The night I was taken away from it all

 It was twenty-five years ago tonight that for the very first time I was sent to a psychiatric hospital.

The bipolar disorder had started during the preceding winter, but I didn't know that's what it was (it would be another four years before that diagnosis was handed to me).  I had been manic most of the winter and then the depression - what I came to call " the dark fountain" - decided that it was time for it to show itself.  The death of my grandmother toward the end of March intensified the blackness.  All I came to think about was death and dying.  Everywhere I looked I saw dead people waiting to happen.  It was a dark fountain that was smothering me, driving me to the brink.

It got bad enough that one night some friends took me to the hospital in Burlington.  The doctors there said that I was having intense depression.  They were worried about my safety, afraid that I might do something to myself.  And so it was that they signed orders to have me taken involuntarily to John Umstead, a mental hospital northeast of Raleigh.  I got to call Dad before I was to leave the hospital, so my family knew where I was going to.

A cop came in a short while later.  He took me out to his cruiser.  We were five minutes down I-40 when his radio crackled to life and he was instructed to turn back around to the hospital and pick up another patient: another "compassionate", the situation was called.  So we returned to the hospital.  The officer opened the back door and told me to come out and he said he had to put handcuffs on me.  I was horrified: I'd never been handcuffed before.  I asked if I could just stay in the car and he said that was against the rules.  So I had cold carbon steel slapped on my wrists for the first time in my life.  We went back into the hospital though the emergency entrance.  I did my best to hide the handcuffs from view, but nobody seemed to notice anyway.

A few minutes later the new patient, a young lady in her early twenties, was brought out.  The cop put handcuffs on her too.  And so he escorted us out and into the back seat of the car and we took off.

"Hi," the girl told me.  "I'm Tracy.  I'm crazy."

She began telling me about how her parents thought she was going to cut herself again.  She told me about sticking pins and needles into her bare arm.  I asked her why did she do that.  "Oh, just to feel something," she told me.  Tracy kept talking for the whole ride.

It took about an hour to get to John Umstead.  We were taken inside.  Tracy was met by two orderlies who took her down one way and I never saw her again.  The officer took the cuffs off of me and I was taken down the other way.

I was brought to a room and told to take my clothes off.  I did, behind a cloth screen so nobody had to look at me without attire.  My shirt and jeans were taken away, my shoes too.  They let me keep my underwear.  I was given pajamas and "grippy" socks to put on.

A short while later a psychiatric nurse came into the room to give me a preliminary examination.  She asked some questions.  She also gave me a series of numbers and asked me to remember them.  A little while later she asked me what the numbers were and I recited them back to her.

She asked me "Who is the President of the United States?"

Sometimes when things are dark, I fall back into using humor.  That's what I tried to do this time, because this was about as bleak as things could get...

"Hillary Clinton," I replied.

The nurse gave me a harsh look and I could immediately tell that I had answered way wrong.  I quickly told her that I was kidding.  "I'm just really nervous right now," I added.

She made a note of what I had told her.

She finished the exam.  By this point it was approximately 2 a.m. on Friday morning.  I was brought to the ward. Taken to a room.  There were two beds inside, but nobody else was in there.  The assistant told me that if I needed anything that I could come to the nurses station down the hallway.

They had let me keep my book bag all this time.  There had been nothing in it but my Bible.  I sat up on the bed and crossed my legs, and took out my Bible and held it close to my chest.  I started rocking back and forth, my Bible a talisman against the night.  Whatever gets you through the darkness.  I tried to pray, but the words would not come.  All I could think about was that I was two hours away from home, in a part of the state where I knew nobody.  I was in a mental hospital, the last place that I had ever expected to be.  The depression was playing on the edges of my mind but I was too frightened and confused to really let that overwhelm me at the moment.

I looked out from my window.  There was a darkened courtyard beyond the glass.  I stood there, and suddenly thought that this was like that scene toward the beginning of The Godfather Part II, where the child Vito Corleone is locked up in the room at Ellis Island because he's too sick to proceed on to America.  Looking out his window at the distant Statue of Liberty, young Vito starts to sing.

I was locked up too.  Away from the world that I knew.  But I couldn't sing.  

"Especially," I reminded myself, "not in Italian."

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I'm starting to feel like this guy...

And hey, I've got a dog too.

The Tramp.  Charlie Chaplin's classic character.  Seemingly forever making his way from one set of experiences on to another.  A life of un-sedentary misadventures.  And that's where I've wound up once more, also.

I've had to find out the hard way that my training and experiences in regard to working with adults in the mental health field, do not necessarily translate into something that can also work with some children.  And neither is my academic background as a student of secondary education pedagogy, plus time spent teaching middle schoolers, very adaptable toward helping young people with severe special needs.

There is much more that could be said about what happened but I'll keep those thoughts to myself.  I believe that I was giving it my best, and I can hold my head high about that.  I'm a very hard worker, I always give something not less than my greatest effort.  A lot of people will attest to that.  But as friends have reminded me in the past two days it's not a perfect world.  I have to try to remember that.

