Year-End Thoughts and Timely Rants – It’s All Words

Another year down. A lot has been going on the past few weeks in here and out in the “real” world that’s kept me thinking. For better or worse, there’s plenty of time to think while you’re in here. Funny, but most guys try and avoid thinking in here. Thinking is dangerous. You think and you ask yourself “why,” why did I ever let it get this far, why did I not properly account for the consequences, why did I not understand the hurt my arrest would bring? Guys try and avoid why; they try to avoid painful self-reflection and admit no matter how bad their lives were, how bad the hand they were dealt, they – and they alone – are responsible for their incarceration. Yeah, thinking is dangerous in here.
            I have a friend, a young guy I work with – only 36 and already he’s been in twenty-one years on a first degree murder charge. He killed a neighbor kid, a teenage boy just like him, and then casually left the scene, changed out of his blood-soaked clothes (stabbing someone to death will do that), and went to school. He was in the school cafeteria when the SWAT team came swarming in and with guns drawn arrested him.

            Every year since his twelfth behind bars he’s come up for parole (murder 1, old law, do twelve, then parole eligibility until you hit your “mandatory” release date – usually at 50% of your sentence). Every year at his hearing the parole examiner asks, “Do you know why you did it, why you killed that boy?” And every year he gives the same answer: “I don’t know. I haven’t given it that much thought?” What??

            I don’t get it. A day doesn’t go by that I don’t think about my selfish, stupid, reckless behavior. I can’t forget the call to my wife, her words in her letters telling me she was divorcing me. I can’t forget my parents’ faces in court as I was sentenced. I have a running list in my head of every person who in spite of my complete self-immolation of my life – has sent me a letter or card saying “you’re in our thoughts and prayers.” I remember to the millisecond that moment when I gave up and when God said “not yet.” My entire purpose for being now is to make right what I did wrong. I can’t help but think about it; and he says it never crosses his mind. Thinking.

            Nelson Mandela died a few weeks ago. He was – he is – a remarkable man. No one gave him much thought when he was arrested and imprisoned for having the radical idea that apartheid was evil. Mandela was no Gandhi. He was willing to use violence to achieve his goal.   The white government sent him to prison to silence him. They misjudged who they were dealing with.

            A writer noted that prison was “the crucible that formed the Mandela we know.” No matter what happened in prison the system could not take away Madela’s pride, his dignity, and his sense of justice. “He refused,” the writer said, “to be intimidated in any circumstance.” Mandela, talking about prison, simply said. “I came out mature.”

            I carry a Mandela quote with me. It goes:

            “Difficulties break some men but make others. No axe is sharp enough to cut the soul of a sinner who keeps on trying, one armed with the hope that he will rise even in the end.” Such beautiful words. Such powerful meaning.  Difficulties.

            I have a friend in here named Chuck. I met him at receiving. Chuck’s an “old head,” sixty-five and four more to go in here. This isn’t Chuck’s “first rodeo.” He’s been in twice before. Chuck has a drinking problem. He also has a temper problem. Combing the two is like using a match around gasoline. Chuck was driving drunk when a cop pulled him over. “I just wanna go home,” Chuck sputtered and pulled a gun on the cop. Chuck then walked home and passed out in his yard.

            Law enforcement didn’t take kindly to Chuck’s gun waving – “threatening an officer” they called it and now he’s doing ten years. But, Chuck was there at receiving and he knows what a psychotic carnival DOC is.

            Anyway, Chuck’s been in visits a number of times when I’ve been up on my monthly visit with my parents. And Chuck always gives a wave and a “Hey counselor,” shout out to me. The other afternoon, I finished running and Chuck was sitting on the picnic table. He called me over. “Saw you in VI Saturday,” he said. “I wanted to tell your folks from the first time I saw them at receiving they never had to worry about you. I’ve seen you face down gang bangers and knuckleheads and never once back off from your convictions or who you are.” I thought about Chuck’s words that night. I feel alone and isolated much of the time that I’m in here. I frankly don’t get much of the behavior or bullshit that passes for being a “grown ass man” in here. There is nothing “grown” or “manly” about much of what guys do in here.

