QiGong Prison Ministry

I have been back for three weeks now.  Rededicated.  Renewed.  Ready.

Potential was there for 15 programs, just two have happened.

I am not alone. I spent this week at the Prison Chaplains conference listening to the frustrations of professionals responsible for 1700 inmates each. (Chaplain to inmate ratio is 1 to 1700 in California).

The highlight of the conference was spending an hour or so with one of the Buddhist volunteers during the faith group breakout. The only two contemplative volunteers, we shared in the challenges of setting aside so much time to offer opportunities for the men to meditate together (3-4 hours each trip) and then to be turned away at the gate. And despite all the headaches, heart aches and hassles receiving so much fulfillment from the practice. The Buddhist group has taken to offering Metta outside the gate.  I have taken to the small redwood circle on my property and spend that “class time” moving and praying.  Trusting my intent-filled offerings to be of benefit.  Praying for the deep patience of the trees.

My I-Ching reading today spoke prophetically about duration (#32):

“Duration is a state whose movement is not worn down by hindrances.  It is not a state of rest, rather the self-contained and therefore self-renewing movement of an organized, firmly integrated whole, taking place in accordance with immutable laws and beginning anew at every ending.  The end is reached by an inward movement, by inhalation, and this movement turns into a new beginning which the movement is directed outward.”*

Checking out another Quaker blogger's site (left sidebar, scroll down...Zach...) I encountered this quote which spoke directly to my condition:

I am separated, as to bodily presence, from you; but I cannot forget you, because ye are written on my heart, aI cannot but desire your peace and welfare, as of my own soul.

 

And this is my present cry for you. Oh that ye might feel the breath of life, that life which at first quickened you, and which still quickeneth, being felt; and that breath of life has power over death; and being felt by you, will bow down death in you, and ye will feel the seed lifting up its head over that which oppresseth it.

 

         -- Isaac Penington

 

At first I latched onto this Penington quote, because it seemed offer divine insight to the "puzzle" of the Heart Quickening stories of my July post. Then it began to offer insight into my sabbatical experience and questions.

It hasn't been easy to truly give over to God whether or not I continued with this work -- to lay all the cards on the table and wait to know which to pick back up. Releasing. Letting go. Teachings of the very QiGong practice I share inside. As I near the end of three months of separation from the men and the prison, the dust has settled, and I can see more clearly. I can not deny the powerful connection that I have with the men, yet it is not the men, not specific men, as much as it is the experience of God that happens inside our experience of moving prayer together. It is the value that my efforts have in the grand scheme of the human journey into becoming loving vessels of spirit. It is the grace of a unique opportunity. Even these I offered up to God.

Once I had deeply offered up even my devotion to this Call, the Call was confirmed. I was sitting inside a old growth cedar tree a few weeks back at Lake Tahoe meditating. My thoughts kept drifting to potential prison projects, and I would quietly bring myself back to the center (of myself and the tree). Praying once again to set aside such wandering thoughts and truly lay it all down; I heard an "voice" of wisdom come from the tree. "You belong in the prison, just as I belong next to this creek." Doubting, I endeavored to set aside that thought as well, I was reproached with a voice of even greater certainty repeating the message once again: "You belong in the prison as I belong here next to this creek." Oh my, what a clear message, I breathed, scrambling internally to take it in. Later the tears of gratitude, for the clear sign of what has been written upon my heart, came.

So I will be returning. I may or may not see the men I have been teaching inside Old Folsom again. The potential transfer of all my students that was pending three months ago is now 'anyday'. At New Folsom all volunteer ID cards have been recalled and our unescorted entry under scrutiny.

Despite the 'inconvience d'jour' the seed has been planted within my heart, and that will give me the strength to lift up my head and find the way.

Thanks be to God.

I never knew how much I loved you
How could I?
All I know is that you and I stood at the edge of the river
Deep inside Folsom prison
Surrendering into its flow
Together we were swept away
Finding each other in the infinite chi
Losing each other in transfers and lock downs
Years later I find you
Locked up in Avenal
And once again we dive into the river
Surrendering to the joy in our hearts.

