by Dan Bodine 

 Forward: 

On Christmas Eve, 1994, as a Far West Texas judge in Presidio, TX, I attended a midnight mass in a Catholic church across the Rio Grande in Ojinaga (OJ), Chihuahua, MX, that would change my life. A real-life drunk’d reached deep in me and snagged some underlying Baptist fundamentalism feelings. 

While clinging to only two short years of sobriety myself, I gripped the back of a wooden church pew to keep from getting up and grabbing this guy who’d noisily staggered in from the plaza outside, and booting him from the church. Continue reading →