Who we aspire to be

THIS BLOG WAS WRITTEN IN DECEMBER, 2014.

 

            They beheaded him. It made “Breaking News” like all the others before him. Was he a journalist, an aid worker, or just a guy who saw abject suffering and it gnawed at him until he decided to do something, to witness what horrors man continues to inflict on his fellow man and to say, “At least with me, no more.” They cut his head off all the while filming the entire brutal, ugly incident. They filmed and they scoffed.

            And we react with revulsion at the barbarism and inhumanity, at the lack of moral clarity in the act and the words. We cry out for “justice,” yet it isn’t justice we seek, its vengeance. We demand retribution all the while ignoring the blood that is on our own hands.

            The issue, we are told this week, is whether “enhanced interrogation techniques are effective in stopping terrorism.” The issue, we are told, is given the nature of our enemy, what is acceptable in a “war unique in the annals of history.” I respectfully disagree. The real question is: does our conduct in war – and peace – keep with the ideals of this country? Or, as Senator John McCain so eloquently put it, “Does this represent who we were, who we are, and who we aspire to be?”

            I speak of the recently released report on CIA activities during the days following 9/11. In truth, I speak beyond that to the foundational notion that exceptional nations act exceptionally. Americans understand in their gut that the reason government must always vest “in the people” is because governments – like all human – failed creatures that we are – institutions are capable of evil. As a believer in the redemptive power of God’s grace. I understand all too well that we are all fallen, we are all sinful, we are all capable of doing the “wrong” thing at any given time. But, we are called to see, as President Lincoln, described it, “the better angels” in ourselves. When we justify the use of torture in the name of a “war” against anyone, we are no more moral, no less evil, than those who attack us.

            Fear causes us to do extraordinary things. I remember those first weeks after 9/11 when we weren’t sure if more attacks were coming, when we weren’t sure even how many were dead. There were rumors attacks; anthrax scares. And my immediate reaction was one of bloodlust. “Kill them all,” I thought. That was hardly a unique perspective.

            It has been that way throughout our collective history. In the Civil War we held soldiers in horrendous prison camps. Sherman burned a path through Georgia and the Carolinas; Lincoln usurped the Constitution and set aside habeas corpus relief. In World War I, German-Americans were rounded up; Congress passed numerous laws which denied basic First Amendment rights of dissent and speech. World War II and we rounded up American citizens of Japanese descent. We put them in “internment camps” and took their property.  In the name of victory we bombed cities in Germany: Cologne, Dresden, Hamburg, killing tens of thousands of innocent men, women, and children, noncombatants. Against Japan we vaporized two whole cities.

            During Korea we allowed Senator McCarthy and his band of red-baiters to destroy fellow citizen’s lives by declaring them “communists.” Vietnam and we watched our air force drop napalm on villages, Agent Orange defoliage on our own troops; we had My Lai and other atrocities. No, our history is replete with our own acts of barbarism.

            Men have been held at Guantanamo Bay for over thirteen years without charge. Our government tortured men: waterboarding, “rectal” feeding, threats with sexual attack, sleep deprivation, solitary confinement, cold and chained to a wall; in the name of saving our country. But what is worth saving if we commit to that type of behavior?

            “Who we aspire to be.” I have the utmost respect for Senator McCain. He knows full well the pain and anguish of torture. In the hands of our Vietnamese enemy, McCain was repeatedly beaten. He was hung by his arms until his shoulders came out of socket. He was kept in solitary confinement, deprived of food and medical care. Senator McCain says he would have done anything, said anything, to stop the torture. Torture is just that – torture. I read in Louie Zamperini’s amazing biography, “Unbroken,” of the horrendous treatment he withstood at the hands of sadistic guards. Is that who we aspire to be?

            British philosopher Edmund Burke said “the only thing necessary for evil to succeed is for a few good men to do nothing.” Evil is never overcome by evil. You overcome evil by good. An editorial cartoon published on the day the CIA report was released shows a grinning OBL in hell holding up a sign that says, “We win.” “Who we aspire to be.”

            For the last six and a half years I have seen some of the worst in men … and some of the best. I have had to rethink every preconceived notion I held about justice, law, and my obligations as a Christian, a citizen, a human being. I know that evil will never be overcome by evil. We must aspire to be like the Good Samaritan, to show mercy to those in need and forgiveness to those who cause us harm.