Have you ever felt, like I have, your heart bursting with emotion, joy, sorrow or just energy, like wings flapping or water swirling, or an inward melting?  I like to use the phrase heart quickening when I think of these times when my hands intuitively rises to cover my chest, as if to keep the vastness of the universe from escaping.  It reminds me of the use of the word quickening to describe those first felt stirrings of a fetus inside your tummy.  This energy seems to have a life of its own, indicative of such vast potential and yet so intimate. When I feel it in myself, when I feel it in another, I am tuning into a vibrating, magnetic and ecstatic fullness that swells in the heart and rises up into the throat.

    I suspect you have felt this way when hearing your lover’s voice after an absence, watching your child graduate, or even in a special communion with the Holy. Have your hands too reached intuitively to cover your heart or your mouth when aroused by a sentimental story, or vision of profound beauty?  Ah  … the sweet fullness. Who are we to contain all this love?  Words are impossible to find and our eyes leak.  

    To be speechless in moments like these is normal.  However, if we experiment with talking and writing about these experiences perhaps our heart wisdom would become more of a collective wisdom.  To this end, I’d like to offer some stories that are not about a lover’s love, or pride of a parent, nor are they moments of awe and rapture as we normally experience them.  Because these are moments with relative strangers I feel they are pointing to a deeper wisdom offering evidence of the web of inter connective ness that holds us profoundly and links us one to another.

    What can these stories have to teach us about the heart’s energy, spiritual bonds and relationships? Perhaps in their sharing, the next steps in understanding and wisdom will arise.

   Let me tell the stories:

    Scene:  Avenal Prison, second visit 5 months after the first.
Nov. 2004.
The chaplain and I slip in the back door to the chapel area, he holds the door open for me so I enter first. There sitting quietly on a bench is M, with his head hanging, eyes on the floor.  
    My heart recognizes him before my brain even registers the familiar face.  There is such a crashing and excitement in my chest. Tears come to my eyes and my brain kicks in quickly to remind me of the restraint appropriate in greeting an “insider”.  My hand grips his shoulder and I lean over to look in his eyes and tell him how wonderful it was to see him again after all this time.  
    He welcomes me back with his energy and eyes.  
    A hug would have been just what we both needed but is not permitted between volunteers and inmates.
    I haven’t seen M. for maybe 3 years.  He had been a regular at Old Folsom, a close friend of one of my senior students.  We hadn’t talked much; I didn’t know anything about him or his story. I didn’t know what had happened to him when he no longer came to class.  I didn’t know he was transferred to Avenal.  Yet years before, we had moved together in that deep space of the QiGong practice (Tai Chi Chih) over and over.  My soul had recognized his and was jumping for joy inside my heart.  
    His assistance in the class that followed was powerful, as the moves came back quickly (he had stopped practicing after being transferred), and he returned to the feelings of wholeness and peace that they provoke.  It did not take much encouragement for him to share with the men about the transformative nature of the movements and the inner peace they bring.  
    I have not seen him since, but remember vividly the energetic response of my heart energy to his.

