Rev. McKinley L. Sims, M.Div.

….I work in a mental hospital, maximum security, in SE D.C. near the Anacostia neighborhood, where the average IIC is a 60 year old Black man committed their by DC criminal court.  There are bars on the doors and cameras in every room and there are no hidden corners. I pass through two security checkpoints and 8 locked doors and under 6 cameras before I get to my office door. I work with serial killers and people who see themselves in need of exorcism or think they are the queen of England or the president of the US. They are FBI agents or God held in bondage.

Those crazy people I work with.. Something I think all the time is thank God I’m not like them. Locked up in the loony bin. Thank God I’m not crazy. Thank God I’m not over there, behind those doors with the bars and those high walls.

OK, pause. Check your feelings. That’s what we do in chaplaincy. How are you feeling towards the people in St. Es. Scared? Upset? Pity? Hold on to that. How are you feeling towards me? In Awe? Concerned? Kind of upset about how judgmental I sound? A little uncomfortable right? Do you feel the same judgments in you? I’m being honest about my stuff, and I think if we’re being honest, we’re all thinking those things, feeling those feelings. Feeling pity. Shock. Fear. Discomfort. Those things are in our shadow, because we kind of don’t want to look at them, or admit them. That’s okay.

This is a sacred space, and I want you to know that it’s okay to feel those feelings. It’s okay to feel uncomfortable. Because in that shadow…that’s the truth. We are raised to think differently about others than we do about ourselves. Especially when they look or sound different than us. When they are Other. When they are distant, over there, locked away, hidden behind the walls of St. Elizabeths. St. Es is DC’s shadow, where we put the things and the people we don’t want to see or think about.

We have all these judgments and preconceptions and biases about mental health patients. That’s just the truth…and we need the truth. Black Theologian James Cone once wrote “Indeed our survival and liberation depend upon our recognition of the truth when it is spoken and lived by the people. If we cannot recognize the truth, then it cannot liberate us from untruth. Truth is divine action entering our lives and creating the human action of liberation.”

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