QiGong Prison Ministry

Thursday, October 19, 2006

The Patience of Trees

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.”*

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Monday, September 25, 2006

Written upon my heart

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.

18:45 Posted in As a Quaker ... , Journal - my journey , Reflections | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this

Friday, July 21, 2006

Heart Quickening Stories

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.”

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Thursday, July 20, 2006

Heart bonds

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.

21:40 Posted in Journal - my journey , Qi-Field Writings , Reflections | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this

Thursday, June 01, 2006

Turning it over to the silence

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.

17:30 Posted in Journal - Folsom Prison , Journal - my journey , Reflections | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this

Sunday, April 30, 2006

Magnets for the Spirit

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.

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Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Holy guests at my table

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

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Sunday, March 26, 2006

Not me, but Christ in me

My short vacation from prison to lead a Quaker retreat, attend a week-long Restoration retreat and visit with friends and family on the east coast left me with more questions than answers about good self-care and the intensity of teaching my schedule.

The first Wednesday back inside was difficult.  Was it letting my own practice slide while traveling?  Was it being out-of-condition with respect to the prison environment?  Or just the demands of holding each class together with a widening range of interest and experience levels?

It is not unusual for me to be exhausted after teaching 3 classes in a row, but it was unusual for me to have a tension headache and back muscle stress after the first class.  It didn’t help that I had several students challenging me during the second class.  One was bold enough to ask, “What’s wrong with the chi today? I’m not feeling anything. ... It must be your new shoes.”  Another was being goofy with the moves.  The ‘soothing’ music stuttered and jumped from scratches on the CD. Head throbbing, I fumbled with addressing the ‘rowdy ones’  and keep class flowing for those that were trying.  Finally, I to proclaimed, “What’s with the energy today?” and ask directly for some respect.  

Wisely one student remembered and suggested our laughter practice, we gave it a half hearted try.  At least half of the men had not done the Laughing QiGong before and my own mood was forced.  But just the remembering, and trying, created the foundation for the shift we needed.

We all settled into a very focused practice.  I stopped teaching and fell silent, cueing only the transitions between movements.  Everyone stayed synchronized.  The chi in the chapel took on a very determined quality.  Certainly better than before, but then I realized we had swung out of balance in the other direction.  I suggested that instead of pushing the chi and forcing the togetherness, we each stay flowing together, but each let go of the efforting and float on the unified flow of the chi.  The shift in the room was dramatic.  After we finished that move, I asked what the men might have noticed.  The only one brave enough to speak up, declared that he found the effortless movements to be even more powerful in a way that deeply surprised him.

While we seemed to salvage the class, the headache was settling in.  Even a 20 minute ‘nap’ at the chaplain’ desk before the Dorm Gym class didn’t help.  

My third class was 6 men, four regulars and two new guys.  I asked P. if he wouldn’t start class off and lead us in hand massage.  P. uses the reflexology that I taught regularly and with great effect on his aches and pains.  He did a great job and the headache started to calm down a bit.  I put on a video, expecting just to use just the introduction, but we ended up following along all the way through.  Having Pam (Towne) lead (on video) gave me the opportunity to circulate and help each man with individual corrections and suggestions.  I could also just move next to the new fellow which seemed to fit his learning style best.  Then we sat, let the chi steep, and finished the class with easy conversation.  I need to ask for help more often.

I dragged myself to the chiropractor, my neck was in, but my hip was out in an unusual way.  The adjustment, brought a new flow up my spine and made the headache manageable.  (headaches are very unusual for me)  Praying before sleep, I offered up this obviously blocked flow of chi, and asked, “guide me, help me know how to take care of myself so that I might continue to serve these men inside.”

In the dream state, I heard the phrase, “not me, but Christ in me”.  I recognized the guidance as “you’re trying to do the work, thinking the results are due to your efforts, that’s what causes the stress and tension.” ... Can’t get much clearer and more difficult instructions given to a perfectionist like me.   

... Still in that soft flexible dream state, I prayed to know the roots of my beliefs. ... Then I heard my father, encouraging me, saying, “That’s a good girl, you’ve done it all by yourself.” ... Oh ... And an older self feeling ... “If you want it done right, do it yourself”. ... I love the way I get taught like this in my dreams.  Now to just apply the lessons and let go of 50 year old patterns.

