Sacred Neighbor. Sacred Self. Part 1
Deena was seventeen when she finally fought back against her abuser. She pulled the trigger thirty-one years ago, changing the address of his eternal consciousness. I have no doubt that he already lived his every day in the land of weeping and gnashing of teeth, but if there is a literal hell in the thereafter, I’m certain he had to at least check in for processing and assessment before the Christ could at last make His way down to his cell for a visit.
I wonder if he was ever able to truly die.
I held Deena’s shoulder. She had been given life without the possibility of parole at an age when most young women were just beginning to imagine what their futures might hold—where they might go to college, with whom they might fall eternally in love.
Deena fought for a future where a man could no longer claim her as his own, against her sovereign will. Her tears, her cries, her pleas—none of them had ever done the trick. She loaded a twenty-two-millimeter round into a pistol and thus traded one form of abuse for another.
We prayed that a newly passed law in Oklahoma would look on her with mercy. If her case qualified, the maximum sentence that could be imposed on survivors of abuse who fought back was thirty years. I would have proposed zero years, as healing our sick is preferable to punishing them, but that’s just me. Between zero and life, I suppose thirty is somewhere toward the middle. Deena would go home with time served if the gods of mercy could cut through the bureaucracy of politics and ego.
She brimmed with excitement over the potential.
When a soul incarcerated prays and dreams of potential freedom, I’ve learned to join them in their ecstasy.
I couldn’t always.
For the longest time, I was not in the business of the impractical. But the older I get, the more I’ve grown, the more I’ve learned to meet God as Artist and Poet—and artists and poets are rarely concerned with the practical.
They’re not afraid of the impossible, and neither should those who admire their work.
The incarcerated-led worship band took the small stage after our prayers. After what felt like a thousand incarcerated women passed me by—hugging me, hugging one another, thanking me for being there, and offering me a bit of burnt coffee—they took their seats. In the cold January chapel, they were ready to sing about their freedom despite the lies of the razor wire that surrounded us that evening.
The lead singer, a woman who would probably never be hired to front any modern evangelical worship band—as she was missing too many teeth, and the stress of her incarcerated existence had begun carving lines in her face earlier than it would most her age—took the stage.
It was Deena.
Her voice was angelic.
In Luke’s gospel, when the mother of Jesus learned she would give birth, she sang a song of praise—what’s come to be known as The Magnificat.
“My soul magnifies the Lord,” she sang, “My spirit rejoices in God my savior.”
As Deena sang, I imagine her voice carried the same defiant joy—the same holy refusal to accept the world as it is—as I imagine in Mary’s Magnificat. She led us all into the divine places of our hearts. Despite her cell, Deena was freer than I was—freer than most of us ever will be. Her voice rose, unbound by steel or stone, carrying a freedom born of defiant hope.
I only wish she could see it.
To wake to it every day.
“We’re having church tonight, ladies,” she said, “and the gates of hell won’t stand a chance.”
It’s safe to say the room agreed.
A shout rang loud.
Arms draped around one another’s shoulders.
Hands were both lifted in the air and grasping their neighbor’s.
The women stood firm, singing to God as if the fence was a fairy tale—and in that moment, it was. They sang a collective middle finger to the darkness that tried to convince them that it was real.
I closed my eyes and allowed them to lead me toward the Gates of Heaven.
Singing “My chains are gone” in a sea of incarcerated souls punches me in the face every time.
Oh, Dear Divine, how the voices of your most broken reach your ears the most whole. Thank you for allowing me to occasionally be healed by their medicine.
After the service, I hugged my friends, and the Gates of Heaven slammed behind me, fading into the rearview mirror. The fluorescent lights of the Dollar General met me next. I grabbed a stick of deodorant and thought about when I might return to Heaven.
I’ve always struggled to accept myself and to believe Love Itself could accept someone like me. So naturally, I’ve always felt at home with those who similarly struggle to find a place of belonging in our world—the overlooked, the marginalized, the confused, the small, the kicked out, and the kept out. It’s among the forgotten that my woundedness has allowed me any sort of reconciliation with my Creator.
In the end, I suppose it makes sense.
This is precisely where the Christ said He can be found.
Deena’s story was Christ’s story.
In fact, every story in that chapel was Christ’s story, as every good story is, in some way, about the death of what breaks us and the resurrection of what sets us free.