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This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories. This next story is about a friend of mine. were close in age, but have little else in common. Mitchell Rutledge, aka Big Mitch, was born black and poor in Georgia. I was born kind of brown and middle class in New Jersey.
He never met his father. I still talk to my ninety four year old father every week. He dropped out of high school in his early teens and was illiterate into his early twenties. I was surrounded by books growing up, and finished graduate school in my early thirties. Big Mitch spent the last 44 years of his life in Alabama prisons.
killing a man. But this is not a story about an innocent man sentenced to prison for a crime he didn't commit. Big Mitch never denied the crime or made excuses for it. This is the story of my friend's spiritual transformation while serving his life sentence. It's also about a friendship only God could have engineered.
A friendship that began with a single Sunday morning call. Through these weekly conversations, I hope you come to know and love him as much as I do. Welcome to Sunday Mornings with Big Mitch. Here's episode 8, our conversation from March 3rd, 2024. where Mitch begins by describing prison life.
as life on the Serengeti. And discussing how he broke the mold of the predator versus prey environment. he subjected to, each and every day, in prison. This is a free call from Yeah, yeah, yeah. An incarcerated individual at Alabama Department of Corrections.
To accept this free call press, one to refuse this free call press, two, thank you for using Securus. You may start the conversation now.
Well, you know uh at at at at the end of the day I I tell everybody I You know, I give credit to God for allowing me to still be here. with my health and strength. The right mind. to whatever degree you and and respect level that and the favor that he allowed me to be able to maintain, as I said, living on the Sarah and Deddy. And it is it's it's a predator and prey.
environment and Most guys. 'Cause he's a one rate Or another. Do you pray or do you pray? Yeah, uh yes. Are you somewhere like, I guess, in the middle, but that's what type of environment it is, and it's hard to.
survive in here like that because individuals in here, you know, they they take kindness for weakness. The um a prey upon kindness and generosity. They prey upon peace and love if they see that They're like raving wolves, you know, so You look at it like this. opportunity to pounce upon you. And what I did, I went out and wrote the poem.
Got a rope. Yeah, yeah. And I I say it better, you know. I'm neither predator nor prey. which is a unique foundation.
To be a to be in an environment where Individuals love the concept predator and prey. They live by it.
So to be neither one is a unique situation. because that's the concept of it.
So I see it then. I said, well, I I I view myself as I'm not free. And I choose not to be predator. It's not necessarily just the physical aspect of an individual preying upon the individual. It's the.
psychological as well. You know, um individuals Cheers. have so many different agendas to want to talk to you of be your friend, or you you you just don't know. You know, there's so many games being played and it's so vicious and so violent. And and and it's so, um Chaotic.
Yes, uh It just is not a good place to be. And the next part of this conversation is one of my favorites of all of the conversations I've had with Big Mitch. And this one has to do with something that happened years ago. with a friend that I've come to know in Memphis, a family in Memphis who also know Big Mitch and have been speaking to him for years, the Wilson family, Kim and Norma Wilson.
Well, a couple of years ago, one of Norma's grandchildren, Willow, sung Big Mitch. A birthday song, a happy birthday song. over the line while he was in prison. And I got a copy of that song. And well.
Take a listen to what happens next. I'm gonna play you something. Miss Norma wanted me to play this for you. Hmm. Happy birthday.
You happy bus game to you. I can't believe that. It wasn't even my birthday and to hear a little child, you know, second behalf birthday, it just did something to me, you know, it was very special. And I I wanted to commemorate that by Doing something, you know, what was in my heart to write a poem about it. But yeah, I wrote that.
I came back that night. And I thought about it, I was so touched by it and I told several guys about it, you know, it was just you know, just to you know, hear a little child, you know, uh uh uh singing to have a birthday and wish I never had that happen to me before. it it was just amazing, you know, and uh it was touching because of uh, she could have been doing anything, you know, a child at that age, you know, I'm talking to her grandmother and and and she said, Well, let me say happy birthday to him And she could have, uh been playing and Done other things, but she chose to do that. And I I thought it was special, so I uh wrote a poem. Uh dedicated to her for that.
