Michael Lister: Blood of the Lamb

“But-”

“I came very close to taking a drink last summer when I was in the middle of the Ike Johnson case,” I said.

Her face registered her surprise. “You should’ve said some thing.”

I didn’t respond.

Harmless appeared at the door again, and I waved him away. She turned, but he was gone.

“How close did you come, really?” she asked when she turned back around.

I shrugged. “The thing is, even though I maintained my sobriety,” I said, “I lost my serenity.”

When Harmless appeared at the door again, I jumped up and rushed over to it. He pulled back from the door and started walking toward the sanctuary.

“What are you doing, Harry?” I asked.

He spun around and stepped back toward me, his dull eyes blinking rapidly behind his thick glasses. “Waiting to see you,” he said impatiently, the severe lisp only adding to his annoying tone. “I’ve been trying to see you for a long time.”

Harry actually looked harmless with his small build, graying crewcut, and thick glasses, his speech impediment only adding to the facade.

“I’m with someone right now,” I said. “If you want to see me, have a seat in the library. If I see you hanging outside my office door again, I’m going to have you locked up.”

“For what?” he asked belligerently.

“You hear that tick tock sound?” Anna asked, coming up behind me and staring Harry down. “That’s the gain time you’re losing. Like sands in the hourglass… I’m taking away days of your life outside.”

He stalked away, muttering something under his breath, and we both made our way back to our seats, shaking our heads as we did.

“Why do you do this?” she asked.

“I was about to ask you the same thing.”

When I moved back home to northwest Florida after being a cop and a cleric in Atlanta, I never would’ve imagined I’d become a prison chaplain. But God works in mysterious ways, and when I fell from grace in Atlanta, this is the grace I fell into.

“I’ve thought about that a lot lately, too,” I said. “I became a chaplain at a time when I was scrambling to put my life back together, probably would’ve taken anything, and the combination of forensics and ministry seemed a natural. But now I really think this is exactly where I’m supposed to be-for now at least.”

She started to say something, but the phone rang.

When I answered, a friendly voice said, “Chaplain Jordan, this is Chuck in the warehouse. We have a special delivery for you and need to see you right away.”

“I’m kind of busy right now. Can I come over after lunch?”

“No, you have to personally sign for it and it’s here now.”

“Okay, I’m on my way,” I said. “Thanks.”

“I’ve got to go to the warehouse,” I said to Anna as I stood. “Can I drop by your office after lunch?”

After sending the inmates back down on the compound, Anna and I walked over to the library where Bobby Earl Caldwell’s thunderous preaching could be heard.

I wasn’t aware of it, but I must have been making my eatingbroccoli face.

“Makes you cringe, doesn’t it?” Anna asked.

“Doesn’t it you?”

“Well, yeah, but I bet it bothers you more.”

I tried to get Officer Whitfield’s attention, but his back was to us and the tape was so loud he couldn’t hear me.

As soon as Bobby Earl Caldwell brought his message to a frenzied finish, Bunny came on and made a tearful appeal for money.

I looked at Anna. She was laughing.

Whitfield jumped when I tapped him on the shoulder, stopped the tape, and spun around to face me.

“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I’ve got to go down to the warehouse, so I need to lock up.”

“Sure,” he said. “No problem. The message is over anyway.”

As we walked out of the chapel, and I paused to lock the door, Whitfield said, “I’m ready to face the enemy on his own territory now.” He nodded toward the compound. “I’ve got my shield of faith, helmet of salvation, breastplate of righteousness… ”

When he finally finished, I said, “Well, go fight the good fight.”

It sounded more sarcastic than I intended, and, as he walked away, Anna laughed. When I was sure he was too far away to hear me, I did too.

“He should be the chaplain here,” I said. “Not me.”

The great irony for a man in my position is how little use I have for organized religion. I am essentially a member of the unchurched. Yet, since high school I’ve felt a strong sense of vocation, a paradoxical longing and belonging which somehow resulted in my becoming a nonreligious religious leader. I was on the very fringe of religion, but so far prison chaplaincy had worked for me.

Anna shot me a look. “I’m not saying he’s not a good, wellmeaning guy, but the last thing the repressed religious simpletons around here need is a repressed religious simpleton as a chaplain.”

“Thanks,” I said, and let out a small ironic laugh at the madness of it all.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t miss all this while you were in training,” she said.

I looked at her for a long moment. “I missed some things more than others.”

Leaving Anna wasn’t easy. It had never been, and every time it got more difficult.

The first time I left her after high school, I had fled to Atlanta, trying to escape the painful and nearly sobering reflection I saw in my mother’s glazed and unfocused eyes.

It was almost two years before I came home again to visit, and having heard that Anna was married, I avoided her. But, just like the song, I ran into her in the grocery store on Christmas Eve, and we had our own bittersweet Same Old Lang Syne . I started listening to Dan Fogelberg then, and have been ever since.

On my walk over to the warehouse, I was joined by Dexter Freeman, a young black inmate with closely shaven hair, a threeinch part cut into the front of it. He was thin, but muscular, and held himself in such a way that even the biggest predators left him alone. He had recently transferred to this institution and had been attending my Bible class and weekly worship service.

“Chaplain, I’ve got a question for you,” he said, as he walked along beside me. “Can I walk with you?”

“Sure,” I said.

A loud burst of laughter erupted to my left, and I turned to see a small group of inmates seated behind the food service building, wearing soiled aprons and white plastic hair covers. The laughter came from a squat, balding black man leaning against the gray cinder block wall. I guessed he was attempting to entertain the others who were seated on over-turned plastic milk crates, but it was obvious that he found himself much more amusing than they did.

“Is the Bible true?” Dexter asked.

“How do you mean?”

“Did all those things really happen?” he asked. “The flood, the tower of Babel, Jonah and the whale?”

Unlike most of the inmates in this facility-or in any state facility-Dexter was well educated, and spoke with no discernable accent or dialect.

I knew what he was asking. It’s what most people of faith ask themselves at one time or another-are our stories true?

“The truth of a story isn’t contingent on its being a factual account of actual events,” I said. “Think about Jesus’ parables. Is there anything more true than them?”

He squinted as he thought about it for a long moment. “It doesn’t have to have happened to be true?”

“What is truth?” I said. “Is it the shallow assurance that something literally took place, or is it about something far deeper, something that is profoundly true-on all levels? Not just the literal one. It’s like poetry.”