Reflections for 12/8/10

"I'm a jail chaplain in Albuquerque. I'm delighted by the way I can preach to those guys in the jail. They don't have all of our sophistication, and they're not lost in worlds of words whereby everything is made vague. It's very clear to them what death is, very clear to them what's destroying people and how it's destroying people. There simply isn't a lot of self-protection in the psyche because their situations is forcing them to face reality."(R.Rohr "Radical Grace" p.13)

I am not a prison chaplain. I have however known people who have unfortunately landed in jail. I have visited two of them in prison, and have written three letters to judges on their behalf.

None of them have ever claimed innocence, or being framed. They didn't claim to be victims of the system. All of them acknowledged the horrible choice they had made and were willing to face the cost of that choice. If you were to have met any of them, you would not have seen them as your typical convict.

As I reflect back on their lives and what got them into trouble, there is a common theme. All of them had lost control of some part of their life, and in their desperation to find a way out of that valley period, they made a choice which turned out to be the wrong one.

While perhaps many of the choices we make when we are in valley periods of our lives will not lead to jail time, I wonder what keeps me from making that one wrong choice when I feel I'm at a place of no alternatives.

One thing may just be enough healthy fear to keep me from doing illegal. Perhaps another is having people to turn to and work through the issues and see truly viable alternative choices. Basically get a walking partner for that journey through the valley. And as a person of faith, to remember the words of Psalm 23, "yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me." 3/4 of those folks definitely had a faith to fall back on, but somehow lost sight of it.

I hope that I never get to such a low point, that I do not feel led to temptation.

Blessings,
Ed