I graduated from 天美视频 in 2010 with an MDiv and am the pastor of in Chicago鈥攁 contemplative anabaptist church in the Old Irving Park neighborhood on the northwest side. Two communities that our church is committed to supporting are the incarcerated and the formerly incarcerated and their families.

I have worked with the formerly incarcerated, but this year is my first for going into the jail to hold religious services. It鈥檚 a trip. Church of the Table is new, and so we are researching and seeking out counsel as to how we as a church can best serve the incarcerated and formerly incarcerated. It is a massive need in Chicago.

Below is a bit that I wrote after my first week going to jail.

鈥⑩赌⑩赌⑩赌⑩赌⑩赌⑩赌⑩赌⑩赌⑩赌�

Annex 4 in Cook County Jail is mostly one large room鈥攃inder block walls with faded paint, 200 steel bunk beds with inches between them, and roughly 400 incarcerated men in tan jumpsuits who are there for relatively short sentences. It is a transient, cold space. Two TVs hang on the walls, each encased in one-inch-thick solid translucent material. They are both playing an NBA playoffs game, the audio drowned out by the presence of the 400 residents. A group of 15 or so guys huddle around the television trying to hear, trying to drown out their circumstances, but probably just trying to watch the game. There’s not a lot of poetry to read into that room.

Guards walk us through the main room to an adjacent room鈥攐ne that is locked and empty, roughly the size of half a basketball court. The walk through the main room means passing almost shoulder-to-shoulder with a crowd of tan jumpsuits; it is an intimidating walk. The guard tells us that he doesn’t want us to go anywhere without him because if one of us 鈥済ets in the middle of something鈥� then it’s on his shoulders, 鈥渁nd I don’t need that shit right now.鈥�

In the adjacent room there are phones on the walls with instructions for collect calls and notices that all calls are monitored and recorded. The notices are not polite. They do not say, 鈥淧lease be aware鈥︹�濃�攖hey are cold fact. Everything you say is heard by CCJ. In the middle of the room are about 15 rows of tables made of steel with circular stools jutting out from the base on a curved tube of metal. Everything there is solid, affixed to something else that is solid. Almost nothing moves. That is where we have church.

Then you have to let people know that church is happening, and the way you do that is to go and invite people to church. I can’t think of the last time I invited a friend to church鈥攊t’s been decades, except for times when I’ve preached and I wanted my pals to come support me. I have never invited someone to church that I had never met.

The other six guys who were in my group to lead the church service are all veterans of this work. They didn’t look intimidated in the slightest. I’ve been in some very tough rooms and some dark places鈥擨’ve been through dozens of awful SROs and hotels, in and out of police departments and court rooms in social work roles, and working in buildings that should have been condemned decades ago鈥攕o it’s not my first experience in an uncomfortable room, but this was a new kind of tough room for me.

鈥淭his was a new kind of tough room for me.鈥�

The other six who were with me spread out through the room, walking down the rows of bunks, yelling out 鈥淐hurch! Church is happening! Come to church!鈥� I watched and learned. I am in preschool鈥攖each me the language and symbols.

Maybe 30 or so guys came to church. One of the guys on my team had a guitar and he passed out lyric sheets, and I am not exaggerating, everyone sang or at the very least talked the words. My read was that they wanted to sing, or needed to sing. It was humbling. I had these flashbacks of the thousands of times I’ve been in church and not sang for some reason or another鈥攖ired of the music or not agreeing with the theology of the lyrics or not liking the style. I didn’t feel bad about it, but I felt as though I hadn’t needed to sing in a very, very long time. And I don’t think it takes dire circumstances to realize the need to sing together.

This is the truth: those men were all very tender, at least when we were singing. And I was looking around a lot, observing this very peculiar space. Not one of them looked like they thought this was silly or that they were above it. And they didn’t looked thrilled either. The look most of them had was one of peace. Take that for what you will. I could be wrong, but there you go.