            As the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was led to the gallows, the SS doctor observing his execution noted he had never seen a man so at peace as he faced his death. “They may kill your body, but they can’t kill your soul.” Those words are in the Gospel of Luke. They killed Bonhoeffer on a spring day in 1945 but his memory, his writings, his faith lives on. And his executioners? Long forgotten. Who do we aspire to be?

 

Two-Edged Sword

            This is personal and some of it hurts to write. Some will read this and say I shouldn’t go there. Well, this is me; this is what I feel; this is how I got here. I found a remarkable line by Charles Colson sometime back. I jotted it down like I do with dozens and dozens of people’s words – people who are so much smarter than me. Colson said Christianity is a “two-edged sword.” He said, “Jesus came not only to comfort the afflicted, but to afflict the comfortable.” And in my journey to find who I am those words staggered me.

            “Never once did I see myself having really sinned … I rationalized … right and wrong were relative … my motives were good … but, I was tired, empty sick inside. For the first time in my life I felt unclean, and worst of all. I could not escape. In those moments, I found myself driven into the arms of God.”

            Chuck Colson was describing his fall and saving. And I knew every word he wrote was true. See, on the outside I was doing everything right. I was active in my church and community; I had a picture perfect home with a beautiful, successful wife and two amazing sons. I was a big fish in a little pond at work. My opinion and counsel was sought after; I could intimidate folks with my “insight.” I had power and prestige in our tight little world.

            I knew everything and was right almost always – or so I thought. Everything was perfect. Except … except I would rationalize lies and deceit daily. Stealing from work was wrong – I knew it the moment I began and I still recall the angst and utter contempt I felt for myself – but worse was failure and disappointment. So, I rationalized it all away and gave thousands to charity. Every needy group was part of my giving. I was like a modern-day Robin Hood. It was all ok, I thought. People will understand. They’ll realize my intentions are good. The truth was nothing like that. The truth was, I was dying inside, one lie at a time.

            And nothing made me happy. There were moments when I’d buy her something beautiful and I’d think this time, yeah this time she’ll throw her arms around me and say she loves it and she loves me. That never happened. And I was left with an emptiness that gnawed at me.

            “Cheap grace.” It’s a term coined by the German theologian Dietrich Bonheoffer to describe modern Christianity’s view of contrition. We’re “good people” and God just loves us. We ignore the dirt and failure in our own lives; we ignore the ultimate price God charged to cleanse us. We ignore it – but we really don’t, because we constantly search for that elusive feeling of peace and acceptance and love.

            I’m chasing that. And there’s a battle raging inside of me. On the one hand, I feel like I sold my soul. I was unworthy of anything good. I knew what I wanted. I wanted her to say “I love you,” I wanted her to say she was proud of me and I mattered. And yet in twenty-eight years she’d never spontaneously and without prompting said any of that. “You’re not who you say you are.” I thought that every day and I thought when the truth comes out, so will everyone’s real feelings for me, “They’ll all leave,” I’d think.

            But on the other hand, I’d see me reach out to someone in need, be there for someone hurting, stand on a principle and risk my job, and I’d tell myself, “you’re ok.”

            Famed Russian author and Gulag survivor Alexander Solzhenitsyn said he learned in prison, “the meaning of our earthly existence is not … in prosperity, but in the development of the soul.” My life came crashing down August 18, 2008. It was a beautiful, sunny, summer Monday and everything that I feared came to pass that day. In truth, my life had been inalterably spinning toward that day for years. I was drinking too much and I’d given up hope that there was any easy way out of the mess I created.

            8/18 and the company president asks me about a questionable check and gives me a letter suspending me – with pay – while they investigate this $30,000 check. I don’t know why, maybe I was tired of all the lies; maybe I was tired of hating who I was. But, unprompted, I told him the truth (I became a defense lawyer’s worst client nightmare). And I told him I was afraid I’d lose her, and our kids, and all those people who hung on to me. You know what honestly got me? A trip to the sheriff’s department, booked, denied bond (our assets made me a flight risk) jailed, and in the news. And all the things I feared all the loss I couldn’t live with, started to happen.

