QiGong Prison Ministry

Call to Prayer Essay 3.6.pdf

 

Praying for our Prisons
to become places of healing and peace
“Remember those in prison as if you were their fellow
prisoners, and those who are mistreated as if you
yourselves were suffering.”
Hebrews 13:3 NIV

Love Never Fails
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but
have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a
clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and
can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I
have a faith that can move mountains, but have not
love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor
and surrender my body to the flames, but have not
love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does
not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not selfseeking,
it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of
wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with
the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always
hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they
will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled;
where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we
know in part and we prophesy in part, but when
perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I
was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a
child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man,
I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor
reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face.
Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I
am fully known.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love.
But the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians 13 NIV

When you pray prayers of hope and blessings upon those
you know and conditions of the world,
Do you include the prison system?
Do you include the bad guys? Most of us don’t.

Perhaps we should not make prayer our last resort, perhaps now is
the time to activate our faith. It’s time to look with our spiritual
eyes at the condition of our prisons, the increasing levels of fear that
we live under, and the cycles of violence. The problem has moved
way beyond what money can solve. Scarce public funds are calling
us to activate alternatives, to see our problems through the eyes of
opportunity, to try out new viewpoints.

This paper is a call to prayer, a call to activate our spiritual powers
as a community, a community that cares about our collective future
and seeks opportunity for everyone to live into their potential.
This is a call for a new vision to arise for our criminal justice
system and community safety, a vision based on doing unto others
as we would have them do unto us.
We are all victims of the way it is now.
We suffer, not only when we are the direct victims of a violent
crime, but also when we witness the daily news reports and our
hearts grow fearful and callous. And all of us suffer as precious
resources for education and youth programs are diverted away from
our own children and our community’s children into incarcerating
criminals. We are all victims of crime.
We are also victims of our society’s approach to punishment. We
expect to be protected from harm when criminals are locked away,
yet most of those who are released (75%) come back a few years
later to commit more crimes, causing more fear, more punishment,
more victims, more cost.1 And the many who return to prisons for
parole infractions keep our prisons overcrowded and expensive.
What neighborhood is safe? Whose family remains untouched? The
only safety is in breaking the cycle.
Pointing our fingers at prison administrators, at the correctional
officers, at those locked inside, misses the point. We are in this all
together. As a human family, we do not have the choice to discard
anyone. An inefficient, insensitive system which continues the
patterns of cruelty and is gobbling up our collective resources exists.
Our prison problem is so enmeshed and vast, our minds falter
trying to grasp how we got here or how to get out.
This is why we are calling for a spiritual solution. The answers
which seem to be beyond our reach are reachable when we ask for
help from God. When guided by God, fear and hatred, injustice
and incorrigible behaviors transform. Together, let us ask for help
and see what Love can do. Love never fails.

The cure is change
The only real cure for criminal behavior is inner change, a change
of heart, a change of attitude, a change of purpose, a change in
resources and skills, a change in the conditions that gave birth to
the criminal behavior and attitude. What is needed for those who
commit crimes is the opportunity to find a new purpose to their
lives, new skills, education and a new sense of how they belong to
our community, whether they are to spend the rest of their lives
inside the walls or return to our neighborhoods.
What is needed for our communities, our society, is for each of
us to leave aside our vengeful, banishing punishment style, and
commission our prison and jail system with the correction, healing
and uplifting of those we send into their care. Programs cultivating
skill development, education and inner value cost much, much
less in the long run than continually warehousing and training
troublemakers.

How can normal law-abiding citizens make a difference?
Prayer. Simple prayers for healing.
How many times have you read the paper or watched the TV news
and heard of some terrible crime and prayed a prayer for the bad
guy to get all the punishment he could, life without parole, death.
“Rot in hell,” you cursed, or thinking of our current prison system,
“You’ll get what you deserve!”
Most of us have. It’s natural when we feel so violated and
vulnerable to wish that such terror should never happen to anyone
else again. We desperately want crime and violence to stop forever.
When you cast someone into hell in your heart, with your words,
with your tax dollars, with your votes, when you pray to throw
them into our current prison system forever, to lock them up and
throw away the key, you pray a prayer of vengeance.
Consider a different approach. Ask yourself, would I wish prison
for someone I knew, a wayward grandson, a neighbor? Probably
not. Then a prayer of … May they never do harm again … is an
honest prayer. And a prayer that will lift you up when you pray it.

