It is the boredom I fear most of all—
A prison boredom, like Tante Corrie—
But my berth is wider, the whole
World my cell—hewn by each thought.
 
The four-year journey was a long pier
Walk—like walking the plank above
Circling sharks—each moment an
Eternity drifting further from the
Harbor lights—but
 
Brave beautiful Cypress—Cypress
Of the Pacific:  I come back to you
In summer and again in fall—and
Once, for that wintering promise.
 
I see you, Cypress—through the
Coastal fog:  you crown the gray
And blue sky, haloed by blue
On the good days.  Brave cypress
Of the Pacific—dawn, dusk, each
Noon, there you stand on a deserted
Stretch, Promise Tree that started
The four-year journey—
 
Of drifting, drifting through the waters—
And I come back—I keep coming back,
Cypress, coming back to you.
 
Dan Davis, © 2011

Last week I was in Lisala, a beautiful town on the Congo river, photographing the leprosy in the area. I’d expressed interest in photographing some younger leprosy patients and Boske, one of the staff at the TB/Lepre offices there had suggested a village a couple of hours drive outside of Lisala. A combination of events led to me leaving my passport behind in Lisala.

Firstly, I was expecting to be picked up at 8am, but was picked up at 7.30am and had to throw thing in my bag very quickly. It was later, just as we were leaving that I realised I’d left my passport and documents behind. However I didn’t mention this as we were on motorbikes, my driver didn’t speak English, and I thought it wouldn’t matter because we were going into the bush and I often leave my passport at my hotel if I’m just heading out to see a couple of patients. Generally I’m not a naïve traveller, in the last three years across Africa, I’ve never had a problem like this.

After four hours of driving we stopped and my interpreter informed me that we would stay the night near where the village is. I pointed out that as no one had told me about this, I hadn’t packed any overnight clothes and was hoping to do some work this evening in my hotel. It was a drawback, but it is the sort of poor communication I’ve come to expect at times in Africa.

Anyway, the day went quite well, I photographed the patients and then we went to the town for a drink and some food. The town is Bumba, the next major port down from Lisala on the Congo and over 150km away. Naturally, the moment I got off the motorbike security came up to ask to see my passport. “It’s at my hotel in Lisala”.

That didn’t go down very well. They demanded to see the passport so the ALM staff I was with took me into the bar away from the security. So they went and got the ‘chief’, the ‘big man’, who in this story is a very corrupt and selfish man with the single aim of pocketing large amounts of money from anybody that looks like they might own a wallet (white man = money of course). He was tall, wore expensive black shades, a glitzy gold watch, white pointy shoes, white trouser and a tight white shirt that accentuated his arms and his proud little pot belly, just to show that he was important enough to get other people to his hard work.

I was taken to the station, but reassured by those with me that everything would be fine. As a foreigner, not carrying my passport and documents (which are immensely unnecessarily complicated) is “an infringement”.

Negotiations didn’t go well. I’m not entirely sure what happened as my interpreter tended to wander off every now and then and was pretty useless at translating anyway, preferring to respond to my enquiries about the heated conversations with reassurances rather than telling me what was being said. Anyway suddenly the chief had had enough and ordered his men to drag me off. Noone had said it, but there was only one place they would be dragging me off to.

The ALM staff protested and tried to drag me in the other direction, which I don’t think was the most sensible action. The police here enjoy any chance to exercise their power over others and clearly a tug of war contest was another opportunity.  Me trying to explain had done no good… I’m pretty sure my interpreter never got my calm words across, and I don’t think the ‘chief’ really cared anyway. He had a chance to exercise a bit of power. I walked with the guards surrounding me through the town to the prison, the chief riding past slowly on his motorbike, careful to remind me of what an arse he was.

I was still being reassured that I wouldn’t go to prison by my interpreter, but my faith in his word was waning somewhat. It was waned after a total of about two hours from the initial arrest when in the dark I was told to step into the prison, to ‘have seat’ for ‘my protection’.

It was a small, old brick complex, with two sets of iron gates leading to a courtyard where a few armed police in loose uniform sat smoking around a fire. I was led past to a slightly ramshackle door and shown my cell. I was quite complacent initially, it was large, there was no one else in it, it had gently sloping sides with a sleeping mat on one side. The guard flashed his torch at it and I went and laid down. I thought; this isn’t so bad. I’m not hungry or thirsty, my camera (main priority of course) is safe, and I have a phone with me that even has a light on it.

