Folsom Prison Blues

I went to prison last Monday: the maximum security unit of Folsom Prison, the California institution made famous by a visit from Johnny Cash, who gave a concert there in 1968.  “We arranged a limo for you,” said my host Jim Carlson who met me at the gate, then laughingly escorted my wife and me to the most beat-up, bedraggled van I have ever seen.  “You’ve heard of California’s budget cutbacks, right?” Jim explained.

Three times we had to exit the van to show i.d., sign registers, and go through a metal detector.  Lush green hills surround the prison, a bucolic scene of blooming fruit trees, California oaks, and herds of deer grazing.  Inside the gate, though, razor wire and a lethal 50,000-volt fence mark a transition to the maximum security unit, an ugly, manmade world of stone and concrete.

As it happened, Rosanne Cash made an appearance that same morning, and sixty inmates and a couple of dozen staff crowded into the prison library for an impromptu concert.  Hers was the first visit by a member of the Cash family since Johnny’s milestone concert, and Rosanne was clearly moved by the memories.  She visited the auditorium where her father had recorded perhaps his most famous album before a raucous audience, though for security reasons her own appearance at the maximum unit was much smaller and more low-key.

Rosanne graciously invited several of the inmates to perform, and blues seemed to be the most popular (and appropriate) style.  One elderly African-American with a gray beard, wearing a stocking cap, rendered his heartfelt song with the accompaniment of a harmonica and guitar: “There is a blue sky outside my window, there’s never a trace of rain,” he crooned, “I no longer think of the lovin’ you give another man.”

Then the song took a somber turn:

It’s true there are times when my heart stops…
Maybe some day I’ll be rid of the pain
I think I’m over you all over again…

Rosanne did a number from an album she says is her favorite, “The Wheel,” written just after a divorce.  As a finale she chose a song from her father’s repertoire.  “I can’t believe I’m doing this here, with you guys,” she said, and then let loose.

On a Monday I was arrested
On a Tuesday they locked me in the jail
On a Wednesday my trial was attested
On a Thursday they said Guilty and the judge’s gavel fell

I got stripes — stripes around my shoulders
I got chains — chains around my feet
I got stripes — stripes around my shoulders
And them chains — them chains they’re about to drag me down

I stood against the wall peering over the shoulders of burly guards and wardens, looking at the backs of seated prisoners who were dressed alike in uniform blue, most of them swaying to the music.  The setting made a stark contrast to Rosanne’s normal concert venues.  The rectangular concrete-block room, humid from all the bodies, had fluorescent lights instead of spotlights, no stage or accommodation to acoustics, and the barest electronic equipment.  The only decorations were copies of prison regulations and announcements regarding medical and dental care posted on the walls.  And yet I doubt she and her guitarist husband John Leventhal had ever played to a more appreciative audience.

From there we went through a series of steel gates and fenced walkways to a smaller room where select inmates practice “Arts in Correction.”  Around the perimeter, steel-mesh lockers housed musical instruments and art supplies (“nylon strings only for the guitars, of course, and you have to earn the right to use them”).  We sat on chairs cast off from someone’s 1950s-era dinette set; they rocked on uneven legs and stuffing stuck up through the cracked plastic.  Here, a book club of a dozen inmates gathered to discuss my book What’s So Amazing About Grace? which they had just finished reading.  I asked what other books they had read, and found myself in good company: The Life of Pi, The Kite Runner, Three Cups of Tea, Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning.

It is not appropriate to ask an inmate about his crime, but I knew that most of these guys were serving sentences of life without possibility of parole.  Over the next ninety minutes, some of their stories came out.  Several had committed murder.  One man, an award-winning poet, had already spent thirty-four years behind bars.

I began by telling them why I wrote the book, and what I’ve learned about grace over the years.  Mainly, though, I came to listen.  What could my book, written by a middle-class author of Christian popular theology, communicate to men who lived in an institution seemingly designed to enforce Ungrace?  We all know the stories of violence, gangs, and bullying in maximum-security prisons.  We know of racial conflicts that lead to lockdowns every few months in a place like Folsom.  What could I teach them about grace?  More important, what could they teach me?

