Mark Scandrette

Yesterday I finished reviewing the page proofs for SOUL GRAFFITI. Its hard to tell when this project will finally be complete. I’m waiting to celebrate until I am holding the finished product in my hand. When I got the copy for the jacket cover this week it was fun to see kind words from several other endorsers.

“Soul Graffiti is not so much a book as it is an encounter—a deadly serious encounter—with a Christianity that is urban, American, un-institutionalized, and now. If you truly like your own Christian walk just the way it is, you definitely should not read this book.”

“Mark Scandrette guides us in this beautifully written and brilliantly illustrated book along a path towards actualized spirituality in a postmodern world. The book provides new avenues to ancient truths.”

“Soul Graffiti is creative, inspiring and challenging in equal measure. Mark has a wonderful way with language weaving together stories, metaphors, and insights that combine into a poetic call to take seriously the radical nature of Christ’s life and teaching and live it out in our own communities.”

Its been just over two years since my grandfather, Dr. Onas Cudley Scandrette died at 91 years old. My cousin, Chunky Blood, has written me recently inquiring about things I might remember about grandpa. Sometime knowing more about where we come from helps us makes sense of who we are becoming. I still think of my grandfather alot– as a signpost fading into the past about where I come from and where my destiny lies. I remember being at the hospital just after he died. I was sitting in a chair beside the bed where his body was beginning to stiffen– his mouth still open. Next to him was my dad on the phone making funeral arrangements. I could hear my sons running around out in the hall. That moment gave me an enduring picture of the cycle of life– where I have been– the child out in the hall, where I am, and where I am headed: middle age, older adulthood and mortality.
I found a place to write offer a tribute to him in SOUL GRAFFITI:

“My other grandfather, Onas Cudley Scandrette, could not have been more different than Grandpa Ray Clow. He and my grandmother Mary lived in a college town near Chicago where my grandfather was a professor of psychology. Their home, instead of being decorated with church craft bazaar knick-knacks, knitted Kleenex box cozies, and dinosaur bones, was furnished with 1950s modern furniture, shelves of art and psychology books, and walls hung with black and white art prints and paintings—including signed lithographs by Marc Chagall, Pablo Picasso, and Thomas Hart Benton.
Grandpa Onas looked the part of an eccentric college professor, wearing thick glasses, suit jackets, and a derby hat as he drove his red MG convertible through campus. He dabbled in mountaineering, experimented with Pop Art, and was an accomplished photographer who corresponded with Ansel Adams. In his basement there was a dark room where he perfected experimental print techniques that he documented for publication in photographic society journals. I rarely saw my grandfather without an SLR camera around his neck.
He also wrote down and told stories about his childhood experiences and wrote romantic and philosophical poetry exploring the human psyche. Academically and personally Grandpa Onas was interested in the intersection of faith and humanity—particularly the psychological dimensions of human spirituality. He was a lifelong fan of the Hebrew Psalms because of their resonance with subjective human moods and motivations. Raised in a religious tradition that regarded the arts and culture as “worldly” and the cravings of the body as shameful, he sought to find God in the pleasures of human creativity.
Always a bit of a hipster, Grandpa Onas wore the latest running shoes, was the first person I knew to own a personal computer, and gave me recommendations about his favorite rock music. For birthdays and Christmas he and my grandmother gave me art supplies and books. They took me to museums and galleries where I recall seeing Andy Warhol’s car crash sculptures, the photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe, and the assemblage sculptures of horses by Deborah Butterfield. From Grandpa Onas I learned to explore the goodness and beauty of God revealed in humanity—through the arts, philosophy, literature, history, and the study of cultures.

The summer and fall were marked by violence in our neighborhood. In mid August Adam and Dan, two of our housemates, were the first on the scene of a homicide across the street in Garfield Park. A group of kids from the projects were taunting people in the park. A man stepped in to deescalate the situation. Two boys, approximately 10 and 12 years old went home and got a gun and came back and shot the man in the head. This incident prompted a group of us to initiate Barrio Libre: a grass roots neighborhood advocacy project aimed at curbing violence by addressing blight and encouraging neighbors to take greater ownership for the conditions in our community. OUR NEIGHBORHOOD: What we do matters has been the tag line for this project, which included a poster campaign, neighborhood trash pick-up, attendance at police meetings, and graffiti removal. One night a group of us went out to pick up trash and to pray for peace, and I wrote the following poem:

25th and Shotwell
25th and Treat
25th and Portrero
24th and Mission, Capp, Shotwell, Folsom, Harrison, York
Harrison and 24th
Treat and 25th
Around the corner, down the street, outside my door
These are the places
I can remember off the top of my head
Where brothers, sons, daughters sisters
Were found dead
Shot down in retaliation drive bys
While wearing blue or red

We hear the sirens
and we turn our heads
When the gunshots wake us
And We rise from our beds

A mother weeps
His sister cries
as the mass is sung
Before the blood has dried
In the cracks along these sidewalks

They say He was a street soldier
But why couldn’t he have been older?
What revolution, good cause or war did he loose his life for?

We hear the sirens
and we turn our heads
When the gunshots wake us
And We rise from our beds

After the candles and trinkets have been swept way
We try to forget about the violence which overshadows this day
But tonight, under the street lights, I will remember and pray

Peace to the immigrant child
Hope to all those in exile
Love to fatherless children
Waiting to born into the family of the kingdom of love