In the meantime, I'm trying to keep hold to my faith.  Trying to cease questioning myself about if I am not thankful enough, because I truly believe that I was thankful and still am.  Is all of this some kind of test from God?  Is He wanting to see how well I hold up under the pressure of it all?  Is He entertained, by watching me holding on by my fingernails for the past few years?

I know.  What I'm going through right now isn't peculiar to me.  A lot of people in recent years have had to struggle.  Many are having it even worse off than I'll ever know.  There again, I should be thankful.  For the time being I still have a roof over my head.  I'm not feasting every night but neither am I starving.  I have my beloved dog Tammy (who is lately determined to drive me batty with her new ball that she keeps getting stuck underneath everything!).  Mental issues aside I am in very excellent health for someone who will be 51 next month.  Some don't get to say such things.  So I suppose on a level playing field, I'm doing all right, more or less.

I just wish that I could once again have a career with meaning and purpose that would provide for my needs.  I'm not interested in being "wealthy".  It doesn't take much to make me happy.  And I'd seriously love a real crack at having that.

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For anyone in a relationship...

Writing my book compelled me to examine a lot of situations that have come about in my life.  Especially where other people are involved.  I've forced myself to take a long and hard and on occasion very difficult look at how I've related to them.  And that includes all the times... all of them... when I have wound up hurting others.

I had a feeling from the start of writing this over ten years ago that my book would in many ways be an act of penance.  That feeling was not unwarranted.  In the end, the manuscript I finished two months ago is replete with the longing for atonement.  I have sinned against God and I have brought about grief to so many people.  And I had I been a wiser person, maybe some or even all of that could be avoided.

It would be easy to say that the bipolar disorder was the cause of it all.  Yet that's not entirely accurate.  Yes, being a manic depressive has complicated relations with other people.  It has wrecked havoc with my thoughts and my emotions and brought me down so many times.  It turned me into someone who was the furthest thing from the person I really am.  But in the final analysis, it was my own weaknesses that brought about ruin.

I see now where my greatest failing was to communicate.

I've only been in two relationships during my lifetime.  One of them resulted in marriage that ended in divorce, the other was a dating relationship that lasted a few years before it also ended.  Each of them could have benefitted greatly if I had not been so withdrawn in sharing my thoughts and feelings and desires and fears.  I thought that I was strong enough to not have to do those to the utmost.  And that was was a great mistake.

I don't know if God will ever let me be in another relationship.  It would make me very happy if He does.  It would have to be someone very special.  I know the kind of woman who I am looking for.  I haven't found her yet.  If she exists and somehow our paths were to cross and we end up in a place where we find that God is leading us into holy matrimony, then I want to be completely open with her.  I need for each of us to do that with one another.  Including sharing our weaknesses, as hard as that might be to do.  I didn't do that before.  Maybe if I had realized that a long time ago it would have prevented a lot of anguish and heartbreak.

I should not have tried to do it alone.  A relationship is two people, come together, out of mutual love and respect.  In the Judeo-Christian tradition this is taken to mean that a love culminates with a man and woman become as one in the eyes of God.  That means the totality of each person, given to God and to one another, lumps and all.

Maybe it took going through decades of pain to come to a point where I could realize that.

If you love someone and are committed to that person, respect them and trust them enough that you can be open with them.  About anything and everything.  Especially about your weaknesses.  I believe that your beloved will understand.  And that he or she will fully accept you.  Being in love means you have each other's back, no matter how ugly or broken things may seem.  But you can't get through that without complete and utter honesty with one another.

That's just something I'm feeling led to share tonight, while looking over a particularly grueling chapter of my book.

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A new op-ed every week: About that first one...

So last weekend after vowing to write an op-ed piece every week this year, I composed the first of the series.  It exists, honest!  I submitted it to a site that I've got a lot of respect for.  There was some correspondence about it but the last was a few days ago.  There hasn't been any word since and it hasn't been published.

I'm going to chalk it up as still being momentum forward.  It has been more than two years since I wrote like this so I'm a bit out of practice.  What I'm going through now is "therapy" as a writer.  When Dad SEVERELY injured his hand in a farming accident forty years ago this coming fall, it was months before he was in any shape to even hold a pen.  I've been injured too, in a fashion.  What did I expect, that I would be published again after not exercising that particular region of my gray matter?

I'm going to give the site a few more days, and if they don't publish it then I'll post it here.  Meanwhile there are two ideas for essays that I have in mind.  I'm going to work on those and send them out.  And then, we'll see what happens.

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My New Year Vow: An op-ed a week

Writing is my calling.  Writing is my gift, ever since my ninth grade English teacher told me that on our last day of class.  It is something that nobody could ever take away from me.  It is something of my very own, that was supposed to always be with me.

And I’ve neglected it horribly these past few years.

I’ve been spending so much of my waking moments keeping my head above water, trying to keep from drowning because of real life matters, that I’ve not devoted anything to my passion and true career.  It simply hasn’t figured at all in my life.  It’s been more than two years since I wrote an op-ed piece, and I had to give up a plum gig at The Western Journal, things became so rough on my end.