After the singing another guy on our team preached for about 25 minutes from the gospel of John. Everyone had a bible (the team always brings a bag full of them in English and Spanish). Most of the guys wanted to read the text out loud, so they took turns reading a few verses at a time.

Last thing we did was break up in groups to pray. I prayed with a few guys who had court dates coming up that week. We sat down, exchanged names and shook hands, and I would ask, 鈥淲hat do you want to pray about?鈥� The first thing that each one of them said was for some member in their family. Isn’t that interesting? Maybe not all that important, but it happened again and again, guy after guy. When they had a court case coming up but they didn鈥檛 know much about their case (common), we would pray that the judge would have a very good breakfast the morning of their trial and would be in a dandy mood. I鈥檝e been in quite a few courtrooms, and the mood of the judge is pertinent. So that鈥檚 what we prayed for. God, give the judge syrup.

I thanked all of them for the honor it was to pray with them.

I didn’t have any massive revelations. I don’t think lives were transformed and forever changed. It was just a bunch of people who weren’t all that different from each other, trying to figure it out, trying to do our best in that moment. And if any of us or all of us were changed, maybe it was just a little, tiny, minuscule bit, like when something helpful or nice happens and you say, 鈥淵eah鈥攖hat was good. Thanks. I needed that.鈥�

Enjoy your meal, your honor.

鈥⑩赌⑩赌⑩赌⑩赌⑩赌⑩赌⑩赌⑩赌⑩赌�

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She called out to me down the pier as I walked in her direction, though not toward her. She was sitting on a concrete slab, her back against a ledge bordering the water. Her friend had a fishing line in the water but no pole in his hand, the translucent line wrapped around a finger in one hand and draped through the other, waiting for a sign, though his worn face said that he didn鈥檛 expect a bite. An orange five-gallon bucket was at their feet, right side up, a receptacle for both fish they hoped to catch and a few bottles of booze. I could see the tops of the bottles peeking over the rim of the bucket. I know those long-necked clear bottle tops with the black twist caps: vodka鈥攃heap and quick.

She spoke in a tone and cadence with which I am familiar; it bore the coarseness of sandpaper, the boldness of speaking daily to people she does not know, the expectation of rejection, and a certain resilience, like a solider on her third tour.

I responded as if I鈥檇 known her for months, which disarmed her. My face did not change, my body not defensive or alarmed. This is my standard approach鈥攁n approach that mirrors my body from moments before the interaction. She asked where I was from and I told her Chicago (I was in Baltimore at the time). There was that specific stench of human feces; I glanced around but I couldn鈥檛 spot it. I sat down. I asked her where she was from and she told me. I asked where she stayed and she told me about a few abandoned houses in the area.

鈥淗ow long until you get bounced?鈥�

鈥淎 few days, maybe up to a week at a time, until the construction picks up.鈥�

鈥淭hen where do you go? More abandons?鈥�

鈥淵eah. Winter will hit soon and construction slows.鈥�

鈥淗ow are the shelters here?鈥�

鈥淚 hate them. 40 people to a room. Can鈥檛 get no sleep.鈥�

Her friend caught a fish.

I asked her about her social security, when was the last time she received it and if she knew ways to access it again. I asked about family in the area. I asked her if she鈥檇 been diagnosed and she told me about her PTSD and borderline personality disorder, and then about how she was abused as a child and how she got cut with a knife under her eye a few days ago.

We discussed those issues with tremendous ease, mere minutes into our meeting each other, because I know her face. I knew her story before she said a word. This is where I shine鈥攖alking to the stranger and the strange. I speak with more ease, poise, and fluidity with people I don鈥檛 know than I do with my own wife. My father-in-law asks me a question and all of history becomes lodged between my vocal cords. Asking my wife for sex seems impossible. Speaking to my father or step-mother or sister can be difficult, not solely because of them, but often because my fear and timidity stir in my gut. My language comes out stunted, my voice cracks like a pubescent kid. But with the homeless and the ill and even the cashier at Trader Joe鈥檚, I speak in sonnets. It鈥檚 always been that way, and I do not know why.

