The Story

In the summer of 2005 my wife was in her first unit of CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education). One of her peers was a Dominican Brother named John. John and Jeannie developed a good friendship. At the end of the summer John moved back to California to continue his work in the Dominican Order and Jeannie continued in a CPE residency program for a year.

During that year Jeannie got pregnant. When John found out that Jeannie was pregnant he told her that he had something for her. Actually, he told her, it was for our child. He went on to tell her that members of the Dominican Order are not owners of anything, rather anything that came into his possession was something that he was holding onto until the intended owner became clear to him. He had discerned that we, more specifically, our daughter was to be the owner of this object that he was sending to us.

A couple of months later a package came in the mail. It was a beautiful woven leather cross. He told us that the cross had been made by a Sudanese refugee in Uganda. A friend of John had given it to him. He blessed the cross and passed it on to us.

I took the cross, used a stamp pad and stamped it onto a piece of paper, and had that design tattooed on my forearm. It reminds me of several things. First and foremost it is in honor of my daughter. It is also a reminder of the place from which I’ve come. It wouldn’t have been too many years ago that I would not have honored the gift given to me because I would not have honored the position of the person giving the gift.

So here is the tattoo. It is still healing, you can tell because it’s shiny from the lotion, and because of the partially shaved arm. But you get the idea…

The Buffet (pick and choose)

Thursday, April 12th I awoke with visions of needles in my head. Yes, needles.

Two weeks prior I had driven to Th’ink Tank in Denver and set up an appointment with Fish. Fish is a young man who, for eight years now, has been embedding ink into the flesh of fellow humans. Fish is an artist, a tattoo artist.

Originally, I went thinking that I would get the tattoo that evening. I soon came to find out that all of the artists at Th’ink Tank are booked at least two weeks in advance.

So, on Thursday, April 12th I awoke knowing that the next day I would be getting a tattoo that I had been planning to get for over a year. It is a tattoo of which I will post pictures and about which I will tell the story in my next post. Typically I plan tattoos for over a year. I find that this is enough time for me to decide that I actually want this picture on my body for the rest of my life.

Thursday was a special day because my dad was in town. He had a lay-over on his way home from California. We spent the day together and it was enjoyable. In the late afternoon I headed to my job, which is coaching a middle school girls soccer team for a small private school in Denver.

On my way home it is my ritual to listen to Christian talk radio. I find it very interesting to listen to the things that come up on this show. I am continually fascinated by the serious life decisions that people entrust to a radio talk show host who does not know them at all and has very little education. It’s interesting and good for a laugh most of the time.

This particular day Bill called into the show for the purpose of having the host validate his views on tattoos. Bill said that his brother-in-law had tattoos and that he did not agree with tattooing. The host said that when confronted with something like this one should go to the Bible to see what it says. Then he quoted Leviticus 19:28:

“Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the LORD.”

They patted themselves on the back and congratulated one another on being against tattoos. I have heard this argument more times than I can count. It seems pretty clear. If the Bible is THE WORD OF GOD then it seems that God is clearly not in favor of tattoos. Here’s the rub:

Leviticus 19:27.

You haven’t heard it recently? Here you go: “’Do not cut the hair at the edges of your head or clip off the edges of your beard.'”

If you followed the link to the Christian talk radio station you’ll notice that the man who is decidedly against tattoos seems to be okay with cutting the hair at the edges of his head and clipping off the edges of his beard. Odd.

If the Bible is THE WORD OF GOD and we must follow it, it seems as though he might want to rethink the shave and haircut.

Needless to say, I was not convinced by the radio. I did not call to cancel my tattooing appointment. Instead, since so many people seem to choose verse 28 to follow and leave out verse 27, I decided to do my part to balance it out and decided to let the edges of my beard grow.

I got the tattoo. It is healing. I’ll take a picture of it in a couple of days and post it. I’ll also tell you the story of where it came from and why it means a lot to me.

Peace