The Failed History & Unknown Future of Metanoia

I grew up in the deep south. It's the part of America where the shade of the oak and pecan tree is filled with the familiar hum of the cicada. Where the humidity is suffocating and a white Christmas is a child's innocent hope for a winter snow that never falls... just an old song from the years gone by.

My mother was a child of the 60's. She was born in '45. Perhaps she had it rougher than she passed down to me. I can't really say now because she's passed on and we never really got into those details. She usually spent her time glorifying her hippie days and the music that swirled through her ears as she recounted days of heavy pot smoking which induced hallucinations that led to conversations with fire hydrants. Fuzzy memories of fuzzy feelings being told over a joint with some 12 year old kids. An obvious crime of child abuse nowadays, but to my friends the coolest mom one could dream of. In her final years she would be stricken with the inescapable burden of guilt for indulging her addictions with her kids.

In time, the joint was eclipsed by powder on a mirror for the kiddies and a bump in a spoon for herself. I was only 13 then, but I knew this was wrong. I knew it was as illegal as when she took us all to go break into cars and played getaway driver, as illegal as when she used us as accomplices to rob my uncles house, much larger a crime than asking me to shoplift cigarettes from Krogers, but not as personal as picking the pockets of my drunken stepfather as he snored on the sofa. By 14 I was in a youth prison having gotten myself arrested for robbing a gas station, but it was the escape I needed from the streets, gangs, and crime... of life in the inner city. No more gun shots heard over the screeching tires of a drive-by or acid trips gone sour as I pointed my unloaded .22 at my raging stepfather that had no idea I was frying my brain with some acid my mom had invested in. It's pretty quiet in a concrete box.

I finally reached my epiphany when a jailer listened to my story of how I'd come to be there and questioned why I didn't think I had a bad mother. I hadn't until then. It was all I'd known and I was only 14. I never thought of anything really. I was just a mess. One question started a change. This is where I experienced Metanoia. In the confines of shackles and 10ft fences topped with concertina wire. I began to read the Bible first and found myself a wretched sinner, but I already knew that. I didn't start to do much about that for around 20 years.

My whole paradigm changed in prison. I think that's the goal of forced confinement. It's the imprisonment of the liberty of our bodies in an attempt to free the mind. Sadly, most don't reach this point as they wait like dogs in the pound, hoping to be let out to roam the streets again. Like a dog returning to its vomit to indulge in the half-digested mess they already tasted the first time around.

I started reading a lot of books because that's what you do there. Most read novels and fiction, but I caught the history bug when I read Alistair Cooke's America. I was intrigued by the history of my nation, the insight of the founding fathers and the sacrifices of early American settlers and the tragedies of the Native American peoples. Jefferson, Madison, Tecumseh, Grant... these were the people I met. I read the Federalist Papers and Freud trying to find my history and get a grip on my future. Some things worked out and I when I got out I went to college, but I squandered all I had worked for and lost my scholarship. I'd become a college dropout. Not much hope for dropouts, I'd heard.

Fast forward... two kids later with no way to secure meaningful employment because of my record and a broke down Jeep finds us here together on Steemit, your eyes reading into my life in the most candid of ways. Perhaps I will get a following and the LORD will shine his grace on me with some new opportunities. Possibly not. HIS WILL BE DONE, you know? It's all part of a plan laid out before the moment time began. Maybe these will just be footnotes able to be recalled digitally when my mind fails, but then maybe something more. Either way, I always want everyone to know that I'm thankful you took the time to read my work. After all, I'm just some anonymous figure... not even an avatar just the silhouette of a man with the screen-name of a huge idea that we all should embrace.

Written by Metanoia
Image credit: metanoiadigital.com