Well...Sam and I have been cellies (rooming together) for over three years now, and the journey has been fraught with enduring riots, standstill happenstances, and just your basic prison nomenclature from which some derive their knowledge from the media, magazines or the menace we caused. Cell changes are probably the worst thing one endures here after being ensconced for a decade...hate even being able to come close to comprehending that. As I walked up the unit steps the turnkey (guard of housing unit) tells me that we have a new cellie. He furthers this with a type of admonishment that will soon be fully felt as I enter the domicile from which I hale as a solitary Christian man fighting the good fight..
Sure you must think: Jail-house Billy Graham here (that's cool..it's a big boat), but the true Christian saint walks alone--JESUS preached it so, and I see it in here up close and personal...frequently. "If I say 'my foot slips,' YOUR mercy will hold me up. In the multitude of my anxieties within me, YOUR comforts delight my soul."(Psalm 94).
The guard tells me in that conspiratorial whisper reserved for those who want to tell of secrets others have, that Sam and I's new cellie is a scared one, and that I might need to show him the ropes--"hopefully," he says "the man isn't up there using these to hang himself," he retorts...expecting some witty repartee from me. Compassion is not lost here, it's just hiding out in the form of malice. As I enter the unit no less than 100 men turn my way to see it's me; and exactly how I'm going to handle the new cellie situation. Which of course gives me that pause convicts are known for that says something's going on to which I am fixing to find out about proper. They've been in here talking it up; some disguising their true feelings towards the likes of me and others whom aren't affiliated with the ilk of ill-reputed gangland garbage which is just a playground philandering of their little minds stuck on stupid (arrested development has got nothing on these Neanderthals). I immediately sense the waywardness of it. I too, have been stuck on imbecilic meanderings.
Walking in the direction of my cell. I contemplate a few things...one being that Sam always misses out on these initial deals. What does he know that I don't? His spidey sense must be more acute than mine. The other that perhaps it's a black man they put in our cell (Heaven forbid!)...or a sureno...or an ms13...or blood...or crip...or white supremacist...or, if worse comes to worse, another CHRISTian! How is Gonier gonna act? Let's lie in wait to see. "Our secret sins... in the light of YOUR countenance." Those which go no further than the heart, and which are at the bottom of all the overt acts.
See the folly of those who go about to cover their sins, for they cannot do so. "It is often the case that the paradoxes that so typified JESUS' teaching are expansive, complex, and nuanced...if you'll allow me that. It requires mulling and wrestling, it forces huge shifts in paradigm and eventually, practice." Culled from Carolyn Arends' "Wrestling with Angels". I mixed it up a bit...what else is new?
Okay back to the cell dilemma. As I walked into my cell shedding the chameleon eyes upon me, I see what all the kerfuffle is about. Standing before me after he had to use the toilet because he's been on a Bureau of Prison bus all day to get to this mountain top, was a man that fit perfectly into the pre-conceived appearance of the most hated of all prisoners...a child molester. A deep breath explodes out of me as a kind of gag reflex, which I immediately regret because here before me is a truly hurting soul, that may have committed heinous things beyond my understanding, and I'm okay with the hundreds of men outside my cell door that are robbers, murderers, gang-bangers...even extortionists. But this type of prisoner is what other types of prisoners are horrified at. So you take the dregs (that'd be me) of our look-orientated society and you pit them against you. There is no chance you can survive (literally) in this place with that jacket welded to your flesh. And all those men outside my cell want to see what I plan on doing about it.
Friggin' Sam! Always ducking these fun-filled adventures.
The status-quo of these ill-fated liaisons is vetted out by discovering if the man is in here for that crime. Just because he looks the part doesn't mean he's done the part. I've met men whom I've conversed with for quite sometime before discovering that they shot three people in a mall, killed a whole family, raped countless numbers of women, sold meth to grade schoolers, engaged in human slavery... all these things are okay though, but this guy here in front of me just won't do.
He reaches out his hand to me to introduce himself as if I am the keeper of the Holy Grail. He is desperate for acceptance...this in and of itself is not the clincher for labeling him with the umbrage of convicts everywhere, but it's a start, so they say. The psychology of inmates goes well beyond AA, into the confines of the mind where platitudes of glory are handed out for the gory. I feign dirty hands from the softball game (which is partially accurate, at least I want it to be that) in order not to familiarize myself too quickly. After all, 100 men are waiting... I'm in a state here now because I am a CHRISTian and a tortured and tormented soul is before me.
I spend about five minutes getting my shower stuff together. I put to him about his crime...usually most proffer this as rite of passage into the prison lore of badness. Most lie as much as this guy is fixing to do. He tells me he's here because of "drugs"--only it isn't so much a statement as it is a trying out period for him...on me. Kinda like "drugs?" I think I am the first person he's giving it a go on, given these instructions by his lawyer to lie (imagine that) because they too, know what treatment he is headed for in here...a meanness he wishes he could equate to those children he hurt, but it's a rougher go...strapped over a 55 gallon drum..hands tied to feet...you get the ugliness I'm sure.
His try fell on my deaf ears as I think for the quickened time when I wanted my sins washed away too. I leave him wallowing in that questionable state that strikes fear in him because as I exit the cell, the 200 eyes firmly affixed on Gonier, he beelines straight to the guard to ask for political asylum. The "proteco" of the inmate's social standing...protective custody. In the shower I am defeated in a way I can't quite explain. Ineffable to the max. Why couldn't I witness with some brief kindness about the love of CHRIST I so often tout about to the judgmental bastards herein? Was self-preservation that tantamount to my very existence here?
It was then (and maybe again) GOD gave me strength as I wept silently in the shower stall..spilling my tears with the water that was washing away the dirt from the hands I didn't want to welcome him with. "Out damn spot!" "For HE is coming to judge the earth....and the peoples with equity."(Psalm 98:9) It's even difficult for me to use Scripture right now...how convicting of a work is that by the HOLY GHOST?
As I exited the shower that man was being escorted out of the unit to protective custody. And the other men were giving me their stained looks of approval: Way to make him check in Gonier...Good job...No chomos (short for child molesters). Never have I felt so sleighted in my walk with my LORD. Because it wasn't a good job by a long shot..and so those who persist in a sinful life sufficiently demonstrate that they are not born of GOD. Is that me? The Scripture tells me to examine myself daily...and so I did...weighed in the balance and found wanting. Hind and quartered by that sanctimonious behavior that excels other sins well and far above what mine are all about. True CHRISTianity establishes that which is of common concern to all mankind, and is not built upon such narrow opinions and private interests as sects commonly owe their origin to. The regenerate person is happily disabled for sin. There is a restraint, an embargo, if you will, laid upon his sinning powers. It goes against him sedately and deliberately to sin. "You who love the LORD, hate evil"(Psalm 97:10)
Well my friends I had a go of it all here as of late. The victory on the softball field paled in comparison to my failing attempt at true agape as was, and is bestowed on me by JESUS. Hopefully if given another chance and I'm certain I will, perhaps I'll handle it differently. I love you guys...love me too...please...
later...dougie boy
...and pray I ask for that man. I didn't at first and the taste still resonating in my mouth the day after is sour.
"Jiam nova progenies coelo demittitur alto, te duce, si qua manent sceleris vestigia nostri, irrita perpetua formidine terras aspice, venturo laetentur ut omnia saeclo."
"A new race descends from the lofty sky, thy influence shall efface every stain of corruption, and free the world from alarm, see how this promised age makes all rejoice."
