December 14, 2025 • 20 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, every Sunday, Our American Stories host Lee Habeeb speaks with Mitchel "Big Mitch" Rutledge, who has spent more than forty years serving a life sentence in Alabama. Each call traces the shape of faith, regret, and forgiveness inside a place built for punishment.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories.
His next story is about a friend of mine. We're
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
(00:33):
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 forty four years of his
life in Alabama prisons for killing a man. But this
(00:55):
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
(01:15):
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 eight,
our conversation from March third, twenty twenty four, where Mitch
(01:37):
begins by describing prison life as life on the Serengetti
and discussing how he broke the mold of the predator
versus prey environment he's subjected to each and every day
in prison.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
This is a free call from.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
An incarcerated individual at Alabama Department of Corrections to accept
this pre call.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Press one to refuse this pre call, Press two, thank
you for ucing securist. You may start the conversation now. Well,
you know, uh, at the end of the day, I
tell everybody, you know, I give credit to God for
allowing me to still be here with my health and
(02:22):
strength right mind to whatever the greed is and the
respect level that in the favor that He allowed me
to be able to maintain, as I said, living on
the stair and get it. And it's a pedator and
pray environment. And most guys it's either one way another.
(02:46):
Do you a predator or your prey? And are you
somewhere alike? I guess in the middle. But that's what
type environment is. And it's hard to survive him like
that because individuals in here, you know, the kind it's
for weakness. They they pray upon kindness and generosity, they
(03:07):
pray upon peace and love. If they see that, they're
like raven wards, you know. So they look at it
like it's an opportunity to pounce upon you. And what
I did and went out of wrote upon that, I wrote,
cause it shat and get it plains. And I said, well,
you know, I'm neither predator nor pray, which is a
(03:31):
unique foundation to be in to be in an environment
where individuals love the concept predator and pray they live
by it. So to be neither one it's a unique
situation because that's the concept of it. So I said that,
I said, well, I view myself as I'm not pray
(03:55):
and I choose not to be predator. It's not necessarily
just a physical core aspect of individual praying upon the individual.
It's still psychological as well. You know, individuals just have
so many different agendos to want to talk to you
of being your friend. You just don't know, you know,
(04:17):
it's so many games they have played, and it's old,
visious and so loud, and it's so chaotic, and it's
just it's not a good place to be.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
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. 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
(04:53):
of years ago, one of normous grandchildren, Willow, sung Big
Mitch a bert 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.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
I'm going to play you something here.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Miss Norman wanted me to play this for you.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
I can't agree it. It wasn't even my birthday, and
to hear a little how you know, singing to me
at birthday, it just needs something to me. You know,
it was very special, and I wanted to commemorate that
by doing something. You know what was in my heart
(05:50):
to write a Paul 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,
singing after birthday and which I never had that happen
to me before. It was just amazing, you know, And
(06:12):
it was touching because she could have been doing anything,
you know, a child and that you know, I'm talking
to her grandmother, and she said, well, let me sing
happy birthday to him. And she could have been playing
and done other things where she chose to do that,
And I thought it was special. So I wrote a poem,
(06:37):
uh dedicated to her for that will. I have yet
to hear the Heavenly acquire. I yet to hear one
of the voices that made the Heavenly Father sing along
until it came out the mouth of Precious Willow, a
two year old singing happy birthday to a agent prisoners
(07:02):
that have been in captivity for thirty nine years. As
she seen, Jesus said same, Precious will of sing these,
his soul moved, his spirit renewed the jaws of yesterday.
He's the eels of captivity. In that moment she been
(07:28):
to me, being sixty, we was in the heaven and
rams as she ministered to my soul. Jesus was saying, same,
precious will of sing.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
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 pray upon
kindness and generosity, they pray upon peace and love. Have
you myself not his prey nor predator. And this isn't
(08:03):
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 well, what Big
Mitch had to deal with, paying the price for his crime.
And then of course that singing of the song by
(08:25):
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 and all that sprang.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Out of it.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
When we come back more of Sunday Mornings with Big
Mitch here on our American stories, and we continue with
(09:40):
our American stories and 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.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
We are in this world, but we're not in your world.
We uh isolated in a particular area back somewhere like
in Alabama. We're stuck away deep in the woods. And
what we do we observe life from the television. We
(10:26):
don't observe life in no other way. In other words,
we don't see cars. We don't, you know, no more
than the cars of the officers patrol in the perimeter.