Try this prayer next time you hear a story of violence:
Pray that the evil be cast out of those we call “bad guys.” Pray
that they find a new life purpose. Pray that somehow, some way,
a healing grace penetrates all obstacles and breaks open the old
patterns and guides a new way forward. Pray for healing. Pray that
no one is ever hurt again by this person and this person will come
to know their value as a child of God. Pray that he2 turns his life
over to correcting the wrongs he has committed in gratitude for the
grace and mercy he has received.
Given a choice to heal and contribute positively to their
community even the most violent choose healing.3 & 4 It is not
always easy or quick or permanent to change some of our deeply
troubled citizens. But to throw them away without trying, that’s
a crime, that’s a sin. To cast someone, anyone into Hell with our
prayers is not the prayer Love would have us pray.
We lock parents up for child abandonment. Yet we collectively
abandon those who break the laws without questioning our
actions. We complain loudly about the consequences, the massive
amounts of dollars spent on our criminal justice system,5 about the
dangerous streets and crime in our communities, about the expense
of security systems for our homes and businesses.6 We are more
willing to spend our hard earned dollars answering to our fears,
than to dare express our love or hope for a different future.

What craziness is this?
Until our wallets and state budgets are impacted, we don’t even
pay attention. Then we question why we are spending so much on
these bad guys, and not on our kids.7 Good question.
Better Question: Why aren’t we spending the money wisely?
Why are we throwing away our precious resources on a vicious
and growing cycle that cultivates criminal behavior? If we spent
our incarceration dollars wisely, we’d have plenty for our children,
their education and their safety, and plenty to educate the bad guy’s
children and put a stop to this cycle.8

A prayer filled vision:
Let us consider the funds we spend on prisons as investments
in our current and future safety. Let us imagine that we can
fundamentally retire or rewire the prison system because the cycle
of criminal behavior has been broken, because society cared,
because we cared. Change happened because we started with prayer.
We took responsibility for the nature of our prayers. We started,
where we all can start, in our own hearts.
What does it take to get movement in this direction?
It’s already happening, here and there. People are seeing, if not the
sinfulness of our behavior, then the wastefulness of our behavior.
What does it take to get better movement in this direction?
Creative minds, intelligent thinking, applied wisdom of experience
and research in personal transformation and criminal behavior.
Compassionate tough love. Discipline. Consistency. Willingness.
Willingness to try, fail, try again. Hope. Grace.

What activates these positive forces?
Prayer: the applied spiritual energy of concerned people.
Where do we start? What do we want?
Let’s start with what we all want: accountability, responsibility for
actions, remorse, the ability to discern right from wrong and an
end to all the excuses and justifications. We want the ‘bad guys” to
feel bad about what they did, and know how much suffering they
caused. We want them to be accountable for their actions and
take responsibility for their own healing and right their wrongs.
We want the law of the land, the law of our hearts, to honestly be:
“Love thy neighbor as thyself.”
We want the victims of crime made whole. We want to feel safe in
our homes and in our neighborhoods.

Praying for our Prisons
Next time you hear of a tale of crime, be shocked, and despair over
the broken lives that have broken more lives. Then pray. Invite love
and hope, rather than fear or hatred, to flow through your heart.
Pray for ourselves: Begin with me. Unlock the prison gates of my
heart and release my stereotypes and negativity. Let my compassion
flow into the darkest places within the world and within me.
Pray for the victim: May their healing come quickly. May they grow
even stronger through this ordeal. May they receive the support and
love they need not become bitter. May their anger be released in
healthy ways as they rise above this turmoil to find peace again.
Pray for the witnesses and the families of the victims: May the horror
of these days awaken a deep compassion in their hearts. May the
support they provide for their suffering loved one open up a flow of
love inside their families that will grace many for years to come.
Pray for the officers, judges, jurors, and other professionals tending to
the investigation, arresting and prosecuting: May they be open to
possibilities and unbiased in perception. May they know peace in
their hearts and firmness in their resolve to best serve all.
Pray for the perpetrators of the crime: May they awaken to the
human consequences of their actions and take responsibility for
their lives. May they know the character building consequences of
remorse, and find their own way through despair into an opening
of self understanding and honest rebuilding of their lives. May
they receive the healing resources that match their needs and
abilities to change and grow. May they find love and strength as a
consequence of the discipline and hardship which they must bear
as a result of their incarceration. May they serve their time in a
manner that brings forth the best in themselves and their prisonmates.
May they never intentionally harm another person again.
May those who cannot or will not be healed be cared for with
respect and protection from their own worst nature.
Pray for their families: May they have the strength to persevere
in their support and visits despite so many hardships. May their
families get the support they need to find their way without their
father or son, mother or daughter. May the “sins of the fathers” be
healed so that their children might realize their own potential as
healthy contributing citizens.
Pray for the parolees: May they find “welcome home” banners in
their neighborhoods and churches. When they leave prison, may
they receive the support they need to to lead an honorable life.
Pray for the men and women who have the jobs to supervise and
care for the incarcerated: May the officers who must remain
vigilant watching for wrongdoing, also have the compassion to
guide these men forward with a positive tough love. May the
administration find its way through the bureaucracy of logistics and
legal maneuvering to create policies to transform the lives of the
incarcerated and the whole prison system. May our prison system
become respected for its applications of the best in human potential
wisdom. May we measure our success in the ever-diminishing
need for prisons, and the ever-increasing feelings of safety in our
communities.
Pray for the parole officers: May they find an engaged society where
businesses feel protected and comfortable taking a risk and hiring
these newly trained and transformed individuals. May they find
fulfillment through successful reentry with adequate resources.
Pray for the chaplains, teachers and mental health professionals: May
they apply the best of their tradition’s wisdom for healing and
transformation. May they be capable of the personal challenges
of helping people heal who have violated our sense of what’s right.
May they know they are not alone in their efforts and caring.
Pray for the prison environment: May the cell-blocks and yards be
cleansed of the build-up of fear, hatred, revenge, violence and terror
that has saturated their walls. May the atmosphere transcend fears
and find forgiveness, release despair and discover hope, surrender
shame and encounter creativity, find no place for revenge and
abundant room for the practice of compassion.
Pray for the spiritual well being of all concerned: May all the guides,
angels, ancestors and teachers of divine nature be aroused and
activated. May we all learn how to ask for, and receive God’s
grace. May the will of God for each human to achieve their fullest
potential be realized through our correctional system. Amen

