Hard Days Make for Good Lenten Discipline

As mentioned before, a good chunk of my Saturday was spent sharing my story of being a witness to the execution of John Earl Bush. When I reflect on what I told the assembled crowd of a couple dozen people, I realize that I told that story... and a whole lot more.
It is impossible for me to discuss the death penalty in a simple way. Because it is NOT a simple notion. And as a journalist, I looked at this issue from so many angles and directions that my knowledge of the nuances of this sticky wicket is scary... even to me! And trying to keep that to 12-minute presentation... well, I should have printed my previous entry and just read it out loud and called for questions!
Instead, I told how I came to be a witness to John Earl Bush's execution. And I told a good deal of how I had then become obsessed with pushing the question about the cruelty of the electric chair. At one moment, I did an aside to the student journalists in the room. I warned them that if they pursued a career in journalism, they would be forced to talk to people and bear witness to things that they were personally opposed to... and they must do something to take care of themselves, or they would pay dearly.
I've mentioned in my spiritual autobiography that I had no "church home" at the time that I witnessed the execution. How I wish I had had that! How I wish that I hadn't had to wait until 2007 to have my mentor tell me that if I was feeling guilty about being a witness to a state-sanctioned murder, all I had to do was ask God for forgiveness. How I wish I had had the sensorimotor training I received in 2008, so I could have worked out this event through my body... and had that release of running at break-neck speed and letting my body do the thing it had WANTED to do at the time the state started killing Bush in the chair.
One of the students came up to me at the break, his eyes wide open.
"I had no idea what this workshop was going to be like, and now I don't know how I should write this story."
A teaching moment. I asked him what his expectations were. He told me he thought it was going to be all statistics and charts. I smiled, and acknowledged to him that it was quite a bit more that he had heard up to that point. I suggested to him to approach the story not in a "traditional news" way... with the inverted pyramid style... but to write it more like a feature... starting with one person's story... and building out from there with the statistics and such. He listened.... and here's his article from the FAMUan.
So, if I accomplished one thing on Saturday it was to give guidance to the next generation of the Fourth Estate. This young man shared with me his dream to be a Hearst award-winning journalist (the moderator for our workshop had identified me as a Hearst winner). I think he has a shot at that trip to San Francisco.
What does any of this have to do with Lent? A lot. I have much sadness when I think on the death penalty and how it effects our universal state of being. And I am on a journey of forgiveness and I have much to do in this arena... for myself... to be able to approach this issue and be "in Christ" and not "in hell". And so I leave this post with that level of ambiguity, and the trust that in this place of discernment... God is there.