Life was so much better when I was working as a mental health professional.  I was going in every day, getting to truly help people have more fulfilling lives.  I was making a difference in this world.  And then I could go home and spend my own hours with my writing.  And that’s the way things would have stayed had the economy not turned so wretched and forced me to find higher paying employment elsewhere.  Employment that has been unreliable, it’s turned out.

So, for the past couple of years my writing has suffered.  And then this past August I decided it was time to finally complete the memoir that I began in 2014.  For three solid months if I wasn’t working or eating or sleeping or taking care of my dog, I was writing.  I went DAYS without showering, I was so “in the zone” with my manuscript.  Until finally in mid-November the first draft was completed.

It was a grand return to form.  And I don’t want it to stop.  I’m back in the saddle again and the last thing I want to do is to find myself slid out of it once more.

So I’m going to commit myself to something for 2025: writing a new op-ed piece every week.  Hopefully for publication elsewhere, but here on this blog if nowhere else.  I need to plunge back into the fray, and involve myself again in the larger world.  Maybe if I do that my writing chops will come back full-bore.  Maybe I can also overcome the indifference to things that I have come to feel.  Perhaps it will even improve my already existing manuscript: something I have been told is good already, but I know it can be better.  And I really do want to see it on a bookstore’s shelf someday.  A story about mental illness, swindling operations, how to make a movie, and twelve months crossing America deserves a shot at traditional publication and that’s going to be a goal for this year too.

I guess this is all a roundabout way of saying that y’all can expect some more writing here and elsewhere for awhile.  A few years ago I did a blog post each day for Lent.  If I can do that, I believe I can sit down and write a new opinion piece every week.  It may not be my best work especially just jumping back into battle… but it will be some movement forward.  And that’s what matters most.

Look for the first piece soon.

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Christmas 2024: A Tradition

Every year at Christmas I used to leave this site for a few days.  Just sort of to take in the holiday and enjoy it with friends and family.  And the last post that I would make was a reprint of column that I wrote for Elon's student newspaper.  It kind of became a holiday tradition of mine to publish it again, now twent-six years after it first ran.

I'll be honest.  I'm just not feeling much of the Christmas spirit this year.  There are a lot of reasons for that, which I haven't talked openly.  Maybe if I share this, it will make me feel better.  Perhaps it might lift up the hearts of other people who deserve to be happy.

Well, here it is.  Merry Christmas.  See y'all soon.

Originally published in The Pendulum, Elon University, 12/03/1998

Celebrating the Christmas season means celebrating the memories

Chris Knight
Columnist

 
     Some of the best memories that we take through life are about the times we cherish the most. And sometimes, it doesn’t take much to bring back the joy.

     Last Friday as I was driving around Greensboro, the all-time coolest Christmas song ever came over the speakers.

     Who knows what this genius recording artist’s name is? Does it really matter? Whoever he is, he’ll forever be remembered as giving us the immortal sound of “Dogs Singing Jingle Bells”:

 
Arf arf arf,
Arf arf arf,
Arf Arf Whoof Whoof Whuf…

 
     Ahh... you know how it goes.

     And there’s the ever-beuh-beuh-beauh-beautiful rendition of Porky Pig singing “Blue Christmas” and the Chipmunks and of course “Weird Al” Yankovic’s “Christmas at Ground Zero,” but hearing those dogs singing “Jingle Bells...” ahhhhh.

     It brought me back to the very first time I heard that: on the radio coming back from school just before Christmas in 1982. I was in third grade at the time. And it brought back memories of the Christmas we had.

     It was cold and very cloudy. I remember that because Santa had brought me a telescope and I didn’t get to use it that night. Which wasn’t too big a worry, ‘cause me and my sister had our brand-new Atari 2600 to play with!

     Another Christmas memory: To this day, I’ll never forgive Anita for the pounding she gave me in “Combat.” I don’t care how fancy Sega or the Playstation get... they’ll never touch the 4-bit pleasures of the Atari!

     There have been many a Christmas since then, and I remember each one well, for all the little things they had with them.

     I’ll never forget Mom and Dad taking me and my sister to see Santa Claus at the mall in ‘84. That morning Dad asked if I’d come with him to cut firewood, so we rode the tractor into the woods. There had been snow earlier in the week, which lay around us in the crisp, cold morning.

     Dad also brought his 30-30 rifle, why I still don’t know. After we had the wood loaded, Dad asked if I wanted to try shootin’ the gun.

     There I was, a ten-year old kid, holding what looked like an anti-aircraft cannon in my tiny hands. Well, I aimed at this tree like Dad told me to, and pulled the trigger.

     To this day I cannot describe the colors that flashed before my eyes, or the sound in my ears. When my existence finally returned, I was flat on my back in the snow, and blood was gushing from between my eyes where the scope had hit my nose from the backfire.

     That night Santa saw the bandages and said “Ho ho hoooo, and what happened to you, little fellow?”

     “I got shot, Santa,” was the only thing I knew to say.

     Hey, was I gonna lie to the Big Man? Uh-uh, no way was I gonna lose all that loot!

     The following year’s Christmas I remember for many things, but especially feeding the young calves on our farm. It would be the last year our family would be running a dairy farm, and I had started helping with some of the work around the barn.

