Innocent in the Eyes of God

This is the story of Stacey Lynn Merkt, a soft-spoken and humble woman who went to prison for her work with Central American refugees. She responded to victimized, suffering people with love and compassion, and the most powerful government in the world--the U.S. government--targeted her and broke its own laws to try to keep her from causing that kind of trouble.

But it is not a sad or cynical story. Hundreds of thousands of Central American refugees are tortured and bombed out of their home countries only to be tracked down and imprisoned in this one. But Stacey believes that these same people who are so desperately poor in possessions and papers are the rich-in-spirit, native-born citizens of a far more powerful and permanent upside-down kingdom. And that makes this a hopeful story.

This story is a triumphant one, not because the refugees' long struggle against death and injustice will soon be won, but because these modern-day symbols of the crucified Christ are imparting to their North American brothers and sisters a new kind of life. And this story is heartening, not because Stacey, who was so unjustly sent to prison, was released to a less harsh, yet still unjust, house arrest, but because she took into and out of prison that greatest symbol of hope and life--a child in her womb--and because she did not allow all the injustice and pain of prison to make her a bitter or angry person.

This is the story of Stacey Merkt, a woman of God who has tried to live her life one step at a time, always open to the call of God and the needs of others. Her faithfulness in the little things has led her on a rewarding, if sometimes difficult, journey.

ON THE MEXICAN SIDE OF HARLINGEN, TEXAS, ON A QUIET RESIDENTIAL STREET lined with palm trees and pickup trucks, sits a small, white, wood-frame house. If you go in through the back door, you'll find yourself in the kitchen, where the table sports a red Guatemalan tablecloth and a portable radio is tuned to a Spanish-language station. You can probably find some coffee ice cream in the freezer (pregnant women have their cravings), but if you're in a baking mood you should know that the temperature setting on the oven doesn't work. But the oven was cheap, and if you need to bake banana bread in 15 minutes it comes in quite handy.

Stepping into the living room you will see one of the best features of this house: the windows. Big windows on every side of the house, windows that catch the south Texas breeze and make the humid valley heat a bit more bearable. A color photograph of Salvadoran refugees, a carved wooden cross, and a painting of Jesus adorn the walls of this room. A spinning wheel and a small piano complement a wooden rocking chair and additional, futon-fashioned seating.

Across from the bathroom is the bedroom, and next to the bedroom is the "spare" room. It is filled mostly with books and papers, sewing and knitting baskets. But there are also signs of something, someone, to come: donated baby clothes, a bassinet, a car seat given by proud grandparents-to-be.

Next comes the all-important yard. It is relatively huge, which means there's lots of room to plant things. Roses in front of the house, zinnias on the south side, sunflowers along the back fence, and a garden of green beans, basil, eggplant, lettuce, and other vegetables on the north side. The back yard also includes mesquite trees, a long clothesline, a pen for the pet duck (known affectionately as "the duck"), and a small, inflatable, kiddie-sized swimming pool.

The last stop on the tour is the telephone. It is a normal touch-tone phone with perhaps the longest cord you have ever seen, maybe 100 feet long. This allows you to put the phone outside or in the back of the house or wherever you might be within 100 feet of the phone jack. That's as far as you can go. This phone rings fairly often, but you cannot unplug it--even if you want to take a nap--because at any moment the probation officer might call.

This is not only the home but almost the entire world of Stacey Merkt these days. Released from the Federal Correctional Institution in Port Worth, Texas, on April 17 to serve the remainder of her 179-day prison term under house arrest, she is allowed to leave her home for three reasons only: to walk between 7:30 and 8:30 every morning, to attend Mass on Sundays, and to receive medical care. She cannot work, she cannot go shopping, she cannot do the laundry or visit friends.

But Stacey is not complaining. This Amnesty International "prisoner of conscience" is thankful to be out of prison, to be reunited with her husband, John Blatz, and her friends, and to have more control over her life. Now she and John can, together, prepare for the birth of their first child. And she is able to garden again.

Released from prison partly because of fears that she would lose her baby if she remained incarcerated, Stacey has gained some weight and looks healthy and even a bit tanned. Doctors now say the Merkt-Blatz baby is due July 20. Stacey was granted three days off her original 179-day prison sentence for every month that she worked while in prison, so her house arrest should end July 8.

