Second Chances

Daryl Holton was supposed to die tonight. On behalf of the people of Tennessee, a lethal dose of electricity was to be sent through his body at 1:00 A.M. at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution about 10 miles from where I live. I got a phone call around 2:00 while I was heading to our “2:00 meeting” at the Campus that the 6^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Nashville granted a stay this afternoon in this case that stemmed from Mr. Holton’s violent killing of his four young children in 1997. Stacy Rector, the outgoing associate pastor at Second Presbyterian, and the incoming interim director of the Tennessee Coalition to Abolish State Killing, had asked me to play the piano for an ecumenical prayer service this evening in East Nashville. So, my five minutes of practice for “What Wondrous Love is This” and “Our God, Our Help in Ages Past” had been in vain. But, it was good news that the courts had granted a stay and Daryl Holton will live to see at least a few more days.

Tonight was my first Odyssey dinner at the Campus. As I’ve mentioned before, the Odyssey program is a residential treatment program to change the lives of those who are chronically homeless. Chronic homelessness means that someone has been homeless continuously for a year or has experienced several shorter incidences of homelessness over a period of four or five years. About 50% of those the Campus for Human Development serves fall into this category. Participants in Odyssey are chosen and commit to an extensive program of life changes through a span of at least two years. This treatment program is unlike most others in that it is more than one month long, so there is a much higher rate of success from Odyssey than from most other programs.

Every Monday night at 5:00, men from Odyssey, Odyssey alums, Campus staff and other guests (everyone is welcome!) gather for a meal. The meal is served family style, since this is at best an experience that most of these people haven’t had in a long time. Many Odyssey participants have never sat down to a meal with family in their entire lives. The indignity of meal tickets and having no control over what is served or how much of it one gets is a standard for most of the people when they enter this program. Tonight’s theme was Monday Night Football, and the meal was prepared by Mary, Martina and Maggie, three of the Campus staff members. Their “man food” meal consisted of pizza, buffalo wings, nachos, beans and brownies. After we ate, as is custom each week, each person in the room (about 40-50 people) shared their “high” and “low” of the week. Most of the lows dealt with the Tennessee Titans. The highs were truly inspiring. They ranged from visits to the state fair with families that hadn’t been seen in years, to general thanksgiving for being alive and healthy after the strains of addiction had torn down bodies and ruined relationships. What a feast it was as people shared their lives and joys over lovingly prepared “man food.”

Neither Daryl Holton nor drug addicted homeless people deserve to be rewarded for the bad choices they have made. Neither do any of us. It is truly amazing when people live out the image of God’s grace that is in each person, whether it is in a panel of judges giving a mentally ill man on death row a little bit of room for hope or in the giving of thanks over buffalo wings and pizza in a group of recovering addicts and formerly homeless men.

Our God, our help in ages past,

Our hope for years to come,

Our shelter from our stormy blast,

And our eternal home.

Jeff, Patrick, Tara and Chasie