It’s the red letters I like.
Standing in the alley between Magnolia Motor Lounge and Landmark, smoking a spliff with my songwriting buddy JEM, we start talking a little about life and spirituality. Growing up in the southern Baptist church has left a sour taste in the mouths of so many. To be religious today seems insane. I never really joined any church. With split custody, my step-mom used to drag us to the closest Catholic church. We’d arrive 10 minutes late and leave after communion. She hated being there just as much as we did, but our grandmother’s expectations were we grew up good Catholics. We’d return home and compete the CCD work sheets. I never confirmed, but apparently you go away on a camping retreat and there is a ceremony there.
On the days we didn’t go to church we’d be forced to watch one hour of TV church before we were allowed to go out and play. We were expected to sit there and watch it just as if we were in the pews. It was a load of bullshit, and still I don’t understand why my father and his wife feigned religiosity, and especially to the Catholic church, given they had both divorced their spouses to marry one another. During my visitation sessions in The Colony, TX and during the month long stay in July, I became an alter boy. It at the very least made church interesting. Being good natured, I bought into the whole thing right away, but quickly found the other boys were just as bad as any other boys around. They’d play pranks on Father Publious, mess up their assigned tasks, cut up and laugh while the priest was talking. It was ridiculous. Just another couple of kids from a family who didn’t really know why they were going to church.
When at my mother’s house religion never really came me until about 5th grade. Probably provoked by my weekend experiences with my dad, I started talking about church at school. I was in the good classes, and there nice pretty girls all went to Ash Creek Baptist. They’d go skating with us on Friday nights and we’d go to Church with them on Sunday mornings. I really only wanted to hang out with my girlfriend at the time. I’d go to church with her any night of the week. I started going to youth group on Wednesday nights and my best friend and one of my brothers also attended for similar reasons. One night the pastor was talking about saving people. I’ve always been very literal and wondered what they were being saved from and by and how. When I asked my classmate sitting next to me in the pew what it was to be saved, he suggested we go up to the front and find out. My brother and best friend went too and before I knew it they were all huddled up and crying while the main leader was speaking prayers about being born again and accepting Jesus into our hearts. I opened my eyes to see if everyone was going along with it and to my disbelief they were. I quickly shut my eyes again and tried to cry. I didn’t really get what we were doing. When it was all over, we had a heighted sense of belonging to the church and started going even more often until we were baptized. We sloshed out from the side room and into the pool one by one and were dipped in the water in front of our parents and all to see.
That was in 5th grade. Everything was perfect. I was dressing preppy, had good hair, was popular, made good grades and was great a sports. My weekend routine consisted of sports, skating, and sleep overs. After school I spent my time in the woods around my neighborhood, riding bikes and building forts and playing capture the flag and swimming in the nasty creeks. Sundays I’d go to church. The only down side to these times was having to travel half way across the world to go to my father’s house, and so have to skip my normal routine. Missing an entire weekend among a peer group in the 5th grade can be devastating. So many things can happen and so returning sometimes felt like coming home to an alternate reality. And if I thought weekends were bad, it was the every summer month of July that really put the nail in the coffin. Leaving friendships for the bulk of summer vacation was social suicide in those days. Or rather, things could just change so quickly while your gone. I lost girlfriends every year due to this. And to top it off, while over at my dad’s at the Catholic church, everything was different. I had no friends at church, knew nobody, and so sat in the pew with my brother, two step brothers, half brother, half sister and step mother and I sang the hymns and said the prayers, looking forward to that tasty sweet donut at the end of the service while the parents gathered and talked.
Things really started to break down around 6th grade and onward for me. Kids started smoking cigarettes and having sex and bringing guns to school. I’d return home from my dads to a world full of new rules and key players. I slowly drifted out of the good kids group and by freshman year in high school had started smoking cigarettes, weed and getting drunk on a regular basis. Moving to a new school a couple times during high school, I lost my connection to any church and any people like that. Even though I was still in the gifted classes and still playing sports, all the good kids at this new high school in Saginaw, were all using drugs already. Showing up to two-a-days, a couple of the kids that lived in Lake Country were on LSD during the first scrimmage. They were crazy and for some reason, I started hanging out with them and spent my 15th birthday getting stoned and drunk at some adult’s house not only encouraging us to get fucked up, but providing the drugs, and space in which to do it.
A few days later I bought a dime bag off of one of the kids at school, Chad Blackman. It looked like some tray week, and he brought it to school in plastic wrap and passed it to me between periods. It was the second time I had possessed weed. The first time was back in Azle in the 8th grade, from Matt De Los Santos. A buddy of my Cole Adams started hanging with him and smoking weed. We skipped class and went to Matt’s house. He lit a joint, I refused. He said I had to at least drink a beer if I was gonna be there, so I did. As I was leaving he gave me a couple buds and I hid them in my boy scout canteen in the top of my closet. Knowing I had drugs in my house ate me alive for a few days before I flushed it down the toilet.
Times had changed, I had no interests. I was in sports and at school, but it just wasn’t keeping me busy. I wanted to hang out with girls and or skip school and go to parties and get fucked up. By the time I got my first car I was running with the worst kids in the school. We’d pace the streets at night looking in unlocked cars for change and CDs, eventually getting arrested. I transferred to two more high schools and continued to get worse before being kicked out all together at the beginning of my jr. year.
There would be no scholarships, no sports, no math team, no nothing. There would be me getting a diploma from the alternative school and graduating off a modular based learning system in 6 weeks. I was barley 17 and out of high school just a third of the way through my jr. year. There was no community, no church, no boy scouts, no nothing. My father had disowned me, I was on the outs with my step-dad and mom from drinking and drugging and staying out all night. I got my first apartment off Las Vegas Tr. and 820 in Fort Worth. It was $350/mo for a one bedroom and I went to work at Bruckner’s Truck Sales. Over the next 5 years, I changed jobs and residences about every 9 months. Nothing seemed to stick. My step-dad took me up to the community college shortly after graduating high school and we found out I qualified for a $1000 scholarship for graduating early and that paid for my first semester. I did well that term, but quickly went on academic probation for not showing up to the final 5 weeks of my classes during my 2nd semester. When I did it again, I was suspended for a few terms.
I began to find my way in the restaurant business. It was 2003. Things leveled off, I had a nice apartment, attending my classes and succeeded at at work. We were all making between $100 and $200 a day waiting tables. It was throgh my waiting tables I began to read again. In the books I found mentioned of God and the universal discussion on why we are here, what is life like, and where is god anyway? The drinking and drugging turned into all night philosophical conversations and it spawned a new journey of spirituality in me.
On my way to Houston this past week I listened to the Celestine Prophecy. It was my third time ‘reading’ the book. It’s such a great story of the heebie-jeebie nature of Christianity. The pieces of faith lost and deleted along the way in order to preserve control over some by a few. It is possible these days to arrive at following Jesus and not be a part of the church. The red letters are alight with me. That’s such a cool way to put it, especially if talking to some bible thumper. I’ll say it rang true for me too, a pseudo intellectual that has been brought to Christ kicking and screaming. I like the red letters. The things that Jesus said enhance my prayer and life on a daily basis and resonate in a way that I’m only beginning to understand.
My introduction to the red letters is this video of a reading of the Gospel Of Thomas. This gospel was only found in 1950. It’s as new as it gets, and after listening to this recording a few hundred times, I’ll confess it has changed me. The red letters changed me. Jesus has changed me.