This week's dispatch is a small fragment of a letter from Neaners, who is incarcerated in state prison. It shows a side few lifelong gang members will expose: weakness. I once heard that the monastic Desert Fathers considered tears to be one of the most potent signs of God's presence.
Sacrament of Tears
I’m sippin’ on some chanate [coffee] right now. I can buy it once a week because you and the people who support the ministry got my back. Some other inmates get their commissary because they have family putting money on their books. I don’t have that kind of family. You all are my family.
So anyway, I’m reading my Daily Bread, the little pamphlets they give out with Bible verses and reflections. I used to think the Daily Bread was for white people, but I’ve been reading it for years now. It helps me and sometimes it doesn’t.
Check this out homie. I told you how I be tearing up on anything, unable to stop crying? I feel now that I have let down my guard and am trying to put down all my hardcore attitude and let go of hurtful emotions, I'm real f***en sensitive. Like a child, bro. A baby who you yell at and cries. I cry for everything, carnal [brother]. It's beautiful.On the TV I can sometimes watch here there’s this commercial of a chunky lil’ boy, cute as hell, in a baseball jersey with a hat a lil’ too big. No one wants to pick him for their team, or something. So another older boy pats him on his shoulder, like picking him. It’s sick [cool], bud. I tear up on it.
I was reading in the Daily Bread about when Jesus wept for his friend Lazarus, when he lost him and other people were crying. The pamphlet thing says “Our tears attract our Lord’s loving kindness and tender care.” Every time I start tearing up, I used to stop it. All my life. But now I just let it flow, like you told me months ago in a letter. Whether I just let myself choke up a lil’ or really cry. It’s beautiful, bro. Like every day now, something makes me tear up, for deeper reasons than I understand.
It's kind like in Jeremiah 9:1, where he says "Oh that my head were waters, and my eyes a fountain of tears." I wanna read more of his story because it says in my Bible that they called him "the weeping prophet." Not like a crybaby, but he cries of all the shit going on around his gente [peopel]. That's like me now, that I'm letting my guard down. I've seen so much, and after all these years I can't stop crying.
Submission by Neaners via Chris Hoke (of Tierra Nueva) to whom he wrote this dispatch.
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