The Moth - The Confessional With Nadia Bolz-Weber: Dr. Ray Christian, Storyteller and Fulbright Specialist

Episode Date: April 16, 2021

We are so excited to present you with a new episode from season 3 of The Confessional, featuring our beloved Mothy, Ray Christian. The Confessional with Nadia Bolz-Weber is available wherever you listen to podcasts. ——— "I got the super squad, the dirty dozen. Nobody needs to know what's going on here; I'm handling everything." Dr. Raymond Christian is a retired US Army paratrooper who grew up on the poverty-ridden streets of Richmond, VA. He has taught African American History and Storytelling at Appalachian State University and is a 12-time Moth Story Slam Champion and winner of the 2016 National Storytelling Festival Story Slam. Ray is a Fulbright Specialist Scholar as an expert in Education and Storytelling Narrative, and the host and producer of the podcast “What’s Ray Saying?” Drraychristian.com Twitter: @whatsraysaying

Attention Houston! You have listened to our podcast and our radio hour, but did you know the Moth has live storytelling events at Wearhouse Live? The Moth has opened Mike's storytelling competitions called Story Slams that are open to anyone with a five-minute story to share on the night's theme. Upcoming themes include love hurts, stakes, clean, and pride. GoodLamoth.org forward slash Houston to experience a live show near you. That's the moth.org forward slash Houston. Hey y'all, I'm Katherine Burns, artistic director of the moth. I'm so excited to be sharing an episode from season three of the confessional with all of you. The confessional is a podcast

all about ugly confessions from beautiful people. And it's created and hosted by beloved math storyteller and friend Nadia Bultweber. If you haven't heard it before, Nadia describes it as a car wash for people's shame and secrets. And it includes confessions big and small. We're so proud to be a part of this continued collaboration between Nadia and her team and our longtime partners, PRX. Today we'll be releasing an episode of the show in our feed,

featuring another beloved Mothy Ray Christian, raised a long time all-star of the Moth stages, and we're so excited for you to hear even more from him. And this honest, strip-back conversation with Nadia. If you wanna listen to more episodes of The Confessional, it's available now across numerous podcast platforms. Here's The confessional. Music

There are scenes from movies that no matter how many times I watch them, I somehow can't keep from crying all over again. Art can do this, excavate a buried thing inside of us, and hold it up until our eyes adjust to the bright truth of it. There is that scene from Goodwill Hunting when Matt Damon's character, who tried to cover the pain of their childhood abuse with the veneer of toughness and bravado is told by his therapist that it wasn't your fault. And he brushes it off, but the therapist won't stop repeating it. It wasn't your fault. Until finally,

Will breaks down sobbing, unburdened by the truth and the relief of it. And there's Robert De Niro's character in the mission set in the 18th century, a mercenary enslaved trader in South America who kills his own brother in a fit of jealousy, and says to a Jesuit priest that he is beyond saving, that for him redemption is not a possibility. And yet the priest gives him penance anyway to carry a large net full of the trappings of his past, armor and weapons and gold, and walk with it on his back for miles, carried up steep cliffs and waterfalls. An easy metaphor for the dead weight of his own shame. After an exhausting painful journey,

when De Niro finally hoist himself to the top, he's cut free from the net by someone who had every right to instead cut his throat. And the contents fall down the cliff, and he collapses into sobs. It was his fault. I felt like both these characters at varying times in my life carrying both the weight

of what I cannot be blamed for and the weight of what I can. The older I get, the more I realize how blurry the line is between the two, how often there are mitigating factors to our own complicity and how at times we are complicit in complicated systems, we didn't actually create. Why do I cry at scenes and movies

that show the catharsis of mercy and forgiveness? For the same reason I started this podcast, because the road we're honest too long, and the cliffs we must climb in life are too steep to keep carrying that shit in a ratty net behind us, especially when grace and mercy and forgiveness are within our reach. My name is Nadia Bolzweber,

and you've stepped into the confessional. It's like a car wash for our shame and secrets. This episode contains a description of violence and discusses suicide, so sensitive listeners be advised. For listeners joining me in the confessional for the first time, stay tuned after the interview. For a blessing I've written just for my guest, but maybe also for you. My name is Nadia Bolzwever and you have stepped into the confessional. Joining me today is the scholar and storyteller, Ray Christian. I am really excited to be talking to him and so great.

