I am a soldier of Christ
I was a 🛹 skater before I was a soldier, my skateboard was how I got to high school when my parents couldn’t take me. My favorite skater has always been Mike Vallely, neither a technical, flip-obsessed street skater nor a big-air vert skater. His signature style was powerful and fluid. He’d frequent skateparks and show locals the biggest, most bad ass shit they hadn’t even thought of yet.
Got a pyramid? Get all the speed you can and clear it with a five foot melon grab.
Got a gap nobody’s cleared yet? Get outta the way and watch Mike V get it done.
Got tyrannical locals mouthing off with unmentionable pejoratives? Beat the shit of out them, all at once;
Mike Vallely is seen as intense, a character trait that some may equate with being aggressive. But that assessment fails to see the whole picture. The same intensity that made him such a unique skater also made it impossible to ignore a group of bullies using their privilege (and the f word) to dehumanize others less fortunate than him. That fight ⬆️ put him on a lot of people’s radar, a fact he doesn’t love. But I bet there are a few skaters who love him for sticking up for them.
I’ve been called “intense,” a fact I’m not exactly keen on. It’s not a character trait I chose for myself; it was put on me by people who feel numb when they compare themselves to me. I put up with the put downs for a long time, something another veteran called “Shit Life Syndrome.” SLS is not a diagnosis, it’s a mask. It is a way to avoid the cold hard truth that we live in a world in which civilian bias is normative, where “it just sucks to be a veteran.” Well I’m here to say,
Fµ¢k that shit; nobody’s life should suck jut because they served.
Why am I writing this? Because it will help you understand me just a little. And understanding my will help you understand Martinalia.
I took the name Martin at my confirmation to the Episcopal Church in April 2013, after the fourth century soldier-turned-bishop. After a dishonorable discharge that came after 25 years of protecting Caesar’s life, he found himself on the field of battle for the first time. He refused to use premeditated violence, saying,
Martin went on to become an itinerant deacon and founded multiple monastic communities. He refused to be ordained, but was tricked into becoming bishop of a large urban center. Before the townspeople finished acclaiming him their leader, other bishops complained that
Martin’s person was contemptible, that he was unworthy of the episcopate, that he was a man despicable in countenance, that his clothing was mean, and his hair disgusting.
Martin did not reside in the cathedral, the first bishop to adopt a monastic lifestyle despite serving a large city. He attracted over 80 disciples who lived beside each other in a series of cave across the river Loire, every day traversing the gap between rural and urban, asceticism and affluence, the people and the power; the original chaplain.
As he got on in years, some Spanish bishops sought to convince the emperor Maximian to silence a heretic, Priscillian of Avila, using capital punishment. Martin delayed the ploy using his political connections as a former Praetor, but to no avail. Maybe it was inevitable that the church would turn to violence and coercion rather than logic and reason. Upon hearing that the distinction between church and state had been desecrated, he publicly excommunicated the bishops and shamed the emperor in his own home.
Martin died thinking he had failed, that his inability to prevent the murder of a fellow Christian would be his legacy. But it’s barely mentioned in the Martinian legendarium. It reminds me of Ralph Abernathy, who was excommunicated from the civil rights movement for being honest about his best friend’s humanity. After he disclosed in his autobiography that Dr. Martin Luther King cheated on his wife the night before he was murdered, the NAACP and it’s celebrity activists disowned him. His gravestone reads “I tried.”
I might fail, or feel like I failed, to promote human dignity for soldiers and veterans by the time my life ends. But it won’t be for lack of trying. If the truth is all I have, then I’ll beat the shit out of injustice with it. I’ll go to my Maker knowing I was not just honest, but vocal and persistent. I may not “win,” but I sure as shit won’t stop fighting. On multiple fronts if necessary, because I know there are plenty of other veterans who’ve been shut down so many times that they learn they have to shut up to fit in.
I don’t need them as a justification for what I do, but it does help hearing that they support me. And I can’t wait until they’re free to be themselves too, when civilian bias is on its heels because the truth is a far deadlier weapon than ignorance.
