Miles from Millions, and Good with Good

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Pete and Daniel

In the dedication to A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, Donald Miller thanks his agent, Kathy Helmers, and his manager, Jim Chaffee.  That’s my agent, and my manager.

When Philip Yancey reviewed my book (you can download the audiobook for any price here), he wrote, “St. Augustine invented the confessional memoir. Modern examples are shorter and funnier (think Anne Lamott and Donald Miller). Now comes Pete Gall, who somehow gathers the messiness of his life into an enduring account, one both poignant and whimsical.”

Shane Claiborne said, “In this era of American idols, money branded ‘In God we Trust,’ altars colonized by the US flag, and bombs baptized in patriotic prayers, this book is a delicate reminder to denounce all that dazzles that does not look like Jesus. It is an invitation to say no to all other lovers and counterfeit hopes, and to put our faith in the God that is blessing the most downtrodden people of this world, the God whose Gospel is good news to the poor.”

So it was with a sort of “aw shucks” attempt at humility that I prepared for a Zondervan-funded cross-country trip with a men’s ministry called the Samson Society the summer of 2008. I was about to be a big deal. Everyone said so.

How would fame and wealth change me, I wondered. How would I keep names and faces straight? When would I need to unlist my phone number? How much would I need to charge for speaking engagements to keep from being on the road all the time? What threats would my marriage face when the throngs of adoring young Christians showed up on my doorstep?

It’s a year later, and none of that stuff has happened. My second book is out, and yesterday I got a note from my publisher that included, “I love your writing, Pete, and regret that we have not been able to connect with the reading audience that your work deserves.”

I tell you all of this because I want to tell you what happened when I started praying a prayer to keep my priorities straight.

God Delights to Spread His Goodness

I adopted a line from the puritan Richard Sibbes, who said, “God delights to spread His goodness.” I began to pray to see and be a part of God’s spreading goodness. That’s what I prayed as I left Indianapolis on June 7^th, loaded down with laundry and boxes of books, to join the Samson tour in Charleston, North Carolina.

The Samson Society is a men’s ministry, but not in the 6AM breakfast and 7 Principles to Being A Better Denim Shirt-Wearing Republican sort of way. It’s a group for men with any sort of struggle.  For many people, the struggle is pornography.  For me, it’s been my weight (I make Donald Miller look like Shane Claiborne).  It’s called the Samson Society after Samson from the Bible, who made many of the same sorts of mistakes as David did, but whose isolation eventually led him to a suicide bomber sort of death, where David had friends around who continually helped him to restoration. You can see the founder, Nate Larkin’s, story and get a feel for the group here.

On the drive south, I noticed the beauty of creation and remembered how God had called that good in Genesis. I concluded it still is. I met people at gas stations – I’ve always wanted to film a documentary about life in a rural truck stop, with romances and weird guests and locals how eat breakfasts at the truck stop and that sort of thing – and I saw God’s goodness, His image, in them too.  But my prayer didn’t really come to life until the morning of Wednesday, June 11, in Winston-Salem.

Bright, Bright Sunshiny Day

I called home that morning, and my wife was very nice. We laughed and told stories and encouraged one another. Her love made me want to make loving choices in response, so I put on my shoes and decided I’d take a walk in the bright summer heat. Get some exercise. Be a good boy.

I followed the street uphill, under the overpass, and wandered into a Christian bookstore. My book was there, but the sales person had never heard of it. I introduced myself and told her who the target audience was. Like that’s what all the authors do – show up sweaty in gym shorts and tell the sales people who should buy their books.

Pretty soon I came to a Whole Foods market, and decided I could find a healthy late breakfast there. I chose sushi, electrolyte-enhanced water, and two South Carolina peaches, and decided I’d eat at one of the bistro tables by the parking lot.

I noticed a skinny black guy playing blues guitar for tips, and thought the music would make for a nice breakfast experience. I noticed a couple of Jesus lyrics in his songs and chose the table next to his, and sat down with my back to him to eat. About half way through my breakfast, I knew I was about to have a divine appointment. I knew I would finish my meal, introduce myself, and God was going to do something amazing.

I saved a peach and fished five dollars from my pocket, turned around and introduced myself.

His name was Daniel.  He was in his mid-50s.  The whites of his eyes were crack-brown. He wore an old dirty blue golf shirt and needed some dental work.

I told him about the Samson Society and the tour I was on.  I asked if he had any experience with addiction.  He told me about the crack.