Thanks for joining me and tell me what brings you into the confessional today. Wow, thank you for having me, Nadia. Well, Nadia, I spent 20 years in our army. I was a professional soldier. Was awarded a lot of medals, a lot of awards. You could say I had a pretty decent military career over 20 years. Started off in a way that I was a very unlikely soldier. What do you mean by that?

a very unlikely soldier. What do you mean by that? Unlikely in that before I left home, all I'd ever did was live with my mama. I'd never did anything. I went from high school to live with my mama house to being 17 years old in the United States Army. I had no other experiences prior to that. So you didn't have something that distinguished you

at that point? No, I was extremely undistinguishable as a person. I got assumed that young soldiers are teenagers for the most part, maybe in the early 20s, and they do the things that people in the early 20s and teenagers do with the real logic. And I found out it was easier to stand out as a good guy, just simply by going along and not saying nothing, you could stand out. So I started employing that.

But by the time I got stationed in Korea, not only was it working, I was recognized as one of the outstanding young sergeants in the brigade. As I started moving up, as I started playing a long playing the game, my reputation was really starting to rise. But the thing is, I was still young, and I still had the same friends and associates.

We were trained to not associate with guys once you moved up and ranked, but it was hard to do. These are the guys that I had a common background with Southern guys, guys who would join the military at the same time with me. And a lot of them had still not learned how to play the game. So they were known for being slackers, complainers, not necessarily the best soldiers that we had.

And so it didn't really look good for me to be around them. So one time I'm kind of like hanging with the guys, it's we're slugging down some beers, just shoot the shit about nothing. And the first sergeant sees me and he calls me over. And he says, the Sergeant Christian, let me speak to you for a moment. And he calls me over and he says, the sudden Christian, let me speak to you for a moment. Explain to me why it is that you're hanging out with some of the worst soldiers that we have in the unit.

And I think it quickly and being full of shit, I said, first, I work with any soldiers that are. I don't care if they have issues. I work with them. When I'm on duty, I work with them. that are. I don't care if they have issues. I work with them when I'm on duty. I work with them when I'm off duty. I'm just trying to work with soldiers, trying to make them better. And he looked at me, instead of saying you're full of it, he went, you know what?

I like that. I like that. That's why you are going to do well in the military, because that's the kind of thinking we want for up-and-coming leaders. The willingness to go out there and work with those soldiers who have problems. And I think I have an idea. What the first sergeant's idea was, was to get the worst soldiers out of the unit and form them into a single squad. That would be the 12 worse discipline problem and put them into one squad and make me the squad leader.

Oh gosh. So, and the thing that got you in that position of suddenly being the leader of a group that's formed exclusively of the 12 biggest disciplinary problems in your unit is that you just bullshitted your top sergeant when he said, hey, why are you hanging out with these guys?

Right, right. I gave it all a military talk I could give and he's seen to be okay with it. So then he gives you all of the worst soldiers and you're gonna be the leader of these guys. Right, I got 12 of them. Like Jesus. Yeah, 12 fuck ups too, man. They couldn't get a thing right. My disciples. All right. So then tell me more what happened. These guys, you know, ran a gambit. I would say

These guys, you know, ran a gambit. I would say five of them were probably just guys that needed good leadership. They needed to be motivated. Hey, you can make it. I think you're a good soldier. You know what I mean? The easy leadership stuff. What about the other half?

The next group were a range of soldiers. Some of them had extreme character flaws combined with some psychopathic tendencies. I'm talking about people who stole shit, people who want to fight everybody, people who were cunning and manipulative way beyond somebody my age should have been working with. And how old were you? I would have been 20. 20.