Willow. I have yes to hear. the heavenly choir. I have yet to hear one of the voices. Then made the Heavenly Father sing along.
until it came out the mouth of precious willow. A two year old singing happy birthday to a aging prisoner that have been in captivity for thirty nine years. As she seems Jesus says same precious willow. Same. Ease his soul moves his spirit.
renew the joys of yesterday. These the eels of capitality. In that moment. She then too. Me being sixty, we was in the heavenly realms.
as she ministered to my soul. Jesus was saying, seam precious willows. thing. And you've been listening to Big Mitch Rutledge, those words of his. It's hard to survive in here.
Because individuals, you know, they take kindness for weakness. They prey upon kindness and generosity, they prey upon peace and love. I view myself not as prey, nor predator. And it isn't just a physical aspect. Or an individual preying upon an individual aspect.
It's the psychological aspect, too. And one can only imagine what that must be like. being locked up for that many years and dealing with with what well, what Big Mitch had to deal with paying the price for his crime. And then of course that singing of the song by Little Willow. And what I learned from Big Mitch, he had never been sung happy birthday to before.
and to hear it from a little girl, from a two-year-old girl. the pure joy, the pure innocence just touched him deeply. And of course his poem Well that sprang out of it. When we come back, more. of Sunday mornings with Big Mitch.
Here. and our American stories.
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Let's create Small to Business, IBM. This is Matt Rogers from Los Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. This is Bowen Yang from Los Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. Hey, Bowen, it's gift season. Ugh, stressing me out.
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And we continue with our American stories in our continuing series Sunday Mornings with Big Mitch. This is episode number eight. We pick up with Mitch explaining the spiritual, physical, and psychological toll that being in prison takes on a person. and how he overcame those challenges. through Jesus Christ.
We are in Yeah. But we're not In your world. We Yeah. Isolated. in a particular area.
Back.
Somewhere like in Alabama, we are stuck away Deep in the woods. And what we do, we observe life. From the television. we don't observe life in no other way. In other words, we we don't see cars.
We don't you know, no more in the the cars of the officer patrolled in the perimeter.
So we are living an environment that is tucked away from the world that you all live in. And we dream of one day coming back to that world.
So it's so different, you know, Is he take me for example? Uh I've I've been locked up going on forty-four years and put it like this. I have been watching Life go on. for forty some years, but I've never been able to participate in it. And so This calls many guys To lose hope.
This caused many guys to give up. This caused many guys to. lose their sanity. This caused many guys to just get buried in the prison life because being in here so long and just watching the world continue to move and you're not being a part of it. It's a psychological It's traumatization really.
But, you know, the only way you can survive is you gotta Help God and your life's gonna help Jesus because Like I said, you know It it's it's a mind game. It it's like you've been in the Serengeti, you know, and Tanzania where you got the line, you got the jackals, you've got the hyenas, you've got the efforts Cheetos. rhinoceros, you know, you got all format of creatures. And and here It it the Serengeti, this is the human Serengeti, where when you walk through here you you can feel, you know, it it's it's a dangerous atmosphere. It's prison.
And you know, when you have the personality of a lion, you have the personality of hyenas, you have the personality. of uh or the jackal, you know, it's the same concept in a sense, but in human form. And that's when I wrote the poem called The Den of Jackals. You know, and uh It's a raw life. And uh a lot of guys give me a lot of credit for Well meet you you strong.
Meet you uh You know, you don't do this, you don't do that. But and I tell 'em, Hey, it's not me, it's Jesus Christ. You know, they can't see Jesus, but I know who keeps me. I know who still have me walking in this Serengeti on the Serengeti plant after forty some years. that I have a certain amount of fear.
Especially with me getting older, you know, because uh I'm I'm I'm I'm not one to say that uh uh I don't have fear in me. Because I do. Uh it is the thing is lies here. uh fear is not necessarily a bad thing. You know, because when you have a certain amount of fear of a particular situation or a particular thing, then you are more cautious about what you do and how you do it.