     Dad set up a Christmas tree in the milking room, with wrapped-up boxes beneath it.

     Tinsel hung from the front doors of the barn. And there was something about the feel of the place there, that has always held a special place in my heart, as if we knew that there would not be another Christmas like this one.

     I wish there had been another Christmas on the farm, because there’s something I wish I could have seen. And as silly as some people might find this, I really believe that it happens.

     You see, if you go out at midnight on Christmas Eve, you will see all the animals in the farmyard, and in the fields, and in the forests, and wherever else they may be, stop where they are.

     And then they kneel.

     They kneel in remembrance for another night, long ago. It was Christmas, but how many people could know it then?

     Nothing remarkable, to be sure: Caesar had decreed a census through the land, and each man went with his family to his town.

     One man in particular took his wife, a young woman quick with child. But there was no room for them at the inn. So that night, in a dirty and filthy stable and surrounded by animals, a child was born.

     You see, it’s easy for us to forget. At this time of the year, we are too overwhelmed by the consumption and the material and the glitter and all the customs that come with Christmas.

     And it’s too easy for us to forget that Christmas is, before everything else, a birthday.

     But the animals, who watched over Him as He lay as a newborn babe, two millenia ago... the animals have not forgotten.

     And so they kneel every Christmas and give glory to the newborn king, and in awe that God would send His Son to live among us in the greatest act of love.

     And to teach us many things, but especially to “love one another”. And to bridge the gap between man and God.

     The birth of Jesus Christ: the greatest Christmas present there will ever be. His birth, which would give mankind the greatest present it could ever ask for.

     Who in the world on that night could know the price that this present would someday have?

     Heaven and Earth sang praises to His glory on that night. The animals have always remembered that night. And Heaven and Earth still praise and sing unto Him.

     And if you only take a little time out from how busy things become at this part of the year, you can hear the singing, too. And it is a great temptation to join in that chorus.

     And perhaps in hearing, we will not forget the real meaning of Christmas, either.

     This Christmas Eve night I plan to be outside, with the same telescope that I got for Christmas all those years ago, and trying to envision a bright star over Bethlehem. Around midnight, I’m going to take a walk over to my aunt’s farm.

     Merry Christmas. Peace on Earth, and goodwill toward men.

Dedicated to the memory of W.C. “Mutt” Burton, for whom Christmas was always “In My Bones.”

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A Christmas Story: The movie about who we were, and could still be again

I have a lot of fond recollections stemming from A Christmas Story, that 1983 film about nine-year-old Ralphie Parker (delightfully played by Peter Billingsley) and his ever-hapless quest to obtain a Red Ryder air rifle.  I was in fourth grade when this movie came out and we - Mom and Dad, my sister, and my best friend Chad and I - saw it on its opening day, at the movie theater at the old Carolina Circle Mall in Greensboro.  A few weeks later our Cub Scout troop made an outing one Saturday and saw it, so A Christmas Story is the first movie that I saw more than once during its theatrical run.

Then a few months later, in the weeks leading up to my tenth birthday, Dad started hinting that he had a special present for me.  He wouldn't tell me anything about it.  Mom did tell me that he had told her and that she had thought it was going to be a real treat.  Well, we had my birthday party at Roll-a-Bout skating rink in Eden, and almost my entire class came.  The last present to unwrap was from Dad, and my anticipation by then had intensified dramatically.  I took the wrapping off at one end and saw the word "Daisy" and knew instantly what it was.

It was indeed an official A Christmas Story edition Red Ryder air rifle.  With a compass in the stock and that thing that tells time.  And when my classmates saw it they all started singing "You'll shoot your eye out!  You'll shoot your eye out!"

What a beautiful time that was, for all of us.

I still have that Red Ryder rifle, too.  More than forty years after Dad gave it to me.  It's in excellent physical condition and a few years ago I got off a few shots from it.  It works perfectly.  It, along with the telescope that I got for Christmas in 1982, are very precious artifacts from my childhood, and I've kept them in great working order all this time.

I don't yet own a "major award" but it's safe to say that my life, especially at this time of year, has been touched by this movie.  In some profound ways and others, more subtle.  And with growing older has come ever-fresh appreciation for A Christmas Story.  And maybe it's because I'm a life-long student of history...

This is truly a special film and that it is set in 1940 makes it even poignant.  1940 was the last Christmas that America got to have before the attack on Pearl Harbor.  That event marked the United States' final and irrevocable entry into world affairs.  After that attack, nothing was the same anymore.  We became a very different people.  We had to.  There was no choice but to "grow up" and accept that we had a role to play in the matters of mankind.

A Christmas Story is not just a tale about one family.  It's about who we all were as the greater American family.  A Christmas Story depicts one boy's playful plight in the final days of American innocence.  There would be no Christmas like that again, ever.  That was the last Christmas that a kid like Randy could get a toy such as a metal zeppelin, symbol of German industry that it had become.