Scene:  Prison Chaplain’s conference. Motel in Visalia. Fall 2005.
    I was standing with a few other Buddhist volunteers at our tables promoting meditation practices in prison.  Bounding up with great enthusiasm comes a man very eager to see me. His energy leaps out before him catching me up in his excitement.  His eyes are alive with joy and gratitude.  
    My own heart is flipping inside out which my mind observes and is puzzled. What’s this all about?  Who is this beautifully tattooed man my heart recognizes but my mind does not?
He is eager to be recognized and says so, “Don’t you recognize me?” he asks.
    “I recognize your eyes” is the response that comes straight from my heart.  What did my heart know what my mind did not?  
    “Avenal” he said.
    “You were there when I went in?”
    “Yes” he says reaching out his hand to shake.  
    I instinctively reach forward with both arms (He is free now). It was an excited hug, hearts jumping up and down, but not a long one.  We are man and woman who don’t really know each other except spiritually.  Thrilled to behold a student free, I relish looking at him. He has a beautiful Kwan Yin tattoo on his arm that I touch lightly.  “How long have you been out?”  
    “Almost a year, I have a job now with the Buddhist Peace Fellowship guiding the prison program.”  
    Standing in the middle of a group of Buddhists, I fumble finding the right words to ask, “I don’t want to sound attached to results, but I am so wanting to know … did practice groups happen?”  
    “Oh, Yes!” he said, amazed that I wouldn’t have known what an impact my two classes had had on the men and the Yard.  The Muslim group was practicing as well as the Buddhist group and some of the others.  All visitors and the regular Buddhist volunteer had been stopped from coming. He was not surprised that I had not been able to return.
    Later, Helen who had been standing next to me told me that she couldn’t remember when she had witnessed so much love, devotion and gratitude flashing between two people.  “If I ever doubted the efficacy of my efforts, I should remember this moment,” she counseled me.
    For days after, just to remember the reunion and his gratitude would bring so much fullness into my heart that I could only cry out in the wonder of it all.

Scene: Old Folsom walking out after class in front of five tiers of cellblocks, guards and other inmates all finding their way back to their cells before the four o’clock count. 2005.  
    That day in class a new man had come.  We had had a short conversation, perhaps a handshake, but no particularly unique one-on-one interchange.  Perhaps a half hour had passed since class had finished.
    I was walking up behind a group of men. My pace was quicker and I was closing in, but still about four feet away. One of these men startled and whirled suddenly around to look at me.  I recognized him as the new man from class.  
He was reassured once he saw me, but obviously shaken by something that had just happened for him.
    I merely smiled and offered an open, curious look.
    “What just happened?” he asked.  
    “Tell me.” I responded, not willing to guess.  
    “Just now, as I was walking, I was overcome with a deep feeling or peace and contentment.  It felt just like I was back in class.  I couldn’t fathom why that feeling would happen here in front of the cells. What happened to me?”  
    “My guess is that your energy felt mine as I got closer and triggered the memory.”  
    “Oh”, he said, still struggling with the experience.
    “I hope you come back to class,” I said quietly, “you have a natural ability to feel the energy flow.”  
    He smiled having relaxed with my positive validation of his experience.  
    I continued on towards my car awed by the experience.

Scene: New Folsom Prison, C Yard. Chaplains office Summer 2005.
    I am sharing with the Chaplain when and J. walks in.  The previous week, we had spent 15 minutes in meditation together enjoying the communion of stillness and our common trust of the Holy that pervades our lives.  We had each have had deep spiritual experiences with the same Swami.  He is not one of my QiGong students.  Standing to greet him, I get only half way up before my heart starts scrambling inside my chest.  
    Whoa, I think, surprised at the energetic exchange happening between our hearts as mine comes closer to his (I am still several feet away).  I sit back down, looking at him, and say with my eyes, “Did you feel that?”      He says something like, “the Guru has got us.”
    We laughed together and I left to let him speak to the chaplain and get my class started.
    I know only little of this man and his story.  I do know that to meditate with him is easy and peaceful.  

What’s going on?

    These stories illustrate the deep bonds that form quickly within the communion of meditation, especially a body practice such as our QiGong (Chi Kung) classes.  We have surrendered to a communal pulse of energy, sharing ourselves from a place deep within, where there are no words, no judgments, no expectations.  In that we have known each other as the Holy knows us.  Not a knowing of the mind, with thoughts in the brain, but a knowing of the heart, of the core.  We have met each other in the “neutral zone,” in liminal space, the unconditioned void.  Sufi poet Rumi said it best, “There beyond right or wrong is a field, I’ll meet you there.”

