One tragedy averted; another in the making....

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Monday morning an observant, quick-thinking and courageous police officer assigned to Portland High School (which backs to the back of our building across a small courtyard), turned what might have easily been another national headline (like Knoxville) into just another local news story. To quote the press account,

Officer Stephen Black said he was locking the rear school doors, as he does every day at 8 a.m., when he saw Herbert Jones, 46, holding a rifle in a small paved area behind the school known as Freshman Alley. He said he then saw Jones, whose back was to him, loading rounds into the gun.

Black drew his sidearm and ordered Jones to put down the gun, a 7 mm Remington. Jones complied immediately, Black said.

That's the good news. The bad news is that there was also a passenger in the car that Jones had driven to the church, and that passenger was my friend Walter, who had been drinking with Jones since about 6 pm the previous evening. That part of the story was a little slow trickling out, but when I finally learned the details I was heartsick. I've blogged about Walter and his situation here before, and he is certainly a familiar figure to the members of my church, where Walter has been worshiping on and off Sunday mornings for about a year and a half. A few months ago he was hospitalized and sobered up, a caseworker took an interest in him, helped to get him admitted to college...but it was either not quite enough or a little too much. In either case, a few weeks after the hospital discharged him Walter starting drinking again, and things just started to go downhill from there.

The last time I saw Walter (before today, that is) was exactly two weeks ago. His leg was infected again, he was clearly drunk (and smelled it), and had come by the church to hit me up for a few bucks for booze. Told him I couldn't help him out that way, and that he needed to return to the hospital to have his leg looked at again...even offered to put him in a cab (since I'm still not driving myself), but he told me he could manage on his own, so I took him at his word, knowing full well that he would probably never make it all the way there on his own initiative. But honestly, how much more could or should I have done?

That question became all the more pressing after his arrest Monday. For ages I've been preaching that good old Universalist gospel that we are ALL God's children, and thus brothers and sisters to one another. Now I found myself asking, How would I have reacted if it had been, say, my brother Erik arrested in the alley behind my church after an all-night bender, while his drinking buddy loaded up a high-powered rifle in preparation for what sounds like premeditated mass murder? (those of you who actually KNOW Erik know how ridiculous this scenario is, but just for the point of illustration...).

I would no doubt feel angry, disappointed, and probably mostly just a little confused; I would certainly expect some sort of explanation as to what he was thinking, assuming that he WAS thinking. But I certainly wouldn't stop caring about him, certainly wouldn't give up on him or stop trying to support him...even as I made it clear to him that there was only so far I could go to shield him from the natural consequences of his own bad decisions.

Yet I would also do everything in my power to prevent him from being victimized by "the system" as well. Wouldn't want to see him crucified to "set an example" for example, or to beef up some ambitious prosecutor's conviction record (not that stuff like that ever REALLY happens in the United States of America....)

In any event, earlier this afternoon I went down to the Cumberland County jail to visit my friend Walter. First time in thirty years of ministry that I have ever had occasion to visit one of my own parishioners in jail, and it was certainly a learning experience...although one that went much more smoothly than I had any reason to expect when it turned out that my driver/assistant also just to happens to be a thirty-year friend of the current chaplain there, Rev. Jeff McIlwain. Jeff was very impressed with my UUMA ID card, BTW, since apparently so few clergy of other denominations have anything like that at all. (Then again, I didn't realize until he handed back my ID that in my wallet it had become stuck to my Harvard University ID identifying me as an "Officer" of the University). But he ushered me through the whole drill, and got me back into an interview room for what turned out to be nearly an hour-long conversation with my Navajo brother.

As his pastor, I get basically the same access to Walter as I would if I were his lawyer, and that got me thinking quite a bit afterwards about something one of my college girlfriend's fathers (an attorney) once said to me about becoming a criminal defense attorney...that it meant you had to spend a lot of your workday hanging out with criminals....

Lots more to cogitate upon here, but it's getting late. No doubt you'll get a chance to read much more though later in the week.

LINK TO TUESDAY'S PORTLAND PRESS HERALD NEWSPAPER STORY

LINK TO MONDAY'S NEWSPAPER STORY

LINK TO TV NEWS STORY