My first experiment was to pick up on what I learned the day before, letting my own teachers help me, by using their videos.  Technical difficulties thwarted me for the first class on Thursday, but got resolved for the next one.  We had fun imagining ourselves practicing in all the beautiful locations shown on the video.

So let’s see how well I can get out of the way and let the divine flow of the chi be the teacher.  ... Can I let go of doing it all by myself, and accept help?  ... Perhaps if I do less, the men might actually get more.  ... The gifts of a ‘messy’ class, can teach as powerfully as any ‘together’ class. ...

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.

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Saturday, February 25, 2006

Dance like no ones watching

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."

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Saturday, February 18, 2006

Walking Cheerfully

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

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Friday, February 17, 2006

Plowed by Anger

Empower me
to be a bold participant,
rather than a timid saint in waiting,
in the difficult ordinariness of now;
to exercise the authority of honesty,
rather than to defer to power,
or deceive to get it;
to influence someone for justice,
rather than impress anyone for gain;
and, by grace, to find treasures
of joy, or friendship, of peace
hidden in the fields of the daily
you give me to plow.

--Ted Loder

The fields I have been given to plow these past months have been very uneven. In truth, I don’t think it is me that is doing the plowing, but God. It seems something is being prepared, and the seeds for this ‘bold participant’ will be planted once the soil is ready. I have given over the notion that I have much if any control over this ‘becoming’.

I pray: “ready my heart” … “plant in me the seeds for the expression of your love in whatever comes my way.”

I received this Ted Loder poem in a daily reflection I subscribe to and immediately added it to the signature on my emails. It feels so far from my truth, yet a larger hand than mine insisted I keep its message front and center during all the upheaval of the past months. I keep reading it with each email I send, and just wonder at God’s subversive tactics to guide me ... I feel only like a ‘timid saint in waiting,’ and the ‘ordinariness of now’ has been very difficult, as I both fear and am protected by the power I defer to on a regular basis in the prison.

So what’s happening?

Anger.  Rage.  Fear of anger. Reading back over the blog I think the signs of an impending eruption were there – the despair, the tears, the grief, the frustrations.  At the Alternatives to Violence (see AVP link in right sidebar) Advanced Workshop the last weekend of January we decided to explore fear and trust. There was a safe group of Quakers and prison volunteers guided by two very experienced facilitators including a man who knows the system personally. Once I felt safe and knew those with me would not turn away from my message, the body sensations were unmistakable and the pent up emotions spewed forth – a volcano of anger and rage at the prison system, society’s lack of concern and racism, the men’s struggles, the guard’s games, the callous cruelty.

I don’t do anger.  Anger is that last place I feel safe. I don’t know how to be angry at the things I see and hear about inside prison.

Three times in the past 10 years the volcano has erupted. The enneagram work that triggered the first explosion at Pendle Hill back in 1998 is back with me and had its role in this explosion.  (I see myself as a ONE).  

My spiritual director tempted me with some more inner child work that surprised me with its parallels … walking on egg shells when Dad was angry, getting sent to my room if I got angry, spanked and shut away if I acted on my anger. I worked very hard to be good and stayed as far as I could from feelings of anger. Mine’s little girl stuff in the midst of big boy, big system expression and repression of anger.  

“Everyone here has issues with power, anger and violence.”  One inmate offered as he asked me years ago: “Why are you here?”

On the surface, I am here as an antidote to power, anger and violence. I teach the men to ‘yield and overcome,’ ‘find peace within, ‘ and ‘move from their spiritual center.’  We are definitely the tiny dot of white, (when you look at the yin/yang or T’ai Ji symbol) within the swirl of black.  The QiGong teaches the power of peace, provides a release for pent up energy.  Layer after layer of this work in this place is a play of opposites seeking a new balance – power over / peace within ...  project toughness and survive / yield and find yourself ...  stay contained & wary / relax & go with the flow ...  inner freedom / life without parole.

Beneath the surface, my years inside have quickened a healing of my issues around spiritual authority, and demanded a mature expression of my womanhood within a dominating masculine environment. Now, it’s anger again, anger at expressions of evil.  It touches into a primal rage at our inhumanity towards other humans. (Let’s not get into my rage about our inhumanity to our eco-system and the generations to follow us.)

