble, but then, that is the brain at work:

Inter generational wounds
We carry what our fathers couldn’t resolve in their lives

Coping mechanisms
Self medication
Violence to others
Violence to self

Treatment takes away a coping mechanism and leaves one more vulnerable

Processing
What feelings do I have?
What did I learn?
What did I learn about me?

(We all need to process)

What you don’t know about what is inside you is toxic

There is no such thing as an unmotivated thing
We use an idea, or a tactic to survive, as a screen

Speech is not initially connected to emotion. For men, talking about feelings releases cortisol, the highest stress hormone. For females, a bonding chemical is released. Female: speech and emotion centers are connected at puberty. Men, never.

Men have to find a label, a second language, to talk about emotion and feeling.

For men, writing thus helps to safely express feelings. A bit detached, safely.

Women: speech centers are wired to sexual arousal. Men: no. So, women connect their speech centers in their brain to both emotion and sexual arousal. They are well connected, but men are not. Thus, it is hard for men to talk about their emotions and sex.

Disconnectors
Men
Sex
Alcohol
Women
Don’t have these disconnectors

So, men are really good at disconnecting!

Relationships
40% of men have genetic emotional disconnect chemical
This contributes to short term relationships.

Our culture has no rite of passage into manhood. Yet, our young men want and need the following elements:

Male box
You live here
The 4 walls-glued together by shame
Feelings and needs
Don’t have them yourself, so there is no me
Cut off self and others
Competition
Everyone, all the time
No room for you
Responsibility
Shame if you don’t
Sex and relationship
I am not important

Inside: a process, a highway
Loneliness to isolation to pain to rage
Rage is not necessarily violence to self or others
It is a fire, pressure needing to be released

Common response to rage
Self medication
Violence

We need to de-shame the release of rage

Young men are looking for a place in society, and to be themselves. Aren’t we all? What does our culture provide for them to get to that place? When young men act out, when they are violent, and self medicate, what are they really telling us? And, how do we respond?

Elements of male life and “treatment”
Tribe
Elders mentors
Sacred text – the rules for being a good man
Ritual/initiation
Play
Treatment needs male focused curriculum
Staff training and selection

(Youth gangs provide these basic needs)

Male Treatment Processes

Kinesthetic (movement) learning
Para pathetic counseling (motion, spacial) counseling (not traditional venue)
Action love (non verbal)
Competition and challenge
Writing to reflect and process
De shame, respect, pride
Aggression nurturance
Confrontation (stand my ground, earning respect)

Our educational system has been designed to provide factory workers for the Industrial Age (assembly line work, structured, orderly, hierarchical labor). Yet, the system pays little attention to all learning styles, to the developmental stages of the male brain, and how we learn and communicate.

We don’t honor young men, and we don’t apply what we know about ourselves and our brains in fashioning a society that is embracing and welcoming.

I came away with some answers, and with some more questions, and a lot more to think about.

The journey continues…

Neal Lemery, April 6, 2013

Outside the Church Yard: Suicide and Me

We have a complicated relationship, and we go way back.

Suicide and the way to early death of young men and women have hit me hard in my life, and I still haven’t found a way to work through it very well, or to make much sense of it, either.

I’ve sat with a young man who was a son to me, when he was suicidal, spending the night holding him, and talking to him, and working through his pain and his hopelessness. When dawn finally came, he was better, and decided he wanted to live. That night took everything out of me, as I used every bit of love and compassion and reason and faith and hope to get him to decide to live, and to tell him that he mattered, that he was important and that life was sacred and good.

I’ve had long talks with a close friend in high school, as he raged about his father beating him, and neglecting him, and not loving him, and how angry he was about all that, and how he just wanted to end it all. Long talks by the camp fire, where truth was spoken and the meaning of life was discussed, and I thought we’d really gotten to the core of it all.

But, we didn’t. And, years later, he came out to me, telling me he was gay and that his sexuality was at the core of his rage with his father, and feeling unloved by his father just made life all the more unbearable.

I learned you never know how deep the wound is that people have to deal with, and struggle with, what the real reasons are that people finally decide that life may not be worth living.

I like to think that if I had known all of the worries, and all of the doubts, we’d been able to figure it all out and “fix” it, around that campfire when we were seventeen. But, probably not. I can’t seem to do that at sixty, and hopefully I’m a bit wiser and smarter now. I’m left with wondering, and not knowing. A lot of the not knowing.

Maybe if we’d been able to say “I don’t know, but walk with me a bit,” that would have been enough.

People ending their lives is not all that rare, but there is a code of silence. We have rarely honestly talked about this part of life, these holes that suddenly open up in our social fabric. Yet, we dance around it, not really speaking truth, not dealing with this subject. Perhaps there are no words to say. That silence is part of the craziness.

In our culture and not too long in the past, a person who ended their own life couldn’t be buried in the church cemetery, which was inside of the fenced in church yard. Their grave was outside of the fence, their lives literally rejected and separated from their spiritual community, and from God.

The code of silence, and shame, and guilt was there for all to see, those feelings literally fenced out of where we were supposed to experience God in our lives, where our pain and our humanity were respected, where we could be embraced by unconditional love.

That rule, that law of our culture is still there for all to see, the graves of the “saved” souls, the children of God, and then, outside of the fence, there are the graves of the suicides, the “eternally damned”.

Oh, we aren’t so explicit now, using the fence around the church yard to make our judgements. Yet, we do judge, and we express our adjudications of shame and guilt.

We follow this rule, this law in so many other ways. We stigmatize and shame, and often ignore depression, other mental illness, and addiction, and the impact of violence and not loving our kids enough, or soldiers trying to come back from war. We make sure people can self medicate with booze, and dope, and lots of prescription meds, and we judge those “solutions” as OK, but when people can’t seem to “get it together”, we put them outside of the fence, and get quiet about it all.

And, when a pop star or other public figure commits suicide, we are quick to pounce, looking for flaws and defects. We are quick to find the defining reason: drugs, love, or the microscope of public infatuation with their lives. We like the simple, quick, and not so very truthful answers. Real life is messier than that, but it doesn’t sell tabloids and it doesn’t draw a television audience. We also don”t have to look at our own doubts, our own actions, and how we as a culture still use that fence.

I held a teenager in my arms one morning, in his bedroom, as he told me about shooting himself in the head, as his father held him, trying to talk him out of it. He showed me the scar on his cheek, and the three missing teeth, and the place on his skull where the bullet came out.

It was a miracle he lived, and it was a miracle we could talk about it in his bedroom, sitting on the bed where his dad had begged him not to do it, and couldn’t pry the rifle out of his hands, until he had pulled the trigger.