That latter comforting thought was dashed when the guard came in 5 minutes later demanding my phone. Obviously I couldn’t have expected to keep it and told him in French to give it my friends outside, who I could still here arguing. Ah well. I lay back down again. I hear the arguments stop outside and it seemed like the staff had gone away for the moment – I was confident they would be doing everything they could to help me out, so I wasn’t worried. A few minutes after they’d left the guards opened my cell and called me over once again. I approached cautiously. They started pointing making demanding noises in French.

It was at this point that real worry started to crawl all over my body. A young man not in a uniform was trying to help me and explain what they wanted, there were a lot of people, most in plain clothes laughing and demanding, but the guard had a malicious look that was instantly obvious even from behind his torchlight.

Clearly he wanted ‘a gift’, l’argent was mention a few times, but I showed them that I had nothing on me. Now in my back pocket I had my memory card wallet which I could not afford to lose at any cost. They started demanding a gift, pointing at my shorts. At one point I feared the worst and did my best to express my shock and horror at what they might be implying. Luckily their reaction of equal shock and surprise confirmed they were just looking for something they could take home with them. He indicated my belt and my boots. Now my belt I didn’t mind losing, but my walking I really didn’t want to, they were extremely useful and had lasted very well for about 7 years. I thought that if I argued for both the items I could get away with just giving up the belt. I argued quite hard, trying to explain in my broken French that I was a missionaire and trying to help their country without pay. I hate referring to myself as a missionary – I don’t consider myself one at all, but since I was working at the moment for free for American Leprosy Missions, I hoped I could get off lightly. Anyway, it didn’t work. I understood that the guard was saying it was his ‘right’ to have my belt and shoes.

Clearly the small crowd was starting to get irritated at my stubbornness and suddenly became very threatening. One picked up a rock and made gestures to indicate quite how serious he was. Equally one of the boys hit me on the head with a water bottle and they suddenly dragged my by the shirt and shorts outside the cell. I was getting a bit panicky and thought it was probably ok to lose my cool a bit. I slowly took off the belt and the guard grabbed it and yanked it out of my shorts. He then pointed his gun at my shoes, but I didn’t want to give them up still and pleaded not to, trying to inch back towards my cell. At that point one of the guards that had stayed back a bit had lost it with this arrogant white man and smashed his rifle against the war inches from head and started kicking my with his boots holding my shirt and punching me in the side, deafening me in the ear. Adrenaline surged through my body and I shakily tried to undo my laces as he kicked my hand shouting God knows what down onto my head. He tore them away from me and then both guard were demanding that give them my socks as well. I pulled them off and, backed into my cell, by now pretty terrified

The door slammed darkness upon me and I stood shaking for a moment, before remembering my memory cards and tucking them behind the elastic of my boxer shorts.

I lay down on the straw mat on my side, half trying to fathom how it had got to this, and half trying to think of something positive, doing neither successfully in the process. My heart sunk as the door was opened once again and the guards gestured me over. I walked slowly, showing them I was clearly scared and feared them and that they had won. They said nothing and gestured me into a door next door.

It was a cell maybe 15 by 10 feet, a small blue bucket in the corner and 7 other prisoners lying tightly next to each other on two small mats. They looked at me with quiet surprise and I sensed no danger there. The door padlocked behind me. I sat on the concrete floor as they slowly sat up, illuminated by a dim candle in the corner. I told them I was English and only spoke a little French. They were all young, maybe my age, except for an older man who then said: “You speak English? I speak English”. I still can’t quite believe my luck – his English wasn’t excellent, but I could communicate with them at least. I told them why I was there and their was a soft, confused surprise to their reaction. I wasn’t sure if they believed me or that they sympathised with my situation. I think it was the latter, and they had a little makemba (cassava bread) and peanuts that they offered me a share of. I was grateful for the gesture, but the whole experience with the guards had left me without an appetite. I tried to start up a bit of conversation and introduce some lightness to the evening. I asked Jean-Peter, the man who spoke English) why he was here. He laughed in an easy but unthreatening way and confessed ‘very bad things’. I smiled back and pushed him a little more, saying I was just interested. “I beat a woman for doing bad things” he said. What the bad things were I don’t know, but I didn’t enquire to the details, or what he meant when he said beat. It sounded like he probably deserved to be there. While trying to keep the atmosphere light I told him that wasn’t a good thing he did, and ended up sounding a bit like Borat when he told the village rapist “naughty, naughty” while waggling a finger.