    Trusting that more “scientific” explanation would come along, and I received a hint as I read, “We are all Savants” in the December 2006 issue of Shift: At the Frontiers of Consciousness, the Journal of the Institute of Noetic Sciences. Diane Powell in writing about quantum processing in the brain discussed a phenomenon known as “entanglement”:

“Physicists have found that two particles can be entangled, or capable of influencing one another instantaneously while separated at vast distances. Entanglement provides a means for consciousness to be coupled to other locations in space-time or for consciousness between individuals to be coupled – in short, a mechanism for telepathic communication.”

It’s a month into my spiritual sabbatical, and I miss the men inside.  

Home now, suspending the Seattle time with my mother, to tend to my husband who had a chainsaw accident, I knew after it hit our local political gossip column (RE_GRASWICH_7190_1_.pdf), some of my students would find out, wonder what was happening with me, and add their prayers to my own for his healing.  

Thinking of this as I was falling asleep last night, I noticed that my heart was stirring, aching, empty, lonely for the feeling of fullness that came from the journeys inside.  An ache I recognize from lockdowns.  An ache that’s still very present today as I come inside out of the garden and the heat to formulate this blog update.

I wonder about all the wives, mothers and children of these men and their loneliness, how profound a sorrow must lie in their hearts as life events can not be shared.  But my heart’s ache is not as personal as this.  It is a spiritual ache.

I am blessed to find communion with G-d opening easily for me in many venues recently: exploring ridge tops staring into the face of Mt. Rainer, sweet moments with family, quiet reading by a fire in a log cabin retreat, dreams under the stars camping just last week, and  healing hands, blogging Quakers and grateful students at the Friends General Conference Gathering the week before.  I treasure the sacredness all around me, always; but there is a rawness, an edge to the communion that happens in prison.  The contrast of exploring true spiritual freedom with incarcerated men taps into a deep place inside me that I cherish.

The sharing that I have come to treasure with these men inside the prison walls, is a intimacy that comes from meditating together, finding the common thread of spiritual meaning in life that unites us all.  Even though I have come to know a few of the men better than others, our conversation is limited to spiritual practices. Rarely do I come to know anything about their families, their pasts, their dreams; nor they of mine.  Yet there is a intimacy that comes with knowing each other in the silence, in the sincerity of our surrender to the QiGong practice together.  It’s a wordless, story-free, nonjudgmental place of freedom where we know each other not in our fragile, frustrated incarnated selves, but in the bigger picture of our divine potential.  We know each other in that awareness of Truth flowing within and between us.

I made a spiritual commitment to leave the whole issue of my Call to the prison work in the hands of G-d during this retreat, including the option to be finished or diverted.  It is VERY difficult for me to leave it all in Divine hands. Yet I feel that is the most important practice for me now.  To keep emptying and keep listening.  

Listening and exploring the ache in my heart feels like the right thing to do in this Holy Present Moment.  

It’s not just today, I have been querying the universe about this energy that binds hearts that have known the Holy together for several years.  Once joined hearts seem to remain connected without regard to time or space.  This seems to be one aspect of the spectrum of energy that facilitates the working out of our prayers for other people, and the knowing we have, before the phone rings, of who is calling.  Many of us know of this perpetual link from romantic or deep friendships. Experiencing this energetic bond with men very different from me that I did not know other than in a spiritual context has intrigued me.

During some of my last classes inside, we talked together about this connection.  I shared how inevitably when I am in a beautiful place and or in spiritual practice of one sort or another, I think of them, I pray for them, I remember them.  As they seem always to be with me in spirit, so too could I be with them.  They could re-activate what we know together from our practicing and return to the QiGong state and the truths we know whether we have talked about them or not, when I am not coming inside.  As my spiritual teachers guide me from a distance, I too could be there for them and they for me.

I told them a couple of stories of my own experiences with other prisoners that have helped me to respect this heart/mind energetic connection.  Rather than retell them here in this entry, I will try and finish up an essay I wrote quite a while ago and share it as a separate blog entry.

Until then I invite you to listen to your heart too.  What threads, what connections with other people feel full, and which feel empty, twisted or knotted?  Let us listen not just the messages in our own hearts, but in the connective energy that binds us one to another.  I doubt there really is any way to separate ourselves out from our web of relationships anyway.