WHEN I VISITED STACEY AND JOHN in mid-May, three weeks after Stacey's release, she was still unable to forget prison and the many women still there, women she wished she could have brought out with her. Nor could she forget why she had been in prison and was currently under arrest in her own home.

Technically, U.S. District Court Judge Filemon Vela sent Stacey to prison for her 1985 conviction on charges of transporting two Salvadoran refugees to the local bus station. He had sentenced her as a second offender, based on a 1984 conviction, to 179 days in prison and three years' probation. But when an appeals court overturned Stacey's first conviction, Judge Vela refused to resentence her as a first offender. And when the appeal of Stacey's second conviction was denied, Vela ordered her to prison, refusing to resentence her according to her legal status or her pregnancy.

But that is not what Stacey Merkt means when she talks about why she went to prison. "It was real important to me that no one send me to prison or take me away, but that I surrender myself," Stacey says. "And it was important that I surrender myself in hope, in hope for and solidarity with the refugees. I was in prison for the refugees."

By that, Stacey does not mean that going to prison or being there for two-and-a-half months was easy. It wasn't. Like any normal person, she desperately missed her husband, her friends, her home, springtime, and having control over her life and her body. Being pregnant in prison was both a trial of being sick and feeling helpless, and a blessing of having that small part of John with her. She did not enjoy being treated as a child or an animal. She was often frustrated by the countless injustices and the counterproductive byproducts of the prison system, and she was sometimes exasperated by the seemingly arbitrary rules that governed prison life.

Yet Stacey Merkt can honestly say, "I would give none of the time away that I've given in being arrested or that I've given in preparation, in prison, or in house arrest. It's been an incredibly rich time. And I just can't help but believe God is especially close to us in these sorts of times. And I think it's probably because we seek him out a little bit more.

"I wouldn't give any of it up. I think it's been priceless. And I think it's caused some good things to happen inside of me, with my relationship with John, in my understanding of God, of systems, and of other people. I think it's really worked together.

"It just means that my time in prison made sense," says this 32-year-old mother-to-be, "not because it was justice, but because in God's sense of things it really does."

IT IS HARD TO SAY exactly where or when the road to prison began for Stacey Merkt. Certainly part of it was growing up in northern California "in a real good home atmosphere with parents who were very caring and honest people." As a child, Stacey attended Sunday school at the local Methodist church and was baptized there, but her first real experience of God came in the non-denominational, evangelical Young Life group at her high school.

The next few years brought the typical young person's stop-and-go search for meaning and direction, but a life-changing seed had been planted in Stacey. Through two years of junior college and another year at a small Christian liberal arts college, the one constant was Young Life and a quiet pursuit of God. As a Young Life leader, she led Bible studies and counseled high school girls, and she continued meeting with past Young Life friends for prayer and Bible study.

After three years of college, Stacey decided to take a break to work at a plant nursery and to focus more intently on determining her life goals. It was during this time that Stacey and her Young Life friends attended a discipleship retreat, where they read Clarence Jordan's Sermon on the Mount.

"We looked at the values of the world and the values of the kingdom of God and compared those two," Stacey says. "And that for me was the turning point....I felt like I would never be the same, because I was beginning to make more connections about faith and how to live out my faith."

Stacey was intrigued by Christian communities and thought they might present opportunities to live out her faith more concretely. She and a close friend spent a whole summer visiting five different Christian communities, and things started coming together.

Stacey next returned to school, this time at the University of California at Davis, where she majored in agricultural education. Working with farmers and tilling the land, Stacey felt called as a Christian to be a steward of the earth. "That was the aspect of God's creation that seemed to be able to bring my theology together with my life," Stacey says.

After graduation Koinonia Farms in Georgia seemed the perfect place for Stacey to integrate her faith, stewardship, community, and her love for the land. She arrived in May for a three-month volunteer stint, but she didn't leave until December. Meanwhile, she had attended a Feast of the Holy Innocents action in Washington, D.C., where she became more involved with anti-nuclear concerns and was arrested for the first time.

As Stacey prepared to leave Koinonia for California, she heard about a half-Mennonite, half-Catholic, 100 percent anti-nuclear community in Colorado that operated a soup kitchen and hospitality house and used a nearby farm to make some connections between city life and country life and to grow food for the soup kitchen. The community was looking for someone to work on the farm. It was a job tailor-made for Stacey Merkt. She stopped in Colorado Springs on her way home and ended up staying with the Bijou Community for five years.

