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Which is Scarier: Staying Sick or Getting Well?
Posted by Wallace+
Reflecting on the sermon from Sunday, Dave Coogan wrote the following, which I pass onto you with his permission. Dave is completing a book on the writing workshop he has led in the Richmond Jail.
The question you posed--Which is scarier? to stay sick or to get well?--is actually one I've been meditating on for the last week or so as I finish my book. I'm on the last chapter, which I've titled "Character Witness." It's filled with stories of me and the guys and asks what all of us know and can witness, with regard to "the change." Sure, there's me in the witness stand as an official character witness. But there's also me hearing another guy's testimony in my classroom and trying to match what I knew of the man through correspondence to this, my first time hearing him, seeing him. You write about unconscious and conscious moves this week. Doesn't writing, itself, wedge the former into the later? Or maybe writing is the fulcrum in the see-saw?
Otis asked me once if I'd ever seen a demon. We were talking about Andre and what causes a man to give in to that impulse, the one that says [expletive] it! He was serious about demons--serious, the way you distinguished it, usefully, I felt. They sometimes talk of it as that little voice that says "I can have just one" hit of crack. You didn't speak on addiction, but I wonder how many legions are supporting the despair of addiction? In this last chapter, I'm trying to figure out if and how they flee their hosts.
Pictured: Medieval illumination of Jesus healing the man from Gerasa.
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Posted by Wallace+