We gave voice to all those feelings, and all that pain that morning, dealt with the poison, and did some healing. We moved on, not forgetting, but dealing with the feelings he had; we had some honesty, and dealt with his pain and doubts. We went deep, talking about life and love and who we really are, and what really goes on when we are at the bottom and can’t see the light above us, or the hand reaching out to us.

A teenager close to me died, choosing a gun to deal with his worries, and his doubts. People close to him had a lot of theories and there were a lot of stories, a lot of explanations, and a bit of blaming others. There were the usual suspects: drugs, love, anger, rage of not being loved, not having a safe, respected place to be in, not getting enough love.

Those popular stories might be true, or several of them, or maybe there was something else, too. I’ll never know. He is gone and didn’t tell us why he left us. Perhaps it all hurt too much to talk about and to stay around and muck through it all.
We will never know his truth, and where he was at when he pulled the trigger.

Suicide takes away the answers and the conversations and just dealing with stuff, with family and with friends, and people who love you. We are left with just the questions, and the guilt and the wondering, the “coulda, woulda, shouldas”.

Two other teenaged boys, boys I was close to, and they so very close to their buddy who shot himself, lived in the same town. It came my job to be with them in the next week, and maybe keep them away from the guns and the drug dealers and killing themselves. I took them to the funeral home to see the body and to pray and say goodbyes. I held them and sat with them at night in the park, the park they’d played in with their buddy, where we shivered on a snowy bench talking about life and crying.

Some folks thought it was part of making sense of it all, but there was no sense to be made of any of it.

And, as some families do, no one talks about him anymore. It is like he disappeared forever, and wasn’t part of our lives. But he was and he is. A lot of people put him in the ground outside of the church yard.

I will always miss him and I will always think of the insanity of a sixteen year old boy kicked out of his house on a snowy night, and finding a gun and blowing his brains out, all alone and cold and feeling unloved.

I’ve stood on that same street corner, where he died, in the cold and the night, and the answers don’t come. Even after nearly thirty years, they don’t come, and the wind still blows cold, cold and lonely.

Crazy.

“His death was a single moment for him, but an endless, unforgiving moment for me, for us, for every encounter from then forward with others — and every encounter with myself.” (Kim Stafford, 100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do: How My Brother Disappeared, p 165).

I know of that loneliness, that pain, that unanswerable, unconsolable ache that fills one’s chest. And, all the questions and the not so good answers that people say. Suicide is craziness, about the biggest kind of craziness there is.

Suicide is just craziness, without any real answers and without any magic wand that makes all the crap of that go away.

I think I know, and yet I don’t. Not really.

We still bury people outside of the fence, at least mentally, separate and distant from the “rest of us”, away from community. Perhaps, in that distance, there is safety, there is the sense of not having to confront those painful, ugly questions about despair, and hopelessness, and death.

If we ignore it, it will go away.

But, it doesn’t. Life isn’t that simple, and when depression and suicide slam down on us, in its ugly suddenness, we don’t have good answers.

When I lose a friend, a relative, or anyone who has been a part of of my life, I need to grieve, too, for they have been in my life and then then they are gone. A person’s death and the grief I feel when someone near to me dies is part of the hole that I have in my heart. We all have holes, you know. We all struggle in life to figure out our holes, and to try to fill them up with goodness and love, and to find some sort of peace and meaning in our lives. Life is messy and awkward, and the work with our holes is sweaty, hard work.

We all have holes, we all have hard, dirty work we are doing to sort through things, to move ahead, and live our lives.

And we need to keep everyone we love inside of the church yard, so we can remember them and hold them close. And, they need to hold us close, too.

3/26/2013

Freedom Day: Getting Paroled and the Incoming Tide

On the beach, he found himself looking at the waves crashing onto the clean sand. Seagulls flew by and landed in a group, just above the incoming tide. The skies were clearing from yesterday’s storm, and the air was fresh, clean, and free.

He was alone, except for the waves, and the gulls, and me, a hundred yards away, watching, watching over him, this first day of freedom.

I saw him gulp the cool, salty air, and then, another gulp, until finally his chest relaxed and he let it all go, released.

Released. Let go from prison this morning, after six and a half years. He knew the exact number of days, and had been counting down each one of them for as long as I’d known him.

The gate swung behind us and clanged shut. A familiar sound to me, after all the visits here with him and other young men, but a new, and final sound for him. Other young men had brought all his belongings from six years behind bars, filling my car, readying us for his trip today to his new life, his new beginning.

We drove away and he could only say “Man, oh, man.”

I honked the horn at the empty road ahead, and offered a shouted “hooray”, and he laughed, finally.

He fell silent, after all the good byes and handshakes and hugs with all the other young men, and the prison staff. Bittersweet, after months of anticipation, almost afraid to go, and move on with his life, from the known and the routine, into new places, new routines, and a new, fresh life.

The waves kept crashing onto the beach, and he had to run back a bit, when a wave moved up farther, almost soaking his shoes. It was a good dance, turning into a bit of a jig, as he became a part of the incoming tide, a part of the morning at the beach, joining the world.

He’d sat down at our breakfast table, laughing at the big plate of eggs and bacon and sausage and the plate of biscuits fresh out of the oven, everything he’d ordered for this day. A real fork and a real knife, not the plastic of the last six and a half years.

I’d thought the event warranted breaking out my mother’s silverware, and candlesticks, and china. Placemats, and all his favorites cooked to order, served on a china platter, and strawberries in a dish.

I refilled his coffee, and waited on him, hand and foot. I thought he needed that, after all these years.

His birthday was tomorrow, and we only had this morning to spoil him. I’d baked him a cake, and I slipped back into the kitchen, ready for a party.

I slipped back into the dining room, with blazing candles, and we broke out into a rousing “Happy Birthday”.

He laughed and nearly cried, and gave a lusty blow out to the candles, as we applauded. I bet his wish was already granted: freedom.

He laughed again, the thought of birthday cake, and now, ice cream, for breakfast. He said his grandmother wouldn’t approve, but then, he laughed again, and said today was probably a good reason for an exception to the rule. We laughed at him being the rule breaker, the scofflaw, not even an hour into his parole.

The sky got lighter and he spotted the neighbor’s horse in the field, and the pink of the dawn. It was a new view, after all. Six and a half years in the same fenced compound, and now everything was new.

He had a second piece of cake, and a bit more ice cream, and then opened up his card, and his presents. Wonder sparkled in his eye, sitting here, in our house, and not where we’d always visited, behind that gate, that gate that clanged for him today, for the last time. It was all new, and it was all delicious, sweet.

It was all about him today, all about getting out and making a fresh start, and moving on with his life.

