Last night Lynette and I watched a wonderfully hopeful documentary entitled, “What I Want My Words to Do to You.”
Inmates at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women try to determine whether redemption is really possible after committing a crime – most of whom are serving time for murder. Proctored by playwright Eve Ensler, (The Vagina Monologues) the convicts perform a series of writing exercises and discussions that could lead to healing. The film culminates in a prison performance of the women’s writings by Glenn Close, Marisa Tomei, Rosie Perez, Hazelle Goodman, and Mary Alice.
I was in tears through much of it. To hear these courageous women wrestling with owning their shame, with being forgotten, with the guilt of their actions while fingering the hope that someone might hear, and that they might find redemption.
I don’t want this to sound glib and I hope I am not minimizing incarceration but I felt the weight of my own prison. Made me think of Albert Camus’ work in “The Stranger” where freedom is seen to be something entirely other than “not being locked up.” For Camus freedom is an individualistic freedom and though I am well aware of the Sartre’s emphasis that relationships are hell – without hell there is no heaven. They may in fact be the same place.
This film was a gift, inviting me to see real people at various places along the journey; some appeared so free while others appeared more locked-down than Bedford Hills Correctional Facility could ever be.
We choose our prisons and our prisons choose us. May you be and thus find a great cell mate. Redemption is spelled the same way as damnation r-e-l-a-t-i-o-n-s-h-i-p.
Peace, dwight
