Warming The Battered Heart

Since I was arrested and subsequently detained as a prisoner of conscience, I have had moments of deep anguish. The realities I have encountered while in prison, in the context of a harshly repressive society, have brought angst deep in my battered heart. In these moments one is but a breath away from despair, like a flickering candle exposed to the wind. During these dark nights of my soul, I am not too sure whether I still manage to cling on to hope. I cry out to the Lord, but there is nothing but a desolate darkness. Hopelessness brings a bleak scenario to our lives, indeed.

Just recently such a moment caught up with me after a series of tragic events and disappointments. Three young men, one the brother of a former detainee, were summarily executed by the military and buried in one shallow grave. The military authorities claimed through the controlled press that the men were rebels killed during an encounter with the soldiers. In fact they were kidnapped and tortured before they were murdered.

Another tragedy took place, this time on the high seas. Close to a dozen churchworkers were to attend a pastoral meeting on another island. Three of them were religious women who took turns responding to our needs here in prison and who were always around to offer compassion and solidarity. In order to give flesh to their option for the poor, they traveled by boat instead of taking the plane. It was still the typhoon season. They perished in the sea, and the search for their bodies was futile. Without the bodies, the mourning was doubly painful.

A new group of political detainees were padlocked after that. When we finally saw them, their bodies bore the scars of torture. The anger I felt at this appalling display of naked, brutal force was exacerbated by the lies from "professional witnesses" used against me by the military authorities during my court hearing soon afterward. The promise of an early release from prison somehow vanished. Meanwhile a few other detainees went through depression, and I felt helpless at being unable to offer a comforting hand.

We can only thank God that when such a moment occurs in the wake of tragedy, we still find the embers of hope across the haunting horizon. Of course we find hope, but not without the agony of God's seeming abandonment. It is the discovery that God is present in these moments that restores our full trust in him as our protector and defender. Anchored in the faith that we are always in his care, and that he saves us from our enemies, our hope in the Lord takes on the characteristics of fire. It tears apart the bleak darkness of hopelessness, warms the battered heart, and raises to the heavens the prayer for strength and courage.

The amazing grace of the spirit pierces through the things that happen here in prison and one is blessed with hope. The political detainees sing their songs and, as the music echoes through the cells, the hope that the songs bring is very palpable in the air. After all, these are songs about birds with the freedom to fly across the heavens, about mothers bequeathing to their children the legacy of heroism, and about peasants offering their lives so justice will reign. And they also sing of hope as in the words of this song composed by a co-detainee who is a young mother:

In the face of freedom caught in chains
and the harsh brutality ire encounter,
the burden of the heart is heavy.
But ice should continue to struggle,
no matter how painful is our suffering.
We should never lose hope.

Even as their voices collectively sing the same dreams, the detainees are united also in the attempt to build a community that fosters concern and affection for one another. The memory of our hunger strike and the prison reforms that ensued have brought a militancy which has served a prophetic function inside the prison. And when a sense of community is nourished, despite our captors' attempt to divide us, it brings hope. Being part of a community of men and women who are struggling to keep their God-given dignity intact has led to an array of activities with hopeful expectations: planting red roses, painting sunsets, composing songs, writing poetry, and doing aerobics. Our Sunday liturgy, the only occasion during the week when all of us are gathered together with relatives and friends, is the celebration around which we draw strength to keep the hope burning.

But we are not without a source of hope from the outside. From across the seas, beyond our national boundaries, friends in solidarity encourage us to take heart. And most important, our fellow Filipinos—the millions who have come out in the open to express their outrage these past few months against the U.S.-Marcos dictatorship—have expressed their option for justice. Among other things, their voices urgently demand: "Free all political prisoners!"

To capture the mood of a people on the march to liberation a poet-friend wrote:

The killing of our people will stop.
The starving of our children will end.
We will break through our prisons
to fight for our right to self-determination.
Justice will prevail.
Freedom will be ours.
And reigning the land
One day will be peace.
And only PEACE.

The belief that the Lord of history will bring us deliverance and lead us to our own promised land has made life in prison a prayer of hope in itself.

Karl Gaspar, lay churchworker, human rights activist, artist, and poet, was imprisoned in Davao City Jail in the Philippines when this article appeared.