But in 1982 Stacey saw a 60 Minutes segment about an Arizona rancher named Jim Corbett who was helping Central American refugees. She started realizing that what the U.S. government was saying and doing in Central America were two different things. Then, when refugees starting coming through Colorado Springs, telling their stories of violence and torture, Stacey felt she had to respond.

So she got on a bus and headed for Mexico City, with nothing but a month's worth of Spanish and the name and address of a Catholic sister. By the time Stacey arrived at the convent, her contact was gone. But the other nuns--originally thinking Stacey was another sister--decided to let her stay with them anyway. After three months in Mexico City and Chiapas, where she spent some time with refugees, Stacey's visa had expired and she had to return to the United States.

But a funny thing happened on her way back to Colorado Springs. Stacey stopped in Brownsville, Texas, to visit a friend and, while there, met Jack and Diane Elder. She spent some time at Casa Oscar Romero, a shelter for Salvadoran and Guatemalan refugees run by the local Catholic diocese. By the time Stacey got back to the Bijou Community, she was already thinking about leaving.

"I had seen too much," Stacey says. "You can't ever go back when you've seen things, and I could no longer stay in Colorado Springs. I had to do something more intentional about the whole Central American plight."

STACEY DECIDED TO RETURN TO THE TEXAS RIO GRANDE VALLEY TO SPEND THREE MONTHS volunteering at Casa Romero and continuing to learn about Central America and the needs of the refugees. She arrived in February 1984.

Two weeks later, on February 17, she was arrested. Stacey was riding in a car driven by a Catholic sister. With them were two Salvadoran refugees, Mauricio and Brenda; Brenda's 18-month-old child Bessie; and a newspaper reporter. The reporter was there to write a story about the refugees, and Stacey was there to interpret for him.

Mauricio and Brenda were Lutheran church workers who had endured jail, torture, near-death, and the deaths and arrests of family, friends, and co-workers before fleeing El Salvador for their lives. They were traveling through south Texas on their way to meet a pastor in San Antonio when red lights started flashing and sirens sounded at 4:45 a.m. The Border Patrol agents said they stopped the car because it had a lot of people in it and was on a "known smuggler's route" at a strange hour.

The authorities detained the refugees for five days and indicted Stacey and Sister Diane on charges of transport and conspiracy to transport. Sister Diane later agreed to plead guilty and to testify for the government in return for a year's probation. Stacey pleaded innocent and went to trial on May 4.

That trial was almost "church vs. church," Stacey says, because U.S. District Court Judge Filemon Vela was a churchgoing man trying a case in which the church was saying, "We have a mandate and the right to shelter the homeless and feed the hungry." After deliberating for 17 hours, the jury pronounced Stacey guilty on May 14, making her the first person in the United States convicted for participation in the growing sanctuary movement. On June 25 Stacey received a three-month suspended sentence and two years' probation--subject to the outcome of her appeal.

"To be honest, I wasn't surprised I was convicted," she says now. "I don't think we're often prosecuted or persecuted for our actions. I think often we're prosecuted or persecuted for our beliefs....

"You have to remember who your true judge is," she continues. "That has always been a real centering force for me. I've not done anything wrong in the eyes of God, first of all. Nor do I believe I have done anything wrong in the eyes of the true laws that exist here [such as the Refugee Act of 1980] that just aren't being enforced."

After the trial and her conviction, Stacey went back to Casa Romero and continued working with refugees. Meanwhile, Casa director Jack Elder had been indicted for transporting refugees. Soon Stacey began meeting refugees who told her of some interesting experiences with the Border Patrol. Agents would ask them, "Didn't Stacey and Jack drive you to the bus station? How did you get here? Did Jack and Stacey--the blond woman--bring you?"

Things were heating up. On December 3 a federal grand jury indicted Jack and Stacey on charges of conspiracy to transport and the transport of two Salvadoran refugees. The indictment was based on the testimony of refugees whose children were being held by immigration authorities on the condition that they would be released only if the refugees cooperated. "The realities are that people from Salvador were being victimized. They were forced to testify against church workers," Stacey says.

When one of the refugees was asked to identify in a police line-up of eight women the one who drove him to the bus station, he picked Stacey. She was the one blond, Anglo woman standing with seven Hispanic women. Several days later, Catholic Bishop John Fitzpatrick borrowed the money needed to bond Jack and Stacey out of jail.

