The Context of Love is the World: Liturgies of Incarceration
http://www.daviddark.org/#!The-Context-Of-Love-Is-The-World-Liturgies-of-Incarceration/cafx2/56e70d940cf2bdd8ba4df737
A
professor went to prison to teach; he had a lot to learn.
Appears
in Spring 2016 Issue: The Rule of Law, The Way of Love
by
David Dark
March
3rd, 2016
Many
years before I set foot in a prison, I passed an afternoon in conversation with
the writer, provocateur, and Baptist minister Will Campbell at his home in Mt.
Juliet, Tennessee. A friend to Martin Luther King Jr., Thomas Merton, and Kris
Kristofferson, Will was that rare white Southerner whose witness throughout the
civil rights era was famously—or notoriously— exemplary. At the risk of life
and limb, he ushered the Little Rock Nine past an angry white mob in 1957, he
counselled and supported Freedom Riders in the sixties, and he ministered to
imprisoned Klansmen in the seventies. He was in his eighties when we met, and
while his obituary appeared on the front page of the New York Times when
he died in 2013, he did not conduct himself in the manner of a legendary
historical figure. He looked after and loved the distinctly unfamous
marginalized, estranged, and incarcerated people of middle Tennessee while
steadfastly refusing to credit any hierarchy or system that would place any
person even a little bit higher (or a little bit lower) than anyone else. As a
relentlessly witty and intensely articulate opponent of every ideology that
degrades the human form and an aggressive ambassador of reconciliation, it was
as if he'd never met a snob he wasn't hell-bent on talking out of—or delivering
from—their own snobbery.
I
begin with Will because of one exchange, one question within an exchange
actually, that has followed me, haunted me, and remained essential to me in my
six years as an alleged teacher of individuals within the Tennessee Department
of Correction. Will was recounting a recent trip to visit a seventy-three-year-old,
incarcerated friend in Kentucky. In an hours-long drive with a small group, his
party arrived at checkpoint and prepared to go through security. A young male
guard pointed out that one member of their party was wearing shoes that failed
to meet regulatory standards for inmate visitation. Will wondered aloud if it
might be possible to make an exception when the guard started yelling:
"One more word out of you and none of you see anyone here
today!"
Read more at
http://www.daviddark.org/#!The-Context-Of-Love-Is-The-World-Liturgies-of-Incarceration/cafx2/56e70d940cf2bdd8ba4df737
Comments
Post a Comment