I don't think I was even shaving. Now the two guys who were exceptional, one of them was a guy, not only was he a weightlifter, bodybuilder, but he had also previously been a sergeant himself and he had been demoted three different times. Oh gosh. All for the same reason,

and that is beating up soldiers, beating up private. So I kind of made a deal with him and arrangement with him that I would allow him to take charge of all the discipline in the squad. All the lazy guys, all the guys who were late for formation, these are all the appearance things of leadership, like making sure all your guys are present for formation on time, ready with all their equipment looking good. And we were always on time, always had our equipment, always prepared every single time. Everybody noticed this. But this was only because I allowed the

former sergeant who I made my de facto team leader do anything he wanted to do to get the guys in shape. And he did. He intimidated them, strangled them, punched them in the stomach, slapped them around, why I saw it and turned my head and walked out the other way. Now I used to feel nervous as hell after that and feel really bad. I felt bad that, that, you know, I was the friendly side. Yeah. And my boys who came in with me, or they took notice, your boy, Christian, he's letting that dude torture these dudes, man. The word got around with my peeps, but it didn't get around like with the chain of command. They just thought I was doing great. You said there were two people in your squad that kind of stood out. So what about the other guy? Now that the other guy was a dude who was really depressed quite often.

I just seen him weep and he would talk to me about, you know, I don't know why I need to even bother to go to formation. I'm going to die my next week anyway, why doesn't make a difference? I wonder if I could take a grade A and blow myself up. Now, he talked like this all the time consistently. Now, I'll tell you what I probably should have done, but what I did do was basically nothing. I may have tormented him myself by constantly saying, I am getting so sick and damn tired of you always talking about committing suicide.

You always saying that shit. And in fact, hey, there's a truck by them by right now. What you gonna run for in that truck and jump in front of it? I said that so often that every time there was a vehicle or something moving by, I would just kind of nod my head at him like over there. Because in my 20 year old mind of leadership, amateur psychiatrists, I'm thinking he's full of shit and the best way to make somebody feel less depressed

is to beat on them. Maybe that's just the thinking of the ignorant. Yeah. I know nothing about turning this man over to a professional, professional counseling, letting one of the other high-ranking NCOs counsel him and let them make recommendations. What you and your sergeants do,

you don't know what you're hell you're doing anyway. But I ain't do that because I got the super squad, right? The dirty does it. I got the group. Nobody needs to know what's going on here. I'm handling everything. One morning, I came in and he did not report the formation. Oh gosh. And I was running around flipping, you know, out. I went to my forcer. Where is he? I haven't seen him. Making you look bad. Yeah, yeah. I was losing it until I was told that he had jumped in front of a truck. Oh, Jesus. He killed herself.

He killed a cell. But all I was thinking was, I told that man to jump in front of a truck. Who else knows what I did. But I got patched on the back. Damn, Christian, man, you really work with him too boy, sorry Christian I sure must have took a lot out of you Damn Christian man. I don't know how you did it must be difficult for a non-commission officer like you to have to deal with something that so harsh Wow, sorry Christian I might have pushed a suicidal man over the edge

I like a psychopath run wild. Now people are patting me on the bat. But what was going on inside? I was thinking, uh, I killed it now. It feels like the reason you have in your mind for why you were in that situation is that you bullshitted someone and then you thought, okay, I'm rising up in the ranks, people respecting me and a good leader. And that's how you ended up in that situation. But do you see it differently now?

Because you're telling in that situation. But do you see it differently now? Because you telling me that story, I think what a monumental fuck up of the army to put 12 soldiers who needed the most expertise in the care of a 20-year-old child. I mean, do you know, I mean, 20 is so young. There's not a 20-year-old on the planet that would have the skill to do that well. What are the other factors?

