Day 10
More from my sermon on Hebrews 13, a reflection on my time as a prison educator.
Simon Helps Carry the Cross
In November 2010, family members of juvenile inmates at Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility filed suit against the Geo Group alleging that the guards at the facility engaged in sexual violence against youth and drug smuggling. 50% of the juveniles incarcerated at Walnut Grove were serving sentences for non-violent offenses.
In February 2012, Warden and then 8 term mayor of Walnut Grove, MS William Grady Sims plead guilty to removing a female inmate to a motel for sex and pressuring her to lie about it. While he faced a sentence of up to 20 years, he served only 7 months in prison with 6 months of house arrest and two years supervised release for federal witness tampering.
Christian communities concerned with the growing number of Americans imprisoned in county jails, and state and federal prisons and detention centers live in a state of paradox: the fear of incarceration and detention is immediate in many of these communities, yet there is a clear and palpable disconnect with the realities of the day to day lives of the incarcerated. During my summer teaching at Lee Arrendale, I was allowed glimpses into what the daily realities of life in prison are for many women. To a person, each of my students experienced violence during their incarceration. For my students who are parents, separation from their children devastated them and their families on the outside, where their children are more likely to face incarceration and experience violence themselves.
My classroom in the vocational building at Lee Arrendale was across the hall from where one of the parenting classes was taught. In the mornings as I prepared my lessons, laying out paints and brushes, markers and construction paper, I heard the chaplain lead classes for new moms. Women who had given birth in jail awaiting trial, or after arriving at Lee Arrendale. I taught Friday mornings and Saturdays were often visitation days at the prison. I’ll never forget one morning as I was carefully laying out my bright and colorful supplies, planning in my head what I hoped would be an afternoon of art-making that could take my students away -- for just a few hours -- from the grimness of life inside an American prison.
Jesus Falls the Second Time
There are 2.7 million minor children who have a parent in jail or prison.
As I did all of this, I could hear -- even as I willed my ears to stop listening -- the lesson being taught across the hall by the chaplain in the parenting class: “It’s difficult,” she said, “But, you must prepare yourself, those of you with babies. Prepare yourself for the chance that your baby won’t recognize you tomorrow. Your baby might not want to be held by you. They might cry for the person who holds them in your absence.”
Then there was a shuffle and an angry shout and a woman in her prison jumpsuit running out of the parenting class with hot tears pouring down her face. Those tears, of a frantic and scared young mother separated from her baby, humbled me that morning. They taught me something about the type of humility that Jesus preaches about in our story from Luke. It’s a humility that reminds us that we are, each and every one of us, beloved by God and that the love we have for each other, binds us to one another as much as it binds us to God, whose love follows us even behind prison bars.
It’s not a humility that says, “let me humble myself so that I can get what I want -- that place of honor at the banquet table,” but rather the humility that teaches us that the banquet table is big enough for all of us. It’s so big, in fact, that there’s room for each and every one of us in all of our trauma and our triumph. Room enough for our feelings, even the ones we want to run away from. Room enough for our resentments, room enough for our relationships, even the broken ones. God claims each and every one of us and invites us to a table where there is room for all people because the force of God’s abounding grace makes room for all people. Even you. Even me. For we have not been bidden to show mercy to the good, and to punish the wicked, but to show this kindness to all. Each and every one of us are claimed by God as beloved and there is for each and every one of us room at God’s table.