Jihad, Strength in Battle or just damn bad luck

December 10th, 2010

Revised  July 29th, 2017


James Ford is reading the psalms with an old friend, a UU minister who has suffered a series of debilitating strokes. He asked me for my list of these ancient songs that struck an authentic place. I told him the story of my friend Kevin McCarthy, a young Jesuit priest who set out to learn Hittite so that he could carefully examine Hittie war songs and see how they related to the Psalms of David, another warlord actually. There’s always war and mayhem. I went scurrying to the Psalter to locate the most bloodthirsty songs I could find. At least this is true, the ancients didn’t shy away from a full throated description of the damage that they wanted god to wreak on their enemies.


Yes, there is a holy war worth fighting.


Almost two and half decades ago, I started a small mediation group at the Central YMCA. I talked to Tarrant about it and he told me to look at the teaching of some vipassana teachers, that the simpler form of clearing meditation might be suitable for the Tenderloin’s struggling denizens. I started with a guided meditation, directing people to put their attention to various parts of the body, from the head to the toes, and then to breathing,


I sat with a small group every Tuesday night for 7 years. Though there was a huge turnover on those 12 to 15 cushions and chairs, there were a few people who consistently showed up and dedicated an enormous amount of energy to their practice. Among them was an African American gay man who called himself “Jihad.” 


Jihad was a very handsome man, with great eyes. He had gone to UC Berkeley on an athletic scholarship and had been a star, though not big enough to be pursued by a professional team.  He was extremely gifted intellectually. And he was gay.


He told me that he was engaged in a holy war and, long before Americans learned about another interpretation of the Qur'an's injunction to followers of the Prophet, this bright young man was fighting his own demons in a way that inspired me: he was a meth addict and meditation was his way of cultivating contact with his Higher Power.


His war was the very disciplined and serious work of gaining sobriety and finding a path for his gifts. 


He went into rehab long before I ever had any personal experience with meth. One night he called me in desperation, saying that the doctors had messed with his medications and he was going crazy. I tried to call him back the next day but the rehab wouldn’t connect because I was not family, nor a professional connected with his treatment. 


The next Monday night I thought I saw him come up to the room where we meditated, but he was fighting with the desk clerk who’d followed him upstairs, and stopped him from coming in. Later, the guy from the front desk told me that he thought that Jihad was high. That brief glimpse of him trying to get into the meditation hall was the last time I saw him. The next day I tried to call him again. Nothing.


A few weeks later I got an email from a friend who just sent out an announcement of his funeral to everyone on his email list. I was shocked. 


Later I found out that he’s been shot by police at a popular restaurant in the Castro when the staff had called to complain about his behavior. Witnesses said there was no reason for the police to have opened fire, but they did. He was black and acting strangely. I also learned that his brother had also been killed violently, in gang violence; I suspect that there were drugs involved.


There were other odd bits of information that surfaced too, but never connected. He had been involved with a gay Catholic priest—I never knew that man’s name though I did talk to Jihad when he visited his “mentor” in another city.


I have a friend who is a gay performance artist, KR (I have decided to include him in our anonymity) who says that we have to be careful of what we put into our bodies if we don’t want to end up going to meetings for the rest of our lives.  I disagree on a very basic level: if you have an addictive streak, some drug will find you sooner or later no matter how careful you are, even if you were living a solitary existence on a pristine island. Certainly in urban gay life, the onslaught of drugs and booze are built into almost everything that we encounter as we live our lives and work out how we are going to live useful, productive and happy lives. There is no escape.


And of course KR wound up in the rooms too, but only stayed for a short time.

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