Applying our faith
This call to pray for our prisons is a reflection of our deep trust that
God is at work in the prison system, already there, never absent.
Our prisons were created with the faith that people could change
when given time to do penance (thus penitentiary).9 Our prisons
can reflect this faith. Compassionate caring can turn lives around.
Our prisons can reflect our faith in the overriding power of good
inherent in all life. Our future can be different.
Our prisons have cycled into the Hell that we abandoned them to
become. A cast-off bureaucracy filled with cast-off humans. We
would rather not pay attention. We must.

Must we forgive?
Are we being asked to forgive and condone the crimes? Forgiveness
is a complex action, and many layered. There is much about
forgiveness that we each have to sort out and come to terms with
when we answer our faith’s call to “love our enemies.” Let us always
hold forgiveness as a possibility, and begin where we can, praying
honest prayers from the truth in our hearts today.

Shifts happen
Many men declare that going to prison saved their life. They have
changed; they are no longer the person they once were. Now still in
prison, they seek ways to redeem themselves and contribute.10
We who have worked with men and women inside prisons, have
witnessed a great hunger for healing; we have seen big change with
miniscule resources. Change in the face of addictions, temporary
psychosis and life threatening violence. Imagine how many more
men and women behind bars could find their way back to healthy
citizenship with the intelligent use of our resources and hopeful
prayers.

Where we go from here is up to us
Everything changes. What we have now can get worse or better, or
even much, much better. We must bring to bear the most powerful
force of transformation that is foundational to all change, the Force
that created life itself, the Force that cares most about our future.
We call this by many names: Infinite Presence, Transformational
Power, God, Allah, Creator, Love. We sense it everywhere yearning
to be brought into fullness in our world, in our lives, and yes,
yearning to be brought into fullness in our prison system and
within each and every prisoner. People of all faiths know that it is
the Holy Will for each and every one of us to heal and know love.
To Pray for Our Prisons is to call upon the Light of God, already
deep within each of the prisoners, within each of the employees,
and within every family that has been affected. To pray for our
prisons is to call upon God to heal us all.
To Pray for Our Prisons is to call upon this Force that cares not
just for the future of each of the individuals involved, but for the
very fabric that binds us all together. We pray so that we may heal
the notion that we can cast off any part of our community, or any
member of our human family. We pray for our prisons so that we
might live in communities safe, healthy and full of kindness.
To Pray for Our Prisons is to acknowledge that what we know (of
causes and solutions) is only partial. The answers lie not in us, but
in inviting the Power of Love to move through us.
Are we ready to question our systems of punishment, to
embrace the potential in everyone? Are we ready to protect our
neighborhoods with wisdom and compassion rather than fear and
vengeance? The time is now. We are ready.

