Beyond Words

I don't know what to say. I'm still collecting my thoughts after going to Santa Marta women's prison in Mexico City. Here's how it went: We go in with a ministry team from Iglesia Bautista Horeb, led by ministry team leader Jorge. No cameras are allowed, so all I came away with was this photo. But not really. I came away with a lot of mental images that are going to be with me for a while. The Horeb team leads a 70-woman vocal and instrumental group of prisoners who have turned the misery of incarceration into a ministry of song. Sixty more are on the waiting list to join. We've come for a practice session.

We entered at the end of Sunday visitation with our first observation: as visitors streamed out, we noticed that the line of women visitors went on forever while the men's line only contained a handful. It is a reality, said Jorge, that while their female family members and relatives still visit, the men in their lives have abandoned them.

As we made our way to the rec hall, prison life manifested itself. Tough stares from some inmates showed no emotion or, worse, anger. Some women walked with their children in their arms (they can keep their small children with them if they are born within the prison walls). Same-sex relationships were everywhere, with some couples sharing close embraces. Some sold cigarettes, gum or cakes out of little boxes, a couple of others had frypans and sold quesadillas to other inmates, evidence of a microeconomy within the walls.

And the walls. Grey and unpainted, I might have been tempted to call them sterile, but the conditions are anything but sterile here.

Inside the rec hall, something changed. There was excitement from the inmates who were tuning their guitars. One, already strumming her guitar, looked up when I tried, in very bad Spanish, to tell her I liked it. "Thank you very much," she said, with a smile. Noting my surprise at her response, she added that she spoke French, English, Spanish and a couple of other languages. Of French nationality, she had been working on cruise lines before her incarceration. I moved over to Dexton, who's asking two women if they might want to participate in a possible project between Buckner and Horeb -- a group home to care for inmates' older children. Both are eager. They know it's a better path than their children are on. They are among the same influences that led them to crime.

When the practice began, the women began playing and singing. Seventy voices and about 20 instruments can make a lot of noise in an enclosed cinder block space. While it was loud and rough, it was beautiful. But it was the content that takes me beyond words. As they sang of their misery, their pain of separation from their children, the abandonment by the men they love, they also sang of the love of God in their lives. All sang while crying. The emotion and salvation evident there from women who Jorge said include killers, prostitutes, drug addicts and thieves still leaves me unable to express what's going on with that ministry. There is something wonderful there, that's so painful yet so joyful, I'd come off sounding crazy to try to tell you.

I'll leave it at that.