This isn’t the first time my repressed anger about the prison has erupted.  Back in 2003 when one of my principle students got badly beaten and sent to the hole for his own protection and then transferred to Avenal, I suffered from months of inner earthquakes which eventually released into a night of erupting rage, tears, anger and despair. The night it all broke, and I cried (raged) for the first time in the 6 years I had been going inside. I have so little connection with this part of my emotional body.  In sessions with Vicki (see teachers) we journeyed deep into my rage at it all, from the racism to the betrayals.

The gift at the other side was a realization of the Light that is in the prison, the “that of God,” the Holy, that is as much a part of the place as the evil, just a lot less obvious.  I began to pray differently, hold myself differently inside, and consciously dedicate the cultivation of the chi towards the fulfillment of the Holy intention for not only the men themselves, but also the place and the system as a whole.

As one man counseled me, “Satan is an aspect of God, when you can love Satan too, your work will be finished.” Another told me, “We practice “loving the beast.”  I couldn’t and still can’t go to loving evil, so in the meantime I pray to let go of the hatred and stop demonizing.  I pray to find a place of neutral in my heart, a place that can hold it all, with loving acceptance.

This time, this increasing sense of belonging (see blog entry from January 24 ,2006) is drawing me into a more intimate relationship with the swirling energies of anger and violence, perverted nature of sexuality and domination, the constant tension to hold oneself (myself and the men) separate from the contamination of the evils.  The more I am shown (or allow myself to see) the deeper the despair, and the more profound is the contrast of the sweet flowing of the free, peaceful, open energy we cultivate in our classes.  It seems the men and the guards are allowing me to see deeper into their lives and spiritual stories.  This, plus the daily shifting from inside the walls of the prison to my gardens, dancing and life on the outside all are having a ‘push-me-pull-you’ effect and opening me up for some not yet understood spiritual growth.

I can’t say that I am on the other side yet and have any sort of perspective.  In a couple of weeks I will be offering a workshop on answering cheerfully to those with great suffering (Pendle Hill workshops ... there is still space available), and I feel this is of the greatest sort of preparation. I pray the inner turmoil will have calmed enough so that I can facilitate, even as I am being plowed myself.  

Last night as I was offering myself the self-Reiki blessing, I witnessed the larger intention from a deeper place within myself: This practice was not a band-aid on or a cleansing of today’s wounds, this was a receiving of God’s unconditional love for me.

I wrote in my journal:  “It is just as important to receive unconditional love as to give it.  I will never be able to give what I have not myself been able to receive, experience, accept, cherish and give thanks for.  Can I trust that God’s love for me (and each of us) is unconditional?”  

Even when I am angry?  Even for all that I bear witness to inside that is evil? Can anything but Love, be the power of change?  Love is the first motion …

Meeting for Worship this Sunday was completely silent.  I felt saturated with a presence of constant faith and enduring love.  Then I noticed a anxious and troubled heart, full of emotional pain, full of suffering.  I asked my heart to listen deeply to the Presence and understand that it too was included … constant … enduring …  gradually it released its burden and was saturated by the Presence. Ah, the grace of Quaker worship!

This week in my inside classes, I took time to ask my students how they cope with “the prison system” and all that means towards them.  They offered the most profound of advice, in simple words.  Pray.  Pray for yourself. Pray for them.  Remember the divinity, remember the Holy.  Don’t get attached.  Patience.  Understanding. Laugh at it all. Remember what is real.

As I prepare for the upcoming workshop, I ask myself in the tradition of Quakers, “What cans’t thou say?”  It will be something about core inner strength – the place from which we know our divinity as well as our rage; the place that holds all of who we are, who we have been and who we will become; the luminous center that enjoys a good dance with its own shadow, even when the shadow is trying to lead and can’t find the beat.

Empower me
to be a bold participant,
rather than a timid saint in waiting,
in the difficult ordinariness of now;
to exercise the authority of honesty,
rather than to defer to power,
or deceive to get it;
to influence someone for justice,
rather than impress anyone for gain;
and, by grace, to find treasures
of joy, or friendship, of peace
hidden in the fields of the daily
you give me to plow.

--Ted Loder

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Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Belonging

An awareness surfaced as I was walking in the Oaks a couple of weeks ago, seeking to let the last “leaves” of one prison stress or another drop from my branches....

That I belong inside New and Old Folsom prison, just as much as any of the men belong, as the captains and wardens belong, as the guards, staff and pigeons belong.

