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©
2001 Tierra Nueva & The People's Seminary
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Learning together of Jesus' liberating pedagogy in John 9:1-41 Two guards usher me into the jail's multipurpose room on this Sunday afternoon at 3:00PM. The English church service has just ended, and the plastic blue chairs are in neat rows before a wooded pulpit standing like a commander before the troops. I quickly slide the pulpit against the wall beside the television and arrange the chairs in a big circle-making sure a larger, more comfortable, plastic easy chair is reserved for someone other than myself. The thick doors noisily open as guards lead red-uniformed inmates
from their cells and pods into the room. I welcome seven men at
the door with a handshake. Tattered, coverless books lie strewn
about on the table. I collect the ones I recognize as Bibles and
pass them out as the men take their seats. I spot the oldest inmate
and invite him to take the most comfortable chair. Once everyone is seated I introduce myself and invite each person to introduce them self by their first name and where they are from -- an empowering moment there in the heart of an institution that classifies inmates as "male" or "female" and addresses them by their last name or inmate number. I invite people to feel free to share their views on the Biblical
text we are about to read, insisting that their questions and comments
are critical if we are to truly understand the text. After an opening
prayer calling on God's Spirit to show us the deeper meaning of
the story I invite a volunteer to read John 9:1-2.
In this story Jesus' disciples are looking at a blind man -- one
who has been afflicted adversely by a calamity. I invite the inmates
to consider how they themselves, functioning in this case as the
contemporary equivalent of the disciples, might view people like
themselves who end up in jail or prison -- as possible equivalents
of the blind man who is considered punished for someone's sin. "Many people outside the jail think that people who end up in jail may be there because of the way their parents raised them," I say, looking around the circle of men in red jail fatigues and rubber sandals. "In fact," I continue, "over the seven years that
I have served as chaplain here in this jail, many men and women
have told me stories about their upbringing. They tell me about
being neglected by their parents, severely punished and even sexually
abused. Do any of you think that you are here now in jail in part
because of the way you were raised?" I ask. The men look up, surprised. Some appear alarmed. "No way man," says Dominic, a white man in his late twenties
looking at 25 years for charges of several counts of assault with
a deadly weapon. "I've got no one to blame but myself."
Others nod their heads in agreement. "So there is nothing about your upbringing that might have
led to some bad decisions on your part that may have eventually
gotten you into trouble with the law?" I ask, probing. "That could be homes (5),"
says Arnold, a Mexican American man in his mid twenties who's been
active in Latino gangs. "I'm not saying it's all them, but
I'm sure it didn't help for me to see my old man always laying around
drunk and shit, man. I didn't have no male role model. I was pretty
much on my own, roaming the streets all night since I was 12 years
old," he continues. "So this may have led to you eventually getting into trouble?"
I ask. "Yeah man, I think so. If I had had a positive male role model,
someone I could look up to, things may have been different,"
he says. "What about the rest of you guys," I ask, looking around.
Nearly everyone is nodding in agreement. Some talk about being
raised by single moms, who were absent due to their need to put
in long hours so they could support their family. Others tell how
their mothers neglected them due to their addictions to drugs and
alcohol, and of their difficulties finding stable partners. Nearly
all tell of being punished severely, but often qualify these accounts
with "but I'm sure I deserved it." "Seeing my jefito (dad) beating up my jefita (mom) all the
time didn't help," recounts Juan, a heavily-tattooed Mexican
American man in his mid twenties who has been in an out of juvenile
detention and jail since he was 15. "I never learned from him how to treat a woman (6)
with respect," continues Juan. "He never disciplined me.
It was my mom who hit us. She would wail on me with a garden hose.
I think that I've got a lot of anger, and maybe take it out on other
women because of this. I'm sure that has something to do with why
I'm here right now." We talk on about other external factors leading to their lives
of crime: getting expelled from school, experiencing discrimination
from the general public and law enforcement officers, poor treatment
by landlords, low wages for stoop labor as farm workers. The men
are all looking down, lamenting their upbringings, until Dominic
calls everyone to attention: "Wait a minute man, maybe we weren't raised all that well
and shit, but one thing I know, I can't blame my old man for my
predicament. I ain't no victim, man. In fact I've victimized plenty
of people. I fucked up man, and I'm to blame for getting my ass
into trouble." Others nod in agreement, and the conversation moves in the direction
of personal responsibility. The men talk about the allure of the
easy life: drugs, alcohol, women, easy money selling dope. They
talk about choosing the easier path that they knew rather than the
narrow path yet unknown. "I fell into a drug addiction -- heroin," says Miguel,
a Mexican American man in his late thirties. "No one ever gave
me help. Now I'm waiting for a bed date [in a drug treatment facility].
I have a little girl that CPS (Child Protective Services) took away.
Hurts me a lot. I have a drug addiction. It's me that has a problem."
"Okay," I say, "so at first you all agreed that you might be in jail in part because of your parents mistakes. Now you are focusing more on your own responsibility. You've been trying to answer the question the disciples asked Jesus: "who sinned that this man was born blind-this man or his parents?" Next: The Blame Game
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