Mentoring Boys to Men: Climbing Their Own Mountains

I am pleased to announce the publication of my book, Mentoring Boys to Men: Climbing Their Own Mountains.  This is available in print on amazon.com, Tillamook County Pioneer Museum and Hidden Acres Nursery and Cafe Botanica. An e-book edition is available at Amazon.

Mentoring Boys to Men: Climbing Their Own Mountains is your guide to inspiring and guiding young men, most of them fatherless and unloved, into manhood, the adventures of mentoring, and the rewards of helping them find their way in the world. These are heartfelt and inspiring stories of courage and determining, overcoming obstacles, and making a difference. This book will help you change one person's life, and thereby changing the world.

Reviews

"After years of working in law enforcement, I found that we always end up dealing with the same people over and over. The problem is that we don’t take the time to engage in conversation with that person to find out where the source of the problem really comes from. The book was an eye opener for me and I think that more people in law enforcement should take the time to read it.

I have found that author to be a great person for opening his heart and mind to these young men that see no future for themselves. 

Great job in mentoring and sharing your stories."

--Alex Ramirez, Clark County (Washington) deputy sheriff, Jail Re-entry Program

Wells Kempter

"As a trauma therapist who works with the impact of combat on the lives of servicemen and women, this book provides the road map for approaching and caring for another strata of trauma impacted souls in post-modern America.  Lemery, in what he writes and how he writes it, depicts the antidote for our troubled times; compassion.  If you enjoy studies in love, caring, and

 read these words.  If you desire more compassion in your life, read these words.  Civil servants who judge in the morning and heal in the evening are very rare.  I recommend for those who seek greater health and well-being to listen and implement these lessons from the wise Judge Lemery."     

Wells Kempter, MA, counselor, US Dept. of Veterans Affairs, former Army Ranger;

 Army Ranger

“Connects to the importance of mentoring to its spiritual roots and provides a simple rule, communicate and listen.  Challenges readers to get involved and help others to reach their full potential in their lives and walk away from their lives of self loathing, poverty and cycles of abuse.  

“My personal take is that once I opened this book, I could not stop reading.  I read about personal pain and the simple gesture of kindness can affect change in so many lives.  Believe the act of kindness is a free gesture that can cultivate so many rewards.  I read about how the act of forgiveness of another and oneself  can change a biased attitude.  

“In the "world" of law enforcement, I got caught up in institutional thinking that everyone is the same and can never change. It is a cold and heartless institution in charge of so many lives.  It seemed that indifference was cultivated in this institution.  

“I am, personally, profoundly, forced to take another look at our society and especially myself, after reading this book.  Thank you for sharing.”

——Sandra K. Pattin, Parole Officer 3, Department of Corrections, State of Washongton.  She  specialized in the sex offender unit. She served on the Board of Directors at YWCA for Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault team.  She has cumulative 35 years volunteering and advocating for victims, 17 years career in law enforcement.  Education, Masters in Social Work. 

“Neal Lemery’s writing reveals much wisdom.  There is an insight and honesty here that challenges you to consider the deeper meanings and purposes of life.  Do not dare to even begin reading these pages unless you are willing to be inspired and transformed, for these stories are irrefutable witnesses to the power of grace.”

Dr. D. Scott Allen

Pastor, United Methodist Church

Biography

Neal Lemery is a mentor of young men in prison, and a retired judge and lawyer. Active in his community, he now is working with fatherless imprisoned young men in shaping their future and giving them confidence and self worth. He is a past president of the Oregon Justices of the Peace Association, Oregon YMCAs, retired youth accountability court judge, and is the current president of the Tillamook Bay Community College Foundation.

Neal is a writer, former school board member, former District Attorney, and lawyer. He has served as a pro tem circuit court judge, and a municipal judge and Justice of the Peace. He has served on numerous local, regional, and statewide (Oregon)committees on juvenile and social justice, substance abuse, and domestic violence. He has been a foster parent, and mentors numerous young men in prison.

Struggling With Forgiveness

“Forgiving people doesn’t mean you necessarily want to meet them for lunch.  It means you try to undo the Velcro hook.  Lewis Smedes said it best: ‘To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner is you.’

‘I wish there’d been a shortcut, but the would had to be revealed in order to heal.  Lack of forgiveness seemed like a friend, the engine that drove my life, with a hot little motor that was weirdly invigorating.  It had helped me survive.

“…

“Forgiveness is release from me; somehow, finally. I am returned to my better, dopier self, so much lighter when I don’t have to drag the toxic chatter, wrangle, and pinch around with me anymore. Not that I don’t get it out every so often, for old time’s sake. But the trapped cloud is no longer so dark or dense. It was blown into wisps, of smoke, of snow, of ocean spray.”