It was a new awareness of a very deep kind, quiet and subtle.   Different from the past where I have always felt like a guest, an interloper, a hassle, a outsider wanting to do good, a visitor who was both welcomed by some and put up with by others.  This feeling came in relation to New Folsom.

The past two weeks I have walked in differently, taught differently, and treated both the guards and men differently.  Its been a healthy shift into a greater confidence.  A greater realism that includes the possibility of me making mistakes, of recognizing more and more of the assumptions I have been making and letting them go.  Less defended against “what are they thinking of me”, it now seems O.K. To be ‘more of me’.  I am vulnerable inside, and that is not going to change by pretending otherwise.

Some of this has come by living through the traumas of the past months and gaining a greater perspective. Some has come from the men themselves as they have read this blog and come to see more of my story in relationship to their story.  Primarily, I feel it as a spirit based shift.  Dropping deeper in the collective nature of our journeys together, rather than the surface comings and going in and out of the gates and their lives.

Three other understandings have been building blocks in this sense of Belonging.
  (1) I hadn’t been able to come in for the Circle of Life, spiritual direction group since Thanksgiving and was feeling disconnected.  One of the men pointed out that really, this was our (Joanne and myself) problem.  And was a problem of perception.  They stayed in this place of canceled programs and random chances to share meaningfully.  We came and went.  We were disconnecting ourselves getting swallowed up in all the rest of our lives, understandably.  
  (2) In November I had started seeing the threads of connection that never seemed to drop away, between my students and myself in a valuable spiritual light.  Quite suddenly I welcomed the opportunity to provide a 24/7 presence of peace in their lives.  I prayed that if troubled they might remember the teachings I had shared, to reconnect in that moment with the stable, internally centered strength of peaceful presence that I aspired to represent to them, as the Dali Lama did for me.  My psyche’s need to cleanse and detach from some of the toxic energy of the place (while still real), had been preempted by my spirit’s desire to remain a constant in their lives.
  (3)  My experiences with cell visits and stiff students is teaching me what a minefield of assumptions I carry, and how useless they are in helping me relate to the men.  The only safe place for me to relate is spirit to spirit, soul to soul.  And even there to simply flow and trust a greater story is playing out through our relationship.

Together with the events of the past few months, I have come to see how my fears of “getting it wrong, of making mistakes, of not being good enough”  were keeping me separate. The men, hungry for what I bring in, have been generous in their forgiveness of my stumbling, and have help more than they know when they tell me, “How could you have known?”.  The guards, are sharp sometimes in their corrections and generally are quite severe in the distance they keep, are unquestionably there if I need them, and watch over me, even if reluctantly.  They expect me now, I have become a part of their week.

Meanwhile, back at Old Folsom
Writing the above, I realize that I had achieved this shift over at the Old Folsom prison  (they are do different institutions on the same property) a few years back.  But here this very sense of belonging is now showing its shadow side as entitlement.  Strong feelings have surfaced when classes have been cancelled for four months now.  I have been alternately sad, angry, frustrated, patient and persistent.  Expectations unmet, my patience has kicked the walls a few times.   

Next up:  learning to belong without expectations.

16:30 Posted in Journal - Folsom Prison , Journal - my journey , Reflections | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this

Friday, December 23, 2005

Recalled to a practice of tears

“Do not seek after what you yearn for,
seek the source of the yearning itself.”
….Adyshanti

This Holiday season my spirit seems much more linked with my inside students than with the busy world around me. Holidays in the prison are generally miserable.  Family is absent or scarce. Tempers short. Days seem as long as the nights really are. Lock downs keep you apart from the few friends you have.

I am staying close to home, each week I call to go up and teach, but the lock downs continue. I am cold, grieving and withdrawn, surrendering to a inward draw, surrendering to the season, surrendering to a yearning to know the bottom of the suffering. Yearning to stand along side suffering and not turn, but step towards – out of the pure impulse of Love. Yearning to find a way to stand in the middle of suffering and be whom I must be.

I feel re-called. The expanded energy of the fall now feels like the flash of autumn foliage.  Yet I trust, as I rake the fallen leaves and add them to the compost pile.  I trust the openings. I trust the shifts.  If I am to revel and trust the expansive Qi movement, then am I not called to do the same now?

