Who is the tattered man?

Randy Loney: Over the years, I've caught glimpses of a recurring figure of a tattered man in my dreams. He represents those parts of myself that I don't want to come to grips with—my frailties, my propensities to evil, but also my undeveloped gifts. Carl Jung would have said that such a figure reveals my personality's "shadow." We all have our shadow sides that are occasions for shame and that we try to keep hidden from view.
When I was visiting Joe Mulligan before he was executed in May of 1987, I often witnessed his powerful sense of shame. He had certainly confronted directly unsavory parts of himself—his shadow. In fact, Joe was so overcome by shame that it almost defined his identity. He almost became his shadow. Without his faith, his shame would have destroyed him, I believe. Especially unkempt and needy just before his death, he reminded me of my image of my own shadow, the tattered man.
Like Joe, most all of the condemned men I have visited have battled mightily with shame. In various ways and to varying degrees, they've struggled with their shadows. It's a struggle that I've known well in my own life.

What prompted you to start visiting death-row prisoners?

Randy Loney: I don't know yet how to answer this question fully. Maybe I can one day. But some things are clear. I was teaching at Mercer University when Georgia resumed the use of its electric chair in 1983 as a consequence of the U.S. Supreme Court's 1976 decision in Gregg v. Georgia, which had made executions possible again in the U.S. after a decade-long halt. At the time when the state's machinery of death was being cranked up again, I had a former death-row prisoner in one of my classes in the University's prison program. He spoke occasionally, but powerfully, about his life on death row. And I talked a lot about capital punishment with folks in our little church, which we've come to call the Glad River Congregation. Members of the Mercer community, they are persons of extraordinary insight. In other words, a number of people helped me to grasp something of the tragedy of the death penalty. I thought to myself: I would like to meet some of the men on death row and see if I might be able to do something for them and their families. As a person of faith, I felt that I would be carrying out a biblical mandate.

Why did you continue, week after week, to visit the men you met on death row?

Randy Loney: As time passed, I began to see that we really had a lot in common. For instance, I came to realize that I knew something of the loneliness the men had experienced as children. And I had been profoundly shaped by things in the popular culture—sports, music—just as they had been. Moreover, I was no stranger to shame, an emotion that haunted the men. Friendships began to develop, sometimes amazingly quickly, and I wanted to go back, again and again, to visit the men, just as I would want to see my friends in the "free world." As our friendships deepened, the men shared more and more of themselves with me, telling me of their most profound struggles and their greatest hopes, fears, and joys. They were giving me a very big gift—the gift of intimacy—and I tried to respond in kind. So my reasons to visit became more and more compelling as time went on.

Was it ever difficult to find the right words to say to the prisoners and their families?

Randy Loney: This has often been difficult. I've frequently said the wrong things, I'm sure. I know I must have offended the African American men, for instance, because there are things about their culture that I as a white man can never know. And I've stumbled time and again in trying to find the right words to speak to a parent who has just lost a son in the state's electric chair. But the amazing thing is the grace I've found from the persons I've been talking with. They've accepted me—"warts and all," as the saying goes.

Did your stance on the death penalty change as your visits progressed? If so, how?

Randy Loney: When I began my visits, I opposed capital punishment in principle. I still do. I can't believe in a God of love and forgiveness and, at the same time, advocate state-sponsored murder. But as time passed and as the condemned men let me know them as persons, as individuals, the death penalty took on a human face. We were executing Jerome Bowden and Bill Tucker and William Hance. And I saw something of the anguish of murder victims' families, whose welfare was hardly important to the state. The executions served various political ends of elected officials. So over the years, capital punishment has become much more personal, more sorrowful, more obscene for me.

What prompted you to write the stories of the death-row prisoners who have been executed? Was it your original intention to publish these stories?

Randy Loney: I began telling the men's stories during my Sunday-morning meditations before the Glad River Congregation. I did so because I was deeply moved by what I heard and saw on the row, and I felt compelled to share these things with people I loved. Also, I thought that by telling the stories I would understand them better. I told them in church for years before I ever thought of publishing them. In part, I didn't think I was up to the job of putting them together in a book. When members of the congregation started suggesting that I should publish what I was witnessing, I mulled over the possibility for a long time before taking their advice. Without the church's encouragement, I never would have written A Dream of the Tattered Man.

Prison ministry has to be difficult in numerous ways. What sustains you in this work?

Randy Loney: I'm wary about using the phrase "prison ministry" to describe my meetings with the men on death row. I'm afraid the phrase might be misunderstood to imply a fundamental inequality: I'm somehow better than the men—I'm in a position of greater moral or spiritual authority. In fact, the men have ministered to me just as much as I may have ministered to them. Furthermore, I would never use the word "work" to describe what I do in the prison. I work on my farm in Harris County.
I prefer to think of my meetings with the men simply as time that friends spend together. We learn from each other, laugh together, grieve together, prop each other up at times. Over the long haul, I've been sustained by the men, their families, and the Love they've disclosed.

What has impressed you most about the men you've met on death row? What have you learned from them?

Randy Loney: Many things have impressed me about the men: their confronting their own inner darkness, their opening to beauty, their ability to laugh good naturedly at themselves and me, their willingness to take the risk of friendship with persons who come their way, their strength in coping with their looming deaths. These are just some of the many things that have moved me greatly.
Most of all, I have learned from the men that—as Augustine would put it—we can really heal "the eye of the heart" with which we see God. We can do this regardless of how troubled our pasts may have been. But we don't do this alone. It happens when "I" and "Thou" meet, to use Martin Buber's vocabulary.

What do you most want readers to take away from this book?

Randy Loney: I hope that they see how racial inequities plague our practice of capital punishment. In this regard, consider this point among many that could be made: six of the twelve black persons executed in Georgia since the state's resumption of electrocutions in 1983, after Gregg v. Georgia, were sentenced to death by all-white juries.
I also hope that readers will see that we have in important ways executed the "least" of those among us: those at the economic margins of society who typically suffered terrifying childhoods and who couldn't afford a "dream team" representation at their capital trials. A crucial sign of our integrity as a nation is our willingness to care for just such persons, not do away with them.
Moreover, I hope that readers come to see that the condemned men we have sent to their deaths in Georgia were too precious to have been executed. They had gifts to give, lives to lead. They were worthy of our forgiveness—as are all the men and women on death rows across the country. In fact, when we refuse to forgive those individuals who are guilty of the most heinous crimes, we do so at our own peril. For we deny our own frailty, fallibility—our own need for forgiveness every day of our lives.