It's work

Especially this summer, I drove South Presa many times but somehow only today noticed a business along it called “Nice Things.” It looks like a Dollar General, and I think Alejandro, the borracho next door, rode his bike there this morning while I watched Dead Man Walking on the floor of a dark bedroom. He wasn’t drunk yet, just unsteady on his bike in the misty rain. I saw him leave, and then returned to the story on my computer. The clouds separated midway through, but that movie itself is dark; I didn’t open any curtains.

It’s an adaptation of two true murders—four if you consider lethal injection a murder. Sean Penn consolidates the two condemned men into one white supremacist with a pompadour, and Susan Sarandon, a nun, agrees to spiritually advise his last days. I was grateful it avoided the old trope of morality as ambiguous. The murders are brutal. I didn’t expect to feel hopeful by the end.

A few moments really impacted me:

Sister Prejean’s insistence that Poncelet had dignity, was a child of God.

A quote, “It’s not faith, it’s work.”

The calluses on Poncelet’s hands in the death chamber.

My own rage against him.

I thought it would be a fine movie for a pulpit to advocate. Frequently it quoted Scripture. Mentioned but not overbearing were class and race—two structures I did notice this summer driving South Presa. Poverty didn’t fully victimize Poncelet; he couldn’t be absolved because of it; he praised Hitler but eventually assumed responsibility. It was then Sister Prejean mentioned his spiritual heritage, to which he responded no one had called him a son of God before.

Even having considered myself a pacifist for five years, I struggled not to hate Poncelet for his racism and impenitence, not to wish his appeal would be denied. I wondered if I could love like Jesus (like Sister Prejean). The climax offered some hope against my heart. My palms used to have calluses, I immediately thought as the nurse readied the needle, which is not to say I am one welfare check away from Poncelet’s life, but simply this, that our souls are descendents of the same God, however far removed. We all are. And this may be esoteric, but I need more stories to encourage my work of remembering that.