THE DEATH ROW SPIRITUAL ADVISOR: A PRIMER
Beginnings are important. We speak to someone where we find them. We cannot begin beyond where we are. Perhaps one can go back, but the beginning is always the beginning. We do not begin in endings. The spiritual advisor must meet all that they meet where they are, not where they were.
Spirituality is complicated. No two people are the same. We are all trying to find the God that is beyond God. That is the entity that is beyond all comprehension that gives all life meaning. Those who claim to know the totality of God are fools. Such people should never be trusted. The indescribability of God is the very constitution of God. Then again, it’s possible that the indescribability of God is the only attribute of God. Too often, there is a cultural phenomenon that demands religious certainty for anything to be considered real spirituality. Such demands will never be met. The primary attribute of the human condition is uncertainty. We can only know what we know. But we can’t even really know that because to know anything is to trust the flawed and partial processes by which something is known. We are not perfect. We are searching. We are human. The spiritual journey is about faith not answers.
Spiritual direction most often comes from the location that our spiritual attempts come from. There are few more unique locations than death row. The location begins in a lack of humanity and ends in the destruction of humanity. Most often, the prisoner has shown a lack of humanity in the crimes that they’ve committed. Society has been right to judge their actions as being something less than human. The problem is that society is unable to see how they contributed to the dehumanization or even how the lack of humanity seen in the other is a lack of humanity in the self. Dehumanization is the only possible way that any society can have a death penalty. One must believe that there is something completely unhuman about someone before they can be comfortable destroying someone. The job of any lover of God is to step into the spaces of a lack of humanity and dehumanization and create humanity. Indeed, the job of the spiritual advisor is to resurrect humanity in both the judge and the object of judgement.
Dehumanization becomes complete when transformation is declared to be impossible. Such a tragedy takes place in a variety of ways. Sometimes the person who is a victim chooses to believe that the transformation of the instigator of their pain is impossible. Something dies in the person. In fact, a suicide of compassion has been perpetuated in their soul. Sometimes the person who is the perpetrator chooses to believe that they can only be defined by the crime that they have committed. Deep in their soul, they choose to believe all that is said about them. While monsterization or complete dehumanization becomes complete, the perpetrator is left with no other choice but continued destruction. Societies that make decisions to perpetuate the dehumanization of people perpetuate their own demise. The dehumanization in me is the dehumanization in you. The spiritual advisor is a prophet of transformation through miraculous expressions of humanization. The person who is a victim somehow finds the ability to believe that the perpetrator of their pain is human and can be transformed. The offender is brought out of darkness and into the light of revived humanity and transformation from evil to wholeness. Society decides to believe that all the world is bigger than injustice and pain. We can bring about humanity in the darkest places of dehumanization. We can transform our world into a place in which humanity is transformed to a place of right. Prophetic humanizations are the epicenter of the work of the spiritual advisor.
Where are we going? We can never completely know the path that life will take us. Relationships are complicated. Roles become mixed. On a basic level though, the spiritual advisor exists to be there when death is announced, death is fought and when death arrives.
Throughout the judicial process, death is constantly announced. From the moment a sentence is handed down until that sentence is carried out, death is constant. How do you comfort someone when death is so imminent? The spiritual advisor declares that death does not exist. That which is being threatened is but an empty threat. One cannot be sentenced to nonexistence when there is never a moment when one will not exist. One is created to be and such being can never be lost. The very essence of being is the be in the being. Comfort is found in constantly lifting up life. Death has no power if we choose to believe. The job of the spiritual advisor is to be an evangelist for life. That is the epicenter of comfort.
The very definition of injustice is anything that tries to create death amidst life. The spiritual advisor exists to push back against a society obsessed with death. By seeking to stop every execution, we are pushing back against injustice so that the condemned will not face the injustice of an execution. Whether one is talking metaphorically or quite viscerally, it is the primary responsibility to try to save the life of the condemned. In the battle for a specific life, the responsibility of the spiritual advisor extends to the collective life of society. The spiritual advisor is a conduit of societal change. By standing with the condemned, the spiritual advisor is standing firmly on the living side of the life of the world, namely justice. It is wrong to kill another. In every direction, the spiritual advisor makes the horrors of death clear, so that life can bring about life. Hope comes from the battle against death. We are not alone in such efforts. Love is always close. The spiritual advisor’s greatest tool is the spread of life.
Executions are the final battle. In the execution chamber, the life that is carried by the spiritual advisor and the condemned push back against death. The purveyors of death want one to think that they are in control. They are not. Life is in control. The spiritual advisor and the condemned are a testament that life matters and that no matter what the outcome of the moment life continues. The outcome of the battle is always to those who decide that the battle for life is always worth the fight. The condemned can never be executed. Life lives on. The spiritual advisor walks out of the execution chamber as a witness that death cannot win…and that hope still breathes.
Life is about giving life. Death is about taking life. The spiritual advisor always leaves a part of who they are in spaces of death. However, death and life go together. Meaning death brings about resurrection. Life is multiplied. The spiritual advisor is the mathematician that has figured out the ultimate problem of life, how to live to die and die to live.