In accordance with proper protocol, I am acknowledging archival consideration. My name is David Lane, revealing myself to Metatron. My report begins now.

                I’ve been in the spiritual fight for a number of years now. I was recruited by the angel Malachi, along with my childhood friend Rex. We were just getting our feet wet when SOUL collapsed. SOUL was the largest organized resistance group here in the Spiritual Realm, helping to combat Satan’s forces who are also remarkably organized.

After SOUL faded into irrelevancy, most people took it as an out. By people, I should clarify that I mean human beings. The angels, well they felt a compulsion to continue the fight. Many of them broke off into smaller groups with less oversight. For them, this war has been a defining part of their existence for longer than my home planet has existed.

It was a bit different for the people though. We were invited into this. Yes we accepted, but it was still a huge transition. The Spiritual Realm serves as a mirror world. Many aspects function the same way, if not similarly. But it’s in another dimension and so far removed from the world we occupied that for many of us, it was easier to return to our earthly connections than try to fumble around in the post SOUL chaos trying to find a place to fit. Why Rex would want to go back to the way things were before is a mystery to me. All we were doing was running the streets and getting into the kind of trouble impoverished black kids get into in Baltimore. Malachi gave us purpose. The kind of purpose you don’t get from a fancy job or even humble societal contribution. He introduced us to a way to truly help the world. The prospect of returning to some life in the mud…you could say I’ve outgrown it.

I don’t regret SOUL falling apart. I wish it happened a little later. Rex, myself and a few other newer recruits had not fully integrated into the ranks. Our lives were still heavily between the two worlds as we worked our way through basic training and academic growth. There’s a lot of bible to learn, a lot of history, a lot of logistics and that’s before you get into learning how to fight and in cases like Rex and I, learning how to use our powers. The point is, we weren’t knowledgeable or experienced enough to completely transfer to the Spiritual Realm as some lifers…or temple dwellers as the layman’s term goes choose to do. To be honest, I don’t think Rex ever would have wanted to do that. But I would have liked to.

I carried on with Malachi for a while, but he fell into what I can only describe as a deep depression after losing SOUL, which you could consider his greatest accomplishment. I was hungry for knowledge. I wanted to see more of the world. I wanted to build bridges and fight evil. He just wanted to cut down demons, as many as he could find. What should have been a lifelong mentor quickly turned into an anchor around my neck. I guess you could say I outgrew him too.

So, now I travel between the two worlds. I stay at my cousin’s house, which has been my registered address since I was a kid. And wouldn’t you know it, in the middle of my demon hunting and soul saving…that’s soul as in the ethereal engine of human beings, not the defunct organization…I’ve been summoned for jury duty. The Physical Realm has its inconveniences. It seems mundane enough, but it would so happen that it’s February. And with the details of this case, I find myself having a Paul experience. One could say…an identity crisis.

It’s fairly straightforward, or at least it’s presented that way. Young black kid accused of knocking over a store that he’s never even been in. He claims a false arrest and police brutality and now we have to come to a verdict. Looking at the evidence, it’s wrong place wrong time. There’s no other suspect, but the clerk’s testimony doesn’t put the kid in the right spot at the right time, given that the kid has already provided evidence of him making a purchase at a shoe store several miles away at the professed time of the robbery. The authorities gave him a beat down he didn’t deserve. That makes it fairly open and shut, and five of the other jurors who share my ethnicity agree. They want to call racism. They want to call discrimination. They want to call the authorities corrupt. They want to claim injustice. And I want to say all of those things too. But then more facts come out.

The kid, though he may not be the offender in this case, is not a first-time offender. He is not even a second-time offender. And while this particular store he’s never been in, this particular clerk has history with him…negative history of petty theft. Is a man who has been robbed by a young man who assumes his masked assailant might be the very same a racist? Or does his past experience with this same kid come to the surface. He may be incorrect, but is he racist?

Then there’s the arrest itself. The kid gets arrested because the clerk identifies him when he sees him later that evening. Is a police officer a racist because he pursues a lead a citizen gave him? The first words out of the mouth of the kid when they ask him to stop walking is an expletive directed at them and their mothers. It began volatile and only escalated from there. By the time of the beating, the kid has cursed at them, refused to cooperate, and gotten into a shoving match with one of the officers. Knowing how many of these situations end, I instinctively move to commend the officers for not coming up with an excuse to kill another unarmed black man. And that may be a sickeningly low bar, but it’s what speaks to me.

It is during deliberation with the jurors, that I realize my two identities are clashing. Because I, as a black man, am disgusted by the thought of minding my business and being treated like a common criminal just because it’s the easiest explanation. I think about the arrest, and what I would want to do. Some white bread cop who is likely borrowed from Virginia with no familiarity with my home or its residents, judges me guilty and behaves as such. Me in that situation, I’m tempted to do what this kid did.

But then my Christian identity speaks out, and I see that badge. That badge represents something in this country, a level of authority. And as a follower of Christ, I am to honor my authority. Were it me, I am to surrender myself and let the process do its business. It’s a spiritual trust in the system that my racial flesh has no reason to believe in. How am I to make heads or tails of that? My faith can’t be circumstantial, but my race certainly isn’t either.

They scream and cry at each other during deliberation. Mothers who just want their white counterparts to give a bit of grace and accept that there is always a racial undertone. And I hear that. But I am also forgiven of many sins that I know I have committed. In the face of punishment, I can’t ever claim injustice; I deserve worse. And this kid, he has a reputation…one he earned. He has a relationship with this clerk…one he forged. And while it means this clerk looks through biased eyes, how do we not consider the look?

I lack omnipotence. I see no one’s heart. So, I must judge what I can see. God’s judgement is always certain. He is always right. Because His choices are made with all the information. He’s never in the dark; He’s never making an educated guess. God has never formed a hypothesis. He deals with the facts. The facts of the case, and the facts of the heart. I don’t have the facts of the heart, only the case. And I judge this kid innocent of robbery. But how do I judge him innocent of wrong doing?

How, when I know that the sins of his crimes would not be speaking for him if he had not committed those crimes? The thief who hung next to Jesus knew he deserved the judgment he was receiving. He knew what it was to get what he deserved and so he recognized a man who deserved the opposite. This kid is not that thief. He is the other one who would rather lash out at the purveyors of justice rather than humble himself. I know why these jurors must act as though he has done no wrong. I know why they must act like his history should not mean anything. I know that when they are in the presence of a white juror who is so hateful of their skin that he argues the kid’s receipt that proves his whereabouts is a forgery, they feel they have no choice. My identity hears them and is compelled to behave as them. But my other identity cannot behave as them, because it is not like them.

I judge this kid innocent of the crime of which he’s been accused, but I do not judge him guiltless. It is a nuanced conversation that they do not want to have. They don’t want to discuss his past or his behavior when questioned. They just want to discuss his color, and privatized prisons and corrupt judges and racist clerks. That is not a conversation I want to have. Perhaps I’ve outgrown it.

In moments like this, I regret the collapse of SOUL. That I did not get an opportunity to put down roots in the other world. I have few friends here, very little family and no one that I can consider a kindred spirit. I long for the place where my two identities become one. For my spirit has no race. And that world does not make me choose.

Protocol acknowledged. My name is David Lane requesting that archival consideration be ended upon benediction. End of message to Metatron.