I explained the guards had taken everything I had, including my boots and belt, but looking around these boys and men mostly had just thin, worn trousers. Some had a shirt, but I doubt any of them had ever worn boots in their lives. I felt guilty for trying to get a bit of sympathy. I’d enquired as to why others were here, a couple of the boys said something about owing debts, but others didn’t bother answering. Some of them probably shouldn’t be there, some of them probably should. I felt safe with them though. They even shifted aside to give me half a mat and one laid his shirt down on the floor so I didn’t have to take mine off and get bitten by mosquitoes.

The door opened once more and this time a familiar voice; Emmanuel, my translator. He invited me out and I immediately pushed my memory cards into his hands and told him to keep those on him. I gushed out what the guards had done and that they had my shoes, socks and belt. He reacted in disgust and the guards were looking away. He said he would get them back and would I like anything to eat. I wasn’t hungry, but thought it would be good to share some food with the other prisoners and asked unashamedly for lots of food and water

He said he would be back and I retreated into the cell, hoping he could negotiate my shoes back. He came back an hour of so later and I was taken outside by the fire to sit by him and one of the ALM nurses. He told me the guards hadn’t realised I was a missionary, and asked forgiveness for how they had treated me. I looked over at them and they looked guilty, but I think more for the fact they had or might get in trouble rather than regret. Nevertheless I asked him to tell them they were forgiven and that they should never treat anyone that way. It was received silently and one of them mumbled something about really regretting it.

Emmanuel handed my shoes, socks and belt over along with some bread, a tin of sardines and a bottle of water. I pushed the shoes etc back into his hands and said firmly that I wanted him to take them because I still didn’t trust the guards not to try and take tem for themselves. He didn’t quite understand my anxiety, but recognised my tone. The guards then said they wanted me to sleep somewhere better, away from the other people. I insisted I stayed with the others in the cell, as well as feeling safer from the guards, I still intended to give them my food, which I had no desire to eat.

Both Emmanuel and the guards were surprised that I wanted to go back in my cell without my shoes and without eating away from the others, but my stubbornness had jumped back into action and I walked back to the cell, gesturing that it needed to be unlocked. I shared the food out which was hungrily wolfed down by all and lay down to the start of what is one of the longest nights I’ve ever had

I didn’t sleep at all. It was very uncomfortable. The wall smelt exactly how you might expect the wall of a cell with just small bucket in to smell. The smell hung thickly in my nostrils for a while until I no longer noticed it. I tried to think of something positive back home or of anything that might distract me, but I kept on being shocked back into reality as mosquitoes began to dig into my legs, feet and arms or hummed past my ear. A chorus of snores began, changing pitch and rhythm every hour as bodies shifted. This was uncomfortable to me, but for the others, they sleep on mats like this anyway

The minutes crawled by and without any sense of time I kept hoping to see a glimmer of light through the two arrow-thin slits in the wall, breaking the blackness in the room. The occasional cockroach would brush past my hair and I could hear mice scampering along the wall

It seemed like it had been light for ages when they finally opened the dor to let me out, but when I asked, it was only 6 o’clock. Emmanuel came along a couple of hours later, and said Dr Jacques (who is at a leprosy conference in Senegal) had been told and my passport was being sent to Bumba from Lisala.

At around 10 I was taken to the ‘chiefs’ bureau and they said they needed to ask me a few questions and write down my answers. I didn’t point out that they could have done this before they put me in Jail. It also emerged that one of the doctors had insulted the police and the chief while they arrested me and they probably wouldn’t have put me in prison if he hadn’t done that. It didn’t matter, it was all in the past now

The statement took ages, it was handwritten very slowly and carefully, they took all my basic information and asked if I knew why I went to prison etc. I played along and said I hadn’t realised it was an infringement of the law, but I know that now. They pressed me about my ‘real mission’ here, as though I was suddenly going to confess I was trying to restart the slave trade, or was a diamond smuggler. They certainly couldn’t understand why I was working for free, and why I was remotely interested in photographing leprosy. They were genuinely perplexed by it and I think there suspicion soon developed into one of thinking I was mad not to want money for my work.