            At first, I think I was overly aggressive, overly blunt because I had some deep felt desire to get my ass kicked. See, I hated what I was outside; hated who I’d become; and I didn’t see any way of finding the real me again. So I was blunt and brutal and stood my ground and kept waiting to be punched or jumped or worse. And it never came. It never came because for all the bravado voiced in here, men in prison are basically cowards. They join gangs because they’re afraid to be alone. They talk of their gun exploits and their break-ins and beatings as evidence of their machismo. And I saw through it. I saw it was a bunch of lies and bullshit.

            Guys in here are afraid of me (funny, but my young friend Mustafa says I could be vicious bully if I wanted to be), afraid because I tell them the truth. Prison exposes a man’s weakness. It takes a lot to carry yourself with self-respect, pride, and dignity. I’ve come to realize the men who learn that overcome prison and all the other baggage they carry.  Self-respect.

            My friend Bob left the day after Christmas. In the past month four men who made prison livable have left: Scotty and Dave got home (and are doing great); Craig was transferred after his major screw up (and I still feel that loss); and Bob. Bob is a man of honor and courage. Bob came in very young in the eighties after committing a very violent crime. And he saw and survived the worst in prison: the racial animus, the stabbings, extortion, and rapes, and the drugs. He made parole before he defeated the demons he faced. And drugs and alcohol led him back here.

            Bob didn’t give up. He left the other day with a future laid out for him. He was a guy who in another time in my life I would have considered a friend. He was serious when need be, well-read, and loyal, characteristics sorely lacking in here. I will miss my conversations with him. I know he will do well. Friendship.

            A federal judge appointed by George W. Bush ruled that the NSA surveillance program was “most probably unconstitutional.” He asked, “What would our founding fathers say to our government’s massive snooping?” I wonder. We live in a nation of fear. We are afraid of “terrorists” and in the name of defeating them we sell our national identity of freedom. Meanwhile, more children die each year in this country from poverty, hunger, and neglect than all the deaths caused by terrorists in this nation’s history.

            In the name of law and order we’ve created a massive prison industrial complex that incarcerates more men and women than any country in the world; more behind bars than Stalin’s gulag purges in the Soviet Union. I live in a police state inside prison where I am constantly subjected to cameras, strip searches and questioning. And the officers are always right; the cameras conveniently turn off when a man is left to die from a heart attack or during a confrontation with an officer. If people outside don’t wake up and demand that their freedoms be respected, the difference between life inside the fence and outside the fence will only be the barbed wire. Freedom.

            I’ve spent a good deal of time this past year thinking about God. Funny writing that because I’ve come to believe God thinks about me all the time. Before my arrest, I was an ordained elder in my church and taught Sunday School and yet I learned more about the mystery and magnificence of God in a dark cell and even darker days in here than ever before.

            Here’s what I’ve realized. We talk a lot about God’s blessings when things are going great, but we don’t give Him much thought. And then our world comes crashing down and like Job we yell out, “Why” and we’re scared, and alone, and at the end of our rope and the time comes in the quiet and stillness of the night we know, we know we aren’t alone; we are loved. I believe the words of Pastor Rick Warren:

            “God can bring good even out of the bad in my life … God loves to turn crucifixions into resurrections.”

            Very hopeful words from a man dealing with the suicide of his oldest son. Faith.

            I love Pope Francis which is surprising coming from such an unabashed Protestant. But this Pope gets it. God is in the AIDS wards, and war zones, and prisons, and slums. He’s with those crying for help and out of loss or pain or fear. “Emmanuel,” “God with us.” The last few weeks I haven’t been able to get that Advent hymn out of my mind:

            “O come, O come Emmanuel
            And ransom captive Israel”

            And over Christmas I re-read Luke’s Gospel and remembered Jesus in the synagogue where He read from the Prophet Isaiah, “He has sent Me to proclaim release to captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed.” That is the God who kept me going when I made such a mess of my life. That’s the God who sees me though today.

            So it’s the New Year and things are good because I have hope. And as Andy Dufresne says in “The Shawshank Redemption,”

            “Hope is a good thing, maybe the best thing. And hope never dies.” Hope.