On January 25 Jack Elder was acquitted of the first charges against him, and on February 20, Stacey and Jack each began their second trials. Stacey's attorneys successfully proved that she was not even the state of Texas at the time of the alleged incident--she and John were in New York visiting John's parents--beating the transport charge, but the jury still convicted her of conspiracy.

On March 27 Judge Vela sentenced Stacey to 179 days in prison, one day short of the term needed for parole eligibility, and three years' probation. Vela stayed the execution of the sentence pending the outcome of Stacey's appeal. Jack was convicted and served 150 days in a halfway house.

After her sentencing Stacey went to Kansas to be with John during his last months of law school, and in early June they both returned to the Rio Grande Valley to begin working at Proyecto Libertad, providing legal services to refugees. After a mostly long-distance courtship of dancing, gardening, bird watching, camping, and courtrooms, Stacey Merkt and John Blatz were married on August 25, 1985.

FROM THE DAY JOHN AND STACEY were married, the prospect of prison hung over them like a dark cloud. "We couldn't plan a family, we couldn't plan for the future," John says. Meanwhile, they continued to invest themselves in the poor and oppressed of Central America and the Rio Grande Valley.

In June 1986 they received an unexpected gift. Stacey's first conviction had been overturned by an appeals court because of faulty jury instructions. The retrial had been on hold for more than six months, and the day it was to begin the government announced it was dropping the charges against Stacey. "My lawyer had to tell me three times," Stacey says. "I thought he was kidding."

But a month later the appeal of Stacey's 1985 conspiracy conviction was denied. Judge Vela proceeded to deny multiple attempts by Stacey's attorneys to have her resentenced as a first offender. Immediately after suffering a miscarriage in October 1986, Stacey got pregnant again.

After Judge Vela denied yet another resentencing motion and made clear his intentions to send Stacey to prison, John and Stacey decided she should go to prison as soon as possible to avoid separation from the baby. Stacey committed herself to the Federal Correctional Institution in Fort Worth on January 29, 1987.

"Getting ready for prison was a process of letting go of everything," Stacey says. "Letting go of where you're living, the garden you've planted, the duck that you've raised from a duckling, not to mention a life that you've lived with your husband and the fact that you're co- creators together with God of a child. It's a real process of letting go, but also of remembering that we do have control over certain things. Letting go to a certain extent, but not of your core, not of yourself."

Time in prison actually set to rest many of Stacey's fears about it and brought new realizations. "It was not until going to prison that I fully realized this reality of community," she says. "Sometimes I felt it was just me going, that the doors were going to clang shut and life for others on the outside would go on, but not for me. Of course, that's not what I found. The people on the outside came with me. And new life came. Life doesn't stop, it goes on no matter where we are."

John Blatz is a remarkable person in his own right, with a history of ministry and community that has led him from Taize and l'Arche in France to El Salvador, law school, and south Texas. At age 35 he is a tall, dark-haired and -bearded man with blue eyes that twinkle. You almost have to see John and Stacey together to see how much John adores her, to fully appreciate how hard their separation was and just how much of a hell the time was for John.

When Stacey went to prison, she had been having morning-noon-and-night sickness for two months. John worried about who was going to take care of her, about what the food would be like. He drove 22 hours every week to spend four hours with Stacey on the weekends. Frustrated by the inability to be alone with Stacey, to be able to touch her stomach and feel the baby move, by the incredible injustice of it all, John was usually crying when he left the prison parking lot. Back home, knowing what time Stacey would be going to sleep, he would rub the sheet beside him on their bed as if it were Stacey's back.

But an overwhelming response of prayer and love kept both John and Stacey going. John found support both in Dallas and the valley, and even clerks and lawyers in the immigration court offered prayers and encouragement. Meanwhile, Stacey was receiving up to 100 letters a day from all around the world. Her parish priest lit an extra candle in the church sanctuary and said he wouldn't blow it out until she was released from prison; a man she didn't know told her he was wearing her prison number every day; refugees wrote and thanked her for what she was doing for them; and hundreds of supporters sent Bible verses, which were like "messages from God" to Stacey. And John figured out a way to bring flowers into the prison when he visited--as long as he took them out when he left.