Swamiji and I had tea with Baba Hari Dass a few weeks ago.  When I had my one-on-one time with him, I told him I taught meditation in the prisons and asked if he had a teaching for me to take inside.  He wrote back on his tiny white board that hangs around his neck, ” Do they come to pass time or to meditate?”

I answered. “both, some to pass time and others are sincere.”  Then he advised, “Make silence a rule during class,”  looked me in the eye, nodded and went back to handing out goodies to the children present.

So today, my first time to teach inside since his blessing, I took up the challenge.  After a brief explanation about levels of listening and learning during a silent practice we began.  I had several new men, a dozen beginners and just a few with much experience, but it worked well.  What was special was that I was engaged in a very different way.  I was engaged with the QiField, engaged with my own practice, but I surrendered my students to the Qi, (Chi) the vital force, the Holy flow.  In giving up responsibility for the men's experience, I lightened, the room lightened and the quiet held us all as we flowed through the moves. The men spoke positively about their experience.    

After the silent practice, we sat on the floor and S. and I answered questions, about the moves, about Chinese Healing practices, ... about religious implications.  Everyone seemed relaxed and surrendered, including myself... I good sign.

Saints put the individual spirit in touch with the Sound Current, and as the spirit catches it and mixes with it, it throws off the influences of mind and matter and gets stronger and stronger.  The more an individual works on these lines, the easier the path for him. The Current acts like a magnet on the spirit.  It attracts the Spirit to Itself and if the Spirit were not covered by the rust of mind and matter, it would go up like a shot.
                   Maharaj Sawan Singh Ji
                    Quoted on page 186 of Kabir, The great mystic, by Isaac A. Ezekiel

This quote speaks to my condition as well as speaking to how QiGong works activating the Current within and magnetizing spiritual growth.  I would translate into Qi speak:  The movements put the individual spirit in touch with the cosmic Qi Current ...

The Holy people I been surrounded by have magnetized my spirit and the path seems easier now.  It has been a lovely couple of weeks.  Between escorting Bo Lozoff around, evening Satsungs with Swamiji, and cooking, conversations and garden watching with Rajul, a deep peace has settled in and the shoulder tension is dropping away.  Last week I canceled a whole day of classes to be with my birth family in Yosemite and this week I start with the new Monday/ Thursday schedule at the prison.  

There is much to tell about Bo’s journeys inside and perhaps I will get to writing up my notes, maybe not.  Until then, you can pretend like you are listening to his message by reading the latest newsletter, which echoes a portion of his message to the men.  http://www.humankindness.org/newslttr.html

There is much to tell about recent classes inside and our final Circle of Life program, but I feel so drawn into meditation these days holding this simple phrase deep in my heart ... a vast, steady flame of quiet love...  (which I found in Andrew Harvey’s spiritual autobiography) that I am reluctant to spend much time at the computer (influences of mind and matter).

Forgive me dear readers ... and welcome to the readers from The Empty Vessel, as their most recent issue carried some of the inmate writings found in the Testimonials section.

I arrived home from my March retreats and a week later Swami Rishi and Rajul arrived for their two month stay with me.  Their presence and our meditations have quickened the opening my heart and stimulated my dreams.  I can feel too, how much I have shifted spiritually during this past year.  

For the past month I have been sitting with a question that arose while attending Quaker healer John Calvi’s Restoration retreat at Pendle Hill.  He laid his hands on the tense muscles of my back and suggested it was time for a sabbatical.  He also suggested that I explore some spiritual practices where I allowed myself to be messy and not so perfect (i.e. not my native QiGong).

Now, preparing for hosting Bo Lozoff and sheparding him through 5 prison programs and 3 public events over the next four days,  I welcome the teachings that will come.  Not only on the sabbatical question, but on the whole of the prison work and holding the sufferings of others with a God’s eye viewpoint.  Bo has been supporting prisoners spiritual growth since the early 70’s and is most known for his early spiritual classic We’re All Doing Time.