Soon, we’d be in the car, and driving south, a big day. A lot of miles to cover, and a lot of time to catch up on.

First the beach, and then, along a bay, and then a river, and through the forest, then farmers’ fields, and a city. He stared out the window, not saying much at times, and on we went.

He asked me about the trees, what they were called, and what about the salmon in the river, and what kind of logs were on that log truck.

We came to a place where we could go one way, or the other. Both roads led to where we were going, so it didn’t matter, and he told me which way to go. He chuckled then, at the choosing of which way to go, which road looked better. He’s made a decision; it was not a big deal, but then, maybe it was.

In the city, we met up with his good friend, a guy who had gotten out of the same place a week earlier, and was doing fine. He’d settled into his new home, a halfway house. He had a seven p.m. curfew, and laughed when others there thought that was too confining. In a month, he could be out until eleven, more freedom than he’d ever thought could be.

I took the two young men to a steak house, so they could eat their fill of meat. They’d both been craving barbeque, and big, greasy ribs, for quite a while, and ordered the big plates of beef, and chicken, and a mound of fries. Menus and ordering and making decisions on all the food was new to them, and when the attractive waitress joked around with them, they didn’t quite know what to do, at least for a minute.

All too soon, the big plates were clean, and bellies were full, and smiles were seen all around.

We said good bye to the young man we’d picked up, and headed off, heading to where home was six and a half years ago. We laughed about lunch and all that he could eat, and the extra slice of birthday cake I’d packed for him before we left my house.

He got quiet then, when the freeway sign told us how many miles it was to home. All this freedom was getting to him, finally, getting right into his heart.

Off to the side of the freeway, there was a beautiful field, shining in the sun with that first bright green that comes with the two or three springlike days of February. Those days are always a tease, making us think spring is here, but it isn’t.

The green was real, though, and worthy of mention.

So were the sheep, grazing on the grass. An entire flock of ewes, and their newborn lambs. The woolly babies were running and jumping, celebrating the newness of their lives and sunshine and green grass and promise of spring.

“I’m free,” he whispered then. “I’m finally free.”

Fresh tears flowed then, from all the eyes in the car, and we didn’t speak for quite a while, caught up in that moment.

We were both free, that day, even if the promised spring was not yet here. There was freedom in the air, in the rush of the incoming tide, in the color of the sky at dawn, in the light on his face from all the birthday candles, and the dance of the lambs on the fresh green grass of a new spring.

Neal Lemery 2/26/2013

The Gift of Education

The Gift of Education: My Speech at My Mentee’s College Graduation, Camp Tillamook, February 7, 2013

It is an honor and privilege to be in this place of personal change, this place of education, and to honor D***.

I am one of D***’s mentors, his friend, and, sometimes, his rhythm guitar player. I stand here with pride and with admiration for a job well done.

We honor D*** for his determination, for his will power, and for his accomplishments. We honor his dedication to make something of himself, to make fundamental changes in his life, and to challenge himself to succeed.

He is the first among you to attain his Associates Degree. This is a remarkable and significant accomplishment.

D*** is the first to achieve this milestone here. But, he is only the first among many.

I look around this room, and I see all of you young men who will follow D***‘s lead, who will keep working hard, and learning. You will achieve your own college degrees.

We also come here today to honor all of you young men. You are all students, you are all learning, and applying yourselves. You are bettering yourselves, and preparing for your own bright and successful futures. You are becoming healthier, and stronger, men.

Today, we come here to honor the power and the gift of education.

Education is a gift each of us gives to ourselves. No one can ever take away that gift. Your ability to learn, to explore, to develop your minds, will always be yours. No one can steal your ability to learn new information, to think through problems, and to come up with brilliant and comprehensive solutions.

You are the problem solvers of our future. You are the future of this country, and we expect you to be successful in creating a bright future for you and your families, and for the generations who will come after you.

And, that is a sacred trust we place in you.

As we look around at the staff members in this room, we see that they are educated people. They have gone to college. They have made sacrifices and sweated over their hard work. And, they have bettered themselves.

They have developed their minds, and taken the time to grow and educate themselves. They bring their education and their strong minds to this place, to teach, and to help you succeed, to be complete and healthy men.

Every staff member has made a difference. Every one of them has changed you and they have changed the world.

Because of education, they are better husbands and wives, better fathers and mothers, better neighbors, and better human beings.

I ask you to look inside of yourselves and take inventory of who you are inside, and who you want to be. Think of the possibilities you have.

Each of us has the power to change our lives, to move ahead, and to be healthy, strong people.

The work that each one of you is doing here is the work of education. Education changes lives. Education frees each of us from the slavery of bad ideas, of helplessness, and despair. Education gives us hope.

You are changing lives here.

We need more than a belief in our heart that the world needs to change, and that we need to change. We need to be problem solvers, we need to be the engineers and architects of a new world. We need to be the song writers and poets who will bring more love and happiness to the world, and to each other.

All of that world depends on education.

D*** is the first of you to achieve a college degree. He has opened up the trail, and he is leading all of you by his example.

But, he is not the only one here who will go on and achieve great things in his life. He is not the only one who will master complex skills and challenging ideas, and become a solver of problems, a teacher, and a healer of his fellow man.

Every one of you has that capability.

The only limits that any of us have right now are the limits we impose on ourselves. Every one of you can achieve your dreams.

And, the key to those goals and those dreams is in your education.

This is the gift we celebrate tonight, the gift of education. It is as close to you as the books on your bookshelf, the discussions you have in class tomorrow, and the serious conversations you have around the dinner table tonight.

It all starts with you. Today. Right now.

Take that gift, and run with it.

The future is yours.

Thank you.

—Neal Lemery

Searching for Potential

from Ruralite Magazine, February 2013

Searching for Potential

Neal Lemery spends Sunday afternoons demonstrating ‘normal’ to young inmates

by Denise Porter

Neal Lemery plans to continue his volunteer work at the Tillamook Youth Correction Facility now that he is retired. He wants to help break the cycle of violence.
Every Sunday, cup of coffee in hand, Neal Lemery and a few buddies sit at a table in a small canteen swapping stories. Sometimes they play guitar or a game of cards. Mostly they talk about their future goals, trips they would like to take, dreams.

Other times, the conversation gets deeper and one of the buddies opens up about his childhood: his addict parents, the homelessness and sexual abuse that were what he understood to be a normal childhood.
Neal’s buddies are among the 50 inmates serving sentences for some type of sexual offense at the Tillamook Youth Correctional Facility.

Neal visits several times weekly. The task both gives him joy and mentally exhausts him.