            Five days later, struggling to hold on to my sanity, I gave up. I’m a lot of things, but I’ve never been a quitter … until then. I found myself in a place I never wanted to be. I made my peace with God – if you ever really do that in those situations. And, I told Him I was sorry for the mess I made of my life. I told Him how much I loved her and our boys and I couldn’t face life without them, living as a failure.

            A theologian once described repentance as, “when you’re so sorry that it hurts to your marrow … and you truly understand why you do what you do, and it creates a desire to change.” He’s right. I had that moment right then and for some inexplicable reason, God saw fit to bring me back from the brink.

            Everything I feared was taken from me. She left, moved on; my sons became estranged from me. I was left with friends numbering less than my fingers. And, I was sentenced beyond what my attorney thought possible, even after paying down half the judgment against me.

            A “two-edged sword.” In my prosperity and arrogance I was afflicted. Everything was stripped bare. But, I found comfort. “I sought the Lord and He answered me, and delivered me from all my fears.” I love those words from Psalm 34. None of the guys in here, none of those outside who are closest to me, know I live with heartbreak. I don’t let it out, the pain and hurt from the loss, but it’s there. So is hope.

            In college I read Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn. In here, I figured out what they truly meant. “This poor man cried and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles.” I’m not sure why this all hit me this week. I just know the words came easily.

Missing the Message

The nation celebrated Martin Luther King, Jr. Day the other day.  In a strange twist, it fell on the same day that the nation’s first Black President celebrated his inauguration and the beginning of his second term.  Living in a place with such a large percentage of Black men you would assume the day resonates with them.  Unfortunately, there is a great deal of ambivalence among the young, incarcerated Black men in here.  And in the white ranks, it borders on contempt.  Much of it arises from ignorance, from missing the message.

There is an old political story from the days of Ronald Reagan’s election.  A well-off Park Avenue liberal was bemoaning to her friends that Reagan won a landslide reelection.  “I don’t know how”, she said.  “I don’t know anyone who voted for him.”  And so it goes for most of the young Black men I know in here.

“I don’t know anyone who respects King,” said Will, a normally very bright studious twenty-eight year old.  “He sold out.  He isn’t a leader of our community.”  As he spoke, three or four other equally young bright Black men nodded in agreement.  “White people like King.”  I could only smile.

I then pointed out that according to surveys among Black Americans; Dr. King is the single most revered figure in American history.  No other person even comes close.  Whites, on the other hand, hold mixed feelings, partly out of the battle over enshrining his birthday as a national holiday and partially over the ugly strains of prejudice that somehow continue to lie just below the surface.

“How can that be?”  My young friend asked.  I don’t know anyone who likes him.  I thought of the wealthy liberal in New York who couldn’t grasp that her view wasn’t the norm.  And I wondered how so many could miss the true meaning of Dr. King’s words, how so many miss the message.

Imagine a young Black man who graduates college in his teens.  He comes from an educated family of ministers in the segregated South.   He heads to Boston to begin graduate studies in Theology, and he discovers the words and works of a half-naked Indian lawyer named Gandhi.  King reads Gandhi’s words and sees in Gandhi’s message of peaceful, nonviolent protest the Christian response to oppression. 

All during his time in Boston King honed his message of using a nonviolent response to evil.  At age twenty-six, King earned his PhD.  He and his young bride accepted a call to a church in Montgomery, Alabama.  It is difficult to imagine America, the South, back in the 1950’s.  Most of the young men in here are quick to use the term “Jim Crow”, but they know nothing of it.  Theirs is a world of Rap singers being number one on the charts, of interracial couples, of a Black President winning a second term.  They know nothing of “colored only” bathrooms and water fountains.  They can’t fathom that you could be arrested for sitting at a lunch counter in a public restaurant or refusing to give up your seat to a white person on a public bus.

This was the world Martin and Coretta King ventured into in Montgomery, a world of separate but woefully unequal.  King preached nonviolence, and forgiveness, and mercy while his flock was regularly embarrassed, humiliated, or worse by their white counterparts.  It didn’t take long for King to find an issue to rally the Black community.

