Father's Day 2021

 

Sunday, June 20, 2021 Jail Day #3215

 

Happy Father's Day.

 

     I thank the Lord for the man who was, who is, my Dad. Thank you, dad, for instilling in me the godly principles of being trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, reverent, physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.

 

     I am thankful for my grandfathers, Ira Eugene Cowan and Thomas Roland Yerton and the time and influence they had on my life. I pray that they look across space and time and are proud of the way that I am handling the circumstances that I have been dealt.

 

      For me, Father's Day is equally as difficult to bear as Christmas or Thanksgiving. The emotional pain of missing my children is too much of a burden to carry. I thank the Lord for the Manasseh blessing that protects my heart from the deep, deep pain that   daily tries to overwhelm. As any reader of this blog, or my pre-incarceral blog (robertyerton.blogspot.com), knows my highest aspiration in life was to be a great dad to a son and a daughter. God answered that prayer, and I loved the family that He created, entrusted me with and the path we were on.

 

      And then Satan was allowed to bend that path through manipulations by an outside force.

 

     I read a quote last week that rings true to me. " One whose path has taken a new turn is often initially disoriented. But as time passes, and the path continues steadily in its new direction, there is a tendency to believe that it will remain so forever, with no future turns. Nothing is further from the truth. A path once bent is always susceptible to new changes. Particularly when the original change came from manipulations from an outside force." Mitth'raw'nuruodo        

 

     When my son gave in to Tulsa County District Attorney Jake Cain's pressure to commit perjury on the stand, my son broke my heart. My prayer for him on this Father's Day is that the Lord will bless him with truth, wisdom, insight, and the courage to finally be the man he was raised to be and to tell the truth.

 

     By the numbers today is my 8th Father's Day incarcerated. It day #3215 since last embracing my own father as a freed man. It is day #4444 since the last time I embraced my son, at his 17th birthday dinner at Cheddar's restaurant (along with His girlfriend* who encouraged him to lie). It's been 4442 days since my son was confronted by his mother as he was caught sneaking out of the house at 1:00 a.m. through his bedroom window to be with his girlfriend (who lived across the street), and he then "ran away" to live with his grandmother so that he could continue his illicit behavior with his girlfriend. It's been 3200 days since my son raised his hand and swore an oath on the Bible to tell the truth and then immediately broke the commandment to not bare false witness. It's been 3011 days since I last saw my daughter's beautiful face. It's been 2637 days since I last spoke to her on the phone. It's been 734 days since I last received an email from her.

 

     I realize that a path once bent is always susceptible to new changes. The Word says as much. I am depending upon a change being manipulated from an outside force to restore my life to the path that was planned from the beginning.

 

      Happy Father's Day Dad!

 

     And to all dads, text your children. Tell them you love them, even though they may have broken your heat. Tell them you are proud of them, even if it is only for the way they breathe air. Hug them, even if they are 53: they still want to be hugged by their father. And if you are unfortunate enough to have a son or daughters who is incarcerated, please know that you can never send enough letters, postcards, pictures, emails, video visits, or prayers. Your child still craves that contact no matter how old they are or how many rows of concertina wire separate you.

 

     And above all, let them know that you forgive them when they come up short and that their behavior does not diminish the love in your heart for them. I love you son. I love you daughter. A path once bent is susceptible to new changes. Jesus, bring new changes.

 

(*K. Spears as testified in court about by her own mother Ann Spears and by my son himself. Transcripts available at the Tulsa County Court House or as quoted in the appeals found at SCOTUS.gov and OSCN.net)

Day 3200

 

Jail Day #3200

Grief is the price we pay for love (1).

Glory to God, another 100 days have safely and swiftly passed. At is nice to be on the downhill slope of my unjust incarnation. It is only by His grace that I survive and thrive in my confinement. With the onset of warmer weather, the for-profit GEO\Lawton warehousing system has resumed outside recreation time: one entire hour once a month. It is a blessing to go outside and soak up some warm sunshine. On our first venture beyond our chattel stalls I stood in the light of the midday sun, closed my eyes, listened, and breathed deeply. As it was still March, I reverently enjoyed the clickity clack of the wind blowing through the bare limbs of the trees that border the western edge of our banishment. The absence of the maliferous odors from the staleness of my confinement was in itself a bonus: the smells of the spring prairie grasses, and flowering weeds were a welcome respite.

