A DAY WITH A MAN WITH NOTHING

I spent today with a man who has nothing.

Eric (not his real name) called me at 7 A.M. Saturday morning. 

“Where’d you sleep last night, Eric?”

“Outside the Church of Latter Day Saints.”

“You got some clothes to change into?”

“Just what I’m wearing.”

“When’d you eat last?”

“Been a couple of days.”

“Where are you calling me from?”

“A pay phone.”

“Where in crap did you find an actual, working pay phone?”

Now before you recite the clichés about “those people” let me point out a couple or three things.  Eric’s doesn’t get food stamps, or SSI/disability. He’s not on section 8, or Medicare, or Medicaid.   He doesn’t panhandle. He didn’t bum off family.  He’d gotten a full time job; and because he didn’t have a car, he walked several miles to and from work.  After work and on weekends he picked up all the odd jobs he could find in the neighborhood.  He ate what he could buy.  He lived where he could afford. He joined a church.  He did everything we say he is supposed to do as a good American capitalist.

And it worked.  Last month Eric wasn’t really homeless.  “Not really homeless.” That’s what we call it because technically he had a place to live.  Sure the only place he could afford had no electricity, no water, at least 8 transient occupants any given day, and both the ownership and legality of occupancy was vague, but the place had 4 walls and a roof and he ought to be thankful for that.  Eric was thankful.

But then somebody (probably one of his housemates) snuck up behind him as he was walking home on payday and cut his throat.  They literally sliced his neck from ear to ear.  The doctors don’t know how the razor missed the big arteries and veins. 

I went to see him a couple of days after the attack.  He strained the staples in his neck trying to tell me what happened but he caught the blood in a towel that he pressed against his open throat.

He couldn’t work.  He lost his job.  His i.d. and all of his clothes went missing from the house. For some reason he started drinking again.

This is where you can recite the clichés about how those people make too many excuses.

A few days after getting out of the hospital, Eric was “really” homeless.  Since then he’s bounced from place to place, emergency room to shelter, abandoned house to Mormon church  doorway.  He called me Saturday because, “I can’t do it on my own.  I need help.”

I spent that morning on the phone.  I spent today today driving around getting Eric a shower and a belt for the clothes I ironed and gave him out of my closet.  We followed up on possible programs and lots of referrals to somewhere else because he doesn’t have Medicare or Medicaid or private insurance or money.

This is where you recite the clichés about the socialist evils of universal healthcare.

The workday came and went without me doing anything I’d planned when I left the office Friday.   But I bought my friend Eric lunch.  (He actually ordered steak, but I did say “Whatever you want.”)  Tonight, he has a safe, air-conditioned place to sleep, a new network of wonderful people in the Montgomery non-profit community, and a certified plan to get sober and back to pursuing the American dream.

His situation isn’t typical, but it is normal.  There are men like him all over our community and yours.   They have screwed up their lives with alcohol, drugs, dropping out, and getting arrested; but they still believe in the American dream.  They believe that if they sacrifice and work hard and do what we tell them to do then they can pull themselves up by their bootstraps and achieve all of their goals.  Because this is America, goshdarnit!

They believe that.  They really do.

You know the stories of extraordinary men and women went from nothing all by themselves, the extraordinary people who made a decision to improve themselves and never looked back. Those stories are extraordinary, i.e., they're not normal.  NORMALLY when a man, like Eric, has nothing in this sinful world and he tries to do better on his own, then somebody comes along and takes what little he does  Normally, he can’t do it on his own.  He needs help.

The only way any of the Erics has a chance at becoming what we tell them they’re supposed to become is if the you’s and me’s are willing to spend some time and money on men and women who have nothing. 

It’s exhausting, and annoying, and not cheap. (Did I mention the steak?)  You’ve got other things to do, and you’ve got a head full of clichés to excuse you.

I guess this is where I should make some profound point. 

Eric is the profound point. 

The man who has nothing is A MAN.   A man Jesus thought was worth dying for.

What’s he worth to you?

Lord, when did we see You a stranger and take You in, or naked and clothe You? Or when did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?’ And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.’ (Matthew 25: 38-40)

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Subscribe to my personal blog  www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com .

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

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THE 3 DAY RULE

I’ve added a new component to the Bible study and GED class I teach in the jail.  Each of the men in my group now has to write an exit plan.  The exit plan is an individualized outline that charts each man’s path from the moment of release to a sustainably fruitful and legal lifestyle. 

