Although my blood ran cold when I first heard these raucous exchanges, the combination of physical exhaustion, saying a prayer, and reading a psalm1 caused me to fall asleep before the shouting had run its course. But the memory of these menacing obscenities came back all too vividly as I began to think about the day ahead.
In contrast to the cacophony of the night before, the stillness of the morning after felt amazingly peaceful. Belmarsh was as quiet as a becalmed battleship. Its silence was strangely conducive to prayer. As I took in my immediate surroundings, I remember thinking, Now I can see why monks down the centuries have found cells such good places to pray in. Confronted with the stark reality of being shut inside a 12 x 8-foot concrete-walled box, whose main features were iron bars, iron door, iron bed, chair, table, and toilet, I realized that life could only be livable in these claustrophobic surroundings if one’s spiritual heart and mind were in the right place. So I turned to God and prayed.
Prayer discipline works. My brain might have been whirling in a thousand different directions, but I settled down into the routine of the ACTS structure I had been using ever since the Alpha course of October 1997. For obvious reasons I remember those particular morning prayers well, as usual recording them in my diary.
First came Adoration. What could there be to adore in God’s glory and creation from a cell in Belmarsh? A nanosecond after asking this silly question I looked up through the bars and saw sunlight dancing like golden ballerinas across the gray rooftops of the adjacent cellblocks. One of the short adoration prayers I had learned came to mind: “O God, be exalted above the heavens: let your glory shine over all the earth.”
Next came Confession. I began with a familiar plea: “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my thoughts. Look well if there are any wrongful ways in me, and lead me in your way everlasting.” Usually this prayer, from Psalm 139, brings up sinful junk by the bucketful. On this day it produced nothing. This was absurd. Here was I on my first morning in prison and I couldn’t think of anything to confess! Was I praying in the wrong way? Of course, the sins for which I was being punished had long ago been confessed to God. But even so, the idea that the previous day had been a sinless one was ridiculous. So I redoubled my efforts to bring to mind my sins. Still nothing happened.
Then an interesting thought came along. Tuesday, June 8 had been a day on which many people were praying for me. I knew this from the breakfast prayers the Alison group members and others such as Charles Colson had said for me before we set off from my home to the Old Bailey. I knew it from the letters I had received that morning from complete strangers and from old friends and even a hand-delivered note sent round from Lambeth Palace by Archbishop George Carey. I knew it from looking up from the dock of Court No. 1 of the Old Bailey at the public gallery just before the judge passed sentence. There I saw Lord Longford, Father Norman Brown of Westminster Cathedral, and James Pringle sitting in the front row. All three had their eyes closed, so I guessed they were praying. Putting these various fragments together, I began to wonder if the reason why I had nothing to confess was that throughout the previous day I had been protected and guided by the supernatural forces of prayer.