Two years ago I began a laughter practice to shift the murky energy of a heart sodden with a Hospice Chaplains compassion fatigue.  Now I am called to a grieving practice.  Knots in my back and neck muscles have been crying out, quite literally, as I lay and roll on a pair of tennis balls (taped together) each morning hoping and allowing for greater freedom of movement.  I sob, not from the pain, but from the layers and layers of holding [in my] back.  At first the stories of my students, hospice families, and world traumas would flash through my mind, now it is just story-less grief. Ten years ago this week we lost the beautiful home we had built to a fire.  This grieving flavors not only the mornings, but the days.

Since the challenges obliquely referenced to in early December’s cell visits, the most important thing has become my own practice.  I’ve returned to the Tai Chi Chih form, which has sustained me for more than a decade.  It’s quiet repetitive weight shifts nurture me like a mother feeding and rocking an infant.

I am in ‘my’ Oak Cathedral walking each day that weather permits, allowing the trees to teach me about ‘standing for’, resilience and the seasons as I walk the loop in meditation.

Twice weekly I am dancing, spontaneous QiGong with spiritual music from all over the world. Exploring and integrating the energy of the chakras is teaching me a whole new level of moving from and through, a less personal and more universal, energy field.  In this wordless practice, my dance-mates teach me how to exchange energy full of freedom and love in unconditional, yet safe and respectful ways.

My prayer beads are smooth now from daily rounds of breathing with God.  The self-Reiki sessions help me close the day with gratitude.  Quaker Meeting comes each Sunday and brings me into group grace whether Meeting seems to ‘gather’ or not.  I am so thankful that I can spend my days following the movement of spirit. The few appointments that I have are for spiritual direction and teaching QiGong.  To listen to ‘that of God’ in another, or to show people how to move from their infinite center is a gift of grace.

As rich as all that sounds … and it is rich … I feel stirred, unsettled, like something is reaching in and massaging my knots working for their freedom, but opening up pain and suffering.  My heart aches.  Am I feeling the men’s sorrow or results of yesterday’s physical therapy massage?  Is it ashes from ten years ago shifting to the surface, or angst over Christmas commercialism?

I open up my daily inspirational emails and they call me to go deeper still. (See top and bottom quotes)  There is a place deep inside me that knows, someday, I too will know these truths, I will see into the darkness with clarity.  But not today, not yet, there is still so much judgment and desire around ‘the way prison should be’ and my heart is troubled by the actions of God’s children, including myself.

In the beginning was the Tao.
All things issue from it;
all things return to it.

To find the origin,
trace back the manifestations.
When you recognize the children
and find the mother,
you will be free of sorrow.

If you close your mind in judgments
and traffic with desires,
your heart will be troubled.
If you keep your mind from judging
and aren't led by the senses,
your heart will find peace.

Seeing into darkness is clarity.
Knowing how to yield is strength.
Use your own light
and return to the source of light.
This is called practicing eternity.

--Lao-Tzu
Translated by Stephen Mitchell

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Friday, December 09, 2005

Tom Fox's message Lights my path

"Be patterns, be examples in every country, place, or nation that you visit,
so that your bearing and life might communicate with all people.
Then you'll happily walk across the earth to evoke that of God in everybody.
So that you will be seen as a blessing in their eyes
and you will receive a blessing from that of God within them."  

-- George Fox, founder of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers)  
(as quoted on Tom Fox’s blog - see right side bar)

I don’t speak often about my Quaker faith, background and beliefs.  The practice is to live from the faith, not to preach it. With one of our own in the news, perhaps it is time to stand up and be counted along side fellow Quaker Tom Fox, one of the Christian Peacemaker Teams held captive in Iraq.  His words, as I read them in context of his peacekeeping efforts, mentor my prison efforts.

My heart is full of prayers for him and his teammates, and his captors, and the spread of his message, as so many tune in, if just briefly, to this story.  Tom,  I trust, would ask us all to look into our own lives, our own callings and see how these same truths he has based his Call upon echo in the work we are each about.  It is a beautiful thing to have your life illuminate the lives of others.  Tom Fox is doing that for all of us. He is doing that for me.

Seeking to honor him, by applying the mentoring I receive from his written words, I offer these reflections on my own work that arose as I read a Salon article called “Love your Enemies”. My words are in green.

