"Lord, have mercy," Leonard "Rusty" Medlock says twice in a profile in the Dallas Morning News. Let's all pray the same as we puzzle over the newspaper's article.
On the one hand, Medlock is quoted several times saying that only God's grace awakened his artistic talent in prison, where he was serving time for a drug conviction. On the other hand, the newspaper says Medlock's very incarceration -- or his own talents -- turned his life around.
This dichotomy starts with the first two paragraphs:
No one has to sell Leonard “Rusty” Medlock on the idea of giving people second chances.
The same situation that threatened to marginalize him in society — a prison term for drug-related felonies — liberated him in a Texas prison.
See it wasn’t God, it was prison that liberated Medlock.
But wait, the headline says: "Set free by art in prison, ex-convict paints a new life for himself." So, it was neither God nor prison, it was art.