I've wondered sometimes what happened to the characters of A Christmas Story the next Christmas, as people from sea to shining sea prepared to go to war full-bore.  What a completely different holiday it would have been for each of them.  The Parkers and their neighbors emerged from the Great Depression seemingly none the worse for wear.  How would their holiday be with the gloom of global conflict hanging over their house on Cleveland Street?

That last shot of Ralphie holding his beloved Red Ryder air rifle, when he says that it was the best Christmas present he ever got... he's not kidding.  When he tells us that, he's really saying to us that this was the final time he got to have Christmas with childlike wonder and that his BB gun is a precious relic of that time in his life.  I haven't seen the recent sequel but it wouldn't surprise me if Ralphie kept his Red Ryder after all these years, as a sacred trophy of his childhood.

A Christmas Story is a movie about who we were at our very best, before the larger world intruded upon our relative peace and calm.  It is a memorial to a bygone era of American society that there has been no going back to.  But I like to think that there is still a bit of that spirit at work amongst us.  Movies like A Christmas Story play a part in keeping the flame going.  And it is for that reason which I believe makes A Christmas Story a true classic film.

In the end, A Christmas Story is about something wonderful we once had, and have lost along the way.  But I like to think that somehow, we might still have it again.

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Well, it is a fantasy movie after all...

This is one of my favorite scenes in motion picture history.  From the 1982 film Conan the Barbarian.  Conan (Arnold Schwarzenegger) has just freed Subotai (Gerry Lopez) from certain death.  Here we see them having dinner together.

I'll let the scene speak for itself.

It's two fast friends, enjoying a meal in each other's company.  And the conversation turns to religion.

There is no bitterness or anger.  Not an iota of hatred between the two men.  They are simply discussing their respective faiths: Subotai's in the Four Winds, and Conan's belief in Crom.

I like to think that Conan and Subotai each give the other something to think about.  Conan certainly seems impressed by the point Subotai is making about "the everlasting sky".

Conan the Barbarian is a fantasy movie.  It is very tragic that people in real life can not speak to one another about their differing beliefs without descending into scorn and hatred.  We don't think anymore.  We only react.

I don't believe that either this candidate or that one is bringing about division among the people.  The people seem to enjoy the division.  It gives them hatred of others.  It justifies their desire to destroy people who don't believe as they do.  They like to hate.  They enjoy it when someone else is hurting.

"The other candidate" is merely the rationale that they use to justify their bitterness.  Hate is a personal choice on the part of the individual.  I believe that of the candidates for President there is only one who has expressed the desire and ability to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States, especially in regard to the Bill of Rights.  The other candidate does not and indeed has long expressed contempt and disdain for the Constitution.  But I am not going to "hate" that candidate for it.  I choose to not cast a vote for that candidate, and to support the candidate who I have many reasons to trust will honor the Constitution (especially in matters such as the border issue).

But I'm not going to get sucked into unwise wrath toward anyone about it.

Conan and Subotai.  Sitting together eating Lord knows what, talking about their theologies.  And appreciating each other.

Like I said, one of my favorite scenes in a movie.  So much that can be taken from watching it.

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Power or Wisdom? Stop asking God to interfere with politics

In searching around for churches in this area, obviously I'm looking at their websites.  I'm studying a few things, particularly their various statements of belief.  In that regard I'll simply say this: there are already a number of places of worship which I regrettably cannot enter.  It would be like bringing a blowtorch aboard the Hindenburg.

No disrespect to those places is meant.  I believe they and I worship the same God.  We differ however in aspects of that which while ultimately meaningless, are as unavoidable in this carnal realm as they are indicative of the imperfect nature of the church as the body of Christ upon this earth.

As I was saying, I'm perusing the websites of places of worship.  Looking for certain qualities.  And with the advent of streaming video I'm now able to watch and listen to recent sermons.  Sort-of like the Esper machine: getting to search a place without actually being there.

(Wait, did I just make a Blade Runner reference...?!?)

So a few nights ago, with nothing else to do (because of tech issues keeping me from my AI work, grrrr...) I was back at ogling church websites.  I literally have told Google to search for "churches near me" and it produces a map with every place of worship and, if available, their website addresses.  How convenient!

There is one church a few miles away from here that I didn't know anything about, other than it's a Baptist congregation unaffiliated with any larger contingent of the faithful.  I read over the site, and didn't find anything that would be objectionable.  It went down on my list of possible places to visit.  And it would have likely stayed there until I got around to checking it out in person...

Then I watched this past Sunday's worship service and listened to the message being preached.

Folks, there are very few things that will have me more walking out, however impolite it may seem, than a sermon that turns blatantly political.

Especially as "conservative" as the message I listened to.  Because conscientious conservatives really ought to know better.

The entirety of the pastor's message was about the evils of liberalism.  I don't mean liberalism in the spiritual sense, which would have been fine and even expected to be touched upon at various times.  No, I mean liberalism as in the temporal notion.

It was using the authority of the pastor to abuse the name of God for the furtherance of a political ideology.  Something I have LONG believed is wrong.

So it is that this church gets a hard pass from me.

It's like this: I believe that each of us as citizens has the responsibility to choose our leaders in representative government.  But it is WRONG for those with spiritual responsibility to decree who it is that his congregants should vote for.  And that is what I saw in this message.