His book Deep and Simple has a chapter called “Buddha time off?” He tells of the Dala Lama struggling to under stand the question, “Your Holiness, how do you feel about our need to drop out of our roles and take time off?”  After four attempts to explain the question, the Dali Lama burst into laugher and said, “Buddha time off?  Bodhisattva time off?  Ha. Ha. What a concept!”  Listening to his audio CD, Bo tells where he stayed away from prisons and went on retreat for 3 years until he understood how his own modesty was getting in the way of other’s experiences of humility.   So let me just sit and listen, I trust a guidance will arise.

I encourage all my readers to explore the humankindness.org website and travel together with Bo Lozoff and myself this week.  Order some of his books and tapes, make a contribution to support his stay here in Sacramento, and discover a American holy man whose lecture circuit is from one prison to another, and his wallet holds only donations to send more free books inside the walls.

If you are in Northern California, come on Thursday evening (April 13) to the Koyason Temple  6:30.  A Soup fundraiser starts at 5.  A concert, Bo is a wonderful musician, is planned for Friday evening at the Friends Meeting House 7-9.

www.humankindness.org

Please pray for me,
that I might truly know on all levels of my being that
“it is not me, but Christ in me”
that serves, that teaches, that heals, that loves.

The Sacramento Bee, our local newspaper, did a feature on conscious dance and my picture was front and center.
The story is well told and did a good job quoting me.
May you too enjoy the dance of your soul!
.

"Judy Tretheway, 54, was a hospice chaplain when she started dancing, and now teaches meditation at Folsom prison. She says this dance "is essential to my well-being," and that she comes to the dance after a day at the prison "to experience the freedom."

Tretheway says the 5 Rhythms help her dance out some of the stories that she hears from prisoners.

"If I'm angry, I stomp around and express it by harsh moves," she says. "I trust the rhythm so much, if tears come up, I let it happen, because I know that by the time I get to 'lyrical,' I'll have been through the release."

Today I was outside in the last bit of sun watching the storm clouds roll in, beautifully backlit.  Eventually the shadow of the clouds and their water, surrendering to the earths pull, reached me and sent me inside to finish my QiGong practice behind the window.

Today I spent a very contemplative day in delicious reflection and preparation for the workshop I will be leading March 3-5 at the Quaker Center for Study and Contemplation - Pendle Hill (near Philadelphia).  There is room if you would like to join us.  (Pendle Hill workshops)

Suffering rolls in us like the storm clouds.  Death, war, hurricanes, accidents, sorrows, skinned knees, and disappointments come.  They bring the unwanted tears and winds of change.  They drive us inside.  The choices, once inside, are as vast as the blue sky and sunlight providing the back lighting.  

George Fox calls out to us from his Journal: “Be patterns, be examples in all countries, places, islands, nations wherever you come; that your carriage and life may preach among all sorts of people, and to them; then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in everyone; whereby in them you may be a blessing, and make the witness of God in them to bless you.”
Our weekend together will focus on what it takes to ‘walk cheerfully’ when present to experiences of suffering and despair.

Blog readers will recognize this theme.  I claim no answers.  This theme has been the background music for my life during the eight years since I was a student at Pendle Hill.  I never expected then that my prayers to be of service would lead me into the bedchambers of the dying and the chapels of maximum security prisons.  Willingly I go, and willingly I experiment with what it takes to remain spiritually, emotionally, mentally and physically healthy, with what it takes to walk cheerfully.  

Today the beauty of watching the backlit storm clouds, feeling the rain on my cheeks, and finding a refuge without turning away, brought forth natural guidance from the Creator.  ... Stay centered in sensing the presence of the Holy backlighting, within and facing into all the suffering that comes our way.

May I stay centered in sensing the presence of the Holy backlighting, within and facing into all that arises in the forthcoming workshop.  Hope to see you there, in prayer or presence.

tretheway-calvi_flier.pdf