Anyway, after a few hours he was insistent that he needed something for my infringement, and that it was a serious offence and so would cost me $250-300. The fact he didn’t give me an exact number immediately gave away the fact it wasn’t a government fine, or at least some of it wasn’t

By 2pm my passport still hadn’t shown up and I was getting worried all over again. None of us had that sort of money with us and the dollars I had with my passport had been left in my room by all accounts. (It was the nuns that searched my room for it). The ‘chief’ still insisted that the damage was done and the infringement had been made and whether I could prove my story or not, I still had to pay.

I feared I would be put into the prison again, more afraid that I wouldn’t be able to carry on with the work I was doing – that was what was really important. I think the fact I hadn’t slept or eaten in 36 hours probably didn’t help too. Eventually after a lot of reassurances that I didn’t particularly believe the man arrived with my passport. It turned out Dr Jacques, despite being in Senegal had pulled out all the stops and sent the Security chief of the district to my rescue. He took me into the ‘chiefs’ office, sent out Emmanuel so I wouldn’t understand anything and negotiated my release, which after another hour was eventually granted.

The relief I felt was enormous. The pathetic little ‘big man chief’ who had arrested me in the first place told me I should carry my passport at all times and that if I should ever become well-known in my country I should remember them. I told him that not to worry, I’m never going to forget.

We finally left around 24 hours later. I had got away without loosing anything or being seriously hurt. Just an empty stomach, a great deal of fatigue and a story that would make up an extremely long post on my blog…

I still love the Congo. I’ve just learnt the hard way that it doesn’t like it when you don’t play by its rules. I’m certainly going to keep my passport on me everywhere I go now, no exceptions.

Sorry about the lack of photograph – I felt it wasn’t wise to get my camera out after being released and start snapping away.

Oh, and I found out a couple of days later that the reason I’d been released was because the leprosy doctor in Lisala had wired the chief $200.

As is, with Tomahawk missile damage. Contact: U.S. Army.

Source:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/12/us-troops-in-iraq-leaving_n_875623.html

For a couple of minutes I stood in the center of the cell, facing the same direction I entered. I was nervous to turn around and face the fact I was trapped inside a cell. The window was barely cracked behind the bars, and it wouldn’t budge when I tried to push it open more. Darkness- past, present, and future.

The brown wooden walls were worn. The planks, arranged vertically, towered above my head and stopped just above the window. The cell, about 6′ by 2′, was uncomfortably cramped for a human being’s living space.

Turning around, I gazed out of the cell into the hall. The cell door, constructed of vertical wood with a rectangular peephole in the top center, hung from rusty hinges. I grabbed hold of the door and pulled it closed, trapping myself within the cell. The creaking of the door sent chills through my body.

Two small chains were hooked to the floor to the left of the door. The length was short; it would have been impossible for a prisoner to stand up or move around if he or she were chained.

I imagined myself being trapped in the cell for long periods of time, not knowing if I would survive the day. Looking down at the ground, I counted the 30 tiles within the cell, half orange and half white (though faded and dirty). If I had been a prisoner, I would have counted those tiles repeatedly. I would have counted the wooden planks. I would have counted everything in attempt to maintain focus and sanity.

It was unnerving to think about the succession of people who had occupied the space where I stood. School children, then prisoners, and then me (a representative for a long line of tourists and journalists). After evacuating the city of Phnom Penh, the Khmer Rogue converted a school (symbolic of life and education) into a place of death and imprisonment. I tried to picture one of my previous schools in the United States as a genocidal prison, but it was surreal and impossible to fathom.

Barbed wire fencing covered the front of Building C. I read a sign earlier that read, “the braid of barbed wires prevents the desperate victims from committing suicide.” Many of the prisoners had probably accepted death as their fate. After seeing the torture rooms and cell blocks, I understood the appeal of taking one’s own life instead of dying by the hands of the Khmer Rogue.

Looking through the barbed wire on the breezeway of the second floor, I saw two small girls playing in the courtyard of the prison. Disgust overwhelmed me as I thought about the school and education that had been taken from so many children. More so, I was disgusted by how many children the Khmer Rogue had executed. I wondered if any of the children imprisoned at Tuol Sleng had also gone to school there. An uneasy feeling rose in my stomach as I questioned whether the two girls in the courtyard were playing on bars that had been used as a killing device.

As I walked to the prison’s exit, I realized it didn’t matter if I was closed into a cell, standing on a breezeway, or observing from the center courtyards- everything felt uneasy and eerie. An estimated 17,000 prisoners went through the prison with only 12 survivors- 1 survivor for every 1,417 prisoners.