What should a pastor or other minister preach about politics, then?  I do not believe the issue is completely off the table.  I don't believe that the elders of yore would have thought so, either.

I also don't believe that it makes a difference to God as to who we ask Him to favor in our elections.  Asking Him to please let Donald Trump win in November is going to mean as much to God as is asking Him to let the Patriots win another Super Bowl.  Indeed it's even more ridiculous to ask Him to favor some candidates over others.  Doing so would violate the concepts of free will and choice.  God has given us choice all along.  He has also given those of us in the free world the right to choose our leaders.

For good or ill, the onus is upon us, and not God, to well pick our representatives and executives.

So, if a minister has some authority to expound upon political matters, what is left if the endorsement of candidates is wildly inappropriate?

How about this instead: rather than trying to sway his listeners to vote either this way or that, a minister instead leads his flock in seeking WISDOM toward making their choices at the ballot box.

Isn't that what we as Christians should be seeking in all of our matters?  That God might liberally (pun shamelessly intended) pour upon us the capacity to discern wisely and to act upon that wisdom with a resolute mind and determined will. 

Should not that be what we are to pray for, instead of for our favorite candidates winning at the polls?

We can choose to have wisdom.  Or we can choose to crave power.  We have been doing the latter for so long that we've practically forgotten about wisdom at all.  And we have suffered for that.

It is not God who has inflicted the metaphorical poxes upon our land.  He is merely letting us have what we vote for.  Free choice, remember?

I would posit that it has been a lack of lusting for wisdom which has brought America to the brink of calamity.  And it has been many if not most of her Christians who have greatly encouraged that folly.  It is the Christians of this land who should have been the very first to appeal to Heaven for wisdom and discernment.  That is the vessel of true power.  Not power itself, which we have deluded ourselves into believing we must wield.

Because in America at least, God has already granted her people all the power that they could possibly require.  But how to exercise that power?  That is something that we should have been petitioning God for all along.

Would it at all hurt us to start fervently oraying for change of hearts and minds instead of obsessively praying for change in Washington?

I know what is that I am praying for.  And it is not for a candidate to win.

I will pray, that the people of this land lay aside their appetites for force and power.  And instead that they would use the authority granted them with discernment and wisdom.

God WILL grant us those things, if we ask Him.

But He is not going to be moved when we ask Him to interfere directly with the politicks of these United States.

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Baptism: It should be more than just water

The church I visited today had a baptismal ceremony.

And as I've thought for a very long time now about the sacrament and is often the case, it was WAY too brief.

It was three people being baptised (I prefer that word with a lovely "s" rather than a jagged "z") and the entire ceremony lasted less than a minute and a half.

Were I a stranger to seeing such things... and there are MANY for whom the act of baptism WOULD be an alien spectacle... I would be absolutely bewildered at the brevity of so mystifying a ritual.  Clearly, some context is in order.  WHY would one subject himself or herself to being immersed in a vessel of water, before a cloud of witnesses?

I think we are depriving ourselves as the body of Christ when we reduce baptism to so few fleeting moments.

A baptism should be much more than a quick dunking in the baptistery (or the "cow trough" as it resembled at this particular congregation).  It should be a time of sharing with the spiritual family one is joining about what Christ has done in one's life to bring him or her to that moment.  It should be preceded by a minute or so of testimony by the candidate himself or herself, in their own words, expressing faith and gratitude and hope and... well, whatever it is that God might place on their heart to say.  

I am not alone in believing this.  Many churches in Great Britain, Canada, and Australia give each of their candidates for baptism several moments to address the congregation and speak of what God has done to bring them to have faith in Him, before being baptised.  It is a beautiful prelude to the act of baptism itself.

But in America the vast majority of the time, we don't do that.  Everything that God means to us comes down to a baptismal candidate merely muttering the word "yes" when asked if he or she is saved.  Maybe that suffices for some people and it's okay if it is.  But there are others who might have more they are led to say, and they are not afforded the opportunity to do that at the time when it would be most meaningful and appreciated.

Baptism in American churches has become like seemingly everything else in this land: fast and now.  And the body of Christ deprives itself of some nourishment when we treat this sacred act of obedience to God so.  It should be one of the common cords that bind us to one another and together, to the Lord we are pledging to serve as His bride.

That loses something precious when we reduce baptism to a quick plunge in the tank, without at least a few moments of testimony and gratitude for the body of believers to appreciate what God has done in the person's life... and to also be reminded to be thankful for their own salvation.

When I was in college at Elon, I attended a weekly worship service on campus.  It was a ministry of a nearby congregation.  There was a time of sharing and testimony around the beginning of each service.  A few moments of praise reports and prayer requests.  That was a very special time of worship, of drawing closer to Gods and each other.  I know that's not feasible for a larger congregation to manage during a single service (praise reports are often perhaps better suited for small groups), but testimony such as that edifies and encourages us as Christians.  It makes the act of worship something that more thoroughly fertilizes our faith, instead of simply showing up for an hour each week in the church sanctuary.