“It’s pretty draining,” Neal says of his visits. “When I come home Sunday afternoon maybe all I’ve been doing is sitting at a table having coffee and playing a game. But this ‘normalcy time,’ is such a new thing for them and they drain you. They’ve never had it before and so they just absorb it. You have to monitor yourself.”

Neal has spent his life working with Oregon’s judicial system. He retired January 2 after 12 years as the Tillamook County Justice of the Peace. He was an Oregon lawyer for 32 years, served as a defense attorney and judge and has spent his entire career in Tillamook—the town where he was raised.

“I’ve sat in all the seats in the criminal justice system here,” he says.

As the Justice of the Peace, Neal officiated nearly 1,800 civil marriages and doled out traffic and fish and wildlife fines.

He says he has always tried to be fair-minded. Rather than locking people away, Neal values educating them. He asked drunk drivers to attend classes—and then report to him after the class with an essay about what they learned.

His biggest challenge as a judge was enforcing mandatory sentencing laws.

“We used to give judges discretion to do the right thing,” he says. “Certainly we’ve taken that away in criminal court. I think you need to consider the person and their circumstances and what’s best for the community.
“We have our own unique values and my job is to reflect the community’s values. The way to fix it is one person at a time, one day at a time. I think if you can change one person, it’s a good day.”

Two years ago, Neal took a call from a friend asking if he could mentor a young sexual offender whose father had died when he was only 15, and whose drug-addict mother would visit her son stoned. Since then, he has made regular visits.

These young men are locked away for a reason, he says. They committed a crime. But the truth is, their behavior was learned. Most were sexually abused as young children.

“People want to blame the ‘neighborhood pervert,’ but really, for nearly everyone there, it was a family member that abused them,” Neal says. “From them, they learned to victimize people.”

Some inmates will never recover from their own trauma, he believes, but he says others can and will, with the correct guidance and can be shown how to break the violent cycle they have known.

“We’re trying to figure out who they are, because they don’t know,” says Neal. “I come, we play Scrabble, have a nice Sunday afternoon like ‘normal’ people would. They’ve never had that. They’ve never gotten mail or a birthday card in their lives.

“One kid freaked out because we gave him a birthday party. He’d never had one. Can you imagine that? There’s been so much sexual abuse and violence; they just don’t know who they are as people.”

Neal’s wife, Karen Keltz, a retired high school English teacher, comes for many visits, too. Karen helps the young men finish high school paperwork and mentors them through college courses.
“She loves it,” says Neal. “They need a mom figure—a sober, decent mom that cares about them, too.”

There is one inmate who Neal has especially enjoyed mentoring. Perhaps it is because the young man is a gifted musician, learning the guitar from Neal in just a few weeks, or perhaps it is because he took the initiative to finish high school, is enrolled in college online and has nearly a 4.0 GPA.

“He writes songs, jazz, blues, rock and he wrote one about me,” says Neal. “It makes me cry every time he plays it for me. The lyrics say something like, ‘You never yelled at me, or gave up on me; you showed up and changed my life.’”

One of the ways Neal pledges to help is by being there when the inmates are released. As part of their terms of release, each needs to spend the first six months in the town where he committed his crime.
Neal sees them settled, enrolls them in college, takes them camping—a longtime wish of one inmate—and gives each every chance to succeed.

Neal plans to learn new hobbies and travel during his retirement. He also will continue to volunteer and mentor and will draft new legislation.

“I want to work on something systemwide around the state for better and more transition services,” he says.

Neal has roughed out a book about mentoring young men.

“There really isn’t a book out there that talks about the crisis in our country of growing up without a father,” he says. “The message I got at home from both my parents, and especially my dad, was ‘You have a brain and a body. You are a child of God, go out and do something!’ A lot of people don’t have someone in their lives to tell them that.

“That’s where I came in—in court as a judge and now, as a mentor. I say, ‘You have potential. You need to use it.’ And I will follow through the next time we meet and ask you, ‘Now tell me, what have you done to reach your potential?’”
Posted January 30th
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Letter to a Young Man in Jail, Again

Dear ***:

I worry about you. I don’t like seeing your name on the jail list. I’d rather take you out for coffee somewhere and hear about the good things you are doing.

I care about you. I know that you care about yourself, too, and want to move ahead.

Love yourself. You have an infinite capacity for love. You are a loving man. There is a great deal to love about yourself. You are worthy of that.

You are worthy of success, of happiness, of peace.

Nourish that wonderful spark of amazing love that burns inside of your heart. Let your light shine, let your love fill this world. You make a difference in other people’s lives, and you make a difference in your own life. You, my friend, are a beautiful person. Believe it. Act on it.

When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.

This is wintertime in your life. Time to rest, to reflect, to refocus and gain new directions. Get your seeds ready for planting. Your springtime is coming soon. This is a time of reinventing yourself, for oiling the gears, and repairing what needs to be repaired. Your garden is ready for plowing, and seeding, and new growth. You are a good gardener.

You know the answers. You know where you want to go. I give you permission to go there, to do the hard work that needs to be done, and to fill your heart with love for yourself. It is OK to love yourself. It is OK to make the hard choices, and to move in the direction you truly want to go. That is your destiny.

You have unlimited potential, and unlimited strength. Your love has no limits. You are a child of God and you are beloved.

Tell the voices that bring you down, that degrade you, that hurt you, to shut up. Find your own voice, and sing your own song.

You already know all of this. I’m just flapping my jaws and making noise here. You already have all the wisdom you need. You already have all the skills. You know where to go. You know the steps you need to take, and the path that you need to walk.

I’m just saying that you have permission now to go do what you need to do. You have all the abilities, all the knowledge. If I didn’t think so, I wouldn’t be wasting money on the postage for this letter.

You also have all the courage and determination you need.

The future is yours. You are in charge of the present, the now. Go, and do what you need to do. Tell the voice of despair and “failure” to shut up, and listen to your heart.

I expect no less of you. I expect greatness in you. I expect you to fill yourself with love and the Light. Let your Light shine.

I believe in you.

Sincerely,

Neal C. Lemery

Blowing Up

” I blew up. I lost it,” my friend said, grinning.

It was such a relief for him, exploding in rage, screaming, carrying on. In a few minutes, the prison staff wrestled him to the ground, secured his flailing hands with handcuffs, and injected some Benadryl to quiet him. He’d earned his 24 hours in the “muser”, the safe room where he could regroup, coming to grips with his rage.

He’d had a hard day.

His phone call with his mom ended in an argument and the same empty promises she’s been making for a while. He was fired from his work crew job, as he was horsing around and disrespecting the task at hand.

His primary staff person tried to talk with him about his attitude and his last phone call with his mom. That talk, with a guy who brings him pizza once in a while as a reward for good work, didn’t go well.

