Brotherhood and The Laffing Devils...Part 4

I'm sitting in Panera, where I often come to write, whether it's a new book or a blog post. Listening to some music (at the moment it's Bowie, "Young American" but it's on shuffle...Springsteen is next) and thinking about life.
My life has most definitely not been tidy and neat.
In December 1999 I went through a terrible divorce that broke my heart. It made me feel very different from other guys my age.
In January 2007 I lost my home when the mortgage industry started to collapse. It hurt like crazy to lose that place of mine. I had five acres and a big vegetable garden and a 750 square foot detached garage where I built furniture and worked on my cars. Losing my home made me feel very different from other guys.
In March of 2008, The company I worked so hard for closed their doors and I was without a job. Not only that, but the whole industry collapsed and I couldn't find a job at all. I was now homeless and I had a daughter to worry about. I was crushed and embarrassed and humiliated. And again I felt very very different from other guys my age.
I spent 4 years...from May 2008 until January 2012 living in my car. I completed my Bachelors degree online while living in a Volvo 850, until that died and I scraped together enough money for a used 1996 Yukon. I hid from view for the most part, because homelessness embarrassed me and  made me feel very different from everyone else.
I graduated in May 2012. I started a carpentry business to try to pay the bills while figuring out my next move. I wrote a Christmas book. But I am still struggling. Work is infrequent and my landlord sold the house last month. I am afraid of the future for the first time in my life. I am going to be fifty this fall, and I can hear the time whistling past my ears. I don't have anything like the life other guys my age have. And it makes me feel very different from them all.
The truth is I don't fit here and I never did. 15 years and I feel like I am still living from a suitcase. I wish I could go home.
I had a talk this afternoon with an older man whom I know and respect. He filled in a few gaps for me. I had labored under the impression that the group of people who essentially turned their backs on me during that horrible time were right and that I was a lazy, ne'er do well. I had such respect for them that when they turned their backs on me I thought I deserved that, and I worked hard to try to change some perception of me they'd had. It turns out that they treat everyone that way...everyone who isn't someone famous or wealthy or powerful. I lived in my car for four years so that I could remain in my daughter's life and not vanish like my father did from mine. I worked on my degree and graduated, I wrote two books. I also built chicken coops, pressure washed driveways and did a hundred other things to keep gas in the tank. And never once in all that time did they call me and ask how I was. They never checked on my daughter or offered me a job or bought me a cup of coffee. They did complain once that I wasn't suffering the right way and I should stop complaining, on the few occasions that it was all overwhelming.  Meanwhile I had to give away our two beautiful Springer Spaniels and our cat. Try doing that when your daughter is ten and loves them like family.
The people I needed to lean on only made me feel very different from everyone else.
They have never tasted failure or shivered in the dark in a car hidden behind a church, or showered in the rec center or washed in a public bathroom. I kept my clothes clean and my hair cut and tried not to "look" homeless and yet I was treated like a vagabond because they had no comprehension of how it hurt being in that situation. And I wasted four years trying to prove myself to them.
I thought I had brothers...
I watch the Laffing Devils and to be honest...I am a little envious. They are rough and edgy and certainly not like the folks I looked to for a little comfort and support. But had I been one of them and gone through what I went through, they would have helped me along. Because I am like them.
Tonight it dawned on me what it is that forges their brotherhood more than anything else. What it is that makes them take the Cut so very seriously and defend each other against all intruders. It's because they all have something or many things in their souls that makes them wince a little. They all have a memory or a lot of memories that they wish they could forget. They have all made mistakes and they all have scars that make them feel like they aren't like anyone else...anyone else except their brothers.
And there it is...
The real secret to the brotherhood these guys share and the bond that beats in all their hearts is that maybe the rest of the world sees someone rough and edgy and broken and not exactly a perfect fit in the mainstream, but the brothers all see another brother. They see themselves looking back and maybe this is the only place on earth where they don't feel awkward and out of sync with everyone else.
They might never admit it out loud, but I think every man in the LDMC needs the others. Just because it's safe with them. They are different from the white breads of the world...but they are all different together.
I have some very very good Christian friends. It's just that only one or two live here.
To be honest...I've been a little beaten up by the saints. I wish I had a couple of devils around me right now.
This might be my final chapter about the Laffing Devils. I think this post really captures what they are about. I'm not sure yet but if it is...Bonez, Sancho, Danny Boy, Sandman, and the rest of you guys...you have something that the "regular" people only wish they had. It's rough around the edges but the heart is pure. It's a lot more like what Jesus had in mind for His brothers than we church folk might admit.
Stay safe and keep the shiny side up. And guard that brotherhood.

