Recently, my son, daughter, and 19 year-old grandson, who live together in Rochester, New York, upon returning home from an afternoon outing of several hours, discovered in their kitchen an umbrella they’d never before seen. How it got there when all doors had been securely locked was a mystery solved only after a half-hour of investigation when discovered in their cellar was an intoxicated man of approximately 50 eating from their second fridge.
The cops were called and a scary scene was resolved with no real harm to anyone save the housebreaker’s future plans. In AA you hear the joke, “I was allergic to alcohol. Every time I drank I broke out in handcuffs.” I pray that Mr. Intruder will one day be making that crack at an AA meeting or its equivalent.
The most significant part of the story to me, besides being a good learning opportunity for my grandson to experience compassion for his own fear as well as for the life that prompted the man to slit a front porch screen and climb in through a window so that he might eat, is that that man was me. He was the man I could have been if, nearly 30 years ago, I did not realize that my options were change or die or worse.
Turns out he was a fellow with a record of previous encounters with the law, among them actions which led him to become a registered sex offender. I mention this because if one’s journey to Oneness draws to them the need of deep social alienation, being a sex offender is a pretty efficient way for that to occur. My sense is that even in prison, sex offenders are the least accepted law-breakers.
It’s impossible for me to imagine the inner world of this particular man, but I’m certainly familiar with my own experience of what folks in AA term incomprehensible demoralization. My heart goes out to him, as I recall another AA slogan: “There but for the grace of God go I.”
If it were my home he had broken into, I feel I would ask myself if there were some way I might serve him. Perhaps at least write him a letter, tell him what the experience has meant to me, and wish him well.
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Sharing my discoveries and welcoming yours is the purpose of this little playground. I hope you’ll add your voice when it feels right.
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