He’s also winding up his second go around with his sex offender treatment, taking another run through all of that life challenging and life changing work. With his medication change, and with his increasing maturity, he’s able to grasp the concepts easier this time around, and apply them to his life. He’s finally been able to see his childhood and his family life for what it really was.

A few weeks ago, his beloved grandfather passed away. His passing was not unexpected. My friend said it was actually a relief, given his grandfather’s declining health and ability to live in his house. The death of his grandmother a few months ago added to his grandfather’s sadness and loneliness.

They were about the last of his dad’s family around, and there is a big emptiness in my friend’s heart. Life with dad hadn’t been easy. There was a lot of alcohol, drugs, violence and anger. When dad died when my friend was fifteen, a lot of unfinished business punched him in the gut.

He went to live with mom, not that she wanted him. She and the boyfriend were busy with the bottle and the pipe, and didn’t need a teenaged boy in the house. But, he had no place else to go.

He’s never had it easy. He’s never enjoyed peace and a sense of place in this world. Life has always been a struggle, and he’s been pushed into the insanity of drugs, alcohol, violence, prostitution, and sexual chaos. School became a joke and he was sidelined and pushed through, grade after grade, and medicated, so that teachers didn’t have to deal with him.

Mom pimped him out, and arranged a lot of drug and alcohol infused “dates”, which led to his arrest and prison.

It was one way to get him away from mom and him dancing around the fringe of the local gangs and criminal element, and off the streets.

Now, he’s completed high school, he’s completing his sex offender treatment, he’s been clean and sober for five years, and he’s able to focus on his needs, and his future. His social skills have grown, so he can live in peace with others and learn to take care of himself.

Still, last week was a huge milestone. Deep inside him, his anger about his childhood and his family have festered and stewed, for his entire life. There are a lot of unresolved conflicts and emotions, and his limited contact with his family hasn’t gone far in settling those. He’s able to see a healthy alternative to all that chaos now, and that brings his anger about what he endured as a kid to an even higher boil.

I’ve played my role in that, too. I’ve been coming to visit him now for two years. Every week, we have coffee and talk. We talk about his work and his studies, and life in prison. We talk about his childhood a bit, and his growing passion for his Native American roots and about him figuring out who he really is.

I’ve challenged him, just by showing up, being dependable, speaking quietly, and gently accepting him, warts and all. He’s been stymied by knowing that I don’t have to show up and be in his life. I’m not a staff person, I’m not a prison guard or teacher, or counselor. I just show up and talk.

And, I don’t blow up. I don’t manipulate him. I don’t call him names. I do my best not to be critical or to put him down. He’s had enough of that for several lifetimes.

I’m a cheerleader here, quietly and consistently pushing him a bit, believing in him, and celebrating the good things he’s doing. Playing that role, I’ve befuddled him on many occasions, showing him that he’s worthy and decent, deep inside.

Over a year ago, he’d struggled with writing about his offense, and the impact it had on the victim, and trying to see the abuse from her point of view. His writing was a big part of his treatment work, the hardest part.

That was a big rock in the road, as he’d been sexually abused, too, and beaten, and neglected, and screamed at. He wrote a great essay on empathy, and then wrote about his life, using another name and making it fiction.

This work went on for months, and there were a lot of times when he cried and threw his hands up, overwhelmed by the enormity of his emotionally draining work. And, I didn’t judge him, and didn’t berate him for not sticking with the “schedule” of getting that work done.

He was digging deep, and opening and healing some awful and infected wounds. He was taking his time with it, taking care to be ready for him opening up every door in his house of horrors, but only when he was ready for what was inside.

And, I waited. I wouldn’t bring up the work unless he did. And, when he talked, I listened. I didn’t play editor, or critic, or judge. Oh, I cried sometimes. The stories that came out were beyond Steven King’s imagination. This was his reality, and he was in charge of peeling back the layers and getting down to the awful core.

A year ago, we celebrated his birthday, an ordinary event for most of us. But, at twenty one, he’d never had had a birthday party. He was able to invite his friends, and my wife and I brought in a cake and some ice cream, and party hats and birthday plates and napkins. We had presents and told jokes and laughed, and sang “Happy Birthday”.

He was nearly speechless. He’d been doubting the idea that we would actually throw a birthday party for him. And, when it came, he quickly slipped into his twelve year old boyness and took it all in.

The birthday party helped. It brought him in touch with his inner boy sweetness, and some healing went on. Silently, we all gave him permission to be a boy and have a party, and enjoy himself, just for who he was. After that, his treatment work moved ahead and he was able to complete his writing.

When that was done, he was a little shy in telling me that the big project was, at last, finished. He let out a smile, but he looked to me for approval.

I put it right back at him.

“This was your project, not mine. This was your work, not mine. You get the credit for all this,” I said. “Not me. This is your achievement.”

He knew that, of course, but he needed me to say the words.

We celebrated, then, with some ice cream. He let it slip that he’d never celebrated an accomplishment in his life with anyone before. Having ice cream, just because you did something that was hard, was something new.

It was another thing for me to cry about, as I drove home from our visit.

Last week, when he blew up, it was a big deal. He’d been dancing around the monster in his basement for his entire life. His treatment and his writing finally gave him permission to put on his armor and deal with the monster. His monster had lots of faces, and lots of evil and darkness. Its demands and screams have filled his ears his entire life.

And, last week, he went to war, taking on the monster and calling it out of his basement.

“I’d never fought it before, never let myself get angry and take it on,” he told me.

“But, it was time. I wasn’t going to take it any more, and I was going to fight him.”

When the six burly staff persons struggled with him, putting him on the ground and handcuffing him, and letting him scream for a half hour, he was winning the battle.

“It felt good to struggle, to fight back. And, I knew they were they helping me,” he said.

He’d never fought back before, taking the beatings from his dad, taking the indifference and the manipulation and the pimping out of his young sexual self in silence, acceptance. He didn’t contest the criminal charges, either, or the seven year sentence. He didn’t cry much when his grandparents died, or when his brother was first busted for heroin. It was all just how his miserable, worthless life was.

It was, after all, what he deserved. His dad had said he was worthless, a good for nothing. And, that must have been true. No one ever said anything different.

He’d never given voice to his grief before, the grief of a lost childhood, of abandonment, of the death of family members he loved and feared. He’d never cried before over his younger brother, now living on and off the streets, dabbling in heroin and sex and petty crime. He’d never screamed before, about being locked up for seven years, over the sex party his mom arranged, and his empty teenaged life.

He makes fifty cents an hour in prison. And, when his mom asked him last year for money, he never raised his voice.