I think it's the expectation in the military about what young people can do. They always put an emphasis on young people and leadership, which can be a lot of pressure and misguided in every way. And in my case, it was a fatally flawed. So the two things that that seem to weigh on you are that you allowed this violent soldier to be abusive to the other soldiers so that they would perform the way they needed to in order for it to look good on you.

And you had a kid who struggled so much with depression and suicidality, and you thought, okay, I'm just gonna be tough on him and like kind of help him snap out of it. Right. What led you to make those decisions? Like, was that modeled for you? I had pet sergeants and it had been sort of pseudo acceptable

to a kind of rough handle some soldiers. Now, this trend was starting to come to the end about that period because by the modern standards, that sergeant who had been demoted three times, he would have been kicked out first time out of the box. You know, you bitchingly got soldiers got big old black eye, going to sit call because he ribs hurt, couldn't have even imagined that by my 10th year service, and whole chain of command would be relieved of duty

for something like that. Yeah. So eventually the culture shifted, but not before it did its damage. Yes. And I was part of that. or shifted, but not before it did its damage. Yes. And I was part of that. And the best thing that ever happened to me was not long after that they disbanded to squad.

I would tell you that for the rest of my career, I would go out of my way to refer guys to mental health counseling, to snap on young sergeants who I thought were playing amateur psychologists. I would tear up counseling forms that even look like they were writing about, you know, any insight to anybody was mental health. I would rip the paper up.

You're not a professional. rewrite that counseling statement. In later years, I would become a senior instructor at the non-commissioned officers course myself. And I could go on and on about all the lectures I gave about abusing soldiers. But I would always have this thing in my stomach when I would give that lecture. What was the thing? Guilt. Because I would speak about it with some passion. Right. How wrong it was.

I never said though, why I was giving those lectures, because I did this thing and I know what you might be thinking. How do you feel like you carried that through your life later? Because that is also something that somebody should have been able to write a referral form for you, for you're carrying that much guilt. Like, that has its own cost, you know, I mean, I'm watching this show right now called a loan and that people go out into the wilderness and they just have 10 tools and they have to

survive. And they filmed themselves. There's no camera crew. There's this woman who is a retired cop, I think. So she set up the camera and she just started recalling this night where she was off duty and there was an active shooter thing that went down and she heard it on the radio and she hesitated a bit

because she was technically supposed to be off before she turned the car around. She goes, yeah, I'm gonna go check it out. But by the time she got there, they were carrying this young woman's body out. And this is like decades ago. And she goes, all I know is that if I just hadn't hesitated, that girl would still be alive.

And I couldn't stop saying to my boyfriend, that breaks my heart. That breaks my heart., that breaks my heart. That breaks my heart. It just breaks my heart. She has carried that around for that long. Man, people need priests for this. Yeah. So while you talk about,

you know, sort of blaming yourself for not referring people to get the help that they needed, my sort of pastoral response is like, why wasn't somebody writing you a fucking referral form for the fact that you're carrying that weight around? You know, the irony of that is I would be a Sergeant First Class and almost two years away from retirement. I had 18 years in the Army and I was diagnosed

with having severe PTSD. And I was sick for years on active duty and it took that long before I was forced into a situation where I had to see a psychiatrist for an evaluation. I had a lot in my brain that was clawing at me. I'm on antidepressants right now. I mean, maybe he all he needed was a pit. I know what I feel like when I get off of him. And it wouldn't take but the weight of a straw to make me pull the car off a curve and go off the edge. Much less having some, some monster in your ear,

repeating it over and over again. Some amateur that doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. Do you feel like you can have any kind of compassion for your 20-year-old self in that situation, profoundly fucking ill-equipped to be doing that work? You know, I would look at him for the sheer weight of his ignorance, him for the sheer weight of his ignorance, not for any evil in his hearts. People can be set up for failure. And their consequences to your psyche that are unchangeable. I may have told two or three of my closest NCO friends about this many years later, as others share these kind of secret stories.

