I look out my prison cell window, 3 inches wide running 5 feet up my cell wall. I look out west/southwest in Alexandria, Virginia and out in the distance there is a storm throwing stripes of lightning. Grounding or not, they are disturbing the placid atmosphere of indolence, stagnation and banality. I know this for this is what storms do.

The flashes are distinct from each other – some reflecting faintly on the clouds in a quarter of the sky, some soft, flickering reflets, then the sharp, split burst lighting up the whole night. And many in between. I am able to connect memories and imagine what is going on there in the distance. The light conveys events and knowledge to me.

I invert my cell mattress to face the window so I am able to lie awake admiring the reflective flashes high in the midnight sky. The streaks and strikes of lightning are so very far away that I know nothing of the accompanying thunder. I neither hear nor feel it. There are no streaks in my sight. How I wish to be there. I am far away.

Light goes on without me, but I am still present in Spirit and testimony to the light reaches me here, just as the flashing reflections high in the night sky. Our brothers and sisters in Tennessee will testify to the Light of Life when they are sentenced in Federal Court this month for rescuing babies, and I will watch for their reflection.

The Light of Truth descended on the dishonest town of Washington DC last week when the Survivors of Abortion took our part in protesting at the corrupt Department of Justice. More light flickering in the night come home to me. These wounded warriors, who have not retired from the fight, know that light is the only disinfectant for the diseased, disgraced, decaying and dark labyrinth of crime that IS our current Department of Justice. We answer Matthew Arnold that ONLY the armies are NOT ignorant in this fight. The light show seen from my cell is my 4th of July celebration this year. But does anyone read our Declaration of Independence anymore? Not our Judges.

The ancients knew the properties and value of light. Socrates through Plato gave us the allegory of the cave as a caution against the manipulation of light to deceive. But we are not deceived. Why do our current philosophical allegories not properly address adult thought? But I digress.

Before form, before shape, but not before movement over the waters, there was light. And this Light of man was the Life of man. The Light that shines on in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.

In the darkness, among the cells deep inside the fount of love called woman, human conception takes place in a flash of Light. During the next nine months, crouched in protective darkness, our children reach for the Light. This ” path” Jesus “walked” is every bit as real as the Dolorosa. Who “invades” here?  Not us. We rescue. And– post tenebras spero lucem: “After darkness, I hope for light” (Job 17:12).

READ: Jailed pro-lifer John Hinshaw: Pro-life rescuers help women choose life after everyone abandons them

The author can currently receive letters addressed to the following:  

John Hinshaw A0216677

William G. Truesdale Adult Detention Center

2001 Mill Rd.

Alexandria, Virginia