Day 12
I spent part of this evening going through some of my old journals. I’ve always been a prolific note taker, list-maker, and journaler. There are hundreds of pages in these journals dedicated to my stations projects over the years. Lots of half-written blog posts that we’re never actually posted. Lots of to-do lists related to their yearly release: website updates, email blasts, invoices, orders, the lists truly go on and on. Some of the notes from years past are practically nonsensical. And some make hilariously practical note about the Gospels. Here’s one note-to-self I found this evening:
Limitations of the narrative are illuminating - no single narrative can tell a whole truth. We need lots of stories. It’s worth mentioning that there are FOUR canonical accounts of Jesus’s death.
It is a point worth making, but probably just in a notebook that no one ever sees. These little bits of writing tell the story of how I’ve processed this ongoing work. What my preoccupations have been and how I engaged with the subject matter in my own life. I was reminded that one year while I was a mission developer at Evergreen Presbyterian Church we built Lenten programming around the Stations of the Cross: Mass Incarceration.
Evergreen had just purchased a new storefront space and I painted our windows to correspond to themes in our worship.
Throughout the season we held space in worship for people to write letters of encouragement to imprisoned people living in solitary confinement. During this time in the service we listened to the Civil Rights anthem Keep Your Eyes on the Prize (sometimes called Gospel Plow). Lyrics to the song were incorporated into the window designs. The idea was to set aside time in worship to ritualize solidarity with our incarcerated siblings. It was a powerful spiritual discipline to practice each week during worship.
Jesus is Stripped of His Clothes
Inmates serving life sentences without parole reported to the ACLU being held in solitary confinement for periods ranging anywhere from a few days to 13-14 years at a time.
In 2013, Herman Wallace, a member of the Angola Three, was released from 40 years in solitary confinement, dying three days later from advanced liver cancer.
The tenth station depicts protestors at the Louisiana State Capitol advocating for Herman Wallace’s release from solitary confinement at Angola State Prison. I was deeply impacted by the reporting around Wallace’s release and subsequent death. It was several years after the creation of the artwork that we used it at Evergreen and incorporated letter writing into worship. My hope always is that the art has a real world impact, that it doesn’t simply hang on a wall, but infiltrates worship and ritual.