Alcatraz
We were very glad we'd toted our jackets across San Francisco when the
official Alcatraz Tour ferry sailled away from the pier. The chilling wind and the waves form a
formidable barrier as they did for the prisoners from 1861 to 1963 when the prison closed,
shortly after a successful prison break.
The tour guide gave us its history as we climbed up the long driveway to the top of the hill until we entered the main blockhouse where the prisoners were processed and housed.
All the cells looked alike, cramped and barely accomodating a person's biological needs.
George had an interesting insight when he compared Alcatraz with how the monks live on Mt. Athos in Greece. The monks even call their spare quarters, cells.
The fact that one place is imposed and the other is voluntary makes all the difference, but the attitude of living a life of repentance, forced or not, is the same. Maybe some found their salvation there. The audio tour pointed out that the prisoners, sometimes not very educated ones, read a lot about philosophy I guess to try to figure themselves out. Monks also read and think a lot about the human, and their own, condition.
I wish the Eastern cure were more known about rather than such a focus on punishing the sins of a few. These desperate people can only be helped by someone who has conquered their own demons. This is more rare than is commonly thought.
The tour guide gave us its history as we climbed up the long driveway to the top of the hill until we entered the main blockhouse where the prisoners were processed and housed.
George had an interesting insight when he compared Alcatraz with how the monks live on Mt. Athos in Greece. The monks even call their spare quarters, cells.
Comments
It was nice seeing the San Francisco bay area at night. Actually, the fact that San Francisco is so close to the Alcatraz island was somewhat tormenting for the criminals because they could occasionally hear cheering, fireworks, and parties during special occasions. They felt especially imprisoned when they couldn't join in the celebrations. It's kind of a sad thought, but it is a deterrent from doing wrong.
On the one hand, they are very similar in some physical aspects; small cells, and an enclosed space apart from worldly affairs does force one to look more into himself, and some of the inhabitants were able to find a measure of inner calm and even expressed themselves quite artistically sometimes (like the paintings in one of the cells that were displayed). And there was a lot of deep reading that went on, as was explained in the tour.
Nevertheless, though many of the physical means were the same, I would say that one big difference between Mt. Athos and a place like Alcatraz is the mindset and spiritual condition of the inhabitants. Though those in Alcatraz may have found themselves freed from many worldly cares, the atmosphere wasn't one of peace, and I doubt that many of the inmates were very interested in praying for the rest of the world. There is also the fact that it takes a lot of spiritual fortitude to live the life of a monk in a cell, and the stress on someone who is in that atmosphere without prayer was probably another factor that worked on the inmates psyche.
So like you said, it is interesting how the setting and conditions of nearly the same physical situation can affect what is does to/for a person.
The prisoner's narratives and writings (which were very well presented by the way) by and large expressed how horrible the place was, the isolation, the solitude, the austere conditions - all of which are things that monks thrive on. So the thought was, if one approached the situation as an opportunity for repentence and for seeking God, it could have become, eventually, a wonderful place (easy to say for someone who's not been interred).
I also thought while we were there about the Gospel imperative to visit those in prison, and about the way prison "ministries" tend to be structured today (and whether those are really effective or not). I wondered how things might have been if the Orthodox Church were to erect a chapel on a place like Alcatraz, place some resident monks and others there along with the prison administration and prisoners, and make the experience of Orthodox worship available to all of them, in accordance with the monastic rule. Maybe it could have been revolutionary in terms of transforming the lives of some prisoners...
I'll have to think about that some more someday.
One of the sad things I heard on Alcatraz was narration from an actual prisoner who talked about his release, how the world had sped up so much while he was interred - it wasn't the same world anymore - and how scared he was when he got out. If only he could have experienced an Orthodox lifestyle while on the island, and when released, been assisted by the Church, continuing in the same worship and repentant life as he'd become accustomed to while interred, and then introduced back into society slowly while maintaining a liturgical life cycle as his balance and "center".