Songs in Prison
By Robert Meyers
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In what I am now about to write I shall have need, perhaps, of more restraint than I am capable of. Having just returned from a deeply moving religious experience, I shall not find it easy to speak of it soberly.
I went last night (Sunday) with twelve of Riverside's talented singers to Wichita's big Sedgwick County prison. We took cakes and dozens of home-baked cookies for the inmates, but mainly we went to sing.
We had no idea how we would be received and we were apprehensive. As successive barrier doors of steel shut heavily behind us and the air grew close and oppressive, I think all of us felt that perhaps we would wind up looking a little silly. We felt vulnerable. Our guide was patient and kept obvious dubiety off his face, but we guessed how he felt.
We made a mistake at first. We were embarrassed--the ladies, perhaps, most of all--and we were reluctant to stand where the men could see us. During our first songs there was constant talk by the unseen prisoners. They made noise, dropped things, laughed, and paid little attention to us.
At that moment we felt that we had made a gruesome mistake, that we were throwing something lovely and well-intended to a group of contemptuous men. We only learned that this was not entirely true when, as we walked to another cell block, several men spoke up from the interior cells and said, "Thank you, folks! Some of us liked that, even if a few of these bums don't have any manners." There was a polite round of applause.
At the next cell block, inhabited by a large number of white and Negro prisoners, we changed tactics. We put the men where they could be seen by the prisoners as they sang, although the women still held back. But the ringleader of that block, an articulate Negro, pled with us to "let the girls come up here closer, please; we don't see many ladies in here."
It could have been disastrous, of course, and we knew it. Our singing group has rather especially pretty women in it and we were uncertain about the remarks that might be made to them. But the request was polite and we could not turn
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At first they seemed wary, suspecting, I suppose, that we had some bargain to strike. (You enjoy our singing, then we'll spring a preacher on you to tell you how you went wrong). But as the faces of our lovely ladies glowed with the terror of their singing, as the beautiful voices harmonized in the old-time favorites we knew they would like best, the wariness passed from their faces and a deeply respectful look took its place.
I believe I am not merely romanticizing when I say that the hungry eagerness with which they first looked at the women was soon supplanted by near-reverence. They remembered mothers and sisters and sweethearts from those far-off forgotten days when life held promise and sweetness. We believed they would recall some things that night which they had not thought of in a long, long time.
Two worlds met that evening which rarely meet. The desire to serve met the fierce desire to take and conquered it. Gracious beauty, illuminated by holiness, met eyes quick to satisfy lewdness and gentled them to quiet respectfulness. Great old Christian songs, sweet with the promise of love and forgiveness, swelled through rooms filled moments before with oaths and bitter jests.
We went to sing about thirty minutes but they would not let us go. We sang two hours. As we left each group of men, singing softly as we walked away, "God be with you till we meet again," we were one as we have seldom been one before. We were caught up in a high and holy rapture. I do not exaggerate it. We could not stop singing. As we went down the corridors we sang spontaneously. In the elevator we sang on. We could not stop. We did not want it to end. We hated to go home.
I have written articles about men who claim the baptism of the Spirit and the gift of tongues. I know a little better how they must feel, for I was close to their rapture that night. We tried to talk about it later and although our words were poor we agreed it was the best thing we had done. Entering into it fearfully, we came away sure that we had sent, with lovely melodies, the word of life among men forgotten by the world.
Our guide told us that it was the best thing he had seen since he had worked there. He meant first to take us to a couple of blocks and then let us leave, but he begged us to go to another floor and sing to more men. "I've been here nine months, but I'll stay here nine more if you folks will come back," said one man, and he meant it as eloquent tribute. "Please come again," they begged us, and one group kept a hymnbook, promising to learn some songs and sing to us when we came back. We left with complete assurance that our gift was accepted joyously.
This will be "old hat" to many of you, so you must forgive us for betraying our excitement to you in the naive and uncritical manner of young lovers who think no one else ever saw the moon. We are normally a reasonably sophisticated lot, touched here and there with a legalism of our past, but that night, together, singing to men who are truly among the lost, we touched the hem of His garment!