So we are living an environment that it took away
from the world that you are living in, and we
dream of one day coming back to that world. So
(10:50):
it's so different, you know, as you take me, for example,
I've been a locked lilf 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 and so this caused many guys
(11:11):
to lose hope. This caused many guys to give up
This called many guys to lose their sanity, just called
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,
(11:34):
the only way you can survive is you gotta have
God and your life's God. Have Jesus, because like I said,
you know, it's a mind game. It's like you then
and it's here and get it. You know, in Tanzanese
over where you got design, you got the jackals, you
got the hyenas, you got the Lefferts cheaters running nosceris.
(11:57):
You know, you got all format of preachers. And here
it's Sarreen Jetty. This is the human sereen Getty. Well,
when you walk through here, you can feel you know,
it's it's a dangerous atmosphere. It's prison. And you know,
when you have the personality of alive, you have the
personality of hyenas, you have the personality of the jackal.
(12:22):
You know, it's the same concept in the sense, but
they're the human form. And that's when I wrote the
poem called the Ten of Jackals. You know, and uh,
it's a rough life. And a lot of guys give
me a lot of credit for well mitt you you strong,
mit you, uh, you know you don't do this, you
don't do that. But and I tell them, hey, it's
(12:46):
not me, it's Jesus Christ. You know they can't see Jesus.
But I know who keeps me. I know who's still
ham me walking in this Serengetty on the Sarren Jetty
playing after forty some years, and I have a certain
amount of fear, especially when it getting older, you know,
because I'm not one to say that I don't have
(13:10):
fear in me, because I do. It's the thing is
wise fear. Fear is not necessarily a bad pain, you know,
because when you have a certain amount of fear of
a particular situation or a particular fame, then you are
more cautious by what you do it, how you do it.
(13:31):
You are not loose. So yes, 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 left. Because
you can easily find yourself in a bad situation. I
(13:53):
walk through here with God protection. I pray, and I
respect everybody trying to do the best I can. Try
to be a big brother to somebody, that I can
be a big brother to a big ulcohol or just
a friend if I can shell but which in any
kind of way in Health County, I do that, And
that the only thing I can do. And tell you
something good, and we'll tell you nothing negative. You know,
(14:17):
and how I live, you know, you know when the
whole thing, Jesus Christ is gonna part the red sea
for the one day.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
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 a vice of sin.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
We look at being bound, you know, with physical restraint
in other words, you know, uh, being physical restraint in prison,
You're still bound in a whole lot of other areas.
You know, you could be financial abound, You could be
bound in greed. You can be bound in lust. You know,
(14:59):
you be bound in envy, and so many aspects of
being bound. And I was telling this particular guys that
were man, You know you was bound or still have
some aspect of being bound up.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
Mitch next read from one of his original poems, this
one entitled Bound.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
Why does man measure the limitations are being bound? Does
bound only exist in the form of physical restraint, or
does it exist with any particular condition of life? Does
the result from the lack of material necessity? Bound as
(15:45):
a mental interpretation that enslaves and destroy its 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. In God, Bound,
(16:05):
we have been leaded to seek ourselves and everything but God.
Once the illusion disappears, we become bound with the elements
from which we were deceived. A word from a true
seket seek God, find oneself in truth, free as you
bound the lie and seek to control and destroy the
(16:29):
human spirit. Nay, brother, that yet I come forth, And
that's you know, regardless of the situation that I'm dealing with,
regardless of how long I've been locked up, regardless of
what it looked like, I still continue to believe in
these Christ and I continue to still continue to move forward.
(16:53):
I wrote this in January thirty first, twenty fifteen, because
I wanted to keep myself. I didn't keep going strong
because sister Mania had you know, she was on the
verge of leaving this world at that time. She died
two months after that. So anyway, I titled this poem
right here. Yet I come forth, born in the grave
(17:16):
yard of poverty, condemned to ignorance and chaos. Yet I
come forth, as I stand upon my feet to move
or miss chaos. I'm praised with no father and a
child for a mother. Yet I come forth. So as
(17:36):
I moved 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, prison,
the system that made me. Yet I come forth. I
(18:00):
was buried alive in the bit of the beast, in prism,
change to hope, to spare fostration, mistrust. Yet I come port.
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 flying is free.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
Yet I come forward 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 forty five years of his life
in prison and who I've had a conversation of running
one now for years. It's my favorite part of my weekend,
(18:46):
my hour with Mitch, and my goodness sees 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
(19:09):
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 the bird flying out of
(19:31):
the ashes, spirit flies free.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Yet I come forth.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Dazzling words of hope and dazzling words of faith. The
story of Big Mitch Rutledge, our episode eight of Sunday
Mornings with Big Mitch here on our American stories.
