Songs of Pain and Hope

My aunt in Malaysia, curiously and quite cutely, asked me what the word motherfucker meant.  I replied it doesn’t really literally mean what it says.  Rather, it’s akin to a Malay term that means bastard or someone of truly despicable character.  I think she understood when I put it that way.  And apparently it also means someone that is truly great or formidable – as in that criminologist is a wicked smart motherfucker.

This one is about how God is more of a gangster than we think He is.

I often think to myself – does God use swear words.  And I actually think He does.  Sometimes I hear Him tell me – “Run your offense.  Play your game.  Keep the faith.”  Followed by that word.  I think the point here is that God isn’t really who we think He is.  We have often put Him in a box to fulfill our own ideas and fantasies.

One of my PhD advisors sent me a book on shepherd leadership.  It is often said that when God chooses a leader, He looks for a shepherd.  David, Moses – two of the greatest Hebrew patriarchs were shepherds.  Jesus is also described as the perfect shepherd.

But here’s the thing with shepherds.  They aren’t the embodiment of nice and nurturing all the time.  They brave the elements, fight off threats, and take on other difficult duties.  An interesting fact about shepherds is that they sometimes have to kill one of their sheep.  Not for food but when one of them is a bad one and causes the others to follow suit.  If the bad sheep cannot be persuaded to behave, the shepherd takes it out – tap tap to the head, Chow Yun Fat style.

When you read the Bible more closely, you’ll see how the people God uses or are considered heroes do not look like Ned Flanders.  Some explain this away as God can use anyone to accomplish His will and that is certainly true but I also think it’s more than that.  I think these characters also reflect who God is as well – His capacity for fierceness, wildness, etc in addition to His gentler characteristics.  Sheep don’t fight wolves.  A sheepdog  or a reformed wolf does.

When I was a baby DA, a more experienced defense attorney challenged me to a fight in court.  He said we could take it outside if we wanted.  I replied – no need, we can do it right here.

Motherfucker.

The truth is that there words mean little to nothing for many.

Courage, loyalty, honor, code, sacrifice.

I served with several that lived those words out but that was the exception.

I did not have to look far from my own family, churches, acquaintances to see the selfishness that is prevalent.

The number I truly trust are few.  But they are mighty.

One of the worst words in the English language is the C word.  It’s not what you think it is.

It’s this.

Coward.

Earlier this year, I wrote about an individual at my former church in Maryland who exhibited predatory behavior.  There was substantial evidence he pushed three females to the ground, threw parties where he served alcohol to minors, and watched as females, likely teens, sexually experimented with each other.

He was a youth counselor at the time.

Recently, I notified several church leaders of the new evidence.  The response this time was slightly different.  When I look back at the incident, I realized the extent of the cover up and apathy in investigation.

Two senior pastors.

The youth minister.

The advisor to the lead pastor.

A lay minister.

The entire Board of Elders.

And several other prominent members.

I leave the conclusions up to you.

This is my closure.

My DA Office investigated the Philadelphia Archdiocese of the Catholic Church.  The report is online.  It made me want to vomit when I read it.  Let me make it abundantly clear – this isn’t a Catholic problem.  It occurs everywhere.  It also isn’t just about sexual abuse but all types.  I saw it happen in many places – my own church and even the NYPD.

The real problem, however, I feel is the lack of courage and initiative to not only confront and prevent such behaviors.  There are better minds and more eloquent writers out there who discuss victim shaming, blaming, and such that I’ll leave that part alone.

I’m not sure what this one is about exactly but it has something to do with guilt.  Like grace, maybe it always finds you.  I often wondered who will be more accountable at the end of it all – the perpetrators or those who looked the other way and even swept under the rug.  Only God knows I suppose.

This one also isn’t about vengeance but justice.  And that often is about shining a light and exposing evil.  Many times, that’s all you can do.  

She holds the hand that holds her down 

She will rise above 

Finally the shades are raised

(From the DA Years)

Last night, I played ball for the first time since the fall.  Played at this court in the city.  The other team we played had a few real players.  I had to guard the opposing point guard who was pretty good.  When he realized I was going to guard him during the game, he gave a look to his friends that said “oooh i’m gonna have an easy time.”  That lasted maybe a few seconds before I knocked him on his butt.  Nuh-uh.  I may be the only c___nk on the court, but don’t ever be laughing at me, punk.  The best part came during later on in the game where I blocked him and made him fall to the ground.  He started to make excuses about how I was trying to take his legs out under him, but his friends started to make fun of him instead.  It was a clean block.  Really, it was. I attribute the story above to my experience at Robert Frost Middle School in Rockville, MD, where I endured this type of abuse almost everyday.  And there is where I learned to play ball and not take crap from people.

(From the DA years)

“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was making us believe he didn’t exist.”

I respectfully disagree. 

The greatest trick he ever pulled was to make us believe that God’s love isn’t real or sufficient. 

This disbelief and mistrust of God’s love leads us to run to false or supplementary gods – power, wealth, food, lust, relationships, religion.  These gods, not being real, ultimately fail. 

I like what Philip Yancey writes about sexuality in his latest book, Rumors of Another World.  He makes a point that modern culture has idolized sexuality as the ultimate prize, but he notes that this idolization hasn’t lived up to expectations.  To illustrate his point, he recounts watching people on the subway.  Although statistically, about half of the people on the subway had sex the night before, they don’t look happier for it while commuting to work.  