I can think of no better time of such sharing than those first few moments when one is about to scripturally become a vibrant and active member of the body of Christ on this earth.

It's NOT simply about joining a local body of believers.  Baptism is the ceremony that formally connects us to two millennia of believers, as well as to all of those who will come after us.

That merits more than a momentary getting oneself wet and nothing more than that.

Just something I'm feeling led to share this afternoon, for consideration by my brothers and sisters in Christ.

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Fifty

First photograph
March 31, 1974
Moses Cone Hospital
Greensboro, North Carolina

 

For a very long time I've believed that if you can make it to fifty without once getting told that you're "middle-aged" it means that you'll never have to be a grown-up.

Ahhhhh, so Fifty, we meet at last.  I've been waiting for you.  You thought I wouldn't make it this far but you were wrong.  You're like One-Eyed Willie from The Goonies: you laid out your traps but I got past them all.  And now here we are.

I shouldn't be here.  The odds have been against me from the very beginning.  All the way back to that delivery room on a rainy Sunday night in 1974 when I emerged from my mother's womb.  Not moving, not crying, not breathing.  It was twelve minutes after being born before air finally filled my lungs.  Fortunately the doctor who delivered me was a very good one.  In lesser hands and without the equipment that got rushed to the room, I wouldn't be here writing about it five full decades later.

There have also been the many situations and events that have transpired throughout the course of my life.  Everything from horrible car crashes to getting shot at.  Any one of those could have ended the temporal traipsings of one Robert Christopher Knight.

And then, there is the dominant element of my life these past twenty-five years: living with manic depression (or bipolar disorder, as I sometimes still call it).  The disease that has destroyed so much happiness and chance for joy.  There is literally no counting how many times I've wanted to die and put an end to the pain forever.  Too many of those times I tried to act on that desire.  I should be dead dozens of times over by now.

Yet here I am.

Many people, especially men, dread the prospect of turning fifty.  They try to cut deals with the universe.  Attempt to bargain with God, that He will give them just one more iota of youth before it all goes downhill.  They try to reason with Death, begging it to stave off the inevitable a little longer.

That's not me.  I've never had the luxury of getting to have a "mid-life crisis".  For me these past several decades, there has been no promise of tomorrow.  There has been little hope for a future of lasting happiness.  My entire life all this time has been in a crisis mode of some form or another, with no time to lament mortality.

Maybe that's part of the reason why I'm feeling so good today.

I am in the best shape that I've been in, in my entire life.  Physically I'm in excellent condition.  My metabolism is that of someone fifteen or twenty years younger.  People all the time mistake me for someone in his early thirties: something I never cease having loads of fun with!

It's mentally that I'm feeling most accomplished about though...

Mentally I am better than I was ten years ago and I want to believe that I'm not as good as I will be ten years from now.  I take my mental health very seriously.  This isn't something you can simply take meds for and see a counselor every few weeks.  You have to WORK, and work hard, to get to that place where you can function and then maintain that.

I'll never be where I'd like to be mentally - bipolar disorder will almost forever be a lurking monster waiting to lash out from the shadows - but I've come very far indeed.  If only I could have been the person I am now, fifteen or twenty years ago.  It would have saved myself and others a lot of grief.

When you're much better at fifty than you were at twenty-five, that is cause for celebration.

What can I say?  I don't smoke and I only drink once a year, when I toast Dad's memory on his birthday with a bottle of his favorite wine.  Despite the disease I try to maintain an upbeat and cheerful and friendly demeanor.  People often tell me that I never meet a stranger.  I've never stopped wanting to learn new things: something that has proven advantageous in the new career that I've recently embarked upon.

(Wish I could tell y'all about that but I literally can't.  All I'll say is that it's a job that's perfect for me, in a field of expertise that has only recently come about.  And I'm getting to use much of my experiences and skills and education toward it.  That also is a reason why I'm finding myself happier than I've thought I've had a right to be.)

Mostly though, I have to credit God.  I could not have come this far without Him and the grace He provides.  Especially in these past several months I've drawn closer to Him.  I'm not holding things against myself as much as I used to: things that I'm even more understanding were beyond my control.  I don't blame God for those anymore.  We aren't promised an easy life.  As long as we are on this earth there will be sickness and suffering.  But God has been faithful.  He has brought me a long way through the madness.  I am absolutely thankful to God, for what He has done in my life.

Maybe it's fitting that this year my birthday is on Easter Sunday.  Because Easter is a day where we celebrate new life, the passing away of darkness.  I feel alive this day, in every possible way.

So, today I turn fifty years old.  I'm cherishing it with all abandon.  Remembering what has come before and looking forward to what is still to come.  Perhaps I'll make it to eighty-eight, and be here to write about seeing Halley's Comet for the second time in my life.  I asked God for that in 1985, when the comet's last appearance was a letdown.  Maybe the next time will be better.

In the meantime, I've a new career and I'm well underway with my book project.  There are a few creative irons in the fire (including a film story that I'm looking for a writing partner to help turn into a real screenplay).  I have my dog Tammy.  I have been blessed with some remarkable friendships.  I have family that I never knew about until a few years ago.  I still have hope, that God might let me have a little family of my own someday.