This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories.
His next story is about a friend of mine. We're
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
(00:33):
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 forty four years of his
life in Alabama prisons for killing a man. But this
(00:55):
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
(01:15):
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 eight,
our conversation from March third, twenty twenty four, where Mitch
(01:37):
begins by describing prison life as life on the Serengetti
and discussing how he broke the mold of the predator
versus prey environment he's subjected to each and every day
in prison.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
This is a free call from.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
An incarcerated individual at Alabama Department of Corrections to accept
this pre call.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Press one to refuse this pre call, Press two, thank
you for ucing securist. You may start the conversation now. Well,
you know, uh, at the end of the day, I
tell everybody, you know, I give credit to God for
allowing me to still be here with my health and
(02:22):
strength right mind to whatever the greed is and the
respect level that in the favor that He allowed me
to be able to maintain, as I said, living on
the stair and get it. And it's a pedator and
pray environment. And most guys it's either one way another.
(02:46):
Do you a predator or your prey? And are you
somewhere alike? I guess in the middle. But that's what
type environment is. And it's hard to survive him like
that because individuals in here, you know, the kind it's
for weakness. They they pray upon kindness and generosity, they
(03:07):
pray upon peace and love. If they see that, they're
like raven wards, you know. So they look at it
like it's an opportunity to pounce upon you. And what
I did and went out of wrote upon that, I wrote,
cause it shat and get it plains. And I said, well,
you know, I'm neither predator nor pray, which is a
(03:31):
unique foundation to be in to be in an environment
where individuals love the concept predator and pray they live
by it. So to be neither one it's a unique
situation because that's the concept of it. So I said that,
I said, well, I view myself as I'm not pray
(03:55):
and I choose not to be predator. It's not necessarily
just a physical core aspect of individual praying upon the individual.
It's still psychological as well. You know, individuals just have
so many different agendos to want to talk to you
of being your friend. You just don't know, you know,
(04:17):
it's so many games they have played, and it's old,
visious and so loud, and it's so chaotic, and it's
just it's not a good place to be.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
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. 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
(04:53):
of years ago, one of normous grandchildren, Willow, sung Big
Mitch a bert 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.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
I'm going to play you something here.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Miss Norman wanted me to play this for you.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
I can't agree it. It wasn't even my birthday, and
to hear a little how you know, singing to me
at birthday, it just needs something to me. You know,
it was very special, and I wanted to commemorate that
by doing something. You know what was in my heart
(05:50):
to write a Paul 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,
singing after birthday and which I never had that happen
to me before. It was just amazing, you know, And
(06:12):
it was touching because she could have been doing anything,
you know, a child and that you know, I'm talking
to her grandmother, and she said, well, let me sing
happy birthday to him. And she could have been playing
and done other things where she chose to do that,
And I thought it was special. So I wrote a poem,
(06:37):
uh dedicated to her for that will. I have yet
to hear the Heavenly acquire. I yet to hear one
of the voices that made the Heavenly Father sing along
until it came out the mouth of Precious Willow, a
two year old singing happy birthday to a agent prisoners
(07:02):
that have been in captivity for thirty nine years. As
she seen, Jesus said same, Precious will of sing these,
his soul moved, his spirit renewed the jaws of yesterday.
He's the eels of captivity. In that moment she been
(07:28):
to me, being sixty, we was in the heaven and
rams as she ministered to my soul. Jesus was saying, same,
precious will of sing.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
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 pray upon
kindness and generosity, they pray upon peace and love. Have
you myself not his prey nor predator. And this isn't
(08:03):
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 well, what Big
Mitch had to deal with, paying the price for his crime.
And then of course that singing of the song by
(08:25):
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 and all that sprang.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Out of it.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
When we come back more of Sunday Mornings with Big
Mitch here on our American stories, and we continue with
(09:40):
our American stories and 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.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
We are in this world, but we're not in your world.
We uh isolated in a particular area back somewhere like
in Alabama. We're stuck away deep in the woods. And
what we do we observe life from the television. We
(10:26):
don't observe life in no other way. In other words,
we don't see cars. We don't, you know, no more
than the cars of the officers patrol in the perimeter.