—Anne Lamott, Small Victories, p 117-118

“Forgiveness means it is finally unimportant for you to hit back.” pp 141-142

The journey with forgiveness, and all of my anger and rage, and general unsettledness, depression, and “not know what to do about it” feelings, is long and tough.  Answers aren’t easy, and I practice all of my avoidance, not wanting to really deal with it.

But, I must.  I must take it on and get into it.  It is always time to deal with my anger, my resentment, and sort it out.  Now.  

New stuff raises up the old stuff, the stuff long buried, ignored, almost forgotten.  It is still there; all of it.  Until I deal with it and let it go, it will be around, nagging at me, eating away, and keeping me from moving on and letting go.

I am good at mortaring my brick walls and erecting barriers, keeping my monsters hidden in the basement of my life.  But, I am a lousy housekeeper, and now might be a good time for some deep cleaning, and breaking down of the walls I have built over the years.  

Desmond and Mpho Tutu’s book on forgiveness is a rich discussion, inviting me to take all of this on, and really deal with it.  Their 30 day exercises and discussions on the subject via e-mail are excellent, cleaning out my puss filled wounds and giving me permission to heal.

   

I have all the tools.  I have the time.  I have the motivation.  And, yes, I do this work.  I take it on, and I see the benefits of being truly and fully engaged in the process of forgiveness.  I feel lighter, freer, happier.  I can move on now, on many levels.

Yet, there are some things I haven’t really dug into, to really work on forgiveness, with some people, some experiences.  It is too painful, I say to myself.  Yet, there is something else.  Perhaps I really enjoy the struggle, the tension, yes, even the hurt.  I don’t want to let that go.  If I forgive, truly forgive, then I don’t have that anger inside of me, that energy of hatred and distrust.

It is, perhaps, an addiction, a need I have to feel that way.  Being pissed off at someone or some experience has become a deep part of myself.  If that goes away, if I release that, then what is left?  Will I become a lesser person?  

That releasing is scary to me.  I am not ready, I tell myself.  The real answer, however, is that I am afraid of who I might really be once those toxins are flushed away, and I truly heal inside.  I hold on to the hate and the hurt, just in case I am not strong enough to live a full, whole life without that flame of rage that still has a place next to my heart.  

This is the dilemma I wrestle with, the feelings I must explore, the doubts I must address and really deal with.

Perhaps I need to reframe the question, and look to forgive myself for who I am now, who I have become, and deal with the hurt I have let burn inside of me. Yes, I need to let it go, and be who I really am deep inside.  I might even like him, a lot.

—Neal Lemery, 1/3/2015

Commitment, Change, and Solstice

“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back.  Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth: that  ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans; the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred.”

—Goethe

It is easy to do nothing.  It is easy to not take a step, not to have that intent to move forward. Inertia is on the side of the procrastinator, if one never plans to achieve anything. Doing nothing means I intend nothingness.

My essence, my soul calls for something more. Moving ahead in life is all about intention. Where do I want to go? What do I want to accomplish? What is on my “to do” list? 

I have intention, even if I intend to do nothing, to sit idle. If I am intentional and purposeful, then my intentions form around my purpose, and I am propelled forward, onward.  I take that first step, which is always the hardest step.  My inertia changes and I move.  The laws of physics apply and I stay in motion. I move in the direction I am moving, forward.  

Implicit in this motion is a goal, a purpose, a direction. I am going towards something.  And, that something should be important, because I am engaging my life in moving towards that something.  I am being purposeful, intentional.  Yes, directional.

Over time, I find myself down the road, along the way.  I am somewhere else, and my perspective, my surroundings have changed. I am changed by this moving forward. In moving, change becomes inevitable, the essence of the motion.

Today is the winter solstice, the day of shortest daylight in the Northern Hemisphere—longest night, shortest day.  Tomorrow, the celestial movement will have taken us from here to somewhere further, and daylight time will grow— a new season, a new year.  

This year, the Moon joins in, with a new moon today. The heavens are calling for us to pay attention.

I am within all of this, change acting upon me, motion and inertia, pushing me ahead. Dare I embrace this change, and reform myself, finding my intention, and ride this wave onward? That is the call of this day, the morning birdsong of this first winter’s day.

Yes, it is time to move, and to change. I intend it to be so.

—Neal Lemery 12/21/2014

Grieving for my Sister in Law

Grieving for my Sister in Law

Last week, my sister in law died.  I have found abundant tears, yet fewer words, to sort that news out, to find my way through the wilderness of grief and loss.  I am lost in my loss.  

Pancreatic cancer is an evil thing.  It has moved swiftly into my life, at many times, taking good people, long before I would even begin to contemplate that their time had come to leave us.  Pancreatic cancer is on my short list of things to loathe. 