Did you know, by the way, that there is a difference between a crack addict and a crack head? A crack addict still has limits, some sort of rule he plays by, where a crack head “will steal his best friend’s wallet and then help him look for it.”  Lesson number one from Daniel.

I told him the tour would head south from Winston-Salem, across through Atlanta to San Antonio, to Phoenix, to San Diego, north to Portland, to Denver, back to Indianapolis, and then south through Florida.  All told, I put over 16,000 miles on my car last summer.

When I mentioned California, Daniel began to grin.

It Sure Beats the Bridge

The previous night, I’d grumbled in my hotel bed about the sound of the thunderstorm outside. It was really something, and it was keeping me awake.

The previous night, Daniel slept under the overpass about 300 feet up the street from the hotel. He’s terrified of lightning, but knew that if he went to any of his friends’ houses, he’d smoke crack, and he didn’t want to do that.

Daniel has spent 25 of the last 33 years in prison. I looked his record up online later in the summer, and it’s true. Always stupid things – drugs, a car theft related to a misunderstanding of some kind, drugs again, stuff like that. His addiction cost him his marriage and his relationships with his now adult son and daughter.

About a month before we met, a Whole Food shopper named Sherri prayed with Daniel, anointed him with oil, and gave him a Bible in which she’d highlighted several passages about stewardship.

I would never have thought to point to stewardship as a convicting theme for a homeless crack addict.

The passages had been working on Daniel.  Every day he would play guitar and people would give him money – God would provide – and then Daniel would take that money and use it to buy crack. It felt like an abuse of God’s provision.

And the music Daniel sings. It’s blues, but it’s gospel. It’s worship from deep places. He plays and cries and offers his heart to strangers, who pay him in quarters and an occasional dollar.  It is ministry, and Daniel is a minister.

Two weeks before the day Daniel and I met, God told Daniel to sell his bicycle, his only means of transportation, because God was going to lead Daniel’s music ministry across the country and the bike would be in the way.  Everyone thought Daniel was crazy.  Or on crack.

It Seemed Like a Good Idea To Us

When I mentioned California, Daniel grinned because he’d been waiting for his ride to show up.

He told me this, but I’ve been hit up for spare change or gas money by enough strangers to know not to believe him at face value.

But I’d been praying to see God’s spreading goodness.  And I’d known I was about to have a divine appointment.

I told Daniel to wait there, while I hurried back to the hotel and grabbed the three other Samson guys and told them I thought God wanted Daniel to join us.  They thought I was crazy. Or on crack. But we didn’t know each other very well yet, so they agreed to come meet Daniel.  And besides, I was driving in my car and they would still be in their rental, so the risk was mostly mine if I wanted to get everything stolen.

It took about five minutes at the Whole Foods talking with Daniel and hearing him play a song before the guys started nodding to each other.

Within an hour of meeting a homeless crack addict in Winston-Salem, we’d swung by his friend’s house to pick up a shopping bag of clothing and a few other items, and were on the road.

Meniscus

When you set a drop of water on a table, and it keeps its shape like a ball, or when you fill a glass so that the water is just higher than the top of the glass, held in place by the surface tension of the water, that surface layer is called the meniscus. It is precarious, seemingly breaking rules, and if you poke it, it will collapse. Daniel and I were both experiencing a connection that was precarious, that seemed to break the rules of common sense, and that required delicacy from both of us. Neither one of us wanted to break the meniscus – because what if? What if our introduction was really from God and we let this weird connection grow?

A few minutes into our drive, I opened the console between the two front seats to plug my phone into its charger. I had about $200 sitting there, folded in half. Daniel made a little gasp. That was the moment when I decided that if Daniel wanted to steal everything, he was welcome to it. I was not going to move the money – then or later – and I was not going to pay any extra attention to my computer, video camera, phone, wallet or keys, either. I was also going to pay for all of his expenses during the trip. I was not going to be the one to break the meniscus, even if I ended up looking like a fool for it.

I wanted to see a delighting God spread His goodness up close and personal.

Rick James, Bitch

The rest of the Samson guys returned to Nashville after our visit to Greenville, South Carolina, and would fly to San Diego a few days later to pick up with the western leg of the tour.  I’d decided to drive the whole thing, so a Samson guy in Atlanta had agreed to ride with me from there across (Samson guys don’t travel alone).