“I’d be dead now, I’m sure of it,” he told me a few weeks ago, giving thanks that he’s in prison and had found the help he needed.

He’s lighter now, and a slight grin flashes across his face, even when he is being serious. There’s light in his eyes, and his shoulders are thrown back, a little pride showing in his face. He’s grown about four inches these last two years, too, and brags about his running and weight lifting and how his biceps are bigger now.

I’m sure there’s some clean up work to do, down in the basement of his young life. But, the monster is on the run, now, no longer the king of the underground. My friend has found his spear and his axe, and has gone into battle, committed to victory.
–Neal Lemery 1/17/2013

So, You Are Really Going to College; I Think I’ll Just Cry

Why is it a big deal to be accepted for a Bachelor’s degree program? Why do I tear up when a good friend of mine shows me his acceptance letter to a university?

It isn’t all that much of a surprise, him being accepted. It really is a given. He’s bright, ambitious, and has been doing some serious academic weightlifting in his first two years of college course work. He hides most of his light under the proverbial basket, but we all know he’s going on to get a bachelor’s degree.

To actually see the letter, and see the grin on my friend’s face, spoke to my soul, and lightened up my heart. Tears came, and I choked on my words.

It goes back to my family, and the feelings I had when I received a similar letter, back when I was more that ready to leave home, and leave my little town, and venture forth into the world. It was a huge milestone for me, and marked the beginning of my adult life, when I could actually go out in the world and live my dreams.

My dad’s parents were hard working wheat farmers in rural Saskatchewan. My dad took me there when I was a teenager, and showed me the foundation of the family homestead cabin. The barn was still standing, but the house was long gone. A lifetime of cruel Canadian prairie winters had had its way with the clapboard house. My grandparents, their six children, and my great uncle lived there for about ten years, as they plowed and planted the wild Canadian prairie, raising wheat, oats, horses, and all of their vegetables.

The prairie wind whistled through the nearby trees, the ones my grandfather planted when they first homesteaded the place. It was summer, but I could only imagine what the wind was like in the dead of winter, with the snow and the forty degrees below zero nights.

The railroad was sixteen miles away, in the closest town. Every fall they hauled their wheat to the grain elevators at the railroad station, and hopefully earned enough money to buy their essentials for the next year.

When the kids were old enough, they would move into town for the winter, boarding with friends, and go to high school. Until then, a one room school house several miles away from their house provided their education.

My grandmother was tough. German, self educated, and the manager of the farm. She cooked all the meals, and also fed the neighbors at harvest time, cooking on a little stove that burned wood, if it was available. But, mainly she fed the flames with tight bundles of straw or dried prairie grass, or dried cow or horse manure. Winter brought temperatures down to forty below zero and blizzards that necessitated the running of a rope between the house and the barn, so you wouldn’t get lost and freeze to death when you had to go feed the animals and milk the cow.

They did all right on the farm, making money most years. They even added a room onto the house, so my grandparents could have a room of their own. Everyone else slept on rough planks laid across the rafters, above the little stove.

World War I broke out, unleashing a strong anti-German sentiment in Canada. The family spoke German at home. Commonly used German words in English became unpopular, and other phrases and words replaced them. Yet, my grandparents were proud Canadians, perfecting ownership in their homestead with their hard work.

One year, they made enough money that they took all the family to the world’s fair in San Francisco. It was quite the adventure, and my dad, the youngest at 6, told stories of the four day train trip, and the wonders of the world’s fair and San Francisco.

I think the trip made a big impression on everyone. My dad and his brothers and sisters all loved to travel, and were all students of the world.

The biggest impression, though, was with my grandmother. She believed, ardently, that in order for her children to get ahead in the world, they needed a good education. And, a boarding high school wouldn’t provide everything they would need to get ahead in life.

She had a dream that every one of her children would go to college. And, not just the boys; the girls, too. She studied, looking at options. She learned that Oregon had a number of colleges, and farming was profitable, land was available. In the 1920s, when their farm was earning good money and land values were up, they sold the farm, and moved to a smaller farm just north of Salem.

A good high school was less than ten miles away, and Salem was the home of a good university. A half dozen private and state colleges were within sixty miles of their new home.

One uncle became a doctor, the other uncle a forester, who would operate his own logging company and also teach forestry at Oregon State University. Two aunts not only earned their bachelor degrees, but also their masters’ degrees. My other aunt finished three years of college.

And this was in the 1920s, the decade where women finally won the right to vote. It was still unusual for a girl to graduate from high school. Women in universities were a rarity.

My dad, the youngest of the six kids, enrolled in the University of Oregon, and then went on to medical school in Portland. He worked nights washing dishes in a cafeteria, putting himself through medical school. His parents paid only for his books. All of his higher education was accomplished during the Great Depression of the 1930s, when farm income was down, and jobs were very difficult to find.

When I was growing up, there were a lot of books in the house, and going to school was seen as the job that my two older brothers and I had. Homework was a priority, and my parents took a keen interest in my schooling.

The talk around the dinner table was “when” we were going to college, not “if”. It was a given.

When I was seven, my mom and dad gave me some money. All of us went down to the bank and I opened up a savings account.

“This is your college fund,” my folks told me.

And, I was expected to put money into the account, from time to time. A bit of money I might earn doing some chores, birthday money, maybe even some money I might receive at Christmas. Later, I’d make a little money helping my mom’s folks on their dairy farm. Most of that went in the bank, too, except the money for a few school clothes and supplies.

My folks added money into it, too, making sure they wrote me a check, so I could make the deposit.

It never occurred to me to take money out of the account. I actually didn’t know how to do that. And, the nice lady who ran the savings accounts and note section of the bank would have made sure I didn’t make a withdrawal. She knew what the money was for, and she’d be on the phone to my mom in a heartbeat if I showed up to make a withdrawal.

My dad’s mother had a stroke when I was in first grade, and came to live in the hospital in my town. Nursing homes were pretty rare then, and my dad arranged for her to be a long term patient at the hospital. She would come visit us a lot, and I remember her urging me to study hard and to learn everything I could. The stroke had made her a woman of few words, but I still remember her preaching to me about school, the flame in her steel blue eyes conveying her passion and her command.

We subscribed to the daily paper, and Time and Saturday Evening Post. There was another national newspaper we also read, and talked about at dinner. We had a big set of encyclopedias and my dad subscribed to the Book of the Month Club. I read most of that material.

In the first grade, our class paraded down to the town’s library and I got a library card. I’d always check out books, and was a big reader in the summer reading program. My mom would read books, too, and I saw my dad reading every night, and also studying medical journals, and listening to tapes of medical lectures.

Having one’s nose in a book was just a normal event in our evenings at home.