It came in the package of a petite, quiet Black woman who refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery public bus to a White passenger.  When asked year’s later why she subjected herself to arrest and death threats, Rosa Parks simply replied, “I was tired.”

“I was tired.”  Tired of indignity, and disrespect, and disobedience to the laws of her God, that all men and women are God’s precious children.  In those three words the Civil Rights movement found their direction and Dr. King became the movement’s Moses.

Dr. King led marches and boycotts and protests – always nonviolent protests – to challenge the conscience of a nation.  So often he and his followers were met with arrest and violence, horrible violence.

“You must love your enemy,” he would tell anyone who would listen.  Loving your enemy, seeing the Godliness in the most evil of men, is usually easier then liking your enemy.  It’s tough, he would say, to like someone who is beating you, or opening up a high-powered fire hose on you, or lynching you.  “Love your enemy.  Do not return his evil with evil.”

No American orator or writer captured the affirmative duty of a man of faith to nonviolently challenge evil – even to the point of death – as Dr. King did.  His “Letter from Birmingham Jail” stands as one of the great written statements of Christian faith in action.  His, “I Have A Dream” speech eloquently captures the Biblical dream of America as a land where all God’s children are truly free. 

Freedom.   I watch these young, Black men miss the poetic beauty of freedom.  Freedom isn’t about purchasing power or the ability to say and do whatever you want.  Freedom is a peace that is given by the Almighty that no tyrant, no nation, can suppress.  Dietrich Bonheoffer knew real freedom even as the Nazis hung a noose around his neck.  Martin Luther King knew freedom even as he understood his life would be cut short.

“You have to fight back.”  “We need to live separately.”  Over and over I hear these young men utter the same words Dr. King faced from his own community.  Violence, he knew was never the answer.  We are called to be better, to be merciful even when confronted by evil.

And Dr. King provoked anger.  He condemned America’s involvement in Vietnam.  War is never the answer he courageously argued.  Inmates who are confronted each day by violence and “might makes right” just shake their heads in bemused wonder.  “He was so foolish”, they’ll say, and I can’t help but think he was the wisest man alive during my lifetime, a man whose vision of America and the world was so much closer to God’s view than most of our national leaders.

This is not to say he was without faults.  King, like all men and women, had foibles and sins and failures.  But the mark of a man is how he behaves in the worst of circumstances.  In that, King proved himself heroic.

So it was with this year’s MLK Day.  They showed a documentary on his life, his legacy on our internal movie channel.  I noticed many TV sets turned to his story.  A few of the guys came by afterward.  “Did you know all that?” they asked.  I did.  And I gave out my dog eared copy of King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, so a few could read it and understand the message.  It’s always been about the message.

Thinking About an eBook

The other night, I read an interesting piece in USA Today about a recent Barnes & Noble eBook “daily special” of Eric Metaxas amazing biography of martyred German Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  Selling as an eBook for $1.99, Bonhoeffer’s amazing life story sold tens of thousands of copies in a short time and thrust the book to number 19 on the paper’s weekly bestsellers list.

I read (and wrote about) the Bonhoeffer book months ago.  I found it a difficult read, very cerebral, theologically driven, and yet one of the most powerful books I’d ever read.  Bonhoeffer was a brilliant, serious Christian who, I believe, would offer scathing criticism of 21^st century American faith trends.  I wondered, as I read the article, if all those readers knew what they were getting into.

Inside my wall locker I display two small items.  The first is a color drawing of the Archangel Michael.  A friend, and Episcopal Rector, sent it to me shortly after my arrival at the receiving unit.  “Michael is the archangel who protects us,” his letter stated.  I kept “Michael” under my pillow, looking at him daily as I dealt with the filth and inhumanity of DOC’s Powhatan Receiving Center.

The second item is a poem penned by Bonhoeffer while imprisoned by the Nazi’s and awaiting his execution.  Simply titled “On Waking in Prison”, it is a powerful testament to this man’s undying faith in his Lord even as the hangman’s noose drew closer.

Bonhoeffer felt compelled by his faith to challenge the Nazi regime, the status quo.  He became a leader of the Covenant Church movement, separating a number of Lutheran parishes away from the mainline German Lutheran churches which, at best, quietly acquiesced to the Nazi’s rule of terror and, at worst, actively participated in Hitler’s dreams of ethnic cleansing and world domination.