The thing is:  teaching inside a correctional institution is just like teaching anywhere else, if you do it right you’ll learn something from your students.

Today’s lesson for teacher was the 3-day rule.

Researchers say that two-thirds of released prisoners are re-arrested and one-half are re-incarcerated within 3 years of release from prison.  The guys who are locked up say that the problem isn’t the first 3 years.

They say, “Rev., it’s them first few days.”

A man may go a day without food or a warm place to sleep.  A really strong man may go 2 days.  But sometime during that first 72 hours, if he’s offered a choice between crime and starvation, the man will follow his old habits back to the corner or back to the back window of your house.

You see, from the outside, recidivism looks like a moral decision:  Do the right thing or do the wrong thing.
For a starving and/or homeless and/or unemployed man who has lived a cycle of criminality, recidivism arises out of a simple process of logic.

“If,” his starving mind reasons, “this new way of being honest and legitimate causes me to starve, but my old way of crime at least kept me with something to eat, then (logically) I must either be honest and die or commit crime and eat.”

No, the choice isn’t really that simple, but it’s nearly impossible to apply your newly learned complex, long range, strategic thinking skills while sleeping in the park, on an empty stomach, in the same clothes you had on 3 days ago.  

And that is why it always, “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

3 days.

I’ve ministered to incarcerated men from 19 to their early 60’s.  Most of those men (including the sixty-something year olds) have never had a bill in their own name.    Many of them had accumulated thousands of dollars in traffic tickets and several different cars without ever possessing a valid driver’s license.

So these men have occupied residences; purchased items; started families; and affected the lives of countless others----- all without really understanding the system that law-abiding citizens call life.  One man stood with me in the middle of a street in Montgomery’s Chisholm neighborhood, crying openly. “Rev., “ he said, “I’m 41 years old.  I have an 8 year old son.  And I don’t know how to do anything.” He looked me right in the eyes--- hard, and he said, “Rev., I’m a grown man, and I don’t know how to live.”
He was an expert at surviving in the streets.  But he didn’t know anything about how to live legitimately.

The community has 3 days to show a man how to survive using skills he may have never used before. 

3 days.

Take a man who doesn’t know how to live and leave him free with nothing for 3 days and that man will survive---- the only way he knows how.

Doesn’t make his decision to break the law any less criminal or any less sinful.  Doesn’t absolve the man of responsibility for his actions.  And it doesn’t make his choices anybody’s fault but his own.

But the 3 day rule does offer the rest of the community an opportunity.

If we can meet those men in the first 72 hours of release and offer them hope to go along with their exit plan, then we can reduce the rate of recidivism.

This is especially true for municipal jails.  Nobody gets sentenced to life or to death row in a city or county jail.   In other words, everybody in your city jail and in your county jail is going to get out one day.  EVERY ONE OF THOSE MEN IS GOING TO GET OUT.

No bus passes at city or county jail (at least not in Montgomery).  They get a trash bag with their belongings in it and a police escort to the front steps.  At that point, they are the community’s problem. 

The guys I see on Tuesdays in leg shackles and jump suits---- you’ll be seeing them soon in the line behind you at Walmart, at the pump next to you at the gas station, in the mall right in front of you as you walk out of the electronics store.  Jail doesn’t make them go away.  THEY WILL GET OUT.

When they get out we can let them live in halfway houses that we let them build in our neighborhoods.  We can feed them some of the 33 million tons of food (actual number; not exaggerating) that we waste every year.   We can let them work for us. 

What an American idea!  LET THEM WORK!

 Or, we can marginalize them. We can (try to) ignore them. 

We can give them empty slogans:

Get a job.

Do something with yourself.

Stay out of trouble.

But as Jesus’ brother James asked,  If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,” but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit?  (James 2: 15, 16)

Such good, Christian encouragements without any actions to back them up are worse than empty slogans.  They are empty faith.

Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. (James 2: 17)

You have the opportunity to break the cycle of recidivism.  You also have the opportunity to perpetuate it.

And, you have 3 days to decide.

If you want to learn how you can be part of the solution, email me with the subject line JAIL MINISTRY.  I’m at atgravestwo2@aol.com

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Hall Memorial CME Church in Montgomery, Alabama, executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO) and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com
Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

To hear sermons, read devotions, and learn more about the ministry at Hall Memorial CME Church, visit www.hallmemorialcme.blogspot.com .

You can read more on Pastor Graves's personal blog at www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com  .

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Hall Memorial CME Church
541 Seibles Road
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