So many nights I sit by my window
Waiting for someone to sing me his song
So many dreams I kept deep inside me
Alone in the dark but now
You've come along You light up my life
You give me hope
To carry on
You light up my days
and fill my nights with song

(From “You Light up my Life” by Jo Brooks)

“You really don’t know how exciting it is when you people visit prison” said a recently released prisoner.  “Not only do you give us contact with the outside world and try to help us – you bring us color.  All we see in prison is black and white.  There is no color in prison, and when volunteers come in we get to see colors that we don’t see in prison, they are the beautiful colors of life outside the walls.”
 
I hadn’t thought about prison visits being colorful, in fact I had taken to wearing black as a way of declaring my solidarity with the suffering and dispossessed people of the world. It was depressive!  For more years than I can remember I was a frequent traveler between two worlds – between freedom that encourages creativity and life, and confinement where conformity and containment are enforced – between the world outside of prison that resounds with vitality and the world where prisoners groan in the imposed and dreary monotony of confinement.
 
To describe the prison world as dull and drab doesn’t even begin portraying the reality of the prison experience.  Several years ago, while visiting prisons in several African countries my eyes were opened to the boring monochromatic world prison world that is often magnified by crumbling infrastructure, extreme poverty, stifling idleness, and inhumane overcrowding.  As in most of the world, African prisons feel like places that are designed to suck the life out of human beings. You can see it in the eyes of the inmates, not just in the drab concrete and steel environment.  As soon as you enter you can literally feel the energy and life being “sucked” out of yourself and anyone who inhabits the space.  In every respect imprisonment leaches life and vitality out of human beings - physically, mentally, socially, and spiritually.
 
It has been observed that the tragedy of imprisonment is not just that it prevents normal contact and conversation between prisoners and their friends and family; but that prisons are designed to keep the normal community out.  I actually had not given this much thought except for the idea that community engagement with prisons by way of volunteer visitation and programs serves as a meaningful bridge between inmates and the world outside of prison.  This provides a significant normalizing influence in prisons which by their very nature are a heinously abnormal social environment.  Since crime is essentially the problem of the community, the community must somehow become part of the solution, because eventually the vast majority of prisoners will be released back into the communities from which they came.  Very often after being separated from the vitality and life of the community they face incalculable difficulties in adjusting to normality in the community.  For that reason alone, bridges comprised of social, material, and spiritual friendship provides a significant influence for good re-entry and reintegration.
 
As I listened to the former African prisoner share his terrible experience of imprisonment and his subsequent return to the community I realized anew just how degrading and damaging imprisonment is; and how life affirming and revitalizing it is for inmates when volunteers from the community visit them inside.  Most people tend to think that the principal value of prison volunteers lies in their messages of hope and faith and in their compassionate friendship.  While that might be true, I believe that the many colors of vitality and life that visiting members of the community bring into prison is every bit as important in affirming dignity and instilling as any of the words they may speak.   
 
“Color gives us inmates feelings of life and joy” the former prisoner told me.  “I am glad your people came to visit me, it gave me hope and kept me alive.”  It seemed to me that his story carried echoes of St. Paul’s description of followers of Jesus when he said that their lives in an anguished world were “the aroma of Christ – the fragrance of life.”  His words were reminiscent of Jesus’ poignant challenge to his followers not to blend into the blandness and the shadows of the world but to bring vitality and life into that world by being people of salt and light.
 
It is a fact that there are many kinds of prisons by which people become confined in bland, tasteless, lusterless and monochromatic day to day existence.  While prisons and correctional institutions are graphic examples of people confined in dreary existence, there are far more people for whom the day to day grind of routine work; endless nights of eating and drinking alone; waking up solitary after yet another one night stand; angry at the world and disgusted with themselves; or insatiable aching because life has no meaning or purpose – these are also real and colorless, deadening dreary prisons.  Without hope people around us, and even some among us who inhabit such prisons will die in anguish.  In a drab and bleary world the light and color of people like you who are reach out to others who are trapped inside these prisons, you exude the vibrant light of love, kindness, joy, freedom, purpose actually bring the colors hope to life – and that can make all the difference in the world.

 
Jesus said …
 
Let me tell you why you are here.
You’re here to be salt-seasoning
that brings out the God-flavors of this earth.
If you lose your saltiness,
how will people taste godliness?...
Here’s another way to put it;
You’re here to be light,
bringing out the God-colors in the world.
(Matthew 5:14-16)