EXCERPT FROM CHAPTER 8
FINDING HEAVEN IN THE DARK - A MEMOIR
EXCERPT FROM CHAPTER 8 - ALMOST HEAVEN - page 151
(Author Comments: This is one of my favorite reminiscences. "STOP THE WORLD, I WANT TO GET OFF!" finally became a reality for me once I stopped trying to run from myself and began learning to appreciate the present.)
I fit in right away. I was a young pair of hands and legs that Brothers Brett and Johnson prayed for. The mission was my temporary refuge from my world of confusion and fear. I knew I was a fugitive, and I feared each day that my whereabouts would be discovered. Everyone would consider me an unpatriotic liar and coward! But I suppressed my fears, and devoted myself to being helpful and eventually, indispensable.
Emil took me under his wing immediately. He was delighted to have an eager apprentice with a hungry mind. He needed help preparing the evening soup, because all he got from his usual volunteers was a full helping of complaining. “You’re a good boy. You don’t complain about working in the kitchen. The others only want to fill their bellies and not do much work,” he said almost every day of the first week since I joined the mission.
Emil was German and Swedish stock. He had well-muscled, white arms covered with the same white hair as on his head and eyebrows. I concluded that he had been a nice-looking man in his earlier years, before drink took its toll. After years of wear and tear—beneath his big, bushy, eyebrows and jowly cheeks—was a kindly expression that made me feel comfortable.
He showed me how to peel vegetables for his soup, and open number-ten (“10”) cans of vegetables, if we didn’t have enough fresh produce. Emil was a real chef for most of his adult life, I learned. Although he wasn’t one to sit around and talk about himself, I gleaned a lot of information from him during the course of a normal day.
In fact, I learned more from the workers at the mission than from all the people I’d known in the past. These men taught me about the fragility of human beings. They were not like those I knew who tried desperately to conceal weaknesses beneath bluff and bravado.
The mission workers were all broken vessels, people who were damaged during their journeys. Then, they found themselves at one of society’s waste dumps. They were the reason I felt so at home. I finally found a place where I didn’t have to fit in, because fitting in wasn’t required on skid row. I learned to keep my mouth shut and listen. I communicated with my ears and eyes, because facial expressions reveal volumes about us.
Peeling vegetables in the mission kitchen became therapeutic for me. I peeled veggies into a garbage pail alongside a large pot of cold water. Potatoes, carrots, purple-top turnips, onions, rutabagas, and parsnips were among the produce I came to know intimately. I handled these vegetables with respect. It was a small, yet significant awakening, a spiritual connection. I had not known this feeling before. The irony of drawing such satisfaction from peeling vegetables wasn’t lost on me. As a fugitive, I joyfully performed tasks that I had resisted during my last acts of defiance at Camp Lejeune.
EXCERPT FROM CHAPTER 8 - ALMOST HEAVEN - page 151
(Author Comments: This is one of my favorite reminiscences. "STOP THE WORLD, I WANT TO GET OFF!" finally became a reality for me once I stopped trying to run from myself and began learning to appreciate the present.)
I fit in right away. I was a young pair of hands and legs that Brothers Brett and Johnson prayed for. The mission was my temporary refuge from my world of confusion and fear. I knew I was a fugitive, and I feared each day that my whereabouts would be discovered. Everyone would consider me an unpatriotic liar and coward! But I suppressed my fears, and devoted myself to being helpful and eventually, indispensable.
Emil took me under his wing immediately. He was delighted to have an eager apprentice with a hungry mind. He needed help preparing the evening soup, because all he got from his usual volunteers was a full helping of complaining. “You’re a good boy. You don’t complain about working in the kitchen. The others only want to fill their bellies and not do much work,” he said almost every day of the first week since I joined the mission.
Emil was German and Swedish stock. He had well-muscled, white arms covered with the same white hair as on his head and eyebrows. I concluded that he had been a nice-looking man in his earlier years, before drink took its toll. After years of wear and tear—beneath his big, bushy, eyebrows and jowly cheeks—was a kindly expression that made me feel comfortable.
He showed me how to peel vegetables for his soup, and open number-ten (“10”) cans of vegetables, if we didn’t have enough fresh produce. Emil was a real chef for most of his adult life, I learned. Although he wasn’t one to sit around and talk about himself, I gleaned a lot of information from him during the course of a normal day.
In fact, I learned more from the workers at the mission than from all the people I’d known in the past. These men taught me about the fragility of human beings. They were not like those I knew who tried desperately to conceal weaknesses beneath bluff and bravado.
The mission workers were all broken vessels, people who were damaged during their journeys. Then, they found themselves at one of society’s waste dumps. They were the reason I felt so at home. I finally found a place where I didn’t have to fit in, because fitting in wasn’t required on skid row. I learned to keep my mouth shut and listen. I communicated with my ears and eyes, because facial expressions reveal volumes about us.
Peeling vegetables in the mission kitchen became therapeutic for me. I peeled veggies into a garbage pail alongside a large pot of cold water. Potatoes, carrots, purple-top turnips, onions, rutabagas, and parsnips were among the produce I came to know intimately. I handled these vegetables with respect. It was a small, yet significant awakening, a spiritual connection. I had not known this feeling before. The irony of drawing such satisfaction from peeling vegetables wasn’t lost on me. As a fugitive, I joyfully performed tasks that I had resisted during my last acts of defiance at Camp Lejeune.
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