I don't remember all of their names, but I remember their faces and their stories. I remember the baggy prison sweatshirts and sweatpants they had to wear with their inmate badges clipped to their chests. I remember the rooms, the chapel, the gates, the rules, the barren in-between, the armed guards, the gate control room, the enormously bright yard lights at night, solitary/maximum/medium/minimum security cell blocks, the J Unit: mothers and babies, med lines, kites, lockdowns, getting through security each Thursday, and the very serious officers.
My experience of the Washington State women's prison outside Tacoma as a chaplain intern 18 years ago comes to the surface of my consciousness from time to time. This morning, as part of local church support program, I preached at a small PCUSA church near Eugene. As I prepared my sermon I remembered one particular inmate, Penny, and I spoke about the experience she and I had together. I also mentioned praying Nishelle's poetry and some of the other women whose names I simply don't recall.
Tonight I regret not using a particular phrase to describe those women: Actual Human Beings. For all the wrong they had committed, for the ways they'd chosen to live if only to survive, for all the darkness they lived inside the prison fences and gates, for all the trouble they may possibly remain in 18 years later, it's important to remember that they, and all prisoners, are actual human beings.
On this third Sunday of Advent, the Sunday of Joy, I thought it important to put these thoughts out into the universe. Isaiah 35 reads "He will come and save you." That means you, that means me, that means the women behind prison bars all over the world. Remember them in your Advent prayers and Christmas preparations. Remember them.