You are not. Looks like So yes, uh I don't necessarily walk in fear, but I have enough sense to know that to be in an environment like this, you have to have a certain amount of fear, you know, to even realize what's going on. Because you have one minute left. because you could easily find yourself in a bad situation. I walked through here with God's protection.
I pray. And I respect everybody, try to do the best I can, try to be a big brother to somebody that I can be a big brother to, or a big uncle, or just a friend. If I can share with you any kind of way in health count, I do that. That's the only thing I can do. And tell you something good.
Ain't gonna tell you nothing negative. That's how I live. You know, with the hope that Jesus Christ is going to pardon the Red Sea for the one day. Mitch next explains that there are many types of bondage. And a man that's free can be just as bound up, just as imprisoned.
as a man like himself. that we can all be prisoners of vice, of sin. We look at being bound, you know, with physical restraint. In other words, you know. Oh, being Physical restraint.
In prison. You're still bound in a whole lot of other areas. You know, you could be financially bound, you could be bound in greed. be bound in lust. you know, you can be bound in envy.
There's so many aspects of being bound. And I was telling this particular guy, I said, Well, man, you know. You was mild or but still have some aspect of being bound up. Mitch next read from one of his original poems, this one entitled Bound. Why does man med you?
His imitation is of being bound. Does bound only exist? in the form of physical restraint. Autos Rex is with any particular condition of life. Does it result from the lack of material necessity?
Bound as a mental interpretation that enslaves and destroys possibilities that God intended for humans. Bound, we have been manipulated and placed in a state of constant illusion. by the true master of illusion, the enemy of man and God. Bound, we have been led to seek ourselves in everything but God. Once the illusion disappears, We become bound with the elements from which we were deceived.
A word from a true seeker, seek God. Find oneself in truthfield as you bound a lie that seek to control and destroy the human spirit. The name of it is yet I come forth. And that's, you know, regardless of the situation that I'm dealing with or regardless of uh how long I've been locked up, uh, regardless of what it looked like. I still continue to believe in Jesus Christ and I continue still continue.
move forward. I wrote this in the january thirty first, twenty fifteen, because I wanted to keep myself positive, keep going strong, and because social media had. you know, she was on the verge of uh leaving this world at that time. She she died two months after that.
So anyway, I'll title this poem right here, Yet I Come Forth. born in the graveyard of poverty. condemned to ignorance and chaos, yet I come forth. As I stand. upon my feet to move amidst chaos.
I'm faced with no father and a child for a mother yet. A come four.
So as I move forward, as I grew, only to become a victim of the trap. that resides in the graveyard of poverty. Yet I come forth. As a young man, life continued for me. I had been conditioned to survive poverty, the hood, poorism.
the system that made me yet. I come forth. I was buried alive in the belly of the beast in Prizon. change to hopelessness, despair, frustration, mistrust. Yeah.
I come forward. Yet now. Seek me rise from the ashes of life by the grace of God. like the Phoenix bird. Flying out of the ashes, my spirit flies free.
Yet I come for. and a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling by our own Reagan Habib and Greg Hengler. And a special thanks as always to Mitch Rutledge. who has spent the last 45 years of his life in prison. and whom I've had a conversation of running one.
Now for years It's my favorite part of my weekend, my hour with Mitch. and my goodness, these words towards the end are just so powerful. We observe life from the television. That's what we see. Mitch was describing his life in prison.
We don't observe life in any other way. In other words, we don't see cars. We don't see life. We are living in an environment that's tucked away from the world. And then those words of that final poem I've been conditioned to survive poverty, the hood, prison.
The system that made me. And yet I come forth. He says a little bit later, Yet I come forth. Yet now see me rise from the ashes of life by the grace of God. Like a bird flying out of the ashes, spirit flies free.
Yet I come forth. dazzling words of hope dazzling words of faith. The story of Big Mitch Rutledge. Our episode eight. Sunday Mornings with Big Mitch.
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