Breaking Bridges

Dear Friends in Christ -

This evening, I was sitting in the drafty, over-lit Bridgeport train station waiting for the arrival of the Amtrak train bearing our speaker for the Clergy Retreat. The train was a bit late, so I plopped myself down on one of the metal benches. The station was fairly crowded so I chose a seat in the midst of a group of African American women who were swapping stories of a common experience they all shared: going to jail.

One of the young women was going on about how it was much better to be arrested in New York than in Connecticut. At least in New York, she said, you know what you're being arrested for. She told the other women how she got in an argument with another woman. Someone called the police and both of them were hauled away in handcuffs. "I couldn't even understand why," the woman said, "the cop kept saying something about breaking bridges. I kept wondering what he talking about."

Eventually, when she got to the police station, someone explained to her that she was being arrested for "breach of peace." But she still didn't know what that meant. And no one, she said, would explain it to her. They just made her take all of the beads and bands out of her hair before taking her picture and finger prints and processing her into the jail. "Great," she said, hanging her head, "and then I look a mess, too."

Curious, but trying not to stare, I glanced at her several times, trying to get pictures in my head to go with the words I was hearing. Life had worn so hard on her that she looked a decade older than her 20-some years. She had teeth that could have used good orthodontics and hardened, down-turned lines around her mouth and eyes. If life were easier, she might have been pretty.

But she was stuck. Stuck in a world where peace is so illusive that she and her friends offhandedly share stories of being jailed. How many bridges in a young woman's life have to be broken before being jailed is just part of the routine for her and her friends? How many bridges in our community have to be broken before we run out of options and resort to repeatedly throwing people in jail?

Faithfully longing for better things,
Janet+