Fifty, here I am.  And I am delighted to finally meet you.

 

 

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Lent 2024: A respite from blogging

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday: the beginning of the Lenten season.

There have been some years when I have observed Lent on this blog.  The first time, in 2006, I refrained from posting at all.  This blog was two years old then and it was a commitment to keep the content fresh and poppin'.  So no blogging for seven weeks presented a dire temptation to write something, to write anything.  But I believe that I came through it a better person, and a better writer at that.

Then two years ago I felt the need to participate in Lent again.  But this time I went in the dire opposite direction.  After leaving Reidsville in 2016 I let this site lapse a bit (for over a year and a half!) while I was getting things in my personal life taken care of.  I like to think that I came back to this blog a different and better individual.  But the damage was done and this site still hasn't regained the audience it once enjoyed.  Still, I write.  And I was writing with passion for Lent 2022: endeavoring to make one post each day during the season.  In the end there were 47 posts made from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday... and it was TOUGH!  But it was something that I needed to do.  God showed me that He hasn't let the gift He has given me lapse because of lack of use.  That was something I needed to see, and I am thankful that He bore me through it.

Now we are on the doorstep of Lent 2024.  And once again I am going to give up blogging for the next seven or so weeks.  It's going to take something dire to bring me back to this site until then (Joe Biden resigning or being removed from the presidency will probably not cut it).  I won't be actively looking for anything to post about.  But this is time when I will be writing.  I'm committing myself to finishing at least one new chapter for my book each week.  Hopefully more than that if the Muse is feeling kind.  In the past month I've written three major chapters.  I've let confidants read some of the work so far and without exception they wildly approved and said that they want to know more about my life story.  I'll give you this teaser: "When you're driving a few hundred miles to banish demons, you can find most of what you need at Walmart."

So I'm more or less going into "radio silence" on this blog.  Probably not so much on Twitter however: that will remain an occasional chronicle of my musings and observations.  I'm also trying to see if I can achieve having a thousand followers.  I want to think that it's possible by doing it the old fashioned way: "we uuuuurn it" (as John Houseman articulated the line).

Lent ends on Easter Sunday.  This year that falls on March 31st.  Which is an important date for me.  It will be my birthday and not only that but my fiftieth!  I'm facing it with pure abandon.  Too many people, especially men, treat fifty as something they must make a deal with God to avoid the ramifications of.  Me?  I'm thankful... DARN thankful... that I will have made it that far.  I should not be here writing these words.  By many accounts I should have been dead dozens of times over by now, especially by my own hand.  I have survived too much than to not be grateful to God and the people He has put into my life for helping to bring me this far along.  I don't know what the heck I'm going to blog about come Easter Sunday but I'm going to write the heck out of it.

So, that's what's going to be up for the next few weeks.  I won't have died (you'll know if if I do though, that is going to be posted on this site) or otherwise abandoned The Knight Shift.  I'm just focusing on spiritual matters more for the next month and a half or so.  And maybe as before, I'll come out of it a better person.

See y'all in forty days.

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A meditation upon Matthew 7:7

Every so often Matthew 7:7 comes to mind.  The verse reads (from the New International Version):

"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you."

 

 It comes to the fore of my thoughts when I think about my own salvation journey.  How it progressed from being a person very angry and bitter toward God, to realizing that He could not have been responsible for what happened to me, to appreciating His beautiful design of the universe, to believing that I could not possibly be reconciled with Him... on until I finally allowed him into my life as my Lord and Savior.

 

(Some people still don't think of my life in terms like that. I suppose they will always think of me as an "atheist" even though I never truly did not believe in God.  They want me to be what THEY expect me to be spiritually.  I guess that's on them.  I know where I stand with God, and it depends on no other person.)

 

I very much appreciate Matthew 7:7.  It could almost be my life verse, if I needed one.  But for the past several years I've pondered it a bit more.  And I've come to also appreciate the promise it holds.  One that I believe is of great import to us as believers.

 

"Seek and you will find."  To me those five words are a PROMISE.  That whoever is looking for God is going to find Him.  That's irrespective of "our" expectations.  We are told in scripture that there are some who will not believe that they served Christ when they did good for others... but God knows their hearts.  He knows when they were and even now are right in spirit and aligned with His will.

 

We can know when we ourselves have found His grace.  We should trust others that they also have His mercy.  But all too often we have no idea whatsoever how far along a person is in his or her own journey, or even if it's begun at all.

 

This verse tells me that we should trust God and His perfect will, that all who seek Him WILL find Him.  At the same time, we should orient ourselves toward His will that much more, so that His light and love shines in our own lives.  That might be the only witness for Christ that some, maybe many, will ever see.  Some will see the relationship with God that they have been looking for.  Others who don't know what exactly what they are looking for WILL recognize it and want the truth of Him.  They WILL find that. God has promised it.

 

We should live so that we have something pure and holy that cannot be evaded and ignored.  So that others might see that, and want it in their own lives.

 

God made us as believers to be a big reason why people seek Him in the first place.  We should embrace that role He has appointed for us.

(Image from Bible.com)

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