So we are living an environment that it took away
from the world that you are living in, and we
dream of one day coming back to that world. So
(10:50):
it's so different, you know, as you take me, for example,
I've been a locked lilf 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 and so this caused many guys
(11:11):
to lose hope. This caused many guys to give up
This called many guys to lose their sanity, just called
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,
(11:34):
the only way you can survive is you gotta have
God and your life's God. Have Jesus, because like I said,
you know, it's a mind game. It's like you then
and it's here and get it. You know, in Tanzanese
over where you got design, you got the jackals, you
got the hyenas, you got the Lefferts cheaters running nosceris.
(11:57):
You know, you got all format of preachers. And here
it's Sarreen Jetty. This is the human sereen Getty. Well,
when you walk through here, you can feel you know,
it's it's a dangerous atmosphere. It's prison. And you know,
when you have the personality of alive, you have the
personality of hyenas, you have the personality of the jackal.
(12:22):
You know, it's the same concept in the sense, but
they're the human form. And that's when I wrote the
poem called the Ten of Jackals. You know, and uh,
it's a rough life. And a lot of guys give
me a lot of credit for well mitt you you strong,
mit you, uh, you know you don't do this, you
don't do that. But and I tell them, hey, it's
(12:46):
not me, it's Jesus Christ. You know they can't see Jesus.
But I know who keeps me. I know who's still
ham me walking in this Serengetty on the Sarren Jetty
playing after forty some years, and I have a certain
amount of fear, especially when it getting older, you know,
because I'm not one to say that I don't have
(13:10):
fear in me, because I do. It's the thing is
wise fear. Fear is not necessarily a bad pain, you know,
because when you have a certain amount of fear of
a particular situation or a particular fame, then you are
more cautious by what you do it, how you do it.
(13:31):
You are not loose. So yes, 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 left. Because
you can easily find yourself in a bad situation. I
(13:53):
walk through here with God protection. I pray, and I
respect everybody trying to do the best I can. Try
to be a big brother to somebody, that I can
be a big brother to a big ulcohol or just
a friend if I can shell but which in any
kind of way in Health County, I do that, And
that the only thing I can do. And tell you
something good, and we'll tell you nothing negative. You know,
(14:17):
and how I live, you know, you know when the
whole thing, Jesus Christ is gonna part the red sea
for the one day.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
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 a vice of sin.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
We look at being bound, you know, with physical restraint
in other words, you know, uh, being physical restraint in prison,
You're still bound in a whole lot of other areas.
You know, you could be financial abound, You could be
bound in greed. You can be bound in lust. You know,
(14:59):
you be bound in envy, and so many aspects of
being bound. And I was telling this particular guys that
were man, You know you was bound or still have
some aspect of being bound up.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
Mitch next read from one of his original poems, this
one entitled Bound.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
Why does man measure the limitations are being bound? Does
bound only exist in the form of physical restraint, or
does it exist with any particular condition of life? Does
the result from the lack of material necessity? Bound as
(15:45):
a mental interpretation that enslaves and destroy its 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. In God, Bound,
(16:05):
we have been leaded to seek ourselves and everything but God.
Once the illusion disappears, we become bound with the elements
from which we were deceived. A word from a true
seket seek God, find oneself in truth, free as you
bound the lie and seek to control and destroy the
(16:29):
human spirit. Nay, brother, that yet I come forth, And
that's you know, regardless of the situation that I'm dealing with,
regardless of how long I've been locked up, regardless of
what it looked like, I still continue to believe in
these Christ and I continue to still continue to move forward.
(16:53):
I wrote this in January thirty first, twenty fifteen, because
I wanted to keep myself. I didn't keep going strong
because sister Mania had you know, she was on the
verge of leaving this world at that time. She died
two months after that. So anyway, I titled this poem
right here. Yet I come forth, born in the grave
(17:16):
yard of poverty, condemned to ignorance and chaos. Yet I
come forth, as I stand upon my feet to move
or miss chaos. I'm praised with no father and a
child for a mother. Yet I come forth. So as
(17:36):
I moved 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, prison,
the system that made me. Yet I come forth. I
(18:00):
was buried alive in the bit of the beast, in prism,
change to hope, to spare fostration, mistrust. Yet I come port.
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 flying is free.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
Yet I come forward 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 forty five years of his life
in prison and who I've had a conversation of running
one now for years. It's my favorite part of my weekend,
(18:46):
my hour with Mitch, and my goodness sees 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
(19:09):
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 the bird flying out of
(19:31):
the ashes, spirit flies free.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Yet I come forth.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Dazzling words of hope and dazzling words of faith. The
story of Big Mitch Rutledge, our episode eight of Sunday
Mornings with Big Mitch here on our American stories.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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