I Went to Prison Today

not as an inmate, but to pick one up who had been released. The Abbess of St. Paisius asked if I'd do them a "pastoral favor"... how can you say "NO" to an Abbess? Anyway, S.K. was imprisoned for drug use and prostitution.

She was being released on Sunday morning. She called and asked if I could pick her up. I kind of hesitated...right in the middle of Matins and I'm the Reader for our mission. But then I thought, oh yeah...sure, I'll pass by on the other side because I'm going to the Temple and can't be bothered with a wounded body lying by the side of the road. OK. That nanosecond of hesitation is worthy of repentance. Some day the gospel will sink in....

I learned early on in "pastoral ministry" classes that you never leave yourself alone with a woman in a "counseling situation". Transporting a prostitute to a halfway house alone? ehhhh...yeah. I figured it might be a good idea to take another woman with me. But who from the Mission could I take? My wife is the only person in our Mission who can carry everyone in the choir and is the choir director. Bill (my co-host on the radio show) can read, so I took his wife with me. We arrived and waited almost two hours in the parking lot of the prison for her to be released. She is 50-ish, haggard and, if a prostitute, would be the object of someone's absolute desperation for human contact. We talked while we took her to Walmart to buy her some clothes and personal items, then to Taco Bell for the first fast food she'd had in almost two years. Then to the halfway house to check in but which didn't open the doors until 5pm, to my house for the afternoon, then back to the halfway house.

All of her family, mother, father, brothers, step family, and kids are on drugs. Some have died, committed suicide and several are in prison. She has one sober brother. She is afraid. Her stomach hurt from fear. She is out of prison, clean and sober and knows no one, has no one and is in a strange town. A perfect recipe for relapse. She wants to call us, she hints and fishes around for more help than we are able to give. I deflect the bait and talk about recovery, fear and staying focussed on the future. She says I sound like someone who is in recovery. I just say we are ALL in recovery from life and sin. She laughs, "Yeah, I guess you're right...that's good, I'll remember that..." She says her life is in the hands of the Lord. Foxhole conversion? I dunno. I've heard that before from druggies coming off detox and rehab. I always pray its real. It is real, I suppose, at the moment, like for all of us. Staying real in the long run? God only knows.

I parked at the curb, got her bag, and we wove our way through all the crazy homeless people congregated at the door of the shelter hoping for a bed for the night. She had a ticket, they didn't. She went in the door, turned and looked like a child walking through the doors of first grade away from her mother for the first time. I looked at all the people she would be cast in with at the shelter. They are all in prison.

Prison. Self made, man made, chemical, environmental, forced upon us, chosen by us, they are all hell. "Bring my soul out of prison that I may praise Thy name..." Lord have mercy!