Jason Little said, “We all a seeker of the spirit when we leaves our mama's womb.  And we find it again at her breast.”  His mama died when he was five.  So he said, “I started lookin' to where my mama went and the spirit that go with it,  going on now for seventy-seven years.”
   
“What is the spirit?”  I asked.  He told me while we were walking clockwise around the gazebo at the mental health center.  The spirit is that feeling of utter love and acceptance you get from your mother.  He said, he later called the spirit God because “you can't go worshipping your mama, dead or alive.”
   
He loved singing and would always be singing up and down the halls like it was his calling to sing or maybe he thought it was our calling to listen.  So I did.   For an old man, Jason Little moved a lot--always looking for spirit.  He taught me that the spirit moves sometimes.  How many times had he just gotten that “settled feelin' at home”  some place when the spirit left.
   
Maybe he thought the spirit was now among us unsettled souls because he said he just came to get his heart pure amongst the sick in the head. It never occurred to him that he was one of us.  Jason said,  “only a pure heart makes a spirit want to stay home.”   So maybe the spirit was sick, too, and he just followed it there.
   
We sat eating our orange slices and soggy Raisin Bran, waiting for the mental health aids to tell us to leave and go to the med line.  No one sat with Jason Little because he talked too much.  Most of those crazy people had their own voices that had to get out.   I had stopped listening to my voices, so I was glad to listen to this old, broken, joyous at nothing black man.
   
“The thing is, young lady,” he would say, waving his milk coated spoon at me,  “we don't know where the spirit be but we gots to follow it if we don'ts, we die.”  Then he'd smile like some angel had come and whispered to him about the secret of life.
     
“And if'n we finds it, the search for home is over.”
   
“What home?”  I asked, not really knowing what that ever was and secretly wanting a place called that.
   
“Home be where the peoples treats you like your mama....with big sloppy kisses and hugs that wipe.  You get treated like the prodigal son.  They sings for ya and claps for ya and have dinners in your honor.”   His voice got louder like the sound of clarion angel and I thought maybe he might be channeling some spirit of his own.
     
“What for?” I asked.  I looked around and saw the rest of  patients start to exit without looking at this man of light.   Couldn't they see how bright he was?
     
“What for? For believin.   FOR BELIEVIN'!!!!  THAT'S WHAT FOR LITTLE GIRL!”   His voice thundered like a preacher's and  it made my heart skittish at the power of it and then I had to know for maybe my very soul depended on it.
   
“You gots to believe in whatever they say.   If they say they lord died and rose, then believe it and you gets it all.   If they say that Jesus come again in different name, then believe it and you get treated like the prince of peace hisself.”   Jason Little moved in closer and whispered.  “That's the secret...baby doll...that's it.  BELIEVE!!”
   
“What if it's not true?”  I asked,  still clinging to that age old dream that there was such a thing as the TRUTH.
   
“Oh, it's true all right.  And you know it's true by the ways they eyes gleam and they smile at ya--at least for a while.  The spirit stay for awhile and make 'em all turn into Jesus or God and they treats you like you da most important person ever been born.”  
   
Jason had been to this heaven many times. And of course it had many names: First Baptist Church, St Andrews Catholic Church, Second Street Masjjid, Jehovah Witnesses, Baha'i, nondenominational this or that and meditation Buddha or the Jewish synagogue-- it didn't matter, he said the spirit was there in all of them.
   
“How can the spirit be in all of them?”  I asked as they herded us all in the hall way to take our meds.
   
“Don't matter how--cuz it don't stay.  It fly off just when you gets comfortable bein' the new shoe. After you says you believe, then the spirit go and you alone again.  You ain't nothin for them to conquer or to change.  Once you change, they just leaves ya there...to sink or swim.  I don't sinks--I always swim away.   But I seen many souls drown.  Those folks, they don't shed a tear abouts it.   They all after the same thing...the new blood, don't care about no old blood--old blood can dries up and blows away. It don't make no never mind.”
   
Amongst the mentally ill in that line,  tangled up in  all the insanity and irrationality of being god or hearing aliens whisper in your ear, I heard truth--at least I thought so.  This old man seemed to make sense.  But I had to check myself.  I mean, this was a mental institution.  You always had to check what you heard in or outside your head.  Because it was a spiritual matter,  I didn't tell the doctor about it.   I waited for my church family to come, for my pastor to come, or even for God to come so we could tackle it together--but they never did.