When I heard the sad news, weeks, yes months before I expected it, a Christmas letter from a good friend had just arrived.  The letter started off with a quote:

“What is the sum total of a man’s life? I knew the answer, and it wasn’t complicated.  At the bottom of the ninth, you count up the people you love, both friends and family, and you add their names to the fine places you’ve been and the good things you’ve done, and you have it.”

—-James Lee Burke, Light of the World.

Each day is a gift, and each moment is precious.  We need to make the most of our lives, and to do what is right, and to bring joy into the world, for ourselves and for others.  And, I am too often rudely reminded that life is short, and should be cherished, in every moment.

My sister in law’s life was rich in family and friends.  She sought joy every day, joy in the simple things, the quiet moments.  I suspect she treasured the sunrise, and the moments with my brother, doing simple things, ordinary.  Yet, in their simplicity and plainness, there was sacred beauty and peace.

She enjoyed rich, strong coffee.  She baked miraculous biscotti to go along with it, as well as a variety of homemade pastas and bread.  

I have been blessed to have her in my life.  We were buddies, friends.  We laughed, we shared jokes and stories.  

One summer’s day, we conspired against my brother to wash his pickup.  We tricked him into driving it onto the lawn, and we scampered like mischevious children, armed with hoses and sponges, even getting into a water fight with my brother.  He resisted, but ended up laughing, soaking wet. His pickup was clean.

She retired last summer, and they took a long trip to Italy, her parents’ homeland.  I trust they found long warm afternoons to drink wine and sample great food.  They bought a new house, and were settling in to a new, relaxing life when she fell ill.  And, all too quickly, she left us.

My life is poorer now, with her gone.  But, in many ways, she is still here, in my heart.  She has enriched my life and brought joy to me.  For all of that, I am grateful for the all too brief time we had together.  

Again, I am reminded of the shortness of life, and the sweetness of life.  All we really have is this moment, and we should enjoy it.  

—Neal Lemery 12/9/2014

One Month, and a Novel Comes

What is it like to write a novel, and accomplish that task in a month?  

I’d never thought I’d experience this, to tell a very long story, and get it down, in some fashion and in some sort of order. All within a month. 

I’m much more of a non fiction kind of writer—essays, poems, op ed pieces for the local paper.  In my legal career, I kept in the non-fiction category, though the cynics among us might disagree about how to label what those lawyers write.  

My creative non-fiction book, Mentoring Boys to Men: Climbing Their Own Mountains, is in copy editing at CreateSpace, and is going to be published in several weeks.  That work took more than two years, though the times I was writing had a lot of interruptions.  No real deadlines and pressure, unlike the idea of writing a complete book in a month.  So, why put myself under this kind of pressure?

November is National Novel Writing Month, and there is an organization out there (http://nanowrimo.org ) that gathers people together, at least in cyberspace, to hunker down over their computers, or their papyrus and quill pens, and put together a rough draft in four short weeks. 

I joined over 300,000 other writers, including 80,000 students and educators, all with the goal of putting down 50,000 words, creating a book.  Well, at least a rough draft.  

That’s 1,600 plus words a day, on average, assuming you don’t take a day or two off, and that you write a couple of hours every day, plodding along, headed to 50,000 words.

The idea of writing a book, along with 300,000 other similarly obsessed writers, intrigued me.

I joined a regional group, over 50 people strong, for moral support.  Our leader sent out regular e-mails, and even scheduled a weekly collective writing session at a coffee shop, hoping to inspire us and perhaps, guilt us into meeting our goal. I never made it to the coffee shop, seventy miles away, but I felt their collective spirit, their angst, and their drive.  We were family, fellow missionaries.

After a day’s writing, you can post your word count to the website, getting feedback on where you are at, as far as the number of words go, and how much closer you are to the 50,000 word goal.  The 50,000 words was formidable, and I preferred to concentrate on the daily goal, of 1,600 words. 

I started with a character, a setting, and a general idea of the journey that I wanted my character to travel.  I had a good list of the supporting cast, and a number of stories to tell, stories that would move my character along in his life, and his journey for self understanding and real change.  

I even wrote out a page of sentence fragments and words, which sort of plotted out the journey.  It was less than an outline, and more than a short description of the book.  Authorities in the know would label it a synopsis, which sounds impressive, like I really knew what I was doing.  

When November 1 dawned, I sat down in front of my laptop, and invited the Muse to sit with me, as I started out.  Like a weaver, it took a while to set up the framework, and fill up the shuttles, beginning the weaving process, and actually making some whole cloth.   At the end of a few hours, there was actually something there, a bit of a story, and more than the bare skeleton of my character.  I felt good, even satisfied.  

“I’ve started,” I bragged to myself, and to my wife, who was an early cheerleader to my efforts.

But, then there was that next day, and the next, thirty in all.  The trail looked long and lonely.  So, I only worried about this day, and getting something done every day.

