PRISONER EXPRESS

I can tell you about God. That topic is something I have some experience with. I saw God for the first time in the face of my newborn son. When he reveled himself again with my second son, I figured that I need to learn something God himself. I set out like a man possessed by God. Books, churches, Bibles, courses, and personal devotions- they all set me on my path.

My path was that of a missionary in Mexico and South America. I was God's risk taker and I moved clothes, medicine, food, vitamins and building materials into places that others wouldn't. I did these things because I saw God and I was still seeing him in everything I did day to day. I saw him in the churches and Christian schools I helped build. I saw him in the faces of the people in the villages I came to love. I thanked him every time I made it through the borders with supplies unmolested. I knew he was in charge when I could afford to pay the bribes when I was molested. I praised his name when I found an angel (Anhill)- a seven year old boy who became my companion, my co-workers and my surrogate third son.

However, I was confused when the military cam into the village one morning with evil intent. I questioned God when they dragged out the women and children from their homes and bulldozed them into piles and burned everything. My God would not allow this. My God, my God would fix this. I stood my ground, but I was still confused for I could not understand his reasoning for the brutality against these beautiful people.

I called out to God when the villagers held hands around the church I built to keep it from being bulldozed. I cried when they arrested the women for resisting arrest and sent them off to prison for 7 to 12 years. I prayed to God to keep Angel, who was held captive in an old boxing gym, away from the media. And I was pissed at God when he wasn't. I felt my first hate for God when I never found out what happened to little Angel. This was not the God I fell in love with and I accused him of treachery. God, however, was there when I woke up in jail, drunk and guilty of breaking my seven year stretch of abstinence from drugs and alcohol. And over the next eight months after that, I talked to him personally every time I woke up from a drug induced stupor. I tried to run back to him for forgiveness every time I held my sons' hands and looked in their eyes. I tried to find him in my wife's eyes when she was begging me to come home. But, he was gone away from me by then.

He wasn't there when I was sent off to prison for shoplifting $18.00 at Wal-Mart. And I haven't seen God in the past six years of my incarceration. I still look for him though. I mean, he is still God.

I look for him in nature, in Druidism, in Paganism and in the great goddess. The sun, the trees, and the birds in the razor wire I think they are all trying to show me God, if only I had eyes to see.

Yea, I can talk about God. It seems that once you've seen him you can never stop looking for him. I'm doing it now in fact. In my past, in my future... Looking.