This was a late in my career when I was a Sergeant First Class. There are real world consequences for bad leadership. Yeah. Had you really only told a couple of people this story before? Yeah, it was, I was ashamed of it. And how we talked and what the culture was like in later years. This kind of stuff was just it was so discouraged and so looked down upon. That's not something that you wanted to talk about even being a part of. So I mean if this is a story that you've only ever told a couple people and that

because you feel ashamed of it, have you made your peace with it? Or does it still grind at you? I am still bothered by the idea that I should have known. I know, I can't lie, I didn't try hard to find out better. I absolutely at the time did not want anybody to know, did I didn't know what the hell I was doing. Oh wow. Yeah. I was stressing. I could have went to some other NCOs. I wasn't doing any of that because it was so much focus on me. And it would collapse if you admitted you didn't know something. Right. Or if you said, God, I feel like I've kind of gone down the wrong road here. Can you help me? Course correct. Did you have any models at all in your life up until that point for men asking for help admitting they didn't know something, trying to get some wisdom from

other people to know how to do a thing? Did you have any models for that? No, no, no, no, no. I saw guys go all the way to catastrophe rather than actually damn question. Yeah. So many of the confessions are things that people did between the ages of 18 and 28. Yeah. Yeah, almost every single one. You know, your your brain isn't even done growing. Right. You know what I mean? You're like thrust into situations. You haven't earned enough wisdom to know what to do and what not to do. You're all kind of instinct and impulse and reaction. And then this is the irony because we did things that we're ashamed of during that period of our life. We learned lessons and we earned wisdom and we became the people now who would never do those things. I don't know where you can just clip a coupon and exchange it for the lesson. It doesn't, that doesn't exist.

Right. You wish it could work that way. There's a price. Yes. You pay to learn. Yeah. And sometimes other people pay. And then you're left going, how can my life honor the fact that I get a still be here? And I learned some lessons, you know? That's the big question. That's what eats at my heart. I wish I could say to him and I wish I could say to his family. I wish I could say to the universe. I'm sorry.

Even if I didn't know, I should have known. I would only say for myself that I was young and ignorant. And I did the very best I could to make sure that nobody else did the same stupid shit that I did when I was younger. You got to stay in your lane sometimes. Well, thank you for sharing a story that you've kind of mostly kept to yourself. I mean how many of those are left with you? Your story teller, right? Yeah, you got some of your holdings still. Well if the CIA put that computer chip in my

products, I would tell you, we'll see you. I was already nervous about stepping in and confessing, because people be crying and stuff after talking to you. I know. Well, there was such a particular generosity to being willing to revisit these stories and sort of talk through them. So for the generosity of that, I think you. Right, I appreciate it.

And thank you. A blessing for Ray. Ray, I cannot stop thinking about the sheer weight of this story. The accumulated burden of grief and regret that you've carried for so long, like a cargo net full of ignorant things you said and did and trophies you didn't feel you earned all bound to you with a rope that you cannot cut loose with your own hand. But you can't cut it loose with your own hand sometimes. Because sometimes all the I'm so sorry's, no matter how genuine, can't free us from our own burdens. Sometimes it takes another person to wield the knife of forgiveness on our behalf. So Ray, may these words be a sharp blade of love taken to the rope binding you to your own

guilt. You are forgiven for being an unprepared kid in an unwinnable situation. It was your mistake, but it wasn't your fault. You did not kill a mentally ill young man, Ray. In 40 years, it's long enough to haul it around dragging at your tender soul. So may you be liberated from the weight of this story, the girth of it, the circumference of it, the solid lumpy unseemliness of it. May you watch it tumble down the cliff and disappear into the soft fog of mercy, which none of us deserve and all of us need.

Amen. [♪ music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music mother and a happy embodied woman, but you can't be a good mother and a liar. The Confessional is produced by Shameless Media and Shelby Jopie, with audio engineering by Kevin O'Connell. We receive support and spiritual guidance from PRX and the Moth. Our original music was written by the one and only Antoine Banks Williams.