In this essay, Pearl Hoover, pastor of the Northern Virginia Mennonite Church and a member of Fox's five-person support team, says, "Part of his being there was to be a presence with people at their own level of risk.

"For [Fox] it was a very measured approach," she says. "He acknowledged it was a risky thing to do, but he wasn't apologizing for it, and he wasn't saying, 'Bring on the trouble.' He was simply saying, 'I want my life to be meaningful.' And I think that's something that someone who's not mentally balanced would not say. He wasn't looking to die. And that's where his message is completely different than people who choose war or people who choose suicide bombing. He went there because he wanted to look for peace wherever it was and to nurture that peace."

The litany of horrors Fox kept hearing -- coupled with all the other torments visited on Iraq -- clearly got to him. On his blog, he wrote about trying not to simply shut down in the face of so much anguish. "The ability to feel the pain of another human being is central to any kind of peace making work," he wrote. "But this compassion is fraught with peril. A person can experience a feeling of being overwhelmed. Or a feeling of rage and desire for revenge. Or a desire to move away from the pain. Or a sense of numbness that can deaden the ability to feel anything at all."

He continued. "How do I stay with the pain and suffering and not be overwhelmed? How do I resist the welling up of rage towards the perpetrators of violence? How do I keep from disconnecting from or becoming numb to the pain? After eight months with CPT, I am no clearer than I [was] when I began. In fact I have to struggle harder and harder each day against my desire to move away or become numb. Simply staying with the pain of others doesn't seem to create any healing or transformation. Yet there seems to be no other first step into the realm of compassion than to not step away."

Fox didn't step away. The day before he was taken, he wrote a brief missive, posted on the Web site Electronic Iraq, titled "Why Are We Here?" He concluded, "We are here to root out all aspects of dehumanization that exists within us. We are here to stand with those being dehumanized by oppressors and stand firm against that dehumanization. We are here to stop people, including ourselves, from dehumanizing any of God's children, no matter how much they dehumanize their own souls."

“Do not give to the poor expecting to get their gratitude
so that you can feel good about yourself.  
If you do, your giving will be thin and short-lived,
and that is not what the poor need;
it will only impoverish them further.
 Give only if you have something you must give;
give only if you are someone for whom giving is its own reward.”
    -- Dorothy Day

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Friday, December 02, 2005

How do I... part two ... Protection

In my only class this week with the men of the B Yard Gym I told a story chi and self defense.  The story came from Vicki Dello Joio (see teacher album) when we had been discussing energetic protection when I went into prison.  This conversation was years ago now, but the story has become a part of my being.  

When people who work with energy hear of my difficulties in prison they suggest that I invoke protective barriers or guardians or shields of white light to protect me.  These concepts have all seemed very fear based and defensive, a physic posture I have been uncomfortable adopting.

During the first years of my visiting Old Folsom, as I walked from the parking lot, I would pray.  One of the prayers was that “if the men saw something about me that they desired, that they treasured, that they were attracted to, that God would hold up a mirror so they could discover those same qualities, characteristics or potentials within themselves.”  The prayer morphed to include a net of mirror chips all over the edges of my aura, porous enough to accept their gratitude, yet reflective of any negative intention, or cording, as some call it.

My conversation with Vicky was probably in 2002 or so, mid-point between my beginnings and now.  She offered my a model that fit wonderfully with my nature and the Qi Gong philosophy I was teaching.  The protection idea was of secondary importance.  What was most valuable was to know your core chi essence, your core inner being, to really feel and know that, stand in that, move from that, radiate that.  If the essential core energy (that of God within each of us) was what we were, that is 100% from the center on out to the energetic edges of our being, what could harm us?  We were solid in our truest nature.  With our minds, she taught me, we could request, or better yet, know, that at the edges of our being, our truest nature was discerning what was in our highest interest and what was best deflected.  If we could trust this higher self with our future in this way, some of what might come our way may seem ugly or negative, but it may well be essential for bringing us closer to our true potential.

She told me a true personal story of walking under an overpass in the dark one evening after exiting a BART train.  A man bolted out at her. She had no time to run or defend herself.  But she did remember who she was.  She was as startled, as the man was, when he hit an invisible “wall” several feet in front of her.  He bounced off.  Freaked out, he ran off.  

