I was driving down a long stretch of Western Kansas highway. It was the kind of drive that grants me visions. To the side of the road, I saw a man walking. He was wearing a backpack and was carrying a wooden cross over his shoulder.
My initial response was cynical. "Another Jesus freak. I wrote a story about one of those guys for a paper in Oklahoma 20 years ago. Same story."
I'm so ashamed now to see how detached I'd become from that life loving youth with the insatiable curiosity. But that's what I am now, though I'm trying to walk back a little, to find that something galvanizing in myself and all the life that surrounds me. I work a job. It's a wagon I'd never hitch my star to, a box where I'll never be a star, a cold place. I accept that I'll never be a company man even though life would probably be easier if I were. I can change some things about myself, but I can't change who I fundamentally am.
Then I heard a voice in my head
Go to him
I'd heard that voice before. I knew to listen to it. So I turned on a dirt road, parked my car in the dry Western grass and walked forward, toward the man. As we inched closer to each other, I could see he was wearing an LA Dodgers baseball cap, faded jeans and a black T-shirt, being in white letters, the words, "We Are One."
"How's it going?" he said, calling across the space between us.
"Well, thank you," I answered. "How 'bout yourself?"
Initially nervous to make his acquaintance, I found this bearded T-shirt wearing man in faded carpenter jeans, light cross beams slung over his shoulder, to be inviting.
"Jared Cassidy," he said, extending his hand. "Jeff Guy," I said, reciprocating.
We made small talk. He told me he was walking from New York City to San Francisco. The end of the continent.
"What's the significance of the cross," I asked.
He told me how he'd gotten off a plane from Los Angeles to New York, walked into a Fifth Street Ace Hardware, asked to borrow a power tool and a man with cross tattoos on his arms and the words, "Jesus Saves" showing on the T-shirt behind his work vest held the beams while my friend drilled the pieces together. He was carrying it on his walk across America.
"The cross is a symbol."
Of what? I asked.
"Peace, unity, harmony, all of us coming together. I'm a Christian, but you know, once you start labeling, it causes divisions. There's just so much political rancor and cops killing people, people killing cops, people fighting over religion and sports."
"I see," I said, inquisitively.
"But the thing is whether you believe in his deity or not, Jesus did a noble thing for mankind."
"Listen," I said, "I have to be somewhat clandestine about my job, but I'll just tell you, I work for an underworld writing society. I give myself assignments, looking for American beauty and that sort of thing. Is it okay if I write your story and take a picture for our files?"
"Sure, my life's an open book."
"Mind if I ask how old you are?" I said as I steadied my camera phone at his standing figure.
"Thirty-three."
After snapping a few pictures and making small talk with the man, I figured I'd better split before I wore out my welcome.
"Well I don't want to take up too much of your time," I said.
"I appreciate that."
"But I wish you peace on your journey."
He walked on and I turned a corner with my car.
Political rancor
I wrote a blog, elucidating just what I thought of people who voted for that racist pig. Then it became like Civil War. "Why are you being so hateful?" a dear member of my family asked me.
"So when your dad posts his Hussein Obama shit, it's just an old man engaging in his hobby, but when I tell how I feel, it's hateful?" I said. "You have a double standard."
I posted what I thought was an innocuous message about peace and inclusion, but the people on the right and the left fought over it on my Facebook wall. A guy I'd been friends with since 7th grade -- well, that's all over. "You're a puppet for the left who believe anything the (sic) leberal media puts in front of you," he wrote. "Think for yourself. There's a media conspiracy. The media lies to you, my friend."
"You're outa here, you sonovabitch," I said and blocked him from ever seeing my Facebook again.
He was no big loss, but my family. God, my family -- I love them like nobody else. How do I reconcile it? I don't think I'm wrong for writing my feelings about the whole Trump fiasco, but I don't want my family to think I'm hateful and I don't want my liberal friends arguing with my more conservative family members on Facebook.
Resurrection
I hadn't been to church in weeks. In my travels, I'd attended a church where someone said something that pissed me off. We read a Bible verse in the Sunday school class:
He defended the cause of the poor and needy, and so all went well. Is that not what it means to know me? -- Jeremiah 22:16
"I admit, I'm judgmental," the woman said. "You see the same poor people coming back time after time and I'm like, 'What are you doing to help yourself?'"
I became incandescent.
"I've read the Gospels. Jesus was helping people all the time and he never asked, 'What are you doing to help yourself?' Hell, Jesus was itinerant, probably homeless. He relied on the kindness of strangers. He said at Matthew 25:35 'I was hungry and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink.' He said what you've done for the least of these, you did for me.You ever had to live hand to mouth? Have your suburban Jesus, I'm outa here," I said and stormed out the door, ignoring their pleas for me to stay.
Now here I was weeks later. After all that happened, I needed spiritual rejuvenation. Weeks of travel had went by. And I was finally back where I felt safe and real in my hometown of Jett, Kan. (pop. 4,000 in the '70s). I went to the one church where I felt free to by myself, Community Crossroads Church off State Street. The pastor, Kyle Whitman, and I seemed to have some rapport and I liked the way he shared a name with Dick Whitman from Mad Men and the poet Walt Whitman. Kyle digs Nadia Bolz-Weber, the author and tattooed pastor of the House For All Saints and Sinners in Denver so I decided he was all right.
Sandy, the liberal children's Sunday school teacher hugged me when she saw me in church. "I feel like I have someone on my team."
Blake, a 60ish man in the class, said, "How 'bout a prayer for Donald Trump who won the majority vote for President?"
Sandy and I looked uneasily at each other.
"He didn't win by a majority," Kyle said. "He was declared winner by the Electoral College."
"Well you can say he won by a majority through the Electoral College," Blake said.
"I wouldn't though," Kyle said.
After taking all the prayer requests -- for people in the hospital, for people to find jobs, for the president-elect, Kyle bowed his head.
"Lord, we know there are differences on this election even among people in this room, but let us remember that we're all here as one for your kingdom. We pray for our leaders to have wisdom because that's what you ask us to do."
We read from the sixth chapter of Second Kings about a small miracle in which a man retrieved the ax he had dropped in the Jordan River. I thought about small miracles. Jared, the man carrying the cross, told me after he'd given money to poor people with signs, other people had come along and given money to him for his journey.
"The Lord provides," he said.
In our area of Western Kansas, the pastor of a small town Methodist Church had given him a place in his church to shower and sleep for the night. Funny, it was a Methodist Church where I'd gotten mad and walked off, but this pastor -- I think Jesus and John Wesley would be proud of him.
I'm happy I talked to that guy, glad our paths crossed. I feel precarious and unsure of my future, but I guess we'll get through life and I'll hope for peace --
as i walk
on my journey
"One Toke Over the Line" -- Brewer and Shipley
