Written By: Ed Chinn
Narrated By: Kara Lea Kennedy
My grandma Chinn probably had Alzheimer’s. But we didn’t have a name for it in those days. Her quirks were just… “Grandma.” We knew her, not a disease. By the time her son, my dad, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s a decade later, we knew a lot about it. In fact, I grew to despise my knowledge of that disease. I found it too easy to relate to Alzheimer’s, not to Dad.
The Bible says that knowledge “puffs up.” Sure does. Knowledge is like vodka; a little of it gives the bluster, the ignorance, and the permission to announce judgments about things we know zero about or things that are none of our business.
David, the Psalmist, wrote of God, “Even the darkness is not dark to Thee, and the night is as bright as the day. Darkness and light are alike to Thee.” (Psalm 139:12)
Maybe a life is a life. Do you think lives of one hour, those lived with severe spinal injuries, or those born in prison could be as beautiful and blessed as ones lived in great health, luxury, and longevity? Is it possible that God sees them alike and grants the special grace required to live where and as they do? Perhaps life needs to be lived straight ahead, without comparison to others or the imposition of human designs or alterations.
Mary Clarke grew up in the wealth and splendor of Beverly Hills. Cary Grant, Spencer Tracy, and Dinah Shore were her neighbors. She was a member of the Beverly Hills Country Club, and she married and divorced twice.
When she was 50, she gave away all her possessions, became a Roman Catholic nun and moved into—into, not near—a notorious Tijuana prison. As “Mother Antonia,” she lived in the same conditions as the prisoners; her home was a 10’ by 10’ cell (which she painted pink) and she ate what the prisoners ate. She lived in that cell for the last 36 years of her life (she died in October 2013).
Prison was to her what a basketball court was to Michael Jordan. The Zone. In 1994, when a full-scale riot broke out in her prison, 5-foot-2 Mother Antonia walked through the blizzard of bullets. Eyewitnesses said she never stopped smiling and her face never stopped glowing. Armed only with love, she saw the riot come to a peaceful end.
According to her New York Times obituary, she once said, “Happiness does not depend on where you are. I live in prison. And I have not had a day of depression in 25 years. I have been upset, angry. I have been sad. But never depressed. I have a reason for my being.”[1]
Incredibly, this woman moved into the darkness and found that it became as bright as the day.
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[1] William Yardley, “Antonia Brenner, ‘Prison Angel’ Who Took Inmates Under Her Wing, Is Dead at 86,” The New York Times, October 20, 2013