My older brothers went to the University of Oregon, and during our visits to them at school, my dad would make a point of walking around the campus with me, letting me get familiar with the place.

When one of my aunts would come for her annual visit, she would bring a book for me and talk about education. She had her master’s degree, and would stay up late at night talking with my dad about science and math, and physics. She became an expert in botany and would go out on hikes with us, and related the Latin names for the plants we saw.

When I was a junior in high school, my folks started taking me to colleges to “look around”.

I picked a different college than my older brothers — Lewis and Clark, and my dad astounded me during the first visit to the campus by asking the admissions staff about their masters’ degree programs.

During my first year and a half in college, my dad would write letters to me, encouraging me, and urging me to study hard. It was a rare letter than contained anything else.

One of my aunts died suddenly in my first year of college. She was the one who would come every year from Texas, or New York, and later, Illinois, to stay with us. She always brought me a book then, and always sent me another one for Christmas. She would read with me, and ask me questions about what I was learning. She had moved to Salem, about a year before she died. We drove to her funeral, which was the day I was going back to school for winter term. Somehow, it seemed like a good way to honor her, remembering her at her funeral, and then going back to college. I studied extra hard that term, just for her.

My dad had a heart attack in the middle of my second year of college. I was home for the last week of his life, and then for the funeral. And, all of my family made a point with me to get me back to school before the end of the term, and even to work on my homework those awful and sad couple of weeks.

Getting an education has just been a part of my life. When I was a kid, any kind of road trip or venture into the big city somehow involved learning something. I always had a book to read in the back seat, and we would stop to read all the history and geography road signs. We’d go to museums, see a play, or a movie, and talk about what we were seeing. I’d be expected to know my way around a road map, and to give a short briefing to the rest of the family on some point of history or geography of the area.

When I got married, my wife and I scrimped and saved, putting a little money away each month for my stepson’s college fund. We bought a set of encyclopedias on time, so he’d have some reference material at home. There was always homework hour after dinner, and we both went to his school conferences.

We did the college visits with him, too, and one summer when he was in high school, we arranged for him to attend a week of living on campus, participating in an enrichment program.

Our foster sons heard the speech, too, and knew we were serious about homework and school. Some of our best conversations occurred during my drive to school every morning. And, our road trips had some good conversations and study questions, too.

Later on, I served on the local school board. And, my wife, the high school teacher, was always promoting opportunities for young people. She organized several trips to Europe for her students, exposing them to a wide range of experiences and cultures. She expanded on her own French classes in college, and spent a summer in France, returning fluent enough to teach French. Later, she learned Spanish, enrolling in another immersion program.

Every year, I find a college class or two to take, and, a few years ago, even took a serious run at a master’s degree in counseling, until I realized the program and my goals were at odds.

We laugh at how many books we read, and the coffee table and my bedside table are usually piled high with books. My favorite gifts to give at Christmas are books, and my favorite store is a book store.

I just retired, but the first week into that adventure, I started a guitar class, and a weightlifting and fitness class at the local Y. Taking some classes seems the right thing to do as I begin a new part of my life.

I’m now president of the local community college’s foundation, working to improve scholarship resources for young people around this county who are working to earn a college degree. One of my tasks is to write an article in the local paper about the benefits of scholarships and endowments to our kids’ future, and our future.

I’ve counseled, encouraged, and mentored dozens, if not hundreds of young people over my legal career here, to make something of themselves, to improve their lives, and to use their brains to get ahead in life. I’ve taught some classes, and tutored a few neighbor kids. I’ve given a few speeches on the power of education.

My wife and I are mentoring young men in prison now, supporting them in their work to improve their lives, use their brains, and get ahead in this world. And, a big part of that work is education. We bring them books, pay for music lessons, challenge them, and have serious discussions about their lives and their goals.

So, when a young friend of mine shows me his letter of acceptance to a university, all of this comes full circle to me. Yes, there are tears. Tears of joy, of gratitude, even tears of grief for those who have passed on.

A few more people show up in the room with us: my grandmother who moved the family halfway across the continent so they could get an education; my aunt, who would make it a point to bring me a book and read to me each summer; my dad and my mom, who helped me save, and encouraged me to use my brains; all the young people I’ve worked with, encouraging them to move ahead with their lives. My younger me is in the room, too; a young man hungry to move out into the world, make something of himself, and get an education.

That young man who is handing me his letter looks a lot like me, at that age. A little shy, and a lot happy, deep inside. There’s a lot of pride and joy inside of him, and he’s not quite sure what to do with all of that.

I’ve seen the result of all this seed planting, and I’m old enough to appreciate the harvest of what these seeds have grown. We aren’t done yet, with all of this work.

So, let me tear up a bit, and choke on my words, and remember all of the good words and many years of quiet, persistent support for others to move ahead and make something out of themselves.

1/10/2013

The Hunger I Feed

People wonder why I go there, to the prison in our town, and visit them. “Them”, the criminals, the sex offenders.

“They need to be locked up, and never see the light of day ever again,” someone told me the other day, scolding me for wasting my time with them.

I shook my head, stunned by this critic’s hatred, their anger. Where do I begin to explain my young friends’ humanity, their own victimization, their own desire to be well, to be productive, to be healthy, young men, full of love and compassion. Just like everyone else. They want to get on with their lives, and move ahead. Just like everyone else.

“We are all potential criminals, and those who we have put into prison are no worse, deep down, than any one of us. They have succumbed to ignorance, desire, and anger, ailments that we all suffer from but to different degrees. Our duty is to help them.”

– His Holiness, The Dalai Lama

When I visit these young men, and hear their stories, and play games, sip coffee, and be a small part of their lives, I keep hearing the same theme, time and again, young man after young man.

Where were their fathers? And, where are they now?

Some dads were never there for them, when there was pain and loneliness, and deep questions rising in their souls about life, about purpose, about love and finding a place in the world.

Other dads climbed in their bottles, or their dope pipes, or lashed out with their fists and their angry voices, unable to turn fists and screams into hugs and quiet words of encouragement and acceptance.

Men being violent, abusive, teaching addiction and molestation, violating their sons, in every imaginable way, and ways I cannot begin to comprehend.

One man tells me the story of his childhood by what he has drawn and painted on a board, and showing me the scars on his body. Scars from his dad’s beatings, his mom’s abuse, her prostituting him for her drugs, his girlfriend cutting on him, while she invited him to cut on her. When he gets out of prison, he wants to cover the scars with tattoos of sacred symbols, giving himself peace and sacred honor, and resolution for his angry, troubled soul.

