A Graduation of ?

Let me begin with a story, about another occasion when I was invited to speak - not for the Baccalaureate address at a major university, but for the inmates at Sing Sing Prison in upstate New York. The invitation letter came from the prisoners themselves and it sounded like a good idea. So I wrote back asking when they wanted me to come. In his return letter, the young Sing Sing resident replied, "Well, we're free most nights! We're kind of a captive audience here." Arrangements were made, and the prison officials were very generous in giving us a room deep in the bowels of that infamous prison facility - just me and about 80 guys for four hours. I will never forget what one of those young prisoners said to me that night, "Jim, all of us at Sing Sing are from only about five neighbourhoods in New York City. It's like a train. You get on the train when you are about 9 or 10 years old. And the train ends up here at Sing Sing." Many of these prisoners were students too, studying in a very unique program of the New York Theological Seminary to obtain their Master of Divinity degree - behind the walls of the prison. They graduated when their sentences were up (of course, none of you feel that way). Here's what that young man at Sing Sing told me he would do upon his graduation: "When I get out, I'm going to go back and stop that train." Now that is exactly the kind of faith and hope we desperately need today from the graduates of Sing Sing, and the graduates of Stanford.

Told by Jim Wallis