May 13, 2006, Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City, Utah, 2006)
A couple of weeks ago, I was asked to be the Sunday meeting speaker at the women’s prison. The inmates meet in a little interdenominational chapel there named for Marvin J. Ashton, the LDS* apostle known for making the prison his personal ministry. I got there early in case there was a glitch. There wasn’t. So I had time to ponder.
The walls of the chapel were brick, painted with white, glossy enamel. They were bare, except for a small painting of Jesus behind the pulpit. The sparseness reminded me of the Amish.
About 100 women filed in, all wearing white jumpsuits and — surprisingly — most of them smiling. Some looked downright sunny. If a person squinted hard enough, I thought, this might look like paradise.
It wasn’t paradise, of course. It was purgatory.
Most of the women were in prison for drug violations. A member of the bishopric explained that once inside, they didn’t have access to drugs so many reverted to their true personalities. They only lost their way when on the outside.
I decided I’d start with a few comments from the heart, then play it by ear — feel my way along like a blind man in a new house. I quoted from a little poem by Pablo Neruda, “Ode to the Artichoke.” Neruda thought we were cruel to artichokes, I told them, because we slowly tug away an artichoke’s armor, then eat its heart.
I asked if anyone felt like an artichoke.
Heads bobbed.
I asked how many had a hard time trusting people and felt that their hearts were hidden by a shell.
More heads bobbed.
I said I knew one woman who no longer prayed. She didn’t trust God, she said, because God was a man and never really understood women.
Like a dentist, I’d struck a nerve. There were nods galore.
And I realized, then, I’d painted myself into a corner. Men didn’t understand women. I was a man. Draw your own conclusion.
I stood there looking fat and dumb for a moment. Then, realizing Mother’s Day was coming up, I did the one thing that came to mind.
I told them about my mother.
She was a timid soul, I said. Trying a new flavor of ice cream could be traumatic for her. When she spoke in church, she’d get so nervous she twisted her hanky in knots.
But that never stopped her from being kind. She didn’t do great things, but — as Mother Teresa once put it — she did small things with great love. And her little kindnesses added up. Half the town showed up at her viewing.
Sometimes, I said, when we are kind, we can change lives — especially our own.
And that was true for people on the “inside” of the wall as well as the “outside.”
In the end, I don’t know how my talk went over. Several were kind enough to come up after and shake my hand. Some likely saw me as just one more man talking pretty. Some had other things on their minds, I’m sure.
But if anything I said affected one or two of them half as much as my being there affected me, it was a Sunday afternoon well spent.
* The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, cf. ldschurch.org for more information.