“How would you like to be remembered for the worst thing you ever did?” one articulate prisoner began.  “Even the downtrodden like us have to look down on somebody.  I’ve learned that grace is not about being nice, it’s about being free.  Outside of grace I’m full of harsh judgments about other people.  With grace, I’m set free.  Grace is the house I live in—I need it every day.  I’m learning to invite others into that house now and then.”

Another man spoke up, “This place pushes you to become more of what you already are.  It’s easy to spend your whole life in here blaming other people—the judge, society, your parents, whatever.  I’ve had to face myself, and learn not to keep blaming.  Life itself is a grace.  The meals I get, even these meals, are a grace.  I need to keep reminding myself.”

And another: “In here, grace is perceived as a weakness.  You give somebody some grace, and immediately they ask, ‘What’s he want in return?’  Or show some grace, and others start counting on it as a kind of entitlement.”

One man kept interrupting with hostile comments.  “You think only Christians have grace?  Yeah, well what about Hell?  What kind of God sends people to Hell?  You call that grace?”

Most, though, showed thoughtfulness and surprising humility.  “I marked one phrase in your book, that forgiveness is an unnatural act.  You got that right.  I’m in here for killing two people.  I pray for their families to forgive me, for their sakes, not for mine.  Until they forgive me, they let me and what I did control them.  Only forgiveness will set them free.  So far, they haven’t done that.  It’s unnatural all right.”  He thought a minute and added, “Without grace I’m a slave to my ancestors, to my anger, to whatever pissed me off this morning.”

The man next to him, a young African-American who will likely grow old in this place, choked up as he spoke.  “I experienced some of that forgiveness just last weekend.  According to California law, a co-defendant who accompanied you during a crime is just as guilty as you are.  I pulled the trigger, but the guys with me got long sentences too.  This weekend, the mother of one of my co-defendants visited me, and she forgave me.  It’s unnatural.”

As our time drew to a close, one prisoner seemed to sum it up.  “You have to look hard for grace in a place like this.  Sometimes you have to dream it.  I’m in for life without possibility of parole.  Yet I can’t help dreaming of rolling hills, of a picnic with my family, of driving down a street.  Maybe laws will change or a new governor will somehow grant me a pardon.  It’s crazy, I know.  Grace is like hope.  You can’t live without it.”

Afterwards the men asked me to sign their books, along with some scraps of paper they could give their kids.  Working full-time, they earn $25 per month, and a father behind bars has few gifts he can pass on.  I shook hands with each inmate, wished them the best, and thanked them for their insights.  Guards accompanied them back to their cells while we visitors reversed the routine of showing i.d., signing registers, and submitting to searches.  Even the rattletrap van got a thorough going-over.

The sun had come out while we were in the prison, glistening off puddles left by a morning rain.  We drove back through the lush green hills into freedom and headed for a nearby coffee shop before catching a flight home.  I remembered a passage from Solzhenitsyn.  Spending his first night outside after serving time in the Gulag, he lay in a comfortable bed and listened to sounds he had not heard for eight years: the click-click of a woman in heels walking on a sidewalk, the shrieks and laughter of children at play.

And off I walk!  I wonder whether everybody knows the meaning of this great free word.  I am walking along by myself!  With no automatic rifles threatening me, from either flank or from the rear.  I look behind me: no one there!  If I like, I can take the right-hand side, past the school fence, where a big pig is rooting in a puddle.  And if I like, I can walk on the left, where hens are strutting and scratching immediately in front of the District Education Department….

I cannot sleep!  I walk and walk in the moonlight.  The donkeys sing their song.  The camels sing.  Every fiber in me sings: I am free!  I am free!

Folsom Prison presents an advanced test on grace, a free gift that only comes to those who pursue it, or at least recognize it.  Clearly, some had passed that test.