The same point could be made about any other idol.  Work.  Religion.  We can immerse ourselves in project after project, bible study after bible study, and still feel empty.  I think some of us try to find meaning in the pursuit of goals.  It probably doesn’t take a wise man to see that the pursuit itself becomes meaningless after a while – the accomplishment of one goal only opens the door to another elusive one. 

In the Book of Job, God answers Job’s questions with a series of questions, but never answering Job’s petition for an explanation of the suffering he has endured.  This story has been explained as Job seeing God’s sovereignty and power, and Job being too stunned and humbled to ever question God again.  While I think this interpretation is correct, I also think that Job saw and experienced God’s love at that point.  In the light of seeing His love, all doubts and questions simply disappear.  A similar scenario occurs in C.S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces, (the only book Lewis wrote while he was briefly married and in my opinion, the best writing he ever did).  

I write this with the realization that I have many questions myself  that recur when I get assigned my cases or read the newspaper.  Although I think my questions are valid, I have a feeling that I should be asking different and better ones.  I’ve noticed that we like to ask for proxies.  We ask for the thing that we think will bring us what we want instead of asking for what we want directly itself.  Instead of asking for our insecurity, inadequacy, or loneliness to be taken away, we ask for a job, a thing, or a person.  All we may truly need to ask for is to experience and understand God’s love more fully. To be known and deeply loved by God.  If we truly believed this, and I think the point of growing in the faith is to know this better, all else would fall into place.  Our unanswerable questions, our feeble human attempts to comfort and guide others, our fears – they grow strangely dim.  As Augustine once wrote, our hearts are truly restless till we find ourselves in Him 

A good number of NBA coaches were backup point guards.  Talented enough to make the team, not enough to start.  The payoff is they understood the game from a higher level.  Watching from the bench allowed them to have a wider perspective – strategy, tactics, clock management, substitution patterns, matchups, etc.  Also true of the NFL – several backup quarterbacks in the coaching ranks.  One of my favorites is Josh McCown – who has played for 12 teams.

There’s a verse in the Bible – “When the wicked rule, the people mourn.  Where there is no vision, the people perish.”  How does one develop vision?  Like those backups, I really think it comes from a combination of opportunity and experience.

The man my son is named after didn’t become possibly the greatest strategist in history just by being born.  When he was a youth, he was assigned to guard duty for the Khan’s war planning council.  And If not into conquest, it is posited that the biblical Joseph was thrown into a prison for those who held political office – that’s how he was prepared for his future high position.

My friend, who was murder police, used to make fun of our colleagues, especially the one from an entitled background.  He said that none of then had ever played a team sport in their lives.  It really showed – many had no idea how to work together, backstabbing, shifting blame, taking undeserved credit.  A former high school teacher also made the same remark about many of my magnet school classmates, that they focused on individual sports, insinuating a me-first selfish attitude.

Individual sports are great – they still require and teach hard work, perseverance, dedication, etc.  but nothing like team sports to teach leadership, working together, learning, optimizing, compensating for your teammates’ strengths and weaknesses.

My undergraduate and law school alma maters once played each other in the NCAA basketball championship game.  Rare instance aside, both teams were hard-working and likable.  There weren’t any real standout stars on either – those considered “stars”  were just supremely hard workers and tenacious players.  The Indiana point guard was undersized, relatively slow, but  a tough, competent one.  They knew how to play together.

I knew I was in trouble at work when my direct supervisor (Princeton, Harvard, I did respect and like her very much) told me after some setbacks that I was still a star.  That was never my game or motivation.

It took so long to get my unit to work together.  And I could only get half of them to do so.  At the end, the entitled one took credit for it.  All good, they know who their general was.

I love movies and shows set in Boston.  Good Will Hunting (a favorite), Ted 1 & 2 (on surface immature, but touching at times), The Town (Charlestown robbers), City on a Hill (a bit under the radar, but takes a unique perspective on 90s Boston when the city was seriously fighting crime, especially at the youth level).

And of course, The Departed.  Not about the BPD, but the Staties, Scorsese made a great movie, although he should have given more credit to the original source material – the Hong Kong Infernal Affairs trilogy.  While The Departed tells a story in one time period, the IA trilogy is somewhat similar to the Godfather’s – the inclusion of a prequel and sequel.

Many powerful memorable scenes – deception, internal conflict, grief and loss, the 1997 handover of Hong Kong back to China.  The one scene that struck me the most comes from the final movie (the most convoluted, but ties the series up).  Standing at the graves of two officers, another officer tells the girlfriend of one of the slain – “Events change men, but men do not change events. But these two men are extraordinary because they changed events.”

This quote is simply haunting.  Every human is part of history, but it speaks to the devastating effects of events outside our control and how powerless we often are.

I was originally going to ask how many of us have the opportunity and means to actually change events, to touch history in more than a cursory, fleeting way.  But I realize it’s not about just opportunity and means, it has a lot more to do with will, courage, faith, and sacrifice.  One of the main characters, a mole in the Triads, pretty much gives his entire life in service and the pursuit of redemption.

Another haunting scene occurs during the handover celebrations, where a newly crowned triad boss mourns his beloved wife alone before pulling it all together to greet his reveling guests.  The boss later asks “What thousands must die so that Caesar may become the great?”