Lest we too quickly applaud Bonhoeffer for his deeds; let’s remember the Nazis were a legitimately recognized political organization.  Hitler’s rise to power came about by the force of political calculation and legitimacy.  There was no government overthrow.  The Nazis entered politics, Hitler was asked to form a government and the German people – a majority at least – willingly followed along as law after law was passed.  There was no coup, there was simple acquiesce by the German people to fear and economic despair and the deep-seated desire to have simple answers to complex societal issues.

And what of Bonhoeffer?  He willingly broke the legitimate laws of his nation because he believed God called humankind to a higher order than the laws on the books.  Bonhoeffer was willing to fight the legitimate government of his nation, challenge the conventional wisdom of his people and be imprisoned and executed to remain true to his God.  An amazing man.  A true Christian.  I wonder how many of us would be willing to do the same; give up job, family, freedom, our lives for our faith.

Bonhoeffer challenged the conventional wisdom of his day – and our day – that found faith to be an easy exercise.  It’s not.  It’s painful and lonely and it involves suffering but you press on anyway because God requires you to do so. You are His child; your eternity is secure.  You are compelled, therefore, to do right even in the face of unwinnable odds.

I wonder what Bonhoeffer would say to modern American Christians; white, upper-income families believing they are blessed because they have two cars, a half million dollar mortgage, a recovering 401k.  What would he say about our reaction to 9/11, to the denial of rights to “enemy combatants”, about our step by step dismantling of personal freedom in the name of security?  What would Bonhoeffer say about the rights call for a wall to “protect” the border?  What would Bonhoeffer say about America’s staggering incarceration number (2.3 million) and supervised probation and parole number (almost 5 million) at a cost of $200 billion per year (criminal justice spending) most of which goes to arrest, try, convict and incarcerate nonviolent offenders?  What would Bonhoeffer say about 46 million Americans using food stamps while our defense budget continues to grow and unemployment exceeds 9%?

I may be mistaken, but I think he would simply ask each believer “What does the Lord require of you?”  As I said earlier, this fast selling eBook will be a difficult read.  But, if we truly believe, we will take heart.  We will get involved.  We will demand justice, seek mercy and forgiveness. 

Ultimately, our power, our future lies not in the military, economic or legal system of this country.   Ultimately, it rests with the Lord who “gives the solitary a home and brings forth the prisoners to freedom”.  What would Bonhoeffer say?  He’d say what I see every morning when I read his poem.  As the psalmist said, “be strong and let your heart take courage.”

Bifocals - My Response to Anonymous

I get a fair number of comments from readers. Most times, I read them, reflect on the suggestions made, then move on. A recent response from an anonymous reader caught my attention. She (I’m making an assumption it was from a woman) gave me a good deal to think about. Ironically, the day she posted her comments I was getting fitted for bifocals.



Vision is a weird thing. When I was in college I had perfect vision 20/20. In law school I became hopelessly nearsighted. I would read law books for hours each day trying to absorb the case holdings. I’d look up from the pages and everything in the distance was a blur.


At my wife’s insistence I went to the ophthalmologist and found my eyesight had deteriorated badly. First it was 20/60; later 20/80. All that time I was ignoring my distance sight, rationalizing I just had eye strain. In truth, I was lying to myself. I couldn’t see anything past three feet.


The other day, I went for an eye exam. The doctor, a very nice older man, gently told me my distance vision was steady, corrected from 20/80. But, he told me I’d been compensating by taking my glasses off to read. Now I had to hold the book close to my face to read. “We need to tweak your near vision”, he told me. So, in another week I’ll be sporting state issued “Clark Kent” framed bifocals. “It won’t be like when you had perfect vision when you were young, but it will be better than what you’ve been living with.”


Which leads me to the comments from anonymous. This morning, I read a few passages from the Old Testament book I Kings about Solomon. In the first verse it simply stated “God granted Solomon great wisdom, but God told Solomon “always listen to My commandments”. One chapter later Solomon – who had let his love of women lead him to marry many who had different gods; was left despondent. As he looked back on his life, he wrote the book of Ecclesiastes, a sorrowful look at the meaninglessness of life. The book ends with Solomon writing “fear God and keep his commandments”.