I felt angry when I left the prison. I couldn’t understand why the Khmer Rogue had killed so many of their people. Looking at the bigger picture, I was angry with mankind in general. The Khmer Rogue conflict isn’t the only genocide that has occurred in the world. It’s a global atrocity on repeat.

The typical cell at Alcatraz (this is one) was 5 feet by 9 feet, had a cot, a metal table and chair attached to the wall, a toilet and a sink.  Oh, and don’t forget the privacy and peaceful surroundings.  Lovely, eh?  I mean, who wouldn’t be eager to spend 10 or more years in such a place?

Room for rent....

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY: in 1960, a survey was conducted that found that commercials shot in “living color” resulted in 3X more effective than commercials shot and broadcast in black and white.

TRIVIA FOR TODAY: Phobos, on of the moons of Mars, is so small that it would not be visible to a person standing at either of the poles of the planet.  Phobos orbits the planet Mars three times a day.

But for those unwilling to repent,
showing no remorse,
should there be a prison cell at all?
But instead, execution—
As should have been done.

But if to be simply incarcerated,
as has become the prevailing way—
no matter the atrocity—Oh God!
What has become of an eye for an eye?

Source:
http://www.modernman.com/10-of-the-worlds-weirdest-hotels/

I do feel stronger than before, though, at least in my mind, because I know those questions have nothing to do with me. I know they didn’t know anything.

After I sit for a long time, I write: “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t done anything wrong and neither have those people you asked me about, as far as I know.”

I finish writing, but I don’t knock on the door. I know what will happen, and I want a few minutes of peace – when nothing is happening to me. I need to be alone.

I sit there for half an hour, then an hour, then another half hour. I can’t really concentrate.

I’m looking around the cell, and I notice a calendar drawn on the opposite wall. I crawl across the floor and look at it more closely. Some prisoner had been keeping track of the days: he’d been in that cell for a year and a half. Suddenly, a feeling of depression overcomes me, and I realize I can’t bear sitting in the cell another minute. I knock for the guard.

Someone comes and takes the paper through the opening in the door, but nobody comes to take me out. They’ve taken away my watch, but I think it’s around 10 at night by this time. I only handed over the one sheet of paper I’d written on; the other I fold very small and put it in my underpants. I may want it later.

A half hour passes, and the guard comes, and leads me to the fat man’s office. He is very controlled, and stares at me with an icy look.

“You haven’t given us much information, I’m afraid. I want to know exactly about everything. Your friends are all here, as you know.”

I don’t know that anyone else is here besides Abdulatif, but he could be telling the truth.

“They’ve already talked,” says the fat man. “I advise you to do the same. I’ve got plenty of information on you already, about the things you’ve done.”

“How can you expect me to tell you I’ve done things I haven’t?” I ask.

“You’re a liar, you little bastard!” His eyes are bulging, the rage is returning.

He motions to one of the men, who gets behind me, and pins my arms behind me. The fat man smiles horribly

“OK, so you don’t want to talk…”

He turns away, towards his desk, and then fast as a snake striking, he turns back and delivers a powerful blow across my face. I am knocked off my feet, under the table.

The man who is holding my arms must have been surprised too, because it knocks him off his feet.

I lay under the table, barely able to move, my ears ringing.

The man who had had held my arms yanks me to my feet. I think the fat man is going to smash me again – this time I brace and clench my teeth — but he doesn’t.

He just looks at me coolly. “Now you are going back to your cell and you are going to write everything you know about the bombing, and activities at the university…and Saida too, of course.”

I am heading back to my cell. Once there, I sit, and I write more or less what I’d written before, but this time it’s a bit longer and in different words. I make some effort to answer the questions I’d been asked, but I don’t say anything that could harm anyone. After a while I knock and hand over the new piece of paper.

Again, I wait.

I sit there in the dark, it’s approaching midnight now, I suspect. Two guards finally come and lead me out.

By now, I am assuming that we’re headed back to the fat man, but they are leading me in a different direction. We are headed upstairs, out of the prison — which is only in the basement level – and go up the stairs to the third floor.

They seat me in a chair in a small, very dark room. Two men enter, and one roughly ties a blindfold over my eyes.

