3 July
“OREGON THANKS YOU
COME BACK SOON”
-road sign along I-84, just before crossing the Snake River into my own private Idaho (I’m not sure what I did for Oregon's benefit,
but I’ll accept their gratitude)
4 July
Snowville, Utah
That’s all I managed to write yesterday.
I spent the first two-thirds of the day on two-lane US
20 across Oregon’s empty midsection, winding through
Stone Age canyons and great stretches of sagebrush
rangeland, and it wasn’t conducive to writing. Then I
reached the freeway and had at least three hours of day-
light driving in light traffic across Idaho, but I could
not pick up the pen. Why? I was puzzled.
But I woke up this morning with the answer. God was
giving it to me in a swift, large voice: I spent the entire
day being angry. Not about anything I’ve mentioned
here, not about Aubray or anything. It was my
unemployment case against the delivery service.
[Ed. note: as mentioned in the Foreward to the Chronicles,
in late April 2004 I was fired from my job as a courier running packages up and down I-5, my last job in Oregon before I was rehired
by U.S. Xpress. I had a lot of reason to feel the termination was unwarranted.]
I had never been fired from any of my several dozen jobs (well, OK, one other time, but that was an internship, and that was because
my greatest accomplishment there, under minimal supervision, was giving birth to what later became the March Fools’ Pool, the
world’s greatest NCAA basketball tournament pool) (and building sculptures out of office supplies) and I think I had a lot of
bitterness in me when I filed my unemployment claim. The shortest version of the sequence of events is: first my claim was denied,
then my appointment for an appeal via conference call last week was botched by a clerical error, then I read the paperwork sent to
the house while I was away and realized the whole process had been a travesty, that there were several pages of secret evidence
submitted by the employer which he had never shown me and the employment office never asked me about. So I spent at least an
hour yesterday at the Burns library writing a very pissy letter to the Office of Administrative Hearings requesting that my case be re-
opened, explaining why my appeal is fair and just. I made a copy to send to the employer as well, along with an incredibly bitter
handwritten postscript. I sent the first letter yesterday, thank God I didn’t have postage for the second one. Once that was done, I
still wasted time at the wheel composing the written testimony I planned to submit to answer the answered claims of the employer.
All day I did nothing but craft myself a little mental and emotional prison, and clanged my pathetic metal cup against the bars.
“Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen, nobody knows but Jeee-zus.” My Gawd, what an idiot.
But God is good and full of mercy, and I was corrected today when I awoke. I was reminded of my workers’ compensation case
against a California contractor I worked for three years ago. I was injured on the job (my left knee kind of crackled and swelled up
pretty bad while bending down to pick up debris at a house demolition site) but I didn’t report it initially because I didn’t realize it was
that bad. I knew it was job-related, but the boss didn’t, and he fought the case hard, and he lashed out at me and jerked me around
because he couldn’t legally fire me. It dragged on for months, and the whole time –Aubray can vouch for this—I was insane with
anger. I couldn’t stand the sight of the man, or his trucks rumbling down our road (which they did several times a day). Venomous
letters were exchanged. It was miserable. Eventually my case was accepted and I received my back pay, my knee healed and I went
on to work full-time for the charter bus company. And over time I was shown how horribly I behaved through the whole process,
and I was compelled to have forgiveness for him and let God forgive me, and enough peace came to where I could think of his name
and picture his face and not want to spit in it. Now I could go up and shake his hand, sit down with him for coffee –he is my
brother.
Well, God made it pretty clear that I was a long way from that point here and headed in the wrong direction. God said (and this is
not a direct quote –only billboards can quote God), “It was easy to forgive in the other case because you won. Try doing it when
you know you were dealt a raw deal, when there is no satisfaction to be found. What other meaning could you possibly find in that
‘turn the other cheek’ bit? It’s time to walk the walk.” In I Corinthians 6, Paul takes the church at Corinth to task because
Christians were taking their disputes to civil courts instead of settling matters peacefully among themselves:
5 I speak to your shame. Is it so, that there is not a wise man among you? no, not one that shall be able to judge
between his brethren?
6 But brother goeth to law with brother, and that before the unbelievers.
7 Now therefore there is utterly a fault among you, because ye go to law one with another. Why do ye not rather take
wrong? why do ye not suffer yourselves to be defrauded?
Good words, good advice from a great church leader.
But it makes me wonder: should I think differently if I go to law against an unbeliever? Why? Why should I rather not suffer myself
to be defrauded, and build my own prison by opposing some people and not others? Should a Christian accept injustice from other
Christians but retaliate in court against non-Christians? It makes absolutely no sense, when you realize why Paul exhorts us not to do
battle in the law: it takes our minds off Christ. When I am focused on Christ, every man is my brother, every woman my sister; so
“brethren” in this passage cannot be limited by the narrow definition, as I suggested in Part One. We are to turn the other cheek in
all confrontations.
Or, as was revealed to me as I was being released from my prison three years ago, and just came back to me this morning, “Accept
injustice for no one but yourself.”
A hard lesson, but one of the most important. I’m free again.
© 2004 by Hermit Crab
a Fish Out Of Water production
Next --Chapter 2
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