a surrender - 60

(Continuing "a surrender", chapter seven, "freely have you received, freely give") 

I squat here in the rain, not moving, looking up into the angry sky. The rain comes down in fury, battering my face. Any sane man would be crouching under a rock ledge, even inside one of the caves where they bury the rich dead, to be out of this.

I am not a sane man.

I am Legion.

My demons are a legion, an army in my head, marching in step one-two one-two. Too many of them to count. One-two one-two one-two and then suddenly they scream, they shriek their battle-cry and charge, and I am trampled under their feet and I know nothing; those times are my rages, the times I’ve torn chunks out of any man that dared set foot among my tombs. Then I feel no pain. I take the rocks that lie on this hillside and run their sharp edges down my chest and bleed, and I feel no pain. Nothing at all. Just the trickling on my skin as warm as tears.

They thought at first they could bind me, they thought I was a joke, a raving screaming lunatic joke—and they found out how wrong they were. They tried to tame me, tie me like a goat to a post—I tore their ropes to shreds. They tried to chain me up and I pulled their chains in two, I chased them through the tombs whipping the broken chain around my head, big men screamed and ran from me.

No one can look me in the face and not be afraid.

No one can bind me.

I stand and shout it to the storm as the thunder booms around me: I am Legion! No one can bind me! And the rain runs down my scarred body and the wind whips my tangled hair around my face and the lightning rips the sky and the thunder cracks again—

And within the space of a breath the storm is gone.

I saw it happen, saw the clouds pull back, draw themselves in and up into blue sky. Sunlight shooting down as sudden as lightning. The waves on the lake flattening out into calm, like the raised hackles of a dog suddenly lying down again at the sound of his master’s voice—there is something out there.

Continued... 

a surrender - 59

(Continuing "a surrender", chapter seven, "freely have you received, freely give") 

Later that summer we had our first retreat guests come for a weekend. Friends had given us a dining room table and chairs just the day before. And only a few days before that we had finished painting the third guest room. We were still short two mattresses, two bedsprings, and a nightstand. Two families at the farm loaned us mattresses for the weekend, so we decided to just put the mattresses on the floor, and set up a temporary nightstand. The two staff people with the group slept in that room. There were fresh blueberries, green beans, potatoes, and lettuce from our garden, and several kinds of fresh bread from the farm bakery. I made pizza. Heather roasted two chickens. And everyone had as much as they wanted.

We listened a lot that weekend. And we all discussed the story of Jesus confronting a man’s demons. Heather read to us her own version of the story, to help us get a deeper understanding of what happened that day:

Bad storm today. The sky is as black as my mind, and the wind is whipping the lake till it heaves and groans with the pain, humps itself up into waves that are taller than me. Lightning rips down the sky onto the water, close—very close—the thunder cracks as soon as the light is gone, a sound of huge stone smashing against stone, almost drowning out the voices in my head.

I look up to the cliff where the pigs are pastured; I can hear them when the thunder fades, grunting and screaming in fear. The pig-herders are having a bad day of it. Everyone is; except me. 

Anyone out on that lake is a goner, but here on my hillside of rocks and caves and graves I listen to the thunder and it wraps me in sound, and the voices are stilled to a low angry mutter and I can hear myself think 

I like storms.

Continued... 

a surrender - 58

(Continuing "a surrender", chapter seven, "freely have you received, freely give") 

Over the weeks that followed, we slowly made our way south to my parents’ house. But we didn’t stay with them long. As soon as we arrived, we found out that one of the families at the farm had moved away, so there was an apartment available for us. And it was in a large community building that had a small library and several unused rooms next to the apartment, which could be made into guest bedrooms. So we took a bus back to the farm.

That winter, we started preparing our retreat house. We stripped wallpaper and painted all the rooms. We asked for donations of beds and blankets. We searched resale shops for sheets and towels and decorations, and found a pretty set of china dishes that could serve twelve. We wanted to treat the people who came for retreats as honored guests in our home, serving our best food, on our finest dishes. We wanted to show our respect for them, as Jesus did.

We were inspired by Jesus’ words, “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you.” So our retreats would be free. And we would invite people who normally couldn’t afford retreats, from ministries and transitional programs, often from the city, and we’d offer transportation too. We already had some money from our wedding, and family and friends on the farm offered money for the retreats as well.

In the spring we started working on the farm again. I remember riding out to the fields on our bikes, in the chilly air of dawn, to pick sweet corn before market. We had to wear raincoats because the leaves were so wet with dew. Every day at lunchtime we ate quickly and fell into bed, so we could get some sleep before we had to start work again in the afternoon. Those days were long and exhausting.

Continued... 

a surrender - 57

(Continuing "a surrender", chapter seven, "freely have you received, freely give") 

A few weeks later we visited a similar community. It had been started in the 1940s following the model of Jesus’ early followers, and was known as a place where black and white people could live and work together peacefully, as equals. Clarence Jordan wrote about their experience starting the place:

I remember quite well that we were supposed to pay the fellow $2500 down. Martin England, who was a missionary under the American Foreign Mission Society to Burma, and I started it together. We agreed on [pooling our finances] and I had the idea that Martin was loaded. I don’t know why I should think that, he being an American Baptist missionary, but he talked about, “Let’s do this and let’s do that,” and I said, “Yeah, let’s do” and I thought he had the money. And so I said, “Let’s do this and let’s do that” and he said, “Yeah, let’s do” and when we finally pooled our common assets, we had $57.13. We were three weeks from the time we had agreed to pay $2500 down! To make a long story short, we put down that $2500. A fellow brought it to us and said God had sent him with it. I didn’t question him—we took it right quick before God changed his mind.

Years later, a newspaper reporter came out there and asked, “Who finances this project?”

Well, all along, folks who had helped us said that God had sent them, so I said to this newspaper reporter, “God does.”

“Yeah,” he said, “I know. But who supports it?”

I said, “God.”

“Yeah, I know,” he said, “but who, who, who, uh, who—you know what I’m talking about. Who’s back of it?”

I said, “God.”

He said, “But what I mean is, how do you pay your bills?”

I said, “By check.”

“But,” he said, “I mean—hell, don’t you know what I mean?”

I said, “Yeah, friend, I know what you mean. The trouble is you don’t know what I mean!”

While we were there, I got an e-mail from the pastor of the church where we found the baby shower. Someone had showed him that I had briefly (and without naming the church) mentioned the incident online, and he had then read about our walk and our preparations to offer free retreats. He said he was sorry that they had not invited us to stay at his church that night. The next Sunday he had preached about the experience. “I would like to ask,” he wrote, “if you are ever coming through this area again, I would love for you and your wife to share with our church. If I can ever be of assistance feel free to call.”

Continued...