Doing Time

By: Gunnar

Borning, boring, boring—it is the only way to describe my time in jail.  2 am breakfast, 11 am lunch, 5 pm dinner, then sleep, sleep, sleep away boredom between meals.  No smoking, just sleeping, eating, and a lot of praying—talking to God.  I got one hour each day free time, spent watching boring TV.  I was sentenced to seven days and served seven months.  I felt it was unjust to serve serve so  much time for such a small sentence.  When they finally let me out, they did not even help me get home on public transportation.  I am glad to be out.

My Calling, Right Now

By: Justin Chambers

All my life it seems I have been searching for the proverbial “call” or purpose for what I am supposed to do with my life.  I wanted God to come down and say, “This is Justin, my beloved child, in whom I am well pleased, this is what I have called him to do.”

I recently went to a retreat where an awesome, awesome man-of-God shared some wise words that have changed my outlook (I really enjoy his speaking as you may be able to tell).  David LaMotte spoke, and sang, some great messages, but what really stood out to me was his belief we do not have a purpose; as in a singular call in life.  We do, however, have many callings.  This idea was profound for me because I have spent much time—perhaps even wasting time—searching for my one singular call.  This idea, this sense of call has been both what I have been passionate and excited to find, and horrified and stressed to discover.  What could this calling be?

If we have many callings, then we are called to live in the moment and to be faithful to the calling of that moment. My call today may be to share my sandwich with the person sitting on the curb next to me. Or, my calling tonight may be to listen to how my roommate’s day went, without interrupting or trying to put in my opinion; just listening.

I decided to do a second YAV year after meeting with the director of an organization that engages the prison system.  I hope to become a lawyer and thought the opportunity would be advantageous to my career.  When funding fell through, it felt like my calling was also blocked.  Through some conversations, and knowing that Mercy has wanted to be more intentional about supporting our members while they are locked-up, we decided to formally expand Mercy’s ministry to include a jail and prison ministry.  I am interning with them to help in this expansion.  Things finally seem to be falling in place, though not in ways that I expected.

One Friday, during a Bible study with a passage rooted in community and solidarity, Pastor Maggie illustrated the theme by using an example from the civil rights movement.  When one activist was attacked by a mob, the others dived into the skirmish so that the blows would be divided between many—I remember her acting it out at Mercy.  What an awesome example of solidarity.  I do not know what situations I will have to dive into this year while walking in solidarity with people in the correctional system and I do not know what bruises will come along with it, but I do know is that God is in this call.  God is present behind the walls, the fences, the barbed wire and the chains.

One of my friends, a frail, fifty year-old sister who is a part of our Mercy community, was lost behind those walls.  Gunnar, our sister, who is homeless, was arrested in the early part of February for trespassing when she took refuge in a parking garage—the safest spot she could find to lay her head.  Spring and summer went by, we were confused by why she did not have a release date; we prayed for her, along with other folks in jail.

At the beginning of my new internship, I was tasked with not just praying for Gunnar but finding out why she had been in jail for so long and what was needed for her release. By our estimation, she should have been released long ago.  I called the local jails and got bounced back and forth between offices, leaving many voice-mails saying, “Hi, my name is Justin. How are you today? I was wandering if you could help me find a friend of mine; she seems to be lost in the system.” Nobody had an answer.
One Monday, I was overcome with joy to arrive at Mercy and see our sister.  When I interviewed her about her experience in jail, it became apparent that the stories of what she was being told on the inside and what I was being told on the outside did not match up.

Gunnar was sentenced to seven days, but instead sat for seven months in a single cell by herself for twenty-three hours a day.  I do not know if it was our calls or if someone finally realized on their own that a mistake had been made, but whatever it was I give thanks for the captive being set free.

I think I have found that passion about which David talked. I have found that thing that I have been trying to describe to people for years, yet words seem not to come. I can see how broken our criminal justice system is and, for now, I am not called to change it but to be present, if only by phone, with people who are navigating it from the inside.  Solidarity can be hard and messy at times, but it is the calling; my calling.