I sit in the chair, and I feel a different fear. It’s bad enough when you can see a blow coming, but it’s especially frightening if you don’t know when or from where it’s coming from, or what part of you might be hit.

But no one hits me, and I grow more nervous. After 20 minutes or so, I can’t keep my body tensed anymore waiting for blows.

I hear a voice that asks me if I can see. “No,” I say, and I’m telling the truth. The blindfold is tied tightly, no light is getting through.

“OK, then, walk.”

I stand and take a step or two, and someone leads me out a door. Then, I am turned around. It is like a child’s party game, except this is no party. I take another few steps and then I stop.

Are they going to make me fall down the stone stairs? Or walk out a window? People die of “accidents” in prison all the time — everyone knows that.

But they push me on. I still have no idea what rooms we are going through, or where we are in the building.

The whole building belongs to the government — everyone knows that; what the people outside don’t know is that there is a prison, mostly underground, here.

They open a door and push me into a cool room. I hear the air conditioner humming. They leave me, I think; at least the door has been closed again.

I can feel a very thick, soft rug under my bare feet. It must be the office of someone important. I just stand there. No one had told me to do anything. I have no idea how many men were in the room. One? Twenty?

I know there is at least one man, however, because he is talking on the phone across the room – from the distance of his voice, I can tell the room is quite large. Perhaps there are others who are being quiet because he is talking?

He has a strong, deep, voice and it resonates with warmth. I listen to what he is saying: “How are the children?…And the baby?…How is little Maher’s cough?…Yes, I’ll bring it when I come home, but I’m going to be a bit late, my dear. Is there anything else you want that I could pick up this late?…OK. Kiss the children for me. I’ll see you in an hour or so…goodbye, my dear.”

I start thinking of my parents, but make myself stop, because I sense that I could very easily start to cry. And I am not going to cry in front of them.

He has hung up the phone, and I hear him approaching me. He is very close.

“What do you know?” His voice has changed completely, it is hard and cold, a metallic voice.

“I don’t know,” I say. He slaps me, hard. I put my arms up…too late.

But some man grabs them, and holds them behind my back. My toes dig into the rug. Another question, another answer, another slap, another question, another answer, another slap.

He keeps moving around me. I never knew where the next question or slap is coming from.

He asks all the same questions, and he asks them several times. Each time I answer, I get hit.

Somehow, I don’t think he even cares about the question. He just wants to humiliate me, a boy with a shaved head, blindfolded.

All this lasts about ten minutes and he says, “Take him back to his cell.”

I am turned around, and feel myself being pushed out the door.

“Walk,” says a guard.

I do, slowly, carefully, feeling ahead of me with each step before putting my weight on it. They laugh and my childlike steps. When we get to the stairs, they give me a little push and I more or less fall down a step. I am frightened. I had no idea whether I was going to fall 8 inches, or 3 stories. My heart is pounding.

They nudge me on. I go down the stairs, slowly, step by step, feeling the wall all the time. They are snickering and laughing – they think this is very funny.

Finally, we get to the door of the prison and they pass me over to other guards there.

“You should have seen this bastard crawling down the stairs. He thought he was falling into hell.” All the guards laugh together.

My blindfold is removed, and I’m led back to my cell.

And my first day in prison comes to an end.

On this second day of Lent, 2011, I’m mindful of the truth that these 40 days of the holy season (not counting the 6 Sundays, because they “don’t count” in this time of preparation and penance before Easter) have long been understood as a deep and meaningful “spiritual journey.”  The “journeying” emphasis – the movement of events, minds and hearts in the direction of Palm Sunday, Holy Week, Maundy/Holy Thursday, the Crucifixion on Good Friday, and the Day of Resurrection on Easter – has been strong in the Christian tradition going all the way back to New Testament times.  The entire “middle section” of the Gospel According to Luke – starting in chapter 9 and ending in chapter 18 – was constructed and written as an account of Jesus and his disciples on the way to Jerusalem and those climactic days and events.

As he traveled about with his loyal band of disciples – both men and a considerable number of women, who, Luke tells us, “provided for them out of their resources” (chapter 8, verse 3) – one of the common occurrences was for people to ask, “Who is this guy?”  Is he a prophet, a magician, a faith healer, just another of the always-showing-up-at-your-door missionaries, yet another itinerant rabbi with a charismatic personality, the awaited-for-centuries Messiah/Deliverer sent by God….the divine Son of God?