Brotherhood and The Laffing Devils Part 3

                                                                  Big Brothers
So last night I was watching "The Devils Ride" again. It's hard, given my current living situation but I find it where I can and what I can't watch, I can get in pieces on the Discovery Channel page.
The club has been in turmoil. The founding Prez left and has been subsequently disgraced. In fact his disgrace is such that I won't speak his name or mention him from here on out. Because it's despicable to me.
Anyway, a new Prez was installed last year, and that's really been the premise of the show since it's inception...how the club was handling growing pains, how the older members were accepting the influx of new blood and whether the new blood was even a good idea. I could write a whole thread on this alone in comparison to the church and our discomfort with modernity but that's not really the lesson here.
The topic has been brotherhood and how it's demonstrated in the church compared to how the Laffing Devils demonstrate it amongst each other.
Yet another leadership change rendered the group in chaos. Last night there was a group of new members brought in to replenish the dwindling numbers. They seemed green to me and I felt uncomfortable with it. It's not my club, but I have watched this group of men carefully and I was imagining how this must have made some of the older guys feel. There was a comment made about guys getting their patch (which means you can ride with the club) without doing any prospecting. Prospecting is that period where you are essentially being checked out, poked, prodded, and investigated as to your character, your trustworthiness, your willingness and ability to behave like a real brother and your accepting of your low rank when you first come in. Are you going to be willing to prove yourself or are you arrogant and a hot dog who thinks he should be a full member right away?
Lots of men think they belong in a group like this. Most of them are pretenders who are weeded out right away. A few more fall out after a short while. Precious few prove themselves over again until they are trusted and finally accepted as brothers.
But that's the point...
You are becoming a brother. You aren't joining a bowling league or drinking beers by the curb with Hank Hill. This is a serious membership, not to be trifled with. When the crap hits the fan and you are up against it, these men will not run. They will stand by your side. If you are wrong, they will still stand by your side. They'll call you on it privately, but in public it's you and them against the world. They expect the same from you. That's why getting a patch, and eventually your colors, is nothing to hand out like candy at Halloween.
It's the same in the Church. We throw around the terms "Brother" so frequently that we don't even realize it anymore, and we certainly don't think about the enormity of what those words mean.
I am essentially an orphan. I have a biological family that I am not a part of for various reasons. Not to all of them at least. I have three brothers and I have no relationship with any of them. One of them I've never even met. But I always wanted a close brother. I wanted to be one of the Unsers or the Matthews brothers. I am a hockey player...I wish I had been a Sutter.
I have a real, strong definition of brotherhod and I don't like being called "brother" if you aren't going to be my brother.
The church is bad about this sometimes. We have called each other brothers for so long that it's just a word now. We have "patched" so many new brothers without "prospecting" them first that our "Colors" have been cheapened just a bit. I'm not talking about doubting the Christianity of those men in the church, but I think brotherhood needs to be proved, whether it's in a motorcycle club or a prayer group.
Last night, the older members raised objections to the new, untested patches. I agree. I refrain from calling someone my brother for the same reason as Danny Boy argued about easy patches; Nobody has proved nothin'!
Stand by me for a while first. When my night is dark and cold and I am worried about my future or my daughter, let's see who is still around when the sun comes up again. When I am broken down by the side of the rode and can't find my tool box and it's 2 AM...let's see who answers the phone. Even if I called them just last week for the same reason. That is a brother. Whether you are my brother in Jesus or my brother in blood and membership in a motorcycle club...a brother is a sacred thing.
A brother is what Vietnam vets call each other. It's what the LDMC call each other. It means you're family.
You can't give yourself the title...you earn it.
Christians would do well to prove themselves to each other a little more.
...by being brothers.