Solomon realized too late that the key to a life full of blessings – even in the midst of despair – is obedience to God. It’s a message that rings true over and over in Jesus’ parables and in my current reading on Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Follow God’s dictates even when they don’t make sense. God knows.


Almost every “fact” anonymous set out was correct. I did something wrong. My vision was so close to my face that I missed what was in the distance. And yes, I put myself ahead of my wife and kids. And Anonymous is right to ask “if you really loved them, how could you do that?” Profound question; simple answer. I loved them, but put myself and a bunch of stupid, impulsive desires first. I was wrong.


But, I want anonymous, and my ex and kids, to know it’s still not too late. God, in His amazing, infinite wisdom, gives all of us second, third and even fourth chances.


I’m not having a pity party or refusing to “take responsibility” for what happened. Matter of fact, my friends and the two therapists I had early on in this process reached the same conclusions: I’m carrying too much responsibility. “Everything is not your fault.” And like the great question, “which came first, the chicken or the egg?” We’re human. We hurt each other way too much; we’re selfish and self-centered. But, we are capable of doing extraordinary selfless things out of love.


My ex is a good woman. She’s beautiful and caring and in her own way – loving. And, I still love her. But, what anonymous missed was, I have moved on.


Christ was in our marriage, yet neither of us listened. For years when I was living the lie I asked God to show me the way out. I expected He would yell out “Larry, you’re going the wrong way”. When He didn’t, I rationalized it would all be OK. Yet, by His silence, He was telling me.


I’ve had terrible days since then, but every night I go to sleep after evening prayers and know God has my back. I sleep peacefully.


Anonymous, you may not like my answer. That’s OK, just keep reading. Like my bifocals, sometimes we need our vision corrected.

Letters

I’ve been writing a number of letters this week. Some I’ll mail, some I need to think about.



It all started after writing class the other day. We finished the fall term and I was presenting certificates to the guys. I was urging them to keep writing because “words matter”. I told them two brief stories. First, I mentioned German Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I told the class at 39, Bonhoeffer was executed by the Nazis for his part in challenging Hitler’s regime. He wrote extensively while held in a concentration camp. I keep his “prison prayer” taped in my locker along with a quote from him – “it’s easier to suffer in obedience”.


I explained to the class Bonhoeffer’s words changed the way committed Christians looked at their moral obligation to confront evil. His words, written in a prison, mattered.


I then told the class the story of Dr. King writing his famous Birmingham jail essay on toilet paper and smuggling it out. I told them his words “freedom is a gift from God” echo through every prison in the world. Every person under the yoke of oppression takes comfort in Dr. King’s words.


That evening, as I was working a crossword puzzle, Dom came over to see me. He’s a huge black man who looks capable of squashing a car in his hands. He is a college student and a member of the writing class. He handed me a stack of papers. It was a copy of Dr. King’s “Letter from the Birmingham Jail”.


Dom told me he’d never heard the story behind the letter or even read the letter. But, after hearing me talk about it he asked one of the GED teachers to print him a copy.


I laughed and told him it was the first time anyone had ever listened to me. Dom turned serious: “Don’t ever say that Larry. We all listen to you. What you say matters. You inspired me to read this and you were right. It’s the most powerful essay I ever read.”


My words mattered. That rolled around in my mind for a few minutes. Every week I write my youngest son and get no response. Twice in the last six months I’ve written my ex, nothing. I can’t get my own parents to read what I write. “It’s nobody’s business you’re in prison. What will people think?”


This week, I wrote my folks. I told them this experience has changed me forever. I then wrote this: “you may find it hard to believe, but God loves the people in prison with me; the murderers, rapists and thieves just as much as He loves the people you go to church with.” Hard concept to swallow when you’re following all the rules, but most of God’s message runs counter to our normal way of thinking.


Then, I wrote my youngest son. I explained to him that a man can’t be judged by a series of acts or failings, but by his heart and character. I then told him Bonhoeffer wrote that too many Christians follow “cheap grace”. We say God loves us, God forgives us, but we don’t think how powerful a message that really is. “You have to love and forgive the way God loves and forgives us.”