Daniel and I had the drive between Greenville and Atlanta to ourselves. He pulled a Rick James CD from his shopping bag and dropped it into the player. We compared efforts at Dave Chappelle’s Rick James imitation, and that may be the whitest I’ve ever felt.

“You know,” I said, clumsily trying to move with the music as though I listened to it all the time, “When you introduce yourself to new people with only your first name, it sounds fishy. I get that you don’t want to use your real name for some reason – I’m not pushing here – but we have to come up with a last name for you to give people.”

“Daniel isn’t my real first name, either.”

“No?”

“No. God named me Daniel when I was in jail. It means ‘God is my judge.’”

“Okay, then. I have an idea – I came up with it in the middle of the night last night, listening to talking and snorting in your sleep.”

Daniel laughed.  “Okay, what?”

“Rassum. Because you sound like the old prospector in Blazing Saddles in your sleep.”

“I like it. Like Razzamataz.”

“Nah, it’s all in how you say it. You really gotta slur it. Like ‘Rrzzm.’”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. I can see it now. ‘Hi, what’s your name?’ ‘Daniel Rrzzm.’ ‘Daniel what?’ ‘Rrzzm.’ ‘Uh, how do you spell that?’ ‘Like it sounds.’”

Then he got it. I can still hear the sudden outburst from this small guy: “Spell it like it sounds, bitch!”

The Goodness of Failure Redeemed

The Samson guy who joined us in Atlanta was Scott Grissom. Scott spent 20 years as an evangelist with the Southern Baptists before he ended up at the Friends of Alcoholics facility in Jackson, Mississippi the summer of 2007. Turns out being an alcoholic is a bad career move in those circles – especially if you admit it and go to rehab. Samson had to pay Scott’s travel expenses, as work had dried up when he dried up. But the good news was that he was available to take a few days for a road trip.

Scott, Daniel and I spent the first night after Atlanta as guests at Friends of Alcoholics. A wonderful evening with remarkable people.

Starting the next morning, driving to Dallas, Scott began to turn the screws on Daniel about going to rehab himself. There is no way Daniel would have gotten in the car if God had told him a ride was coming to take Daniel to rehab, but love and a glimpse at a different sort of community shifted something in Daniel enough that he told Scott he’d consider it.

Scott and I took turns driving, and Daniel owned the front passenger’s seat. He kept his guitar with him at all times, resting on the floor between his legs, usually with both hands on the neck. Scott and I thought the guitar was too much of an idol for Daniel, so when he wasn’t looking we’d untune it or drop candy wrappers in the hole.

Daniel explained to me later that he never knew when I’d freak out and drive off, leaving him stranded. If I left with his clothes and all the rest, he’d be okay.  But if I left with his guitar he’d be in real trouble.

And I thought I’d risked a lot with my cash and car and electronics. If Daniel had stolen all of that, I’d make a couple of calls and be in a hotel that night, and home the next day. If the same thing happened to Daniel, he would have found himself paddling a stinky creek.

How Daniel Got His Guitar

Daniel and I first met on a Wednesday, and he had a guitar, but that guitar was only a day old. God had already been working on Daniel about his stewardship issues, but misusing funds wasn’t his only abuse. He would also go out “boostin’” – shoplifting (always from businesses, like a crack addict would do, and never from a people like a crack head would do).  The Saturday before we met, Daniel went boostin with a couple of people he’d never met before.  They ended up driving off with his guitar and the Bible Sherri had given him.

To Daniel, it felt like God was removing His hand – finally saying He’d given up on Daniel.

The next day, Sunday, Daniel had gone looking for the people who stole his guitar, but couldn’t find them.

On Monday he got high.  By Monday night, he was determined to start over.

On Tuesday morning, Daniel cut the silhouette of a guitar from two pieces of poster board, and wrote on them “GUITAR STOLEN. NEED HELP.”  Then he went to the Whole Foods and sang while pretending to play the paper guitar.  Five hours later he had enough money for a bus ticket and a $65 pawnshop guitar.

There was no way he was going to risk having me drive away with it.

How Daniel Got His New Guitar

Scott flew home from Phoenix (where we stayed with the Arizona Southern Baptist Evangelism Coordinator, who was a great guy and proof that I can’t write off the whole denomination just because I don’t like how Scott was treated by some of its leaders), and Daniel and I continued on to California.  The Interstate runs very near the Mexican border in western Arizona and eastern California, and there are a few checkpoints where all of the traffic gets funneled by armed Border Patrol officers who scan faces and do “random” checks of people they see.  I heard Daniel mutter, “I never thought I’d be glad to be a black man around a cop.”