What Father Involvement Means

More than 1/4 of American children — 17 million — don’t live with their fathers.
In 1996, 42% of female-headed households with children were poor, compared to 8% of families headed by married parents.
Parents who don’t live with their children but stay involved with them are more likely to pay child support. 74% of non-custodial parents with joint custody or visitation agreements make support payments, compared to 35% of parents without such arrangements.
Girls without fathers in their lives are 2.5 times more likely to get pregnant and 53% are more likely to commit suicide.
Boys without fathers in their lives are 63% more likely to run away and 35% more likely to use drugs.
Boys and girls without father involvement are twice as likely to drop out of school, twice as likely to go to jail, and nearly four times more likely to need help for emotional or behavioral problems.

—US Dept. of Health and Human Services; Morehouse Report; National Center for Children in Poverty; US Census Bureau

They do well here, in this prison, this sanctuary from the craziness of their earlier nightmare of a world. Involved in treatment, learning about their sexuality, their anger, their humanity. They are deep in their quest for manhood. They go to school, they study, they read, they discuss, they write. They do all that, again and again.

They run, play ball, draw, they sing, they lose themselves in art, recreating themselves and finding themselves as creators of beauty and peace.

They work, learning skills and the ability to earn their way in the world. They work in teams, raising and cooking their food, growing trees, restoring stream banks, improving habitat for salmon. Their work makes our community a better place, a more beautiful place. In their work, they make themselves stronger, more sure of who they are, and who they want to become.

They pray, they find God on many paths, and they look inward, and see their manliness begin to bloom. They begin to laugh, they begin to smile. They begin to move ahead, one sure step after another. They see themselves being successful, moving into the world confident and strong. They are becoming men, good men. They begin to see themselves in all their goodness.

And, in every step of their journey, they take from me and they take from the prison staff. They want reassurance, acceptance, guidance, direction, support. They soak it up from me every time I go there. They drain me, taking my acceptance of them, my support from them, my flame of fathering, my own sense of my own manhood. Hungry, they circle my essence, gnawing and grabbing all that I can give them.

When I smile, or shake their hand, or ask them how they are, or play a game, talk about their lives, and my life, they soak it all up, thirsty sponges wanting love and acceptance, wanting to be good men.

I walk away, my visit over. The click of the closed cyclone fence gate, with the barbed wire on top, reminds me that I am drained, exhausted, sucked nearly dry of my own flame of manhood, my own feelings of being the son and the father and the mentor-teacher-elder. The soup kettle of love and acceptance and compassion for their journey that I brought through the gate today is drained now, devoured by hungry young men needing to fill their bellies with soul food, feasting on whatever I could bring in today.

The sun shines bright on my face, the fresh air fills my lungs, my heart full now of purpose, of meaning in my life.

Today, I could feed someone, and offered them hope.

—Neal Lemery, January 1, 2013

Making Peace

It is Christmas. It is a time for being in peace, for thinking about peace.

One would hope that peace would be on our minds every day of the year, and be something we strive for in everything we do. Peace shouldn’t just be one of those popular ideas of a particular season.

Many of us have religious beliefs that profess we believe in peace, that we should be peacemakers as we go about our lives, raising our families, do our jobs, and live in our communities.

Yet, much of societal life is obsessed with competition, making a profit, and feeding a variety of addictions. Lying and stealing, even though we find other names for that, is ever-present in our community lives.

If I really believe in peace, and know that I have a Divine direction to live in peace, to practice peace, and to truly be a peacemaker, then how do I accomplish that?

I get pulled and dragged to live otherwise.

If I pay attention to popular culture, and much of the media, then I soon find myself absorbed by violence, by bigotry, fear, anger, greed, and addiction. Material possessions, instant gratification, and self absorption fill my mind and guide my day. Yet, I am left hungrier for true satisfaction, true fulfillment, and farther from my real purpose as a human being on this planet.

The bell ringer at the grocery store, and the pile of solicitations in my mailbox tempt me to “make peace” by writing a check, or putting some cash in the red kettle at the store. But, does that make peace, or simply fuel a bureaucracy clothed in the appearance of charity and peace making?

Some commentators urge me to buy a bigger gun and a larger ammo clip, or support arming teachers, or deploying squads of sharpshooters, in order to bring peace to the latest mass casualty crime scene, to stop random shooting sprees, to thwart the crazy actions of the angry sociopath who is looking for a newsworthy end to his troubled life.

The cops I’ve worked with spend much of their time responding to the seemingly endless calls of domestic violence, drug abuse, child neglect, and the sad loneliness in people’s lives they try to self medicate with alcohol, drugs, and violence. Yes, they are peacemakers, applying first aid to a troubled society we like to think is seeking peace, but so often is trapped in the cycle of pain, violence, self medication, and despair.

Adding more guns that that explosive mix is just creating more havoc, more violence. I suppose we would become more efficient in spilling blood, and adding more fuel to the fires of anger and rage and isolation in our already self-absorbed society. I wonder what the lessons would be that we would teach our children. What would be our legacy to them?

My soul calls me to reject all that. In my time on this Earth, I’ve seen that war and violence, and anger and self gratification don’t make this world a better place. I’ve learned that compassion and unconditional love, and being truly selfless are the beliefs and actions that grow flowers and save souls.

I can make peace in my home, creating a place of beauty, serenity, and purpose. In order to truly do that, I need to make peace with myself, to truly connect with God, and be content with my purpose in life, my real values. I need to realize that I am beautiful, and part of the Universe. I need to tend to my own candlelight.

It starts with me. And, when I am filled with Peace, then I can be a peace maker. I can reach out into my community and be a small flame of peace and unconditional love.

I walk past the red kettle and the bell ringer, and I toss all the dunning letters into the trash.

Instead, I visit the nearby prison, and drink coffee and play games with young men. We play guitar and sing songs, and tell stories of our lives. And, in our conversations, I talk about my life, and my struggles. I talk about love and peace. And, they do, too. We learn from each other, and we talk about peace.

Soon, those young men will be out of prison, making their way in this troubled world. They will be tempted by the drugs, violence and sexual exploitation, and all the other war making forces in our culture. They will doubt themselves, and they will struggle to find their place in all of that.

Yet, they will have that small flame burning in their soul, the flame of self esteem, of inner peace, and universal love. They will have our relationship, and their own nurtured peace-loving souls to guide and comfort them.

In their new beginnings, they will have some answers and they will have the beginnings of a strong foundation in their lives. And, when they become workers, and husbands, and fathers, they will be on the right path, and will know who they truly are, and where they are going.

I can’t change the world today. But, I can start with one person, and light that candle, and nourish that small, flickering flame in the dark. That one candle lights a dark room in the depth of one’s midnight despair.

With one candle, one can light the world.

Neal Lemery 12/25/2012