For staffing purposes, and since we are short of clergy on our 7 tables in prison, I was asked to be a substitute clergy person on the Table of Luke. The incident below is typical of an inmate to team member encounter, regardless of the team member being laity or clergy.
The resident sitting next to me today was the young man from Chicago. We had just finished hearing a talk by a team member on Discovery. Now the Discovery talk was to be about Christian study, leading to a more thorough understanding of God. For some reason the speaker, at the end of his talk, launched in to a personal story that revolved around his relationship with an older lady in a nursing home where his aunt resided. This lady, Ms. Myrtle, took a shine to him and made him 42 crosses to be given to the inmates on the next Kairos walk he was working. He was so touched by her willingness to be a part of this ministry, that he almost could not finish telling the story. His emotions almost conquered him.
My first thought as he finished and sat down was, "what in the world did that have to do with the object of the talk?" As far as I could determine, there was really no connection.
After the talk, as our table was discussing what the speaker had talked about and how it affected them, the Chicago lad leaned over to me and started telling me that when he was a teenager, about 15, he had a job in a nursing home near his home. There was a lady there, Ms. Anne, who befriended him. All the time he worked there, this older lady treated him like one of her family. Then, as tears started rolling down his face, he said he never did pay that much attention to her and wished he had been more attentive. She had since passed away, and he never got to tell her how much that meant to him.
Fast forward into the next break we took. Everyone left the table to stretch except one man. He just sat as read his Kairos booklet. So, I went over and sat next to him, just to see if there was anything he wanted to talk about. He started telling me about his grandmother, who had had a large part in raising him. He stated that, after he got into trouble with the law, she made him promise to straighten up and live right. But as young men sometimes do, he backslid and ended up in prison. Again, with tears in his eyes, he lamented the fact that he had let her down and had not kept his word. He knew she was right, but the call of the crowd had overpowered his desire to follow the way she had shown. He had let her down when she had faith in him, and the remembrance of all of that was causing a sense of anguish in his life. Here he was, sitting in a prison gymnasium, in a white uniform with State Prisoner on the back, crying because he had failed her.
Then I thought again about the talk. Why had the speaker deviated from the topic assigned and told the story of Ms. Myrtle?
At least in the hearts of two inmates, that particular story had struck a chord, and they both were able to talk about a situation in each of their lives, stories that maybe had lain dormant for some years and just needed to be told. They each needed a listening ear, that was all.
The Kairos motto is Listen, Listen, Love, Love and God used that simple act to minister to two black inmates on this March morning.
Who said the story did not have any place in that talk?
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