Brotherhood and the Laffing Devils...part 2

Something about the word brotherhood makes most men smile. If not outwardly, than inside for sure. We watch shows like "Band of Brothers" and we wish we could have the kind of friendships forged in the fires of difficulty and testing and peril. Because those friendships go well beyond the kind we form at neighborhood cookouts and PTA meetings and on the golf course. We watch movies like "Miracle" and we understand why those great hockey players from 1980 are still joined at the soul and still care deeply for each other. Because they endured something so hard that most other men would have quit. It was getting through the test that was half the battle and it's what made you a brother. It made you a brother because it proved to the others around you that you were cut from the same cloth. That you had the stuff. That you were willing to work every bit as hard as they were and that they could count on you to give your very best until you had nothing left to give.
That's where brotherhood is born.
David and Jonathan were brothers like this. David was the future king of Israel, and the present king, King Saul, despised him for his status as God's favored man. Even though David honored Saul and respected him and loved him as his king...Saul tried to kill him several times. Jonathan was Saul's son and he loved David as a brother, and it was literally taking his life in his own hands to defend him against his fathers jealous insanity. But he did. He did because David was his brother. And even if it cost him his life, he would stand by his friend.
There is a sad scene that plays out in their friendship. Jonathan discovers a plot against David and he warns him about it. They meet in a field at dusk and they embrace and weep openly, because they realized that this was likely the last time they would see each other alive. It was heartbreaking.
Paul often describes leaving churches on his missionary journeys and the people hugging his neck and weeping. Paul was a brother.
I watch the LDMC guys and I see the same devotion. It's not cloaked in the innocence of young adulthood, as it was with the teen-aged David and Jonathan. And it's not quite the same as Paul and his relationships with the early churches. But it's similar at it's heart. These guys really care about each other. And they care about the club and their colors. They get frustrated with each other sometimes because they care so deeply. A brother in the club letting you down or breaking the protocol is a heart-wound, and it incites passion and emotion. These are tough men who have been hardened by life. Some of them have deep wounds and the club is their refuge. Most of them are distrusting of anyone not wearing the Cut. That makes the brotherhood they share with their other members so much more important.
It's an amazing parallel for my brotherhood with Christ. He is the only person...outside of my daughter...who has never once failed me. He is the only one who I know will stand by me. His blood is my "color" and my white robe of forgiveness is my "Cut". He is the only person who really knows me...with all my failings and frailties and bad habits and weaknesses, and yet loves me and stands by me.
I am told to have the same mind as Jesus has where my brothers in Christ are concerned. (Philippians chapter 2) yet how many times have I held a brothers sins against him? How safe is it for a broken friend to let his hair down in my presence and find in me, someone who won't judge him?
I watch the LDMC guys and I see something closer to unconditional brotherhood than I have ever received with only a few exceptions. Like salvation, there is only one way in the club. But once you are in, you are in. Whatever you are to the outside world, when you are amongst your brothers you are a brother as well.
Five years ago, when the mortgage industry collapsed and I lost my home and my career and I was sleeping in my car hidden behind a church, I longed for someone who would remind me who I was. That what I lost was not who I was, and that I had a safe haven. I had to call home and talk to friends I grew up with. My "club" was 900 miles away and the distance, at times, seemed like it was unimaginable.
I watch the Laffing Devils and I see a model for a men's ministry in a future church I will pastor. I want to have a place where honor and integrity can mingle with toughness. I want guys to see a place where their hearts are safe and where they realize that devoting yourself to your friends is the highest calling. I want men who are able to be brutally honest with each other because underneath the toughness they know they love each other as brothers. I want to raise up a church full of men who know each other, care about each other, accept each other, help each other get better and stand by each other until the last shots are fired.
I want to teach brotherhood...because while we often call each other "Brother So-and-So" we seldom really live like we are brothers. The saints could learn a little about this from the Devils.