The daily word count wasn’t impossible, and it was large enough that I had to do some serious writing and move the plot along, every day.

When my wife had surgery, I lost a few days.  Waiting in hospitals is not conducive to the Muse, even though you have plenty of time to do nothing, nothing but wait.  My attention span withered.  

Yet, the first full day my patient and I were back home, the Muse awakened, and I churned out 5,000 words in a day.  I guess I had been thinking about the character, and the plot, and had some ideas of where it was all going.  The Muse is persistent.  

It has helped that my character is probably certifiably crazy, and so is the antagonist.  And, over thirty years of experience dealing with folks who are mentally ill, emotionally abused, and incarcerated gave me a large cast of characters and a plush library of stories to tell.  

The day before Thanksgiving, it was time to write the climactic chapter, and to bring a lot of the things I’d been developing to a rich froth. It was time to let my character find his freedom and achieve his destiny.  My scratched out laundry list of the chapter’s frenzy laid there, next to my coffee mug, and I wrote, and then wrote some more.

The final product went a slightly different route, but then, the good chapters do that.  My character has a will of his own, and I needed to listen to where he wanted to go in the telling of his story.  

My fingers smoked, or so it seemed, and at last, I was drained.  The coffee was long gone, and I needed a martini.  

The next day was Thanksgiving, and giving thanks for being at 46,000 words and having the end in sight was my offering at the family table for our annual tradition of giving thanks.

I needed a day off, a day of family and eating and being lazy, to recover from all of that angst, and then, on to the last chapter.  

My writing is chronological, orderly.  But, that last chapter, I wrote it backwards.  I had awakened with the final paragraph already drafted by my subconscious.  

Fortified by coffee, I typed that last paragraph, starting with the last sentence.  Then, the paragraph before it, and then the one before that.  After an hour, the last chapter was written.  My lawyer mind screamed in agony. 

This is not the right way.

But, it was. It worked.  It flowed.  It made sense.  The last chapter wrapped up all the loose ends, well, except for one or two, but then, that’s the fun of writing.  You need to not answer all the readers’ questions, though you can figure out that the remaining questions will get resolved, and in a good way.

There was another chapter that needed writing, and that came out onto the computer screen, too.  It would fit in nicely just before the climactic chapter.  

And, it was done.  The first draft.  It is a draft, a work in progress.  But, the meat and bones are there.

Then, time for some computer work, putting all of my chapters, my daily writes, into a giant file. I’d been keeping track of the word count all month, but when I had everything all in one place, I realized my count was wrong, by about 10,000 words.  10,000 in my favor, though.  I’d actually written 60,000 words!  Yikes!  

With excitement, I went to the NaNoWriMo website, and updated my word count.  And, then, I pasted and copied all of my month’s writing into the “word count validator”.  Its job is to count all the words, again, and give me an official word count.  

Yes, 60,000. Well, 60,650 to be exact.  I wanted to be exact.  Every word counts, and every word took a bit of my energies this month.  

The screen flashed that I’m a winner.  I can order the winner’s T shirt, and put the “winner”  NaNoWriMo logo on my blog.  

I’d also been eying some rather cool writing software, that several writers had recommended.  I’d checked it out and it looked very useful.  The price was very reasonable, and, if I became a NaNoWriMo winner, I’d get it for fifty percent off.  

Now, I have my new software, my new “winner” logo and I think I’ll order that T shirt, too.  

But, most importantly, I have a new piece of work to reflect on, revise, and rewrite.  It’s a good first draft, and I think it will evolve into a respectable story that needs to be told, out in the world.  I’m going to publish it, and get it out there. 

My second book. My first novel.  All that sounds good.  It’s been a good month.  

—Neal Lemery 12/2/2014

Giving Thanks

Gathering
Only the expectation of togetherness and gratitude and family
Simple pleasures, old recipes, old memories, traditions
Old stories, new accomplishments, adventures
Pausing to give thanks, being together
Nothing else needed, wanted, just
Thanksgiving.

—-Neal Lemery 11/25/2014

Thoughts About Mentoring

“Teach them the quiet words of kindness, to live beyond themselves. Urge them toward excellence, drive them toward gentleness, pull them deep into yourself, pull them upward toward manhood, but softly like an angel arranging clouds. Let your spirit move through them softly.”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

When I mentor, I seek to listen, and to respect them, and honor their voices. Perhaps for the first time, they are listened to.

I’m being mentored, too.  I have sent my book manuscript to an editor and have begun the publication process at CreateSpace, at Amazon.  The kind folks there are gently guiding me through the process.  I hope to see the book out in the world at the end of December.  More updates to follow, on this new journey in life. Mentoring Boys to Men: Climbing Their Own Mountains will soon emerge from my cocoon!

More at http://facebook.com/NealCLemery .