We arrived in San Luis Obispo on our 14^th day together. Nate Larkin was supposed to lead a day’s training for a summer internship program one day, I was to lead the next day, and Tony Campolo would be there the third day.

The evening of the 15^th day, the pastor at the – sigh, the exceptions outnumber the stereotype – Baptist church recorded a CD with Daniel.  You can download it for any price here.  At lunch on the 16^th day, the local Samson guys took us out to lunch and asked Daniel if he would trust them enough to give them his guitar.

He did so immediately.  Then we drove across town to a local bank, where the president – a Samson guy – met us with a beautiful $1,200 Guild guitar that he wanted Daniel to have.

That night Daniel opened for Tony Campolo in front of a packed house at the Baptist church.

The morning of the 17^th day, Daniel and I led the staff devotions at the Parable Group (Christian bookstore chain) headquarters.  Then we drove to the Greyhound station, where Daniel boarded a bus for a three-day trip to Jackson, Mississippi where he checked in to the Friends of Alcoholics facility.

Love. God’s spreading goodness. An emotional day.

The Goodness Continues to Spread

I finished the Samson trip, and 8 weeks after dropping Daniel off at the Greyhound station in California, I was joined by several Samson brothers to pick Daniel up from rehab. The Birmingham Samson guys put Daniel and me up in a hotel, and they brought their families to breakfast the next morning to meet Daniel and hear him play.

“Hey Daniel,” one of them said, “it’s a CRACKer Barrel.”

“No,” Daniel replied, “it’s a CRACKER Barrel.”

From there I drove Daniel to Franklin, Tennessee, where he and another Samson guy rented a house from Nate Larkin. Every week, Daniel was part of a community of about 200 men who are doing life together.  A couple of months later, the church in San Luis Obispo flew Daniel back out for a concert.  He’s been to California with his music ministry four times now.

Shortly before Thanksgiving, Nate Larkin drove Daniel home to North Carolina to say goodbye to his father.  He got to kiss his dad on the cheek and tell his dad he was doing okay. That’s a pretty good farewell.  Goodness spreading.

The day after Thanksgiving, I left Indianapolis to take Daniel home for his dad’s funeral. I was received like family.

Daniel has reconciled with his wife, and there is talk of remarriage.  He has reconciled with his adult children, and he carries a video clip of his grandson – Daniel gave him a harmonica – on his cell phone.

Last week Daniel moved to Indianapolis, and right now – and every Thursday evening – he is playing at the Starbucks near my house.

He has used crack a couple – four – times in the past year. It is still a struggle. We both have struggles. But we’re not alone, and that makes a world of difference. My dentist is going to fix Daniel’s teeth for free on Monday. In two weekends, Daniel will house sit for me, as he has done before.

We’ve shared our story and his music at churches – you can listen to one example here – but what we’re working on together these days are “living room visits,” dessert and coffee type evenings, with small groups of friends who’ll have us.

Daniel has become my brother, and we make better sense in quiet settings, in conversation. A magic sort of feeling comes into the room – I know it is the Holy Spirit – when we get to tell of the things God has been doing in our lives. I like to think that maybe the people we meet feel like a part of our adventure, because they are. And I like to think that maybe, because they’ve met us – soft, white, neurotic, nerdy author guy recovering from Christian heroism, and wiry, black, con who sees all the angles in a relational moment, but who sings with a sweetness and soulish quiet he’s earned through too many tears – they look for God’s goodness, too.

It’s not what I expected when I signed with Donald Miller’s agent and manager, and a lot of the time I feel like maybe I’ve failed as an author and speaker. I’m certainly not the cool kid I thought I’d be (and to be clear, this is in no way a knock on Miller – whose work and success opened any doors I’ve passed through and am ever likely to encounter – nor on the agent, manager and publisher who have worked hard on my behalf…things are simply unfolding the way my Lord, whom I’ve invited to drive all things in my life, wants them to unfold).

But man, does my God delight in showing His goodness in this place, and man does that feel good. I’m not going to change my prayers now. And the prayer and the delight is open to any of us. May the same delighting God show you the joy He takes in spreading His goodness in this world.

You can learn more about Pete Gall at http://petegall.com

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