With 2.3 Million People Incarcerated in the US, Prisons Are Big Business

With 2.3 Million People Incarcerated in the US, Prisons Are Big Business

Meet the corporations who are profiting off our prison system.

Liliana Segura

October 1, 2013  

(Reuters/Joshua Lott)
 
“Global Tel* Link. You have a collect call from: ‘Tim.’ An inmate in Shelby County Correctional Facility…. If you wish to accept and pay for this call, dial zero now.”
I don’t know how many times I heard the same robotic voice speak these words since last fall. I was researching the story of Timothy McKinney, a Memphis man facing his third death-penalty trial for the killing of an off-duty police officer in 1997. Tim would call from Shelby County Jail, to answer my questions and to do what anyone facing trial would want to do: air concerns about his case, vent. Sometimes he would call multiple times a week. Because the phone calls were limited to fifteen minutes at a time, a couple of times he hung up and called right back, so we could keep talking.
The calls were expensive, more than a dollar per minute, depending on the time of day. In order to accept one, I had to set up a prepaid account with Global Tel* Link, or GTL, “The Next Generation of Correctional Technology.” If Tim called and my account was out of money, the automated voice would prompt me to replenish it via credit card, while he waited on the other line. “By accepting an inmate call, you acknowledge and agree that your conversation may be monitored and recorded,” the company advises.


http://www.thenation.com/blog/176533/meet-medical-company-making-14-billion-year-sick-prisoners#

Scales Falling Off

As promised in my first blog post, here is an article from my experience at Mercy last year.

I have been here in Georgia and at Mercy for roughly eight months now.  That’s been more than enough time to have more than a few life-changing experiences. Each experience has invited and forced me to grow my proverbial edges, sometimes to the point of discomfort.  Yet each produced amazing growth. I came to this year of service expecting to help others and be the face of God for someone else.  More often, however, I have seen God’s face in those I came to served.


I followed God’s call to Atlanta, but was skeptical about what I would find.  I wondered if I was going through some kind of a quarter-life crisis, spending a year volunteering instead of getting a “real job.”  I came seeking to change the world, instead I have had a journey-to-Damascus-scales-falling-off-the-eyes-life-changing kind of experience.

I first started to notice that my world view was changing when I visited the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia—it is the largest immigrant detention facility in the country and is privately owned.  The detention center looked a lot like a prison to me.  Security was tight: the gates were 10 feet high with barbed wire at the top, families were sent away unable to visit their loved ones, and for those of us who did make it in, we had to talk to the detainees on a telephone because the plastic window was too thick for sound to pass through.

I assumed once again that I would have the opportunity to be a super-volunteer and minister to an “evil-doer” who had reason to be locked away. Once again, I was wrong. The detainee ministered to me more than he may ever know.  He asked me about my life  goals—he was genuinely interested, and it showed. We even talked about my relationship with my estranged eldest brother who is in prison. My life connected with that of this stranger—noticing injustices in the world and expressing our hopes for the years to come. In the midst of all the uncertainty—deportation—we connected and the figurative barriers fell, though the thick plastic remained. At the end of our conversation, we fist-bumped through the glass and parted ways.

I had no idea that many people like my new friend had no choice in  coming to the States. Frequently, people are brought to the States by their parents when they are just two or three because their parents hope to be able to better provide for their family here.  And honestly, I had never cared about what I did not know—I was comfortable with the “us/them” rhetoric and scapegoating debates of politics.  They were not like me and it did not concern me.

Soon after, I found myself standing at Catch-Out Corner sharing food with Mercy.  As I looked at my sisters and brothers who had gathered around our coolers, grateful for lunch with few prospects of catching-out a day labor job, I realized that many of my friends could easily end up in the detention center.  I saw how vulnerable my Latino sisters and brothers were, standing out on this corner, ready to work, and frequently watched by the police. I knew I saw them differently.