On April 17, Good Friday, Stacey was released from prison to house arrest, and she and John and their families and friends experienced resurrection in a new and glorious way.

STACEY MERKT IS A WOMAN with such a strong grasp of who she is and who God is, with such a rare knowledge of the human need to say yes as well as no, and to nurture good in addition to confronting evil, that she can emerge from prison not only an intact person, but a stronger person.

"Liz McAlister says you have to choose to serve your time, do your time, or journey in your time. I chose to journey in my time," Stacey says. "Prison has made me a stronger person in terms of understanding what it's like to be without,...and because of that it has made me closer to God.

"But the biggest thing is that I've not become a bitter or an angry person. That was a conscious choice I made before I went to prison. I think the easiest way out is to be angry and embittered by injustice. And I think it's a wrong way out, and God calls us to a lot more than that. I'm still angry at injustices, especially as refugees keep coming, but I'm not an angry or bitter person."

To fully understand what makes Stacey Merkt so remarkable, one needs to grasp this all-important concept of balance, of confrontation vs. nurturing, of no vs. yes. It is this exceptionally healthy perspective on life that makes Stacey the kind of person who, for example, takes a break from an interview to plant zinnia seeds.

"I think when we burn out or get tired we maybe have been doing more confrontation than we can take at that time. And if we're sensitive enough, if we can catch ourselves before we burn out, we can draw back and plant these sunflower seeds and enjoy hanging out the wash or doing things like that."

The core part of Stacey Merkt, that core that she wouldn't let go of while in prison, is her openness to God and the goodness of life and other people. For her this means being open to growth, being open to being broken if that's what it takes. And she is able to be open because of her fundamental trust in the goodness of God and her almost unwavering willingness to go wherever and do whatever God calls her to do. But she is not trying to change the world.

"When I look at the big picture it gets pretty scary," she says. "There are times certainly when I've screamed in my pillow because I get so frustrated or angry or feeling so impotent to effect any kind of meaningful change for these people that come from Salvador or Nicaragua or Guatemala.

"But I have to remind myself that I'm not God's answer to the world's problems. I think that I could certainly do my part,and I will do whatever I can, whenever I can. My prayer is that I'm sensitive enough to know when that is and when it's not....My favorite saying in the last year or so seems to have become, 'I'll do what I can--no more, no less.'"

Doing what she can has carried Stacey Merkt from Young Life in California to Georgia, Colorado, Mexico, the Texas Rio Grande Valley, and to prison and out again. And she has traveled not by curiosity or whim but by deliberate openness and faithful obedience.

"I don't like to make any decision without an end to it. I make commitments for a certain period and then evaluate. I made a commitment to be in Colorado for one year; I was there for five years. I came to the border for three months; I have been here for three-and-a-half years....There seemed to be a need for me to be here....My moves were major moves with safety valves built in. I operate on logic as well as faithfulness, responsibility as well as commitment.

"One step leads to another. I see something that needs to change in my life; I see a direction that seems to be the place to go. I put one foot out, and if there's solid ground I put the other one down.

"It's a reciprocal relationship. I'm in cahoots with God. It's part of knowing myself and allowing God to uniquely use me in a situation where I'm needed. It involves prayer, and it also helps to process with a community. I don't believe in waiting for the bolt of lightning. If you take the first step, the second step will be there."

Right now it's unclear just where the next step will lead Stacey Merkt, John Blatz, and their new baby. But wherever it is, they will be following God, one step at a time.

WHEN STACEY WAS IN PRISON, I wrote her and told her I saw her as "not just a sanctuary worker, but a woman of God." She wrote back to thank me for seeing her as a "woman of God."

"That's my goal in life," she told me in Texas. "That's probably the one constant that has propelled me from one place to another, to take that one small step that leads to another step. I don't want to be seen as a person who follows after causes and jumps on bandwagons. One of the things I realize about Jesus is how hard it must have been for him to be misunderstood. Being misunderstood--whether being labeled a felon or a criminal--is something I identify with.

"I just seek to be a woman of God, and that's why I respond as I do. There are a lot of causes, but the one thing that connects them is the dignity of life. So many things deny that dignity of life--nuclear bombs, Central American wars, racial discrimination. Being a woman of God to me is loving God with all my heart, soul, mind, and body, and loving my neighbor--actively."

Vicki Kemper was new editor of Sojourners when this article appeared.