Beauty, Lies and Other Horrors
On Christmas Day 2006, I was two months away from my fifth year in prison. All morning long and into the early afternoon I enjoyed near bliss. I was disappointed that I got no visitors but by a learned tactical skill in prayer I was able to leverage the sorrow and gain God’s presence. If you have to spend Christmas in prison there are ways to discover beauty, although the path can be difficult.
I did go outside for a very brief time. The canteen line was impossible. At least thirty-five or more men. It was unruly, wide and long, and the men were wet. My thoughts of picking up a few small gifts to brighten someone’s day vanished quickly. The cul-de-sac that connects the buildings was crowded with refugees from the cramped, cold dorms who were taking advantage of the brief pause in the rain.
An acquaintance caught my ear and began “conversating”. I succeeded in remaining silent and smiling through most of this short conversation. My attention was drawn to the faces of the men on the basketball court, the faces of the men who were standing along the cul-de-sac, the faces in the canteen line, the lost lonely men lingering near the doors of their dormitories and the hardened masks of the correctional officers who were all bunched together under the only exterior shelter. They stood with faces like flags giving false signals of who they are, what they want and where they are headed.
Each face was a portrait of pretense and fear penciled in, shaded and colored in lies. Lies now proud and polished by their regular rehearsals. Lies that invent an alternate reality. A filter had been lifted from my vision so that each expression revealed the naked horror of an inward reality. The courtyard was full of ugly men in drab state uniforms, raggedy sweats, T-shirts or thermal tops shredded with age about the necks and elbows. Ugly men with their faces painted in desperate strokes meant to convey to their peers confidence, strength, intelligence, coolness, toughness, aggression, superiority. It is a look that only works during the daytime because when night time come the visual certainty of real life vanishes and darkness encroaches on the borders of our lives bringing with it thought, memory, and conscience. Powerlessness drifts in like a fog to fill in the space left by the departure of the light. Expressions become meaningless when the lights go off so faces are no longer flags. They become, rather, portholes from which the brain peers out from darkness into darkness. No flags unfurls in this darkness to dispel the truth about the interior moral cargo. There is no one out there taking notice, except, of course, God who patiently, lovingly waits without for an invitation. Darkness hides from light and wraps the ugly with bitter loneliness.
Ugliness, I have discovered, since becoming incarcerated anyway, is pervasive in the prison system. Handsomeness or beauty is so rare that it is startling when it appears. You could mark it up to the harshness of the free State soap that causes a disturbing level of dandruff and severe flaking skin on the forearms and shins of many of the men. Another factor is the quality of haircuts that serve to accentuate the lack of symmetry of the ears, the lumps, protrusions, scars, growths, tattoos on the scalp, and cowlicks on the head that would otherwise be hidden by a more complimentary hairstyle. However, it is more likely the ugliness comes from the drudgery and sameness in the routine, the repeating tasteless menu, the loss of hope, the personal powerlessness over one’s environment, the severe dress code that subliminally enforces the labels of “loser” and “pariah”. Nevertheless, whatever the reason or assortment of reasons there is a pervasive ugliness that registers in the face, and seems to rumble from deep within. Ugliness with depth. An essay sculpted in the frightening lines and contours of the face.
With the return of the drizzle I hastened to my room. Each face I passed placed a weight like a rock on my back as I negotiated the crowd of men. The haven of my room beckoned me, yet like a moth to a flame my stare sought out faces as I passed through. Each expression a flag of pride, indifference, arrogance, superiority that served to deflect notice of the despair, the fear, the confusion. The despair hung on the crowd like Spanish moss on a live oak. The faces leaped out at me as I snaked my way through the bored mingle of do-nothings who make the best of this enforced idleness by doing the dance of profane levity. Each face like a specter ballooning, pulsing, billowing its ugliness, emptiness and gloom. As I passed, the ghosts of these pre-dead were hectoring me, haunting me, “Ugly. Ugly. Ugly. You, too. Find your mirror. Unfurl your flag, if you dare. Look at yourself.”
I found 2200 wing, E-Dorm; E2-207, my house. I turned in. Fortunately, I found it empty. I leaned over the stainless steel lavatory-toilet and pressed my forehead to the 4” by 8” opaque plastic mirror which I did not peer into. In a vain attempt to relieve stress I slowly pounded the palm of my hand onto the cold concrete block wall. The ugliness clung to me. The sculpting of years of incarceration into the expressions on each face with my refusal, due to fear, to compare my image in the mirror to the images haunting my imagination taunted me.
Christmas day. Until then it was a blissful day of prayer. A quiet day of contemplation, praise and intercession interspersed with a few moments of limited but satisfying social exchanges. I thought of the Christmas cards which, in violation of F. D. C. rules I had taped up attractively on my wall. One from Sister Dorothea was the prettiest. A Madonna and child. I thought of it. Mary. God’s beauty.
Queen of heaven! How can it be? A natural born human being. Eternal beauty. Elevated above all angels. Having a beginning, yet now without ending. As will we, if we love her Son as she does. Beauty. Yet, human. Complete absence of ugly. Perfect beauty. Through her God took on flesh. By her faith and obedience the second person of the triune God became human. Human DNA in the Godhead inherited from Mary. Does God, the Son, resemble Mary as most children resemble their mother? This ironic, impossible stretch of the human experience was startling. Humanity presented in the throne of God. Humanity branded eternally in judgement by the horror of evil. And, Mary, our Queen mother, the bridge of hope between the two.
With my forehead against the dull, scratched mirror my palm continued its slow therapeutic thumping against the dirty, drab block wall. I felt the stretch – the twist, the chill – of paradox. Like a man overboard hanging bravely onto a piece of flotsam I felt dizzy and adrift in a sea of ugliness yet my mother, Mary, is no less human than I or than the men whose face-flags deny their deviancy. Yet, she lives unstained, un-ugly. Is this why the Church for years has called her “Help of Christians”?
I had transitioned from a morning of peace and meditation into an unwanted, unsolicited, but possibly God-inspired awareness of the horror of sin. It had the shock and precision of focus as jumping into icy waves. And now, in my not so solitary situation, I willed myself by use of my imagination to be alone in prayer. I prayed:
Mom, I need your help. There is no one here I can go to and express myself.
Who in here could I turn to with this strange burden I now feel? I need a
human being, a person to help me in my appeal to God. I need my mother. I
cannot look in the mirror for fear of seeing what I cannot run from. Help me
to move towards the beautiful and away from the horror. To hold Christ near
me as you did. As you do. I see in you such beauty. Such hope that the ugliness
can be dispelled. Washed away. Pray for me. Stay near me. Never leave me.
I turned to look at the Christmas card. The Madonna and child. So beautiful. So hopeful. I thought of the human experience and how both the majestic beauty of holiness and the horror of sin each are presented in the human life. I thought of God’s goal in human history – the Church, the bride of Christ. And, how in Mary this goal is realized, even idealized. In her we see our destiny. I take courage. I look in the mirror. I do not see it. I do not see the eternal beauty in the scratched plastic. However I have hope. I have a Savior. And, I have a mother.
