There are many reasons to write about and admire Rev. Chris Brown, the pastor at Bethania Lutheran Church in Solvang.
When initially introduced to him at a meeting in the Santa Ynez Valley, the first thing I noticed about him were his tattoos. He had several, though I was not sitting close enough nor felt comfortable enough to stare and try to identify what they were.
I have a real relationship with tattoos because of my youngest son David. And seeing a clergyman sporting a few only solidified my resolve not to judge tattoo-wearers.
When my son turned 18, I was fairly sure I knew how he’d celebrate his birthday. Eighteen is the age at which it is legal to get a tattoo or body piercing in California without parental consent. It was pretty clear to me given my often stated distaste for tattoos that David was not going to get a parental consent note from me: Off to the tattoo parlor he went, shortly after his 18th birthday.
He returned home that night showing me his forearm. He was so excited, he didn’t even bother to try to conceal it. On David’s arm was drawn a very pretty caduceus (the ancient symbol of medicine, a staff with two snakes wrapped around it). Underneath this symbol were the words “Perscription for Creativity” inked in elegant script. No, this is not a typo you are reading; the tattoo artist and my son had misspelled the word prescription and written p-e-r-s-c-r-i-p-t-i-o-n instead.
The story behind this image and phrase is that my nephew Brian designs t-shirts. His best selling shirt was the one that had the caduceus with the phrase in question under it. David loved that shirt designed by his cousin. All he had to do was take it with him to the tattoo parlor. But David was 18 and planning ahead was not his strongest quality. So, the Vietnamese tattoo artist (and we can’t blame him, English was his second language) and my son did what they did and he was tattooed with an incorrectly spelled word.
When I saw the tattoo on my son’s forearm, I shrieked, “It’s spelled wrong!” David calmly replied, “No, it’s not.”
I am a writer and an editor; I taught writing in college, but there was no convincing David. Before I ran for the dictionary and things turned ugly, my husband, the family’s true peacemaker, interjected, “Well, perhaps that’s the CREATIVE spelling.”
I learned to live with that misspelled tattoo, just as parents everywhere learn to live with so many crazy things their kids do. David eventually laughed at his 18-year-old self. He even reported that when he was traveling overseas, an elderly man approached him and said, “Son, when you make your mistakes, learn to make them in pencil.” (A great metaphor for young people’s risky behavior if I’ve ever heard one.)
I have since read that almost 40 percent of young Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 have at least one tattoo. That’s a lot of ink. Of my four children, three have tattoos -- way higher than 40 percent. David’s two sisters each have tiny, delicate ones: one has a moon, the other a horseshoe. I will not disclose where on their bodies these are located. I am almost positive that my older son, straight arrow as they come, has unblemished skin.
When I spoke with Rev. Brown, he told me he has two rules concerning getting tattooed. First, he promises himself that he’ll think about the possible tattoo for a whole year. After a year, if he still wants it, he’ll take action. His second rule is that the tattoo should be something meaningful. He now has three. I asked him if he’d received any blow-back from his parishioners because of those tattoos. He said that he knows some at his church were put-off at first, but mostly everyone has come to accept them.
I came away with an increased appreciation for Pastor Chris. The good works he does in the Santa Ynez Valley make the drawings on his arms seem pretty unimportant. And when my son David meets Pastor Chris I know he will think, as I am sure most young people do, this man is so cool.