I usually don’t discuss the truly evil side of life that I’ve experienced in here. Something happened the other day that led me to write a letter to a close friend detailing how “things were”. He’s a friend from home who hadn’t corresponded with me for over three months. His letter was heartfelt: “We (he and another close friend) figure you’ve had a very rough winter.” He then went on to tell me I was making a difference in inmates lives with my tutoring and writing class.
I got hung up on the words “rough winter”. I knew those guys had no idea how rough winter – my winter that has now lasted thirty-three months – has really been. The guys in here tell me all the time to “keep it a hundred”. That’s prison speak for keep to the truth, no holds bar.So I disclosed some things I experienced during this journey, things I never told anyone. I started each paragraph with “rough winter” and I set out some things about prison and the abandonment and rejection I received. I told him about going to Powhatan Receiving Unit, a dilapidated facility (built pre-1900) where men are locked into stale, stifling hot cells twenty-two hours a day. There is no hot water in the cells. The base around the commode is rotted out. The toilet and sink are cracked and stained. Roaches and ants roam the eight by eight foot space at their will. The only light is a sixty watt bulb above the top bunk that has to be screwed in and out to turn the light on and off. The cell was despicable and was, ironically, the most redeeming feature of the entire experience.
As bad as the cell was, the operation of the facility, the lack of security and control, was worse. No person deserved to be treated the way Virginia DOC operates their receiving facility. It is, simply put, immoral for society to claim legal justification (“they broke the law”) to subject people to those conditions. I wrote my friend and described the fact that DOC places all offenders together regardless of crime, violence or history. I was a nonviolent, fifty year-old offender and was placed in a cell with a twenty four year-old gang leader serving seventy-six years for a double homicide. It was his third trip to prison. He also suffered from psychotic episodes. He asked me to review his appeal. Included in that was a psychological profile. He suffered from explosive anger syndrome and “heard voices”. He deliberately refused to take his psychotropic meds (he’d sell them to other inmates) to be ready for “any gang fight”. And, ironically, except for one day when he threatened to kill me, I got along with him.
What I couldn’t get along with was the young kid a tier below me who every night screamed in terror. He was mentally ill and would have to go from 8:00 pm pill call until 6:00 am pill call without meds. Every night he would hallucinate and scream “Oh Jesus! Help me!” Guys in the cells around him would cuss and taunt him. The staff did nothing. Then, there was the evening my “cellie” decided another man disrespected him. He pummeled him, then pushed him over the third tier railing, forty feet above the concrete floor below. The man held on literally for dear life until “Lil P” relented and two other inmates drug the beaten man back over the rail. He then “checked in” – had himself placed in the hole for protection. Imagine asking to be placed in solitary confinement in a cell next to the prison boiler where the heat is unbearable, to save your life.
One afternoon gang members beat another inmate to a bloody pulp in the stairwell. Two participants were hauled off to the hole. Blood stains still remained on the concrete floor when we exited for chow that night. A young homosexual inmate was viciously assaulted in the bathroom by a group. He said nothing about his attackers. He just went to the hole.
Receiving was a place of violence, degradation and inhumanity. And it all occurred under the watchful eye of employees of the Commonwealth of Virginia.Almost every day I would look up at that third tier railing and think it would be so much easier to just take a dive. But. I didn’t. Instead, at night during the screams from the deranged kid and his tormentors, I’d pray “God, give me back my family.” God, I discovered, had a warped sense of humor. While I was going through all that, my wife had already met someone new and my kids were choosing to treat me as though I never existed. To the three of them, I was already dead. I couldn’t have handled knowing that back in receiving. Just keeping my humanity, just keeping my sanity, just staying off that railing, required me to believe my family loved me. Rough winter. I found out his past winter how truly rough it was.
As I wrote the letter I was overwhelmed with despair. Not one prayer I’d prayed had been answered. Actually that’s not true; I prayed every day after the divorce that my ex find someone she loved. Leave it to God to answer that prayer!So I finished the letter and I felt like crap. I had tried to do the right thing every day, tried to treat people kindly and with compassion and mercy (the old heads tell me I’m a bad judge of character. “These guys are scum. You always give them the benefit of the doubt”), and not a single thing was going my way. I frankly wondered why God was silent, why He said He loved me and let me suffer this way.
That night in my mail I received next month’s devotionals. A second booklet was included “When God is silent to our Prayers.” I read the thirty-four page booklet within the hour. It quoted a Psalmist saying the exact words I had uttered as I thought about my situation, my rough winter. I came away from my brink of doubt with renewed appreciation to the power and mystery of God. Those whom I thought loved me may flee, but God doesn’t.
So what does all this have to do with the “company of convicts”? I have spent the past three years questioning every decision I made as an adult. Everything I held dear has been taken from me. Every relationship that I believed was “forever”, unbreakable, has been cast aside. There have been days when quite literally, if I ceased to be, only a handful of people would give a damn. And yet, I’ve made it this far unscathed. I have seen and heard horrible things but I am more convinced than ever that no one is beyond redemption. I finished my letter telling my friend that at the end of all this, people will say “he never quit; he never gave up”. That comes from 1Corinthians 13, where Paul explains God’s love for us and demands we do the same. “Love never quits…love never gives up.”
Here’s what “company of convicts” means. We’re all convicted. Every single one of us does wrong. In God’s eyes, we’re all sinners. In God’s eyes, there is no difference between the church elder and the murderer. Both fall short of His glory. It is alright to hate the evil perpetrated by someone. But it is never alright to hate the person. In God’s eyes they, we, are all his children and He never gives up on any of us. Too many of us think we deserve God’s love because we look so much better than “that guy”.
God loves all of us without condition. Those are easy words to say, but a tough path to follow when you’ve seen some of what I’ve seen. But it is the truth. I realized each day I’m being led down a path that God intends me to follow. I just have to keep going. There is nothing wrong with the men in here. In God’s eyes, they are His children and there is still hope. Perhaps it’s time to look at not just the criminal justice system, but life itself through God’s transforming eyes. We all experience “rough winters” and we’re all promised to be led through them.
A minister I know wrote me the following recently:“We should be more concerned about showing God’s love to those who do wrong than about demanding our rights.” That thought helps lead me to spring.
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