Chapters Twelve, Thirteen: More hope, mercy, justice

“‘I am lucky. I got help that most women can’t get. It’s what bothers me the most now, knowing that they are still there and I’m home. I hope we can do more to help more people.’” Marsha Colbey, speaking at the EJI benefit dinner, p. 241

Marsha Colbey is compelling us to act. It is not enough for me to work to raise kids who are not entitled, who are compassionate, who care about others. It is not enough for me to buy the occasional Groundcover. It is not enough for me to every once in awhile volunteer for something. It’s not enough when there are women who are in jail for the simple reason that they are poor. Living in my safe, secure world, I have what I need and feeling safe in that is not enough. I am called to act. I am called to do something about the injustices in the world.

I can’t even imagine what it must have been like to be Colbey, just a few short weeks after delivering her stillborn son, arrested and charged with capital murder. Here is a woman who couldn’t afford prenatal care, who was doing what she could to provide a stable, loving home for her other six children. It seems so wrong that we would arrest and jail a woman who obviously needed our kindness and compassion instead.

This book is a constant challenge to me. Each page I read asks what am I doing in my life to work towards justice, towards mercy. And this goes beyond working towards getting wrongfully convicted people out of jail or fixing our justice system. Those are the big things. It goes to what I can do on a daily basis to help. And that starts with me spending the time figuring out what I can do with my gifts, how I can best serve.

In this chapter,  Stevenson writes, “We need more hope. We need more mercy. We need more justice” (241). We need to be the people who bring that hope, that mercy, that justice. We are being called with each page of this book.

Monet Tiedeman is a resident parishioner at St. Mary’s. She is a blogger of all AAPS Board of Education regular meetings (http://annarbivore.com), a photographer, a wife to her best friend, and a mother to three of the coolest kids around. She is passionate about public education, civic engagement, and camping.