I was twenty years old.
As a Jehovah's Witness, I had no career path ahead of me, no college to attend, and no prospect for my future other than
knocking on people's doors and scanning the horizon for signs of Armageddon:)
I was engaged to a 17-year-old Witness girl I had met at the Mineral Wells Assembly.
What was our future together? What were our plans? I WAS GOING TO FEDERAL PRISON and she was going to "wait".
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It is now 48 years later.
Last night (and for the previous three nights) I've been talking on the phone once more with that 17-year-old girl who now happens to be a 65-year-old woman.
What amazing conversations we have had trying to gain perspective and apply life's wisdom to those distant events.
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We marvel at how naive we were and ill-equipped to deal with anything resembling reality at that time.
The most honest thing I can tell you about those years and events of log ago is this. My heart was breaking and I was trying to do the right thing. I was terribly scared and putting on a brave face. As the song says, "I can see clearly now" and I certainly could not see anything but some kind of "duty" back then---inescapable, terrifying duty.
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I thought I would cut and past a chunk out of the book I wrote about this experience and let you read it.
This is my way of "celebrating" my anniversary. So, here goes.
Excerpt from I WEPT BY THE RIVERS OF BABYLON (A Prisoner of Conscience in a Time of War.)
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THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
I shrugged and marched behind Hajim with time to spare.
An hour lay fallow before me like an empty field before a plow. It was so natural a thing to do. I was obligated and duty called. Jehovah's Witnesses, even in prison, had to preach when the opportunity arose.
Hajim knew this too.
There were only wolves and sheep in this world. Today, Hajim comes as a sheep. The real sheep follows ever so meekly.
Up the stairs into a breeze way, we two figures plodded forward with footfalls echoing as the rattle of bones. The day inched into grayness toward darkness. Shadows gulped and swallowed us into the building's hulking gut. The dark, rectangular man with his shades and thin mustache pushed open a sturdy door and stepped aside inviting me to precede him.
The vastness of the room sprawled inward into outlines unseen and disturbingly monstrous.
There are only two important moments: before and afterward. In between hangs the moment.
One moment the world hangs balanced in space; the next, everything comes unstuck as a passage from life to humiliation.
It happened with the swiftness of a serpent's strike!
The first minute, I blinked to adjust to shadows and black nothingness; the next, I spied the door as it was being locked. Locked? Why?
Some trap was sprung on someone too stupid to beware! This was a consummate betrayal. The brutal urgency of the attack unhinged me to the point I stopped thinking as a human being.
I was fiendishly seized from behind.
The audacious, strong-limbed inmate had shrewdly pounced with such uncanny grace, unwitting me! I dangled in the air aloft as a scrawny marionette. A baffling prodding from behind caught me stupefied. A crumpled thought twisted into horror: Hajim is humping me like a big dog with its bitch: me!
I squirmed and arched my back to fend away his ruinous assault. His hot chest and pounding heart drummed against my spine. A bestial voice exhaled pestilence upon my neck. Low and ruminative pleasure grunts, hound-like, echoed in the room.
"Give me what I want, man or I'll knock you out and take it."
This was not even a threat: this was a certainty. Cold objectivity flooded in upon me. Something inside screamed. Soundless, empty air rushed out of my dry mouth. My hapless heart flailed, rattling in a cage in my chest. My assailant's voice barked provocative commands. “…take you out! Teach you everything…”
Icy clarity seized my consciousness, simple childish thoughts: Wasn't I a servant of God's will?
Why me? Why this?
Adrenaline is a sordid intoxicant, jumbling my thoughts. . . all senses on high alert, thrusting from behind; this vile dance mocked my sense of God.
"You are never tested beyond what you can endure. . ."
Jehovah could make the way out! I spoke as calmly as if I were explaining to a child: "I can't do this. It is against my religion."
Bland, calm Statements. . . as though read from the label of a can. Contents: "religious nitwit with dumb commitment and self-destructive determination."
Muscular arms looped under my pits and steel-fingered hands interlaced behind my head. The lifting power of this monster was extreme!
The baffling impropriety was clear. Only God could end this now. Unconnected thoughts shunted in and out of my head. Abraham raised the dagger to plunge into his only son's chest! The angel stayed his hand. This was that moment… I had placed myself in the hands of the living God. The rest was up to Him.
The rest…God willed.
What excuse was I supposed to make to absolve Jehovah in all this?
I was no martyr--I was a child in the eyes of the law, not even 21 years old.
I was a lamb.
After the incident, I was dazed, spaced out and finally dead calm. Nobody knew Post Traumatic Stress as a natural consequence of extreme shock in the year 1968. Men were expected to tough it out and never indulge in angst or hand-wringing displays. I mean, really—what had I expected? This was me alone in the world discovering what was and wasn’t reality.
A wrecking ball had taken my head off! Disconfirmation of certainty hit me between my eyes. My first consideration was how this was going to reflect on Jehovah’s Witnesses. I was nothing to them but a symbol of the faithful rain dance always ongoing. If I broke and asked to transfer to Alternate Service in the hospital at this point I’d be marked as a loser whose lack of faith brought on his own ruination. I would let my fellow inmates down and become a laughing stock. If I bucked up and brushed it off and took the bit between my teeth and charged ahead—well, it was only what was expected of me anyway. At best, I was somebody who had passed a sadistic minimum requirement test of faith and now, if I so chose, would continue in provisional standing. I relied on prayer and total service to Jehovah until this moment. How had that worked out for me so far? It hadn’t. My ordeal was only what I had done lately.
The cold truth was this: I had no permanent standing with my God or my religion.
All this time, I was on my own. I just didn't know it--until now.