What’s your shtick (act, adopted persona, what are you up to), Jesus of Nazareth and your merry band; are you a mensch (good and honorable person) or a putz (fool….and other possibilities I won’t mention)?  Not that Jewish people of the first century in Palestine spoke Yiddish (and neither do I, and have probably ventured beyond the limit of my confidence).  In fact, when the great John the Baptist heard from his prison cell what Jesus was doing in his “show on the road,” Matthew’s Gospel says that he sent the question-of-the-day by means of his own disciples, “Are you the One who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” (chapter 11)

People are always looking for something to believe in, or even more likely, someone in whom they can put their trust. And for some reason that largely escapes me, discerning reader – maybe you have your finger on this pulse better than I – believing and trusting in someone too often seems to result in a suspension of intelligence, personal judgment, essential critical thinking, and that peskily-elusive “common sense” I repeatedly post about.  Archimedes (3rd century BC) shouldn’t have walked around with his famous lantern seeking to find and illuminate an honest man – talk about a “fool’s errand” – he should have located that missing, uncommon, “common sense.”

All of which leads me up to courtroom testimony in the tragic “sweat lodge” deaths at the Angel Valley retreat center in Sedona, Arizona, back on October 9, 2010 (see my post on “dqhall1″ for March 7, 2011).  In response to a litigator’s questions about why did you allow James Arthur Ray to “keep you” in the life-threatening heat and steam that took the lives of three of your companions, an earnest witness/survivor replied, “Because he was my mentor and leader.”  Until the bodies starting falling, even in the excruciating, life-smothering, oppressive environment of the so-called “sweat lodge,” that witness and all the others in there “put their faith and trust” in someone who abused that trust to an extreme degree….and suspended what little common sense they may have had in the process.

Why is that need to believe in someone and give control of your life and well-being to them so strong?  How empty and desperate and hungering do you have to be to close your mind happily to rational thought?  Why do seemingly intelligent and able people patter after “authority figures” who are transparently nothing but truth-denying, fact-twisting, hate-spewing, bigots, bullies, and boors?  Christians would claim that there is one Messiah sent by God and that this is one of his sacred seasons; why do some of those same people seek false prophets, self-proclaimed “messiahs,” “saviors for profit?”

I’m well aware of the fact that there are answers and explanations expertly offered to these questions.  In fact, some years ago I read John Dean’s excellent “expose,” if you will, Conservatives Without Conscience (2006) which presented from the perspective of a former, highly-placed, conservative “insider” the rise in the last quarter of a century of “right-wing,” authoritarian fundamentalism in American political and social life.

Dean does a fine job of addressing the question of what is the denial of critical thinking and independent judgment in favor of authoritarianism all about?  Why do people feel a need to deny their own welfare and good in order to put their trust in someone who doesn’t deserve it….who cares not for the safety, decency, liberty and equality upon which our country and we all depend?  Only five years later, his book is still very pertinent; and I recommend it to you.

There are others, by the way, that helpfully criticize the self-serving gurus on the left, the falsely-liberal, manipulative voices that some put their trust in; and we should probably take a brief look at those another time.  But today it’s “authoritarianism” and “I need another person to believe in, even in whose hands I willingly place my life.”  And the result is the not-so-Happy Valley tragedy, the Jamestown horror (1978), selling your home and possessions to camp on a mountaintop in the Ozarks and await The End (1920′s); and drinking poison in Rancho Santa Fe, California, so that your liberated spirit can catch a ride on an invisible spaceship hiding behind the Halle-Bop comet (1997).

Expert explanations and answers or not, it still boggles and distresses my mind and soul.  Come on, folks, believe with rational and critical thought in God if you will; believe in yourself; believe in those who obviously and truly love you and more than merit your love in return; believe in the soon-to-arrive Easter bunny if you want – that’s probably harmless enough, except for over-indulging in all that chocolate and hard-boiled eggs.  But never, never, suspend logic, reason, your personal and independent judgment based upon facts, whatever shred of uncommon “common sense” you may possess….to take a “leap of faith” with some self-glorifying “mentor and leader” who is not about to catch you.

(The Rev. Dr.’s Musings on Nature, Life, God…. may not be reprinted, whether in whole or in part, without prior permission of the author.  The use of some posts may involve compensation agreements with publications, or persons, who may wish to use them for publishing purposes.)

Nelson Mandela’s cell, Robben Island, South Africa