Stopping the cycles
We cannot stop the cycles of violence by doing more violence. We
cannot protect our children and our neighbor’s children by turning
their fathers into monsters. We cannot bring our community into
a bright future when we condemn so many to a festering darkness.
We need prisons to pull people out of society when they are
harming others and harming themselves. We must protect
each other from the worst of human behaviors. We must take
responsibility for the most vulnerable and protect them by
incarcerating those that bring poison with their presence; poisons of
rage, hatred, greed, callousness, and pride.
Our prisons are filled with a huge spectrum of spiritual,
psychological and physical types of people and problems. The
stories are sometimes fair and sometimes not. Prayer can serve
them all. We do not need to have a particular recipe for success; we
can leave that in God’s hands.

It’s time to move mountains
We can take inspiration from studies that have demonstrated the
positive effect that prayer has on healing from heart attacks,11
and the dramatic reduction in violent crime (20%) with group
meditation in Washington DC (summer of 1993)12 We can
intercede in violent behaviors with prayer. We can heal with prayer.
The greatest power we have is to invoke the power of the Holy.
Prayer costs us nothing but the releasing of hope from our hearts.
We are not talking about more expensive programs, more
psychological therapy, and better food. We are talking about
the power of God, the power of love, the power of prayer. We
are praying for all of us to participate, to care about our prison
problem; to apply our faith. That has not been tried. We have
a mountain to move, let us begin today, let us begin with prayer.
When the foundation of our actions and attitudes is prayer, all
things are possible.

Pray the prayer from your own heart.
Nothing is more powerful than your heart’s desires laid into the
lap of the Infinite with trust. When our caring is made manifest by
the action of prayer, then our intentions join with the prayers of
people of all faiths and traditions, and miracles happen. Let us join
together in visualizing something different: prisons as institutions
of healing and peace. We don’t have to know what it would look
like, nor how it would come to pass. We just offer up our hearts
desire for something better for all concerned, and trust.
The higher road, with prayers of hope, and programs of healing,
will bring us all forward to a community of kindness and
compassion. This is a much better choice than following our
fears, and the poisonous prayers of condemnation, which are
casting other humans to the ongoing hell of our current style of
punishment.
Where we go with our prayers, will be where our future lies. For
years we have abandoned our worst enemies to their fate in our
prison system. We have banished them, packed them one on top
of the other, with more of their own kind to teach them. We have
wished for them “hell” and hell is what they received. Are we
surprised that they come back devils? Are we surprised that they
come back more violent and more angry? No, we didn’t think
about all that, all we wish for is for them to be punished. We let
our resentment rule our hearts and guide our actions. We followed
our childish human tendency to get even and withhold love.

It is time to see what love can do
These are childish ways. It is time to put them aside. It is time to
see what love can do. It is time to pray. It is time to pray for our
own hearts to become large enough to pray that the bad guys, our
“enemies” heal. It is time to pray a prayer of compassion, rather
than a prayer of hatred and vengeance. It is time to invoke the
power of the Holy to shine in all of our hearts and take us to a new
level of kindness, a new level of morality, a new potential, for those
who are locked inside, for those that tend to them, for everyone
caught in the story’s web, for ourselves, for our future. It is time to
see what Love can do.

End Notes
1. Recidivism rates vary across the country. Seldom do you see less than 75%, often much
higher.
2. “He”: for the purpose of writing and reading ease, we have just used the pronoun “he”, as
90% (check) of those incarcerated are male.
3. Dreams from the Monster Factory: A Tale of Prison, Redemption, and One Woman’s
Fight to Restore Justice to All by Sunny Schwartz and David Boodell (Jan 6, 2009)
4. For programs and studies see our blog: prisonpotential.blogspot.com or
prayingforourprisons.blogspot.com
5. Current expenditures per man per year in CA state system averages $43,000
6. Money saved through healed men, means they don’t cycle back to prison, and $30-40k is
freed up for programming, or non-prison needs.
7. In 2006, federal, state, and local government spent $214 billion for justice, including
police protection, corrections, and legal and justice activities. Corrections alone amounted
to nearly $69 billion,[i] a sum that is dead even with the national budget for education.[ii]
Each prisoner costs our taxpayers approximately $30,000 per year, a stark difference when
compared to $1,024 per year spent to educate each of the 67 million students.
[i] http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/eande.htm
[ii] http://www.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/index.html
8. 70% children of the incarcerated following their parents into the system. http://www.
amachimentoring.org/aboutus.html
9. Beyond Prisons: A New Interfaith Paradigm for Our Failed Prison System by Laura
Magnani and Harmon L. Wray (April 1, 2006)
10. These men have committed to joining us, accepting our prayers, visualizing their
penetration into each and every aspect of the prison systems across the planet.
11. Be Careful What You Pray For...You Just Might Get It by Larry Dossey (Sep 23, 1998)
12. Social Indicators Research - Volume 47, Issue 2, June 99 “Effects of Group Practice of
the Transcendental Meditation Program on Preventing Violent Crime in Washington, D.C.:
Results of the National Demonstration Project, June--July 93” John S. Hagelin, Maxwell
V. Rainforth, Kenneth L. C. Cavanaugh, Charles N. Alexander, Susan F. Shatkin, John L.
Davies, Anne O. Hughes, Emanuel Ross, David W. Orme-Johnson, pp 153-201
see also: http://www.alltm.org/pages/crime-arrested.html

