Fish Sandwiches

As a child in a church service, I remember sitting in one of those steel folding chairs. My feet dangled. They swung in opposite directions. The preacher read a story from the bible. It detailed several accounts about how Jesus, as if by magic, multiplied the lunch of a boy to feed over five thousand people.

As a child, I believed it. In my teen years, I was skeptical. Jesus fed all of those people with a boy’s lunch. In my community, children did not have lunch. Jesus was the free lunch program. The devil came home at dinner.

A mixture of food insecurity, abuse, and neglect prompted me to begin stealing. I fleeced items from big box stores. Like Robin Hood, I justified. They had more than enough, more than anyone in my community.

I stole. I got caught. I took trips through the criminal punishment system, from precinct, to court, to jail, over seventy times. Police officers made the arrests. Public defenders made the plea deals. Judges made the sentencing pronouncements. Corrections officers held me captive until I was released.

None of the department officials questioned me. No one was interested in why I was there. I was not offered assistance. I was not recommended a program. My family situation was not investigated. I was dismissed, given community service or jail.

I was just another boy from the slums. My formidable years were spent in the streets and jails. As a man, I found myself in prison, guilty of murder.

With more skepticism than in my teen years, I read that story about Jesus and the boy's lunch. I noticed three things in particular. First, there were five thousand men. The women and children were not counted. Second, Jesus and his disciples went into the desert. Later, people from a nearby town journeyed there. Last, a boy brought five fish and two loaves of bread, more than enough for a single lunch, with him.

I had questions. Why were the women and children not counted? What is the probability that out of over five-thousand people only one boy had food? Why was there no mention of water?

It struck me as odd and hard to believe that the boy was the only person with food. All of the people were familiar with the desert in their neighborhood. The story began to take a different shape in my mind. Possibly the CGI version of morphing and multiplying bread and fish in a child's mind was all wrong.

What if the real miracle here is that an insignificant child's offering was enough to spark a change of the hearts and minds of a community. Could the boy's example of sharing what he had translated into everyone sharing, having more than enough. This version of events, changing the hearts of people, is more miraculous than magic.

I put the bible down that day. The story stuck. It became a hope for me.

In this culture, the prisoner is discounted. Some of us have offered our fish and loaves. We have positively impacted communities both within and outside the carceral system. Sadly, society is distracted, looking for something fantastic. I have learned that miracles are overlooked because the actions were simple or the person insignificant.

Meeting the spiritual, physical, and mental needs of everyone in our community makes us all safer. insignificant men and women within prisons are offering their lunches - facilitating voluntary programming, mentoring/tutoring, and making remarkable contributions to society - from the discomforts of prison cells. They are making all of us safer.

Maybe society will realize that insignificant people are contributing to them. Possibly they will reveal their secret rituals and share a meal with us. What would it take to put our trust in the miracle of seemingly ordinary actions of people deemed insignificant? Now that would be a fish sandwich miracle.

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Joseph Wilson is a father, performer, singer, songwriter, librettist, community organizer, and contributing writer to The Marshall Project. He is incarcerated at Green Haven Correctional Facility.