     As my first parole date was moved to just 15 months from now, I continue to see the light at the end of my tunnel growing brighter and larger. Parole and commutation are not that far away. Unlike those covid antivaxers crying for a "return to normal", I look forward to, not resuming my old pre-prison life, but the new adventures of my yet unfinished life. There will be no return to old norms for me, nor for the post-pandemic world. A new paradigm has been cast. I watch with interest and dismay on TV the people I'll soon be reintegrating with. So much has changed over the past 457 weeks. Our nation, thus state, is finally being forced to be woke: to acknowledge its unconscious biases as well as its trend to adjudicate cancel culture. This state's lawmakers have labeled me a sex offender (for the truth see SCOTUS.gov docket numbers 19-874 & 20-7754). That S.O. label alone puts a bounty on my head by some of my fellow incarcerates. Unfortunately, many of the so-called Christians that I used to associate with, whom do not know the truth of my situation, will give in to their retrumplican Quanon theories and I may find myself the victim of a biased Christian cancel culture upon my release.

     My intent in writing these reflections every 100 days is to give my family and friends an understanding of what incarceration has been like for me. While what happens inside prison does not affect the average person outside these fences, what happens outside these fences almost always has an effect   upon those of us in prison. Many people, many people groups, seem so decisive. Millennials and GenZers debate whether to side part or middle part their hair. The politicos get upset over mask mandates, the gender of an imaginary potato head, vaccine shedding, or the unintentional innocent stereotypes portrayed by Dr. Suess. So many people, it seems, are quick to jump on the cancel culture bandwagon rather than give accountability, counsel culture, or corrective evolution an opportunity to be a healing force.

Outside of these fences cancel culture can be inconvenient or decisive. Inside these fences cancel culture can often be grievously deadly.

     Everyday it seems that more and more American extremists get more and more deeply entrenched in their particular -ism's, and that is even true (perhaps even more so) in prison. Racism and projected stereotyping are quite prevalent behind these fences. Our state continues to throw into its for profit and stateroom warehouses those whom they feel are unredeemable: the poor, the intellectually deficient, the mentally retarded, the psychologically fragile, the undereducated, the nonwhite, the traumatized, the grieving, and then somehow expect that everyone will manage to get along. Our state breeds continued streams of revenue by ensuring that there are generation after generation of people subject to fascism and racism within its concertina wired banishments of chalk and choke. It seems easier for our lawmakers to cancel those who do not reflect their same espoused morality rather than attempt any effort at rehabilitation or education.

     Someone once said, "The cover is nice, but the cover is not the book". For whatever reason, the Lord is using me right now as a sounding board for the Millennials and GenZers that I live with. I listen and I reflect. I receive as a compliment their acknowledgement of my calming demeanor and nonjudgmental attentiveness as the pour out their life's story. So many of them are victims of repetitive stress traumas from a young age. It wouldn't require Randonautica® to have predicted that prison was their destination, or that the ism's that they are caught up in are part of the trauma that led to their incarceration. Their criminal designation does not come close to describing who they really are or are meant to be. Our state's criminal justice system has given them a jacket, a book cover, that does not tell their whole story.

     Trauma that goes unresolved almost always allows Satan an opportunity to build -isms into your life. Miguel de Unamuno wrote that fascism is cured by reading and racism is cured by traveling. Fanaticism and ignorance are hungry and forever feeding. When you add to the mix Oklahoman's predilection to prefer meth over math, a trend to undereducated its poor, and its 100's of moral codex’s with a willy-nilly sentencing structure for those who break them it is no mystery why our prison warehouses seem to have rotating doors at their entryways. Most of the men I am incarcerated with have minimal reading skills and have not left their county's borders. They have had little opportunity to build true relationships, travel, or become well read. The traumas induced in their upbringing have left them void of true relationships with their family, much less their Creator. It comes as no surprise then that drug use, bullying, extortion, fascism, and racism are so deeply rooted within these prison fences. I no longer ask why so many incarcerates use narcotics daily; I ask why not?

     Obscuration would be preferable to the irrational addictions to the -ism's and the meth that surrounds me. My daily walk is like strolling through a mine field of men caught up in their "dope emotions", their grief, and their loneliness. You never know when an explosion of -ism's, fragile emotions, a psychotic break, or worse will hit you in the eye.

     Perhaps there is still an opportunity for me to make a difference in the lives of other people. I would love to finish my substance abuse recovery degree and be an addiction counselor. Trauma may destroy relationships, but relationships destroy trauma. Perhaps these reflections will serve as non-fungible tokens that will become a deposit toward future reconciliation, restoration, restitution, and relationship. If grief is the NFT that I pay for loving my prodigal Absalom\Kylo, then I am ready to cash in this block chain of heartache. I call upon you, Wounded Healer, to stop the games with the chalk and choke. I call upon you to come heal and enhance.

 

(1) Queen Elizabeth upon her husband's death