Now my walking in prayers include the gift of her story.  I feel my core, like a florescent light tube, radiating through all of me to the edges of my personal space.  I feel this light as vibration energy, but also solid enough to ward off an intruder like in Vicky’s story.  I also visualize mirror-like quality to the edges, praying that anyone attracted to my light, know their own as just as beautiful.

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Integrity and accountability with our Callings

At a gathering of prison volunteers this week we discussed integrity and accountability.  Some of us did have spiritual teachers (or an equivalent) that watched over us and to whom we were accountable.  But many were accountable just to the prison chaplains, who pretty much allowed them follow their own course.  This is an issue that any of us offering ourselves in service to others needs to address.

Even as deeply spiritual people we sometimes have a sense of indignation when someone suggests that there might be more to the process of integrity than our own honesty, and more to be accountable to than our own good ethics an personal relationship with the Holy.  

We deflect, procrastinate, and feel ourselves above the process of reporting in to someone else; laying bare the weaknesses in our own practices; telling someone the stories of our struggles so that they might reflect back our growing edges; telling someone our stories of victories so that they might reflect back our assumptions or pride.  This just doesn’t seem to be necessary.  Aren’t we doing just find on our own?  

Where do we find the time in the middle of all our service to the disempowered?  Where do we find the money to compensate those who counsel us when we are volunteers ourselves?  Besides, who is qualified to listen to us when we are out on the cutting edge?  Who can hold the stories of grief and violence?  Who is challenging themselves spiritually as much as we are?

Can you hear all the ego?  I feel justified to go it on my own, because God is with me, watching over me, because my intentions are the highest I can imagine. I know where to get support if I can’t handle it, right now everything is under control. Can you hear all the pride? Do we grow when everything is under control?

Several years back now I was at a Quaker retreat for those of us following Calls.  We shared together about going it alone, and having a safety net, or a leash.  Powerful testimonies helped me come into the understanding that we get much farther with realizing our highest potentials of our Calls when we have oversight, when we have people looking out for us, watching over and seasoning our impulses.  Those who had already walked this path spoke of how much further they felt they were able to go in taking risks, because they knew they were watched over and would get pulled back from anything out of line or dangerous.  Without the support network they had been constantly attempting to self initiate the checks and balances and felt that so often they had not risked what they might have, and did not bounce back as easily as they might have when deeply challenged.

We were bemoaning the fact that our Quaker Meetings did not seem to have the skills to provide the quality of oversight and guidance that we needed, that we had to spend time, we could spend on our Calls, educating them how to take care of us, that our Meetings just didn’t understand.  In worship that Sunday morning I rose to speak of the need to forgive our Meetings for being who they are, and offer up ourselves as tools for our Meeting’s growth and the development of the skills in Oversight.  When we keep ourselves open and vulnerable to supervision by our Meetings, we were keeping ourselves open and vulnerable to God’s grace to guide our calls.  No matter how healthy our personal discernment process, learning trust and vulnerability is essential and ultimately a blessing to both the Call and the community.

I now sit monthly with a spiritual director, as well as my Meeting Oversight Committee. The Sacramento Buddhist prison volunteers have a Sangha that welcomes my participation. I also have a network of mentors: former prison staff, former inmates, Qigong teachers, therapists and spiritual friends that are not afraid of the nature of my work or of challenging my ego.  Weekly I open up to some part of this team and ask for guidance.  I do this as a part if my practice, a part of the Call.  It’s a good way to stay humble and to keep others engaged with my journey and their own wisdom. I can clearly see the impact that expanding the base of my accountability and practicing “asking for help” has made upon my prison work.  Not only have the numbers of men impacted dramatically increased, but my own integrity,  presence and offerings are several important levels deeper.  

The key to “ask and ye shall receive” is that I must be willing to receive.

PS:  One of the best guides to volunteering, motivation and integrity is Ram Dass’s book How Can I help? I believe it is essential reading for all volunteers whose intention is to grow spiritually and have our efforts come from the place of highest integrity within ourselves.

13:15 Posted in As a Quaker ... , Journal - my journey , Reflections | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Dissolving trauma energy

In my commitment to being more transparent in this blog, I offer up my personal process of coping and rebalancing after the afternoon of trauma told in  the Onion Tears blog entry. You might want to read it first.

After visiting just one of the 6 or so students I originally intended to see, I quit.  Hearing the inner voice, that enough was enough, I left. &nbs