“See that guy over there?” K.A nodded to a man stood a few feet away from us, “He killed someone I was close to.” He paused as I followed the direction of his gesture with my eyes, “And I killed someone he was close to… We didn’t used to be able to be in the same room together, but now we’ve learnt how to tolerate each other. It’s really crazy that we can even both be here right now.”
I looked at the two men and let the enormity of K.A’s words soak in, our conversation from the previous day suddenly carrying a whole new weight. The afternoon before, K.A had asked me if I’d ever been betrayed. I knew there was something specific on his mind as I shared with him my journey of choosing to forgive the man who had raped me ten years prior, and just what true forgiveness looked like, but had had no inkling to what that might be. Now, as we stood in the prison chapel, I felt the sacredness of vulnerability and caught a glimpse of the hope of reconciliation.
“I hope that one day we can do more than just tolerate one another,” K.A looked at me with a little smile.
“I believe you will,” came my simple words of encouragement as I smiled in return.
Joy chatting with a Shining Light participant from Philadelphia Detention Center
The moment shifted as the room geared up for our first group activity of the day and K.A moved away to take his seat. I was now once again so aware of the power that our presence has to break down walls, restore humanity and release fresh hope. This was day two of a three day Creative Intensive Workshop that I was helping to lead with Shining Light Ministries. It’s the fourth time this year that I’ve entered a state correctional facility with the organization, our sole purpose being to love on the inmates, using the tools of creativity and presence to see perspectives expanded and lives changed in prison and beyond. My role was to lead a group of 10 men in a spoken word workshop, the end goal being to create a collaborative piece together which they would then perform for the rest of the participants at the end of the Intensive. There were three other teams - dance, theater and vocals - all with roughly 10 apiece, making up a full and lively room of men all eager to have their minds set free from their current surroundings.
Myself and the dance team had been using the song, ‘Run Wild’ by for King & Country as the stimulus for our groups’ creative processes, but neither team saw the other’s work until the final day. It just so happened that the man that K.A had now told me about, Felipé, was on the dance team. These two men, who were once arch enemies, were now both exploring similar personal journeys of finding freedom - even whilst living behind bars.
Dance team rehearsal from Waymart SCI
As a spoken word team, we took the concept of freedom that the song highlighted and used it as a prompt to write from. Each man wrote their own response to what freedom looks or feels like, or what their relationship with freedom is currently like, and we weaved them all together into one fluid piece. Below is the section that K.A wrote:
‘Not a lion who forgot how to roar,But more so a heart that forgot how to beat.
From chaos that infiltrated my peace,
I became a slave to the chaos of the street.
I am crushed at what I have become,
An element of all but God’s plan.
All because the thing that I honestly am not,
Has made me the person to which that I am.
A prisoner of my own destruction,
A king to a throne-less kingdom,
A servant to the undeserved,
But yet the betrayer of my dearest and beloved Brother Freedom.’
After our group presentation time on the final day of the Intensive, the other teams were invited to give their responses to the pieces that they watched. Felipé raised his hand and went on to express how the spoken word team’s piece had made him see that just because someone had committed murder didn’t mean that’s all that there was to them. It had opened his eyes to see things differently, and I knew that he was talking about K.A.
I think if we’d been able to spend a few more days with these men, we would have witnessed the full restoration of relationship between K.A and Felipé. As it happened, we just got to glimpse the beginning and perhaps middle of that process, where grace was starting to be extended and understanding allowed to enter in. My conversations with K.A continued in the vein of exploring forgiveness and what true justice looked like right up until the end of the program, and on the last day he said, “You have inspired me to find the good in all people. To forgive - not just others, but myself.” This young man who had one of the worst reputations in the whole prison was being reminded that trusting people is possible, that forgiveness was not just an option but a reality, and he wasn’t an animal but a valuable human being.
These conversations have left an indelible mark on my heart, not just because they were profound in nature, but because they were evidence of humanity being restored to men who had literally had it repeatedly stripped from them. Sons, brothers, fathers, who had undoubtedly made big mistakes but who were searching for redemption, hungry for love, and desperately longing for the loneliness to end. As humans, we were never meant to live in cages. We were created to be free, living in community - family - with justice looking like the restoration of every violation of love.
It matters what we do with our freedom - whether we abuse it, using it for our own good, or wield it for the betterment of those around us. It matters where we choose to take our presence, and where we decide to shine our light. If a room is already flooded in daylight, lighting a lamp is of no consequence, but when darkness covers the walls even the smallest of lights has the greatest of impacts.
Shining Light Participant from Waymart SCI
For further in formation about Shining Light Ministries and how you can get involved, please head to https://www.shining-light.com
Images used in this blog are courtesy of Shining Light Ministries and were taken at different correctional facilities in Pennsylvania than the one highlighted here.
