I read this article in Time and wanted to link to it, but they do not provide the full edition to read online, so here it is. Incredibly well-written and thought provoking, with a refreshing perspective from a non-religious magazine.
She went out for cigarettes.That's my favorite detail of the story told by Ashley Smith. It was not a noble calling: it wasn't even a noble errand. But the craving for nicotine at 2 o'clock in the morning apparently led Smith into the loaded gun of one Brian Nichols, a man who was wanted for raping one woman and murdering another woman and three men. According to Smith, Nichols forced her into her aparment, tied her up, put her in the bathtub, and told her, "I'm not going to hurt you if you just do what I say."What would you do under those circumstances? Scream? Panic? Beg? But at that point, something else intervened. Smith actually communicated with her captor. She says she saw him not as a monster but as a human being. She talked with him. She told her story--how her husband had been stabbed in a dispute and had died in her arms, how she then had developed a drug habit, had been caught for speeding and drunken driving, had been arrested for assault (the charges were dropped), had ceded custody of her young daughter to her aunt. She showed him her wounds as a human being. And she saw in that man his own wounded soul.It would be politically correct to describe that encounter as a spiritual one. But it seems to me it was more than that. It was, in the minds and soulds of both human beings, an encounter with God. Smith's weapon, it appears was a hugely popular book, The Purpose Driven Life, by Rick Warren, an unabashedly Christian guide to making it through life's highs and lows by constantly asking what God has intended for you. The book is indeed a powerful one--precisely because it insist on the notion that God knows all of us intimately, especially sinners. Smith says she read from chapter 33, which centers on the role of Christian service, on the idea that in every moment there is a chance to serve others. "You can tell what they are by what they do" is one of the chapter's inscriptions from Matthew's Gospel.Smith, blessed by what can only be called grace, saw that terrifyingly early morning in suburban Atlanta as one of those opportunities. Warren writes in that chapter, "Great opporunties to serve never last long. They pass quickly, sometimes never to return again. You may only get once chance to serve that person, so take advantace of that moment." Smith did. By her account, she talked to him, made breakfast, told him her story, listened. And as she reavealed her openness to grace, so, apparently, did he. "He said he thought I was an angel sent from God and that I was his sister and he was my brother in Christ and that I was lost, and God led him right to me," Smith sad. Maybe he was right.We latch onto this story not just because it's a riveting end to a high-stakes manhunt. We find outselves transfixed and uplifted by the sordid ordinariness of it all. He was an alleged rapist and murderer. She was tied up in a bathtub, clinging to the wreckage of a life that was barely afloat. One was a monster, the other a woman unable to care for her 5-year-old, looking for cigarettes in the dark. And out of that came something, well, beautiful. He saw his purpose: to serve God in prison, to turn his life around, even as it may have been saturated in the blood and pain of others. She saw hers: to make that happen. These people weren't saints. Grace arrives, unannounced, in lives that least expect or deserve it.I say that as a believer. The crimes Nichols is suspected of are inexcusable. The serenity of Smith is close to inexplicable. But the message of the Gospels is that God works with the crooked timber of human failure. That was an exceptional moment of redemption. But every day we have smaller, calmer chances to turn another's life around, to serve, to listen. How often do we simply not see what is in front of us? How often do we believe that the world's evils--from terrorism to crime to emotional cruelty--are beyond our capacity to change? Or that there is no one in front of us whom we can serve? Smith and Nichols' story is a chastening reminder that we may be wrong.There's a line in a Leonard Cohen song that has always stayed with me. It kept me going in a bleak moment in my life, when I thought, as we all sometimes do, that I couldn't see how good could come out of the dark I have turned my life into. "Forget your perfect offering" Cohen advises. "There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." Happy Easter.--Andrew Sullivan
Now I see why you want to study Journalism, so you have a writing platform, make people think about ideas. Powerful the pen is!
However, you are writing now, it's not out there somewhere, stay faithful in the small things.
May the whole world know, Porchop has a very Proud Father, grateful that his daughter wants to make a difference, make her life count for something, live a life of significance.
! ! ! ! GO GIRL ! ! ! ! ! !
And for the rest of you in Rio Linda, porkchop has announced she is going to NYC, this coming week, to sell her body on the street corner, to raise money for college. PF(Proud Father) tried very hard to remain nonchalant in this encounter, later, privately unloading his distress to wifey. And she so wisely brought to my attention, " You introduced our marraige to your parents,(Whom she hadn't met) that you were marrying a colored girl, who was pregnant, and you didn't know if you were the father" Alas, this was quite true, for after all, she is colored, quite caucasian, and was quite parturient with lots of ideas incubating in her mind, of which it was possible I had in fact instilled.
PF has a right to be proud.
Hey PC- what street corner so I can find you. And to you take cash?
Jon--
I take credit cards only. And when I say take, I mean you will not get them back. So I would advise you bring the credit card with a limit, or consider me a tax write off
Andrew Sullivan is my daddy. Nevermind that he is gay and ghastly conservative. He is my daddy. Thank you for posting my daddy's article.