Ring the Bells

Preached at Neshoba Unitarian Church

Cordova, TN

June 8, 2014

“Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack, a crack in everything

That’s how the light gets in.”

From “Anthem” by Leonard Cohen

I’ve said it so many times and I feel the need to say it again: It is challenging and often very difficult to be a human being.  I look at my cat, Alex, lying in a circle of sunlight on the floor and I know he isn’t concerned with climate change, violence against women and the problem of racism in our justice and corrections systems. Alex never worries about getting the oil changed in the car and he is totally unconcerned about his security when it comes to retirement. But we, as human beings, have all of these concerns on our minds and we tend to feel overwhelmed or indifferent. The flood of information is so much that we drown in it sometimes, even those of us with the highest educations and the best intentions. 

That’s why I keep telling stories. Because in the moments when I am telling a story, I am not struggling. I am not worried. I am not confused or frustrated. I am simply being myself and “ringing the bell that still can ring.” It may not be perfect. My stories are certainly not powerful enough to put an end to violence against women but the stories are the bell that I ring and it keeps me centered, motivated and hopeful.

In the five years that have gone by since I was the Religious Educator here at Neshoba Unitarian Church, I have spent much of my time in jail. I went to Shelby County’s jail for women to tell stories and to listen to the stories of women who are serving time there. I went to listen to them because I wanted to find a hungry place, a place where people thirst for a chance to be noticed, heard and valued.

I have been disrespected and dismissed in my life. I know that kind of pain and I went to the jail to listen to stories because I have learned how much healing happens when people listen to my stories. There is freedom in the experience of face to face respectful storytelling. Freedom. Even in jail, human beings can be liberated to be the best human being they can possibly be—when light comes in through the cracks. 

Each one of us has the power to liberate and to be liberated—to the extent that we do what we can with what we’ve been given to make the world a better place.

In 1961, Clarence Gideon, a poor man in Florida, petitioned the United States Supreme Court. Gideon was in jail in Raiford, Florida and serving time for breaking into a pool hall. He was poor and poorly educated, a drifter with a criminal record. He couldn’t afford an attorney.  Clarence Gideon thought that was unfair and he claimed it was unconstitutional for a man to be denied legal counsel because of his inability to pay. 

Until recently I would have guessed that the law in the United States of America has always provided legal counsel to the poor. But (to put it into context) I was nine years old at the time Gideon wrote his letter.  It is very recent in our nation’s history that legal counsel has been guaranteed to the poor among us.

The letter was written with a pencil and in big block letters. It was processed and given the respect it deserved. But Gideon was not the first person to claim the right to counsel regardless of inability to pay. Twenty years earlier (1942) in Betts vs Brady the Supreme Court had ruled that the constitution did not guarantee counsel in state criminal cases. 

“But the Supreme Court never speaks with absolute finality when it interprets the constitution. From time to time the high court overrules its own decisions. Clarence Gideon, from his jail cell in Florida, was asking the Supreme Court to change its mind.”

Anthony Lewis/ Gideon’s Trumpet

And they did. We now have public defenders, attorneys who focus on cases where indigent citizens are in need of counsel. The Shelby County Public Defenders are bright, dedicated, and good humored. They are overloaded with cases; and determined to do the best they can for every one of them.

Because Clarence Gideon rang his bell—doggedly determined to be noticed and heard—our public defenders are out there ringing their bells and letting light shine into so many otherwise dark places. The needs are enormous and the problems are complicated.

According to a recent feature story on CNN, there are about as many people behind bars in this nation as there are people in the city of Chicago. One in every 108 citizens is locked up and living under supervision. According to the NAACP, one in three black males born in the United States today is likely to spend time in prison at some point in his life. That’s compared with one in six Hispanic males or one in twenty-five white males.  More than two million of our neighbors are locked up right now in some prison cell and-- because we do very little to encourage and educate them while they are incarcerated-- far too many of them will return to jail within a few years after their release.

This kind of information is discouraging. It’s the kind of information that can leave us feeling overwhelmed and helpless. I want to point out that feeling overwhelmed and helpless is as much a trap, a prison cell, as any iron bars can be. To throw up our hands in despair is to trap ourselves, silence the bells and turn out the lights.

It costs on average $47,000 a year to keep an inmate in jail. But what would it cost us to help somebody in jail? What would we have to give up in order to liberate one human life? And what would we gain if we set ourselves free from the belief that there’s nothing I can do about the crisis of mass incarceration?

Michelle Alexander’s book, The New Jim Crow, is an excellent read and an eye-opener. In her last chapter she says, “It is this failure to care, really care across color lines that lies at the core of this system of control and at the core of every racial caste system that has existed in the United States or anywhere else in the world.” 

I know you care. I know this congregation well enough to know that I am preaching to the choir here. It is my hope that my words today might inspire one or some of you to go to jail and ring the bells that still can ring. Contact the volunteer coordinator and volunteer to be a literacy tutor. Help somebody earn their GED. Start a book group. Teach a craft or an art. Set up a series of lectures in which eight of you talk to the inmates about your own careers and how you got where you are, what matters to you in life. Give someone a chance to play a keyboard, to sing a song, to write a poem. Call the office of the Shelby County Public Defenders and ask one of them to give you a name for one of their clients, somebody who needs a friend, somebody who currently has nobody coming to jail on visiting day.  It’s not what you do that matters so much. It’s doing something that will make a difference.

Clarence Gideon was a poor man, poorly educated and incarcerated. He wrote a letter with a pencil and he mailed that simple communication to Washington DC. And because he did something—we now have public defenders for all of us in this country. 

I met Carolyn while she was serving time in our county jail. A short and round African American woman. Thirty-seven years old when I met her. Carolyn has spent most of her life around North Memphis. Sometimes she lived with her mother in an apartment or in the home of a friend or relative. Sometimes she lived on her own on the streets. She started prostituting at the age of thirteen. Dropped out of school. Fell in love with crack cocaine. No one urged her to stick with her formal education. She learned how to survive by the strength of her own body and spirit. 

She chose to join us in Prison Stories class. For four months she sat in the circle with me and eleven other women in the jail. Carolyn told stories about her life. Some of them were so funny we slapped our knees and laughed til we cried. Some of her stories were frightening, so frightening it made me see the world through different eyes when I left the jail and headed for home. Her stories opened windows on worlds I had never seen, places and people not far from my home but previously invisible to me. 

At the close of our time together and at the performance of the class stories, I called Carolyn up to the front and gave her the certificate of completion she had earned.  She turned to the gathered audience of incarcerated women, family members, jail staff and community guests. She held that certificate up high over her head and she announced, “I took this class because I wanted to tell my story to somebody. And somebody listened. Ms Elaine and my sisters listened to what I been through and I saw the truth. I used to think I was a bad girl, a fast girl. I used to think weren’t no hope for somebody like me. But now I told my story and I can see… I ain’t no bad girl. I ain’t no fast girl. I am a girl what had bad things done to me and I can get over that. I can be free.”

And so can we all. So can we all.

“There is a crack, a crack in everything

That’s how the light gets in.”

Amen