I don’t know if my folks will get what I’m saying. I don’t know if my son – or his mom – will understand. But, at least I put on paper something real, something true. I owed it to them – and myself – to try.


I then started a letter to my ex. I realized all these months I’d been hoping for a miracle, hoping that she would magically decide to write me or show up for a visit and say “I’ve always loved you”. That’s never going to happen because she’s incapable of that. She can’t be what she isn’t.


I always wanted her to love me the way I loved her. I would have crawled across broken glass for her. There was nothing she could have done to stop me from loving her, to make me give up on her.


That isn’t the way she felt about me. That’s not how she defines love, marriage and commitment. I’m sad about that, but I can’t make her love me. I can’t make her say “our marriage is worth fighting for; you’re worth fighting for.”


I realized as I wrote that letter, if she couldn’t feel that way for me, she won’t ever feel it. She’s probably lonely and wants companionship. I understand that and hope she finds it. But, she won’t find love because love is tough; sometimes it’s difficult, but it’s always courageous. Love means loving “in spite of”. She, I regrettably have realized, isn’t capable of that. I, however, will always love her even as I know that love won’t be returned.


That letter is not being mailed. The other thing I’ve learned about words is, while they can inspire and illuminate, they can also hurt. My letter to her is the truth. But, sometimes the truth needs to be put in a drawer. The only thing such a letter would accomplish is hurt her. That’s never a good reason for any words.

Bonhoeffer's Prayer

A friend of my mother’s – “Ms. Pat” – has been steadfastly writing me for the last year and a half. She and her husband are longtime friends of my parents. We attended the same church when I was growing up. They still reside in the same home they lived in back in the ‘70’s. I remember one Christmas, shortly after we married, I took my new bride to a party at their home. During my time in prison, I’ve thought often of how beautiful my wife looked that night.



Ms. Pat is an 80 year old woman of deep faith and conviction. More importantly, she practices what she preaches. She is very open about her own failures and shortcomings. She is also very forgiving.


Anyway, she writes quite regularly. I enjoy her letters. They usually contain a card with a Bible verse that is exactly what I need to see at that particular moment. There are newspaper clippings about prison fellowship programs, song lyrics, poems and prayers. Many of these find their way to get taped up in my locker.


Two days ago I received another mailing from Ms. Pat. Included in the envelope was a prayer written by the 20th century German Theologian DietrichBonhoeffer. He wrote this prayer as he awaited execution in a concentration camp. He was imprisoned and eventually executed by the Nazis for daring to speak out against Hitler. His faith, he argued, compelled him to confront evil.


He was a solitary man who agonized and prayed, trying to decide what his moral obligation was. Should he speak out against the government? In the end, he followed the guiding principles of his faith in God. At the age of 39, he lost his life, but kept his faith.


On Waking in Prison


O God, early in the morning I cry to You;
Help me to pray
And to concentrate my thoughts on You;
I cannot do this alone.

In me there is darkness,

But with You there is light;

I am lonely, but You do not leave me;

I am feeble in heart, but with You there is help;

I am restless, but with You there is peace.

With me there is bitterness, but with You there is patience;

I do not understand Your ways,

But You know the way for me.


There is no one I’ve met who is being held as a prisoner of conscience. In fact, most of us in here did, in fact, break the law. But Christians, at least, would do well to read the Gospels of Paul’s Epistles. There are numerous references to those in prison and none of those says “this doesn’t apply if the prisoner is guilty.”


In Matthew 25, Jesus speaks of the Lord separating the flock. “The Lord said ‘I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me’. Then the righteous will answer Him, ‘Lord when did we see You?’ And the Lord said ‘to the extent that you did it to one of these, you did it to Me.”


The righteous gain eternal life. The others, eternal punishment.


Bonhoeffer’s prayer is profound testament to the feelings of despair, loneliness, isolation and fear that every imprisoned person feels. But, it is also a powerful reminder that no matter what a man did, God is with him in prison if he calls out.


People may not like hearing this, but we are all created in His image and He requires us to be loving, be forgiving, be merciful and just.


Visit someone in prison. Make a difference in that person’s life. Be a beacon of God’s light. The life you save may be your own.