On a Mission.
[2d printing]
Especially now that classes are officially over (my last class EVER ended yesterday at 6:30pm!), many people have disappeared and are holed up in some favorite study carrel in the library or frantically locked up in their room with books and commercial outlines. We’ll remain squirreled away like hermits for about a week…but then everything will happen very quickly from there on out.
We will study hard, tap away furiously during our three- and eight-hour exams, and then step into the sunshine one day in early May to suddenly find ourselves with a bunch of free time that we don’t know what to do with. School will be officially over. Just as we get comfortable with having time, the bar studies will hit and we’ll go back into study mode for a couple months, and in the meantime, people will trickle away to whatever ends of the earth to which their next jobs are taking them, and then…
A new chapter will begin. We’ll be at the next page turn.
For my part, I’ve long understood and realized that I don’t very much like certain kinds of change. Granted, my favorite seasons are fall and spring–both of which epitomize the word “change”–but I have trouble with other kinds of change. Especially those that involve saying goodbye and entering new spaces full of risk and mystery. I may not always be satisfied with my current state in life, but at least it is safe.
In contrast, when I turn the corner in five months, I’m not sure what I’ll find. I have a vague and fuzzy idea, but quality of life resides in nuances, and I don’t know what shape those nuances will take. It could be surprisingly good – or devastatingly horrible. In all likelihood reality will end up being somewhere in the middle, and vascillate unsteadily toward either end from time to time. But for now–the mere fact of not knowing drives me crazy. And it inspires some degree of fear.
It doesn’t, of course, paralyze me – I’ll leave this place with a degree in my hand and many fond memories in my heart, and I’ll keep moving forward, because that’s what I’ve been called to do. At the same time, though, from time to time I pause and hesitate. And I get nervous about the world I’m stepping toward.
One thing that has (surprisingly) brought me a lot of comfort in the past few days, though, is a renewed sense of purpose, and drive to make that purpose come alive. After a bit of hunting online, I found an application for a volunteer program in the City’s Corrections Department. I’ll need to make some phone calls and see what sorts of opportunities are available, but even knowing that I’m getting closer to my goal rejuvenates my spirit and shoves aside some of the fear.
A note in the way of background… this semester, I was inspired by a classmate of mine – an expert statistician named Dan. We worked together on a semester-long project (that I despised), and after taking care of business at our meetings, we found ourselves shooting the breeze from time to time. During one of those conversations, I discovered that Dan’s been teaching at a local jail here for ten years, ever since he was a freshman in college. Every Wednesday, he goes to the jail to teach everything from math to art to science to … whatever. And through that work, he has had a chance to build relationships with inmates, contribute to their lives, and even see some of them turn their lives around upon their release from jail. Incredible and awesome.
I’d done some work in jails before, but only as a library volunteer or as an attorney – both of which are very different roles than the one that Dan plays. And I especially find a lot of value in the fact that he goes every week – that block of service is built into his schedule just as regularly as Bible study and church are built into mine. And though Dan is not religious, I think that as a Christian, it would be a good spiritual discipline to be so engaged in service too.
This prospect of working in a jail especially excites me because in about six months, I’m going to start work at a corporate law firm. My office will be somewhere in the top third of one of the tallest skyscrapers in the City, far above the troubles and miseries that attend so many lives on that overly-populated island of consumerism and opulence. And yes, I will (God willing) get to do pro bono work–but serving the poor and marginalized from my pristine and posh office tower is so different from going to the place where they are and interacting with them, face to face.
That was one of the hugest things that I learned from my defense work this year … it’s one thing to talk about criminal defendants from a biopolitical perspective – “oh yes, 95 percent of criminals are this-and-this-and-that, and have such-and-such problems, and are bad and hopeless people because of x, y, and z.” It’s another thing entirely to visit them in their homes, to interact with their children, to meet their parents, to speak with their employers. To discover that they are people.
Having learned that lesson well, I want to find and engage in that same sort of on-the-ground experience in the City. I’ve been there enough summers and weekends to know that it’s a fabulously fun place to be. But I really want purpose when I’m there. The whole time that I’m there. It’s not enough for me to say that my ministry will begin when I switch out of corporate law and to do something else. That will be years from now. The service has to start now, because if it doesn’t – I might spend my whole life saying, “after _____, then my life will begin.” And one day, my life will be over and I won’t have accomplished much at all.
My dream is to find a women’s prison ward where I can teach or otherwise engage in work of a rehabilitative nature. And I want to do three things while I’m there.
First, as much as God lets these sinful pairs of hands and feet do so, I want to bring the love of Jesus behind the prison walls. It’s one thing to pray for social justice in some abstract sense from the cushy confines of my apartment. It’s another thing to read the newspaper and pray for people that I read about – victims and perpetrators alike. It’s yet another thing to sit at the counsel’s table and pray over the people I see pass through a courtroom. And it’s another thing entirely to actually go to a prison and, even for an hour or two a week, dwell among prisoners in their space, and love them.
After all, prison is a place where love doesn’t often go. Love likes to enter hospitals and dwell with patients facing medical misery; love likes to enter schools and dwell with impressionable school children who hold hope and promise for the future; love even sometimes likes to go to nursing homes to tend to people in the eves of their lives. But… prison? And that’s why I want to go.
Second, I want to build relationships with the women I meet, and have earned credibility to share the Gospel with them. I want to show them that my freedom in Jesus is what drives me to visit them, and that He gives me a heart that desires to love them. On my own strength, it’s impossible. I was born with a stern and stubborn heart; only God has had the power to bring compassion into it. I want to share that, and hopefully God will do His thing and meet them where they’re at.
Third, I think I need this experience in seeing people as they truly are – as beloved creations who are created in the image of God. It’s easy to look at a newborn baby or a cute little kid and see the image of God. It’s easy to look at a stunning beauty or a handsome gentleman and see the image of God. It’s not so easy to look at a sinner who’s hurt other people [but whom among us has not?] and broken laws [whom among us have not broken God's laws?] and still see God’s face and His heart for them.
I’ve written all this out because I don’t want to forget it. It’s possible (though not all that likely) that I’ll go to sleep now, wake up, and feel less inspired. Or that I’ll start work and get too busy and be too tired. Or whatever. Whatever shape the “whatever” might take in the future, I can’t let it win. This is too important. So I’m writing this and sharing it to hold myself accountable – and so that you can hold me accountable, and pray for me – because I’ll need it. 
Just one last thing. Having discussed this all in more detail, I’m realizing that at least in semi-significant part, I want to do this ministry for me, too. I want the humility that this will inspire, I want the dependence on God that it will require, and I need to be reminded that there but for the grace of God go I.