My day job is in the mental health field. I work with adults who suffer from mental illness, and I work on a broad spectrum, ranging from very high-functioning adults who are enrolled in educational programs to adults who suffer from such deep, dark paranoia that they believe my truck is bugged, and then when we move to a spot in the park and they see a woman in running clothes stretching near us they accuse her of being an agent, and so on at every place we sit. I work with a gentleman who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and hoarding, who every morning leaves his SRO (single room occupancy) men鈥檚 hotel and walks around for two hours on the streets before he goes into any business in order to give time for the roaches and bugs to get out of his clothes and bag on his pull cart. Some of my people live in apartments and some live in buildings where when I knock on their doors I see bed bugs scatter to the cracks.

My work is to engage people who suffer a vast darkness, to be an advocate for them in a system that is very difficult to navigate, to fight for them with landlords who discriminate, and to take them to all the places that we hate, DMVs and Social Security Agencies, anywhere with a 2+ hour wait, in order for my people to get state IDs and the benefits entitled to them. And part of my job is to counsel them, to help them develop coping skills, to budget their money, and to be one of the few voices in their lives that tells them that there is no normal, that they are valuable, lovely, and good, and that their mental illness does not define them in the same way that the flu does not define anyone with it. There are no schizophrenics, bipolars, or borderlines; there are only people, and we all suffer from something. My agency is funded by tax dollars and private money, it is not religious, but my job is very, very pastoral; this is by far the most pastoral work I鈥檝e ever done. Some days are very hard, some days I hate my job, and some days are so profoundly gratifying in ways I never knew possible.

So when this woman on the pier called out to me, I already knew her, and I sat down somewhere very near human feces without hesitation because I sit in that space all the time. I鈥檓 not careless, I know what to look for, but I don鈥檛 have the same reservations and fears that once kept me from engaging. And I do not speak with an agenda or a religious righteousness; I talk as though I know her, because I do. I repeat to myself, daily, 鈥淒o not judge, lest you be judged.鈥� I find great relief and freedom in that mandate.

Her friend caught another fish.

She threw me a curveball, fast, without hesitation.

鈥淲ill you pray for me?鈥�

Does she know I鈥檓 religious? Does she care? I felt stuck. I can talk for hours about the logistics of finding and receiving support, where she could go to get her social security check, and how she could find housing. I can speak as a clinician, though not a psychiatrist, to her mental illness, being bathroom-reading-familiar with the DSM-V definitions of mental illnesses and the side effects of psychotropics like Haldol and Prolixin and Thorazine. But all of a sudden she asks me to pray for her, to leave the realm of what is in front of us and enter into an unseen mystery, and my throat binds in knots. I am not ashamed to say that I am a Christian, trinitarian, and fairly devout, but I will also say that when she asked me if Jesus loved her I told her that yes, I believe that he does, but that idea lives in the realm of belief, my belief, and I鈥檓 a fearful man of imposing my beliefs on others. And I suppose I have a good amount of fear in general. So odd to be fearful of imposing my beliefs but not of sitting in or near feces.

But I told her Yes, I鈥檒l pray for you. What should I pray for? in an attempt to stall, and she listed some things and waited for me to start. I paused, my mouth slightly agape. And then she said,

鈥淥ur Father, who art in heaven鈥︹��

And I joined her. We said the Lord鈥檚 prayer by her leading, and I found myself being taught how to pray. We ended our prayer in unison, she hugged me, and I wondered who had cared for whom as I walked back up the pier.

Joshua Longbrake (MDiv ’10) is a social worker in Chicago and with adults who suffer from mental illness. Joshua is married to Kirby and is a father to Waits.

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