But they were not the only people I saw differently.  I knew other scales had fallen to the ground, in fact, the ground around me was littered with scales.  I hadn’t realized it, but I spent my first month at Mercy in a state of blindness.   I realized that day by day folks in our community were helping to free me of those scales that blinded my eyes.   Now I am aware that some days my sisters and brothers merely had to wipe the scales off, my view of the world changed, became clearer.  Other days they were surely using pliers to yank off the scales as I resisted change.

I am grateful to know that I don’t go about experiencing change alone.  I am supported.  I am in community.  Just as Paul had Ananias, I have my sisters and brothers at Mercy walking with me.  We help each other.  Saul would never have regained his sight if it were not for his obedience and the obedience of Ananias. Talk about walking by faith and not by sight! Ananias chose a hard, uncomfortable journey—that is living in community. We all have shameful moments in our past, but in this same c

ommunity we come together and find, or regain, our sight and perspective. It is in this community where folks come and touch my eyes with their stories.  Day by day, I learn to see this world a little differently.

This community has changed my life; I can never look at church the same. Truth be told, sometimes I find myself living with my new sight and other times I find myself on my knees trying to piece my old life back together.


Christ offers new sight every day! The choice is ours. We can either stand up and live or try to take steps back into blindness.

I know I have so much more to see and learn (and it’s probably going to take a jackhammer to get the rest of the scales off), but I choose to see. I choose to see the church being called outside the four walls of a building. I choose to go out to the hedges and highways, remembering to look in the hedge and under the highway because that may be where one of our brothers or sisters is looking for community. Seeing as Christ sees is a process, one that can be painful and joyous; yet a process never the less. I look forward to what is to come; there is no point in turning back now!

A Rainy Day Rite of Passage

As promised in my first blog post, here is an article from my experience at Mercy last year.

For the majority of us, a rainy day merely presents an inconvenience, yet for some of our brothers and sisters it’s a bit more than that. Last Monday I checked my phone in the morning to see what the weather was going to be like; the forecast predicted rain. I grabbed my umbrella and I was off to work, ready to face the day ahead of me. Our first stop serving lunch out on the streets went well but as we headed down Ponce the drops began to fall. I opened my cheap umbrella thinking it would keep me dry.  It didn’t. In minutes I was soaked.  We were all soaked.  Cars drove by and splashed us and water fell off the building as if it were falling from a waterfall.  Adding excitement to an already busy day, the soup we were carrying somehow tipped over before our last stop.  When we arrived at Catch-Out Corner we huddled under the ledge of a store in an attempt to keep the rain off the food.  It was a little hectic, yet everyone pitched in to help, and everyone ate.

It has been a long time since I was so completely soaked. Yet as we were walking back to Mercy it dawned on me, unlike for my friends, for me this moment was temporary.  At the end of the day I would find myself driving home in my dry car to put on clean, dry clothes. After I left Mercy that day, I found myself in a somewhat strange, reflective state. It was just wet clothes after all.  Yet it seemed as if there was more to it. I wanted to sit with the wetness for a while to get a glimpse, if only for a moment, of the struggle that so many of our sisters and brothers without homes face every day.

My mind turned to the story of the Good Samaritan and I thought about who my neighbor really is and what community looks like. In Jesus’ parable, the guy on the side of the road had been robbed and beaten, and the people that society expected to help simply walked by.  How often have I driven or walked past our brothers and sisters simply ignoring them, hoping they won’t ask for change?  A rainy day with my sisters and brothers put me in a position where I could either comfort myself by saying, “This is crazy!” or lean into the discomfort of the moment.  For me the rain, as wet as it was, was like a rite of passage—a kind of street baptism.  Seeing others as neighbors called to love one another offers the opportunity to take part in healthy community, where we defy what is expected of us and live out our ministry in new and radical ways.  For me, I had my Samaritan moment on a rainy day walking down the road, yet your moment maybe somewhere else.  Don’t keep walking.  There is an opportunity waiting for you to love, to be in community, to experience the face of God on that long and troublesome road.

                                          ( Photo by Dani Planer, 14, Galloway School)