You Can't Hustle an Old Hustler

… Ray hadn’t told me about the daughters but I was sure as hell not going to cross this woman. I tried to assure her, “I have a Bible and I have been reading it.”

   “Let me say one thing about that Bible, Max, it’s just another book you won’t ever understand without a change in your heart. I know scoundrels and bushwhackers of every race and creed. They know that Bible from Genesis to the last words of Revelations. But to them it’s just a tool they use to swindle widows and old-maids. Don’t try to blow smoke up my butt about the Bible. I was a bartender and barfly before I was ever a Christian. You can’t hustle an old hustler.”

    I dared not fidget because this woman’s eyes were still bearing down on me. I did look down at my hands in resignation and waited for her to change her mind and tell me to get the Hell out of her sight…

A Time Ago and Then:

Saintly Sinners,

G.B. Couper

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Scripture, sutras and texts couldn’t convince me of anything as far as spiritual beliefs were concerned. I saw a lot of the content as confusing and undecipherable… historical or rhetorical exhortations and superstition of arcane spirituality that made no sense whatsoever. It wasn’t as though I hadn’t been exposed to them. The Catholic Mass has a break in it in which the Gospels and the Epistles are read. I loved the Gospels because they had a feel for something that had a deep resonance in my mind. However, for the most part, the rest simply held a mistaken and useless morality based on fear to me.

    So-called beacons of morality: hypocrites; pedophiles; cultists; and scoundrels of every sort; hiding behind leather clad Bibles, were everywhere. I saw Okie preachers from the pulpits of television, and Black preachers in store-front churches from the inner cities have the ushers pass the basket to pay for nice Cadillacs and expensive suits for the Pastor. When I looked to the East it was apparent that it wasn’t much different. Gurus sat on their asses in ashrams in poverty stricken India, or came over to the West, seeming to have no other motive than to exploit the vulnerability of an upwardly mobile, white, middle-class youth from the suburbs in search of a father figure to guide them. Even more disconcerting to my sensibilities were flocks of folks paying exorbitant fees to be humiliated by so-called native Shaman in sweat lodges, hoping to capture a romanticized spirituality that never existed.. at least in that form. It also goes on with crystals and aroma therapy... on and on infinitum in the  market places of spiritual vanity.

    It took a spiritual awakening in the deepest part of my heart for any of it to make sense to me. The sweet spot of surrender and recovery opened the texts. It is an especially poignant truth that preaching abstinence or moderation has little or no impact on the thinking of an alcoholic or addict. What had the power to change my mind was a personal and direct act of unselfish compassion of one alcoholic helping another. Until then our beliefs are just words on paper.

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