Clinging to Faithfulness

The phone felt large and awkward in my hand. I could see his lips moving as he talked to match the words coming through the line, and yet the glass created such a tangible barrier. Even though he sat right before me I would forget that we could make eye contact...or maybe it was just too awkward for us. We only met ten minutes ago.

“...¿Tu familia nació en los Estados?” (Your family was born in the U.S.?)
“Sí.” (Yes)
“Ah, puedes vivir tranquila, entonces. Qué bueno.” (Ah, you can live at ease, then. How good.)

Qué bueno. How good. The more he said that, the more uncomfortable I felt. Everything I shared seemed to reflect my privileged life. A life of freedom and security (or at least the illusion thereof). Gifts this young man was longing for. Only 22, snatched at the border and whisked far away to southern Georgia, where even fewer people spoke his native tongue, and he has no idea if or when he will be released. Welcome to America, my friend.

There was a mixture of sorrow and gratitude in his expression as we talked, a sense of quiet shame and defeat and the fatigue from wondering how much longer. But there was also a spark of pleasant surprise at my presence, this young visitor who showed up out of the blue, even if my life looks quite different from his. Though conversation was slow, he seemed eager to make the most of this unexpected visit.

I don't know the details of how he ended up here. We're not permitted to ask, and he wasn't very forth-coming with info about his life in general. He seemed more interested in hearing about life in Georgia outside the walls of this prison – I mean, detention center.

The Stewart Detention Center was not intended to be a place of punishment. But looking at the place, how would one know the difference? The building is surrounded by barbed wire, and it's as hard to get in as it is to get out.

The moments I feel dirty with privilege are the moments when I'm most likely to doubt what I have to offer the world, as a person and as an artist. The same day we visited SDC we viewed a documentary at Cafe Campesino on the artist Winfred Rembert. Here's an artist who has something to say to the world, a man who has faced unspeakable treatment because of the color of his skin and now uses art as a way of telling his story. Me? I paint trees and flowers. The thought strikes me that mine may not be the art the world needs to see, like Rembert's, but that mine is for those in my immediate community, to bring life to them. It's the personal connection that perhaps matters most in my role as an artist.

I continue to run back to my word for this season: faithfulness. Faithfulness means showing up day after day, whether or not I feel like it. Praying, painting, and striving for reconciliation whether or not I see immediate results or growth, or any at all. Practicing presence. Putting one foot in front of the other.

I have the potential “luxury” as it were, to choose to be a full-time artist. But my art must be “fed” by something. If I am fed by being in touch with the earth, should my art not grow out of that? If I am fed by life in community, should my art not grow out of that? I must find what feeds and sustains my spirit, and my art will grow accordingly. Art cannot survive on its own any more than raw talent can. It must be driven by something, and sustained by effort and persistent work.

As an artist, Madeleine L'Engle's words encourage me: “It's all been said better before. If I thought I had to say it better than anybody else, I'd never start. Better or worse is immaterial. The thing is that it has to be said; by me, ontologically. We each have to say it, to say it our own way. Not of our own will, but as it comes out through us. Good or bad, great or little: that isn't what human creation is about. It is that we have to try; to put it down in pigment, or words, or musical notations, or we die.” (A Circle of Quiet)

As someone striving to follow Christ, Clarence Jordan's words encourage me: “Faithfulness is of greater worth than success...Let us cling to faithfulness as the one and only responsibility of Jesus – not to save the world, not to save the church, not to usher in the Kingdom, but to be faithful, as Jesus himself had been in the face of what seemed to be absolute failure.” (Cotton Patch Evidence)

Shortly after my visit to SDC, I stumbled upon an article by a German artist that brought me hope. He was given the opportunity to paint the walls of a prison, which has served to uplift those who come to visit incarcerated friends and relatives. If I could I would paint murals all over SDC, to cover the walls of my lonely friend's cell, in hope that my physical mark might somehow remind him of his humanity. At the very least I can continue visiting, faithfully making contact with those our society has rejected. And I can continue advocating, through prayer and contact with my Congressmen, whether I see results or not, because I believe that this in itself is an act of love.

I pray that my detained friend finds hope and the support he needs, that this time will at least give him space for valuable contemplation. And I pray that privilege will not stand in the way of me doing something, even though I cannot do everything.