For years I thought silence had to do with shyness. That may sometimes be true. More often, I’ve learned, silence is the final recourse of those who given up hope of being heard. It takes years to tunnel back up from the dark, hidden places of those who have been silenced. Sometimes words break out in poetry, or song, or prayer.
Sometimes silence wins.
I grew up third of four, with brothers older and younger, living in the care of our grandmother, who did her best to feed and clothe and supervise and keep the house clean. My grandfather was mostly distant but rattled doorknobs now and then to remind us he’d rather not have children in the house. There was little interest there in hearing me talk.
My church, on the fundamentalist side of evangelical, believed women and children should be seen and not heard. They had verses and church polity to back that up. At school I was the odd kid: wearing hand-me-downs in a wealthy town where most of my classmates had complete new wardrobes several times a year. I lived in six different places in high school, went to three different schools. It was all too hard to explain, so I stopped trying. By the time I reached college I had burrowed deep into silence. “Quiet” was a word often used to describe me.
Three passages gave me hope in my own long journey back to speech.
There’s Hagar, the slave girl, mistreated by Abraham’ wife Sarah, running away from harsh treatment, invited into conversation with the angel of the Lord. She concludes God is the God who sees, but the name she’s instructed to give her son, Ishmael, Ishmael, is a combination of el and shama, “God hears” or “God listens .” (Genesis 16).
Many centuries later a Samaritan woman, outcast in her own town, ventured alone to draw water in the middle of the day. She found herself talking at the well with a stranger in a conversation that went from talking about water to talking about streams of eternal life. By the end she felt heard, known, and ready to talk to everyone in town about this amazing stranger who dared to talk with her. (John 4)
And then there’s Lydia, praying with a few other women along the river outside Phillipi. Paul shared his faith with them, and Lydia believed, invited him and his companions to her home, urged them to agree when they seemed to hesitate, and has since been known as the first Christian convert in Europe. The brief account in Acts makes clear: Paul thought women were worth talking with, and when invited to a Gentile woman’s home, he allowed himself to be persuaded. (Acts 16)
This blog, since the start, has been in part an attempt to explore what I’d left too long unsaid, but also to attempt to hear other voices too often ignored and to see the real meaning of words misused by those with power to shape the conversation.
In our current political arena the need to hear becomes ever more important.
In our political debates, those with most experience interrupting are usually the winners. As policy agendas take shape, those who have held power longest arrange the rules to ensure their perspectives and priorities are always heard first.
In my work on redistricting reform, God has given me amazing opportunities to speak, but also opened opportunities to listen to many whose voices have been ignored.
I think of focus groups in rural parts of our state, where I heard stories of homes lost to rising property taxes, savings lost to unexpected illness, generations who moved away for good because of lost jobs and opportunity.
I think of conversations in diners and coffee shops in depressed towns across our state. Of meetings in battered community rooms in urban neighborhoods.
Most recently I’ve been listening to stories from communities harmed by mass incarceration.
Just before the pandemic turned the world upside down, I met for breakfast with a man sentenced to life in prison as a result of his presence at a fatal crime committed on his 16th birthday.
Pennsylvania’s harsh mandatory sentencing laws have yielded the largest juvenile lifer population in the world. The US is the only nation that sentences children to life without parole for crimes committed before turning 18. At the end of 2016, there were 2,310 juvenile lifers in our country. 517 of those, almost 1 in 4, were in Pennsylvania prisons.
In 2012 the Supreme Court banned mandatory life terms for juveniles and many states quickly made that ruling retroactive. PA did not. In 2016 the Supreme Court stepped in again, ruling that the 2012 decision was retroactive to those sentenced before 2012. That meant resentencing finally became possible for all PA’s juvenile lifers. In the past four years, 399 PA juvenile lifers have been resentenced. 163 have been released.
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| Robert Saleem Holbrook The Appeal, May 2, 2020 |
Robert Saleem Holbrooke was one of those. He spent 27 years in prison before his release in 2018. During that time, he helped found several organizations to support the rights of the incarcerated people. He also sued the state for censuring inmates’ mail and infringing on their right to speak.
I met with him at the request of one of our Fair Districts PA volunteers working on prison gerrymandering reform. Afterward, Robert invited me to be part of a loose coalition of individuals and organizations looking for ways to call attention to death by incarceration (life without parole) and the misuses of solitary confinement in Pennsylvania prisons.
On Zoom meetings this summer, I’ve listened to men who spent years in prison, talked with mothers whose children have been locked away for years, met young adults concerned about unrestrained use of force by police and prison guards.
My husband worked for Prison Fellowship for 14 years, from 1983 to 1997. We were immersed in scripture about God’s concern for those in prison:
He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets prisoners free. (Psalm 146:7)
The Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners (Isaiah 61:1-3)
Remember those in prison as if you were their fellow prisoners, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering.
(Hebrews 13:3)
There are some chances In the weeks ahead to hear some voices not often heard. The first is a virtual film screening on Tuesday, August 18, (y to 8:30 pm) with three short films focusing on women serving life sentences at Muncy state prison. Afterward the films, Naomi Blount, the subject of the second film will lead a conversation about the need to end vengeful and punitive sentencing in Pennsylvania. You can see a short trailer here trailer and register here to receive the link for the screening.
The second will be a Zoom event on September 3: Stories from Inside PA Prisons, sharing recorded voices of people who have experienced solitary confinement and confinement circumstances under the COVID lockdowns. As the promo for the event says:
Since 2015, the use of solitary confinement for more than 15 days has been classified as torture by the United Nations. Yet as of January 2020, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections houses almost 2,500 people in solitary, and stays lasting multiple years are common.
People currently inside PA prisons report feeling extreme loneliness, anxiety, and paranoia and report having panic attacks and suicidal thoughts when in solitary confinement.
Psalm 20: says “You will listen, O Lord, to the prayers of the lowly; you will give them courage. You will hear the cries of the oppressed and the orphans; you will judge in their favor, so that mortal men may cause terror no more.”
Too often we see safety, order, crime, punishment from our own perspective.
Too often we listen to voices that say we should fear, punish, build walls, protect our own.
Can we learn to listen to other voices, even when they’re uncomfortable to hear?
Can we reach out to those whose stories are far more painful than our own?
I pray that God opens our hearts to love those he loves, to hear those he hears, to seek justice and mercy for those who have been judged most harshly.
Two voices to consider now:
One from trauma healing work done by the American Bible Society, Whitney’s current employer.
