I've been thinking about prisons and jails. I visited Stasi ....the secret prison where political dissidents were held, tortured and where many died in the GDR in East Berlin. I stood in the courtyard there looking at the walls, the guard towers, and realizing that if I'd been standing there 20 years earlier I would either have been a prisoner or a guard.
Our guides were former inmates. They showed us where their cells were, talked about what they did that landed them there. Related to us how they were treated, how they felt, how the food was, what their interrogators were like.
The bars were everywhere... on the windows, on the doors, on the stairwells.... everywhere. I kept thinking what would it be like to be held here. What would it feel like to be brought in here in a truck, walked into the facility, stripped, searched, issued prison clothing, walked down a hallway, pushed into a cell... and hear the heavy door slam... heavy, loud, final... How long would it take? How many days would pass until I woke up one morning and came to terms with being in a prison, not having any idea how far I was from my home and family? How many weeks before I woke up in the morning and wondered if it had all been a bad dream... and then realized I was still there, still locked up, still kept away from the sun, away from my family and friends, still existing in a vacume where no one who loved me knew where I'd gone or even if I was still alive?
Where would I find hope? What would mitigate the fear? What would feed it? Would I dream of escape? Would I dream of freedom? Would I cry? I hope I would. I hope I would not become dull and resigned to the day to day monotony of imprisonment. In Stasi the prisoners never even saw each other. They were never even moved in the hallways when another prisoner was out of their cell. They were alone except when they were taken to interrogation or the rare visit outside the buildings.
At some point I began to feel sick during the tour. I felt nauseous. I began to realize that as recently as 1989 prisoners were still held here.Some lost hope here. Some may have survived in body but were broken in spirit. Some undoubtedly found a deeper faith, a stronger path to hope, a reason for living. Some died here. Their spirits still inhabit the place. You can feel them.
I've been thinking about all the ways I put myself into prisons of my own making. How many ways I limit my potential, limit my ability to interact with others, limit the hope I allow myself to have about the future, how many ways I hide out in a poverty of hope and an economy of isolation. Oh I interact with people everyday. But how many people do I really show myself to? How many people do I share my burdens with? How many people do I really trust?
I keep myself in prisons of all kinds. I hear the large steel doors slam shut. I see the light filtered in through frosted windows. I note the bars on the windows. I can't get out. No one else can get in. There's only a small hole to peer in and out. But I'm behind the door. Separated. And somehow safe from the demands of intimacy. Safe from the potential of disappointment and hurt and pain.
Now don't get me wrong, I have lots of beautiful people in my life. And I have meaningful conversation and intimate time with someone whom I love nearly everyday. But I have a tendency to limit what I'm willing to believe is possible. And that is it's own kind of jail, it's own kind of prison.
On my better days I want to tear down the walls in me that make the prisons possible. When I'm imagining my own magnificence and incarnation I know I have a choice. I can walk out. I can let my imagination loose. I can let my spirit dream. I can play and laugh and enjoy each moment. I can make a joke of the bars and walls and locks and steel doors.
Parts of the Berlin wall still stand as a reminder that it happened. Stasi is still there, so that people like me can still go visit it and see the horror of secret prisons and secret jails where lives ended, families and friends were separated, where hope was lost.... sometimes forever.
No one comes in a truck in the night and takes me away to a jail. I do it all on my own. I lock myself up in a prison of despair and cynicism and expectations of negative outcomes rather than creative positive results. And if I do it, I can stop it. I can open the cell doors, walk out of the prison, tear down the wall. It's my choice. I don't have to do this anymore. Not one more day.