 

back page

Our prisons are crying out for a new vision.
Let us turn to the source of true healing.
Let us open our hearts in prayer.
Let us pray for hope. Let us pray for change. Let us pray for peace.
Let us pray for Love to prevail.
Pray any time, all the time, for all dimensions of this system: the
victims, the prisoners, the families, the correctional officers, the
administration, the parolees, everyone impacted.
Your prayers are received and welcomed into the heart of the
prisons by dedicated, spiritual, incarcerated men and women of all
faith traditions.
We began focusing on Tuesday evenings at 7:30 with the prisons in
Folsom (California). This prayer campaign has spread quickly to
penetrate all aspects of the prison system everywhere, all the time.
Love is seeking a way forward. How might you join us?

For the story behind this project,
prayer cards and other materials:
www.prayingforourprisons.blogspot.com

Judy Tretheway and Myrna Echols of Compassionate Action in
Sacramento were the primary authors of this essay.

There are two sayings that have been moving around me for a while. I’m not offering them up as Truth with a capital “T”. I would like to offer them up as a starting point to explore some ideas about spiritual transformation of the prison system and our roles as volunteers, and even more specifically, our coming together in this newly formed group.

You can’t imagine what you have not experienced.

You can’t solve a problem with the same consciousness that created it.

We have been pulled together by unseen forces; as individuals dedicated to quickening the Field of Love inside our jails and prisons.  As stars in a galaxy, we have been swirling around the same source field, living out our own unique way of manifesting Love’s desire to penetrate the walls and offer itself as a viable choice.

We have been called inside to help build an infrastructure of wisdom and experiences for those locked up to realize their potential and become catalysts for their own and the collective’s healing process. Inside, in our own groups, in our own ways, we bring forth the experiences that allow us each to imagine in a new way.

Now we are invited to bring our behind-the-walls experiences of this Field of Love’s potential outside; and invite them to fuel an imagination of a humanity that no longer needs to scapegoat and demonize its troubled brothers and sisters.  We are tending to the sprouting vision of our society’s evolution beyond the need for punishment.

We are a part of a consciousness that has come to know and deeply trust that there are no “others.”  We are expanding this awareness inside an institution reflecting a  different worldview. We have experienced the collective spiritual soul with these folks who have been cast out as demons.  We have imagined and witnessed the transformative potential made flesh inside the most barren of wombs.

Many people outside the walls are actively engaged in a new a paradigm, a consciousness actively working out of love rather than fear.  There are not so many who have had the experiences we have had from which to apply this new consciousness to the evolution of our criminal justice system. 

We have experienced, so we can imagine.
We are a part of the new consciousness needed
for the evolution of the criminal justice system.

We can release the criminal justice system from its old paradigm into a new vision.
We hold in our personal fields of awareness the energetic seeds for an evolutionary leap.   We hold the vision of seed becoming fruit. 
We are here today as the Field of Compassion cultivates its own becoming.
May we listen deeply and serve humbly.

I wander free, freely.
Engaging in the vitality of the forest, the dance floor, the garden.
Engaging the Qi, as I am inspired, as I choose, as I am chosen.
I have been chosen to engage with the Qi in a very special place.
A special place called Folsom Prison.

There those that I practice with, those that I teach have a way of living and viewing the world
as different from mine as Yin is to Yang.  (And then at times I find there is absolutely no difference at all.)

For all that my life is filled with creative vibrancy, theirs is filled the sterile and the mundane.
I live with people who love to experiment as they cook with fresh imaginative ingredients.
It is easy for me to eat as I choose organic vegetarian. The men inside must swallow the same o same o pre frozen meals bounteous in their cheap starches. No fresh veggies from the garden for them. 

I live with art and spaciousness, people I have chosen and love dearly. My friends inside might have chosen their cellmate, or maybe not.  Their “house” is tiny, sterile, harsh and hard with concrete or granite walls and the prerequisite bars.  The locks on the doors are on the outside, mine on the inside.

I get to love my family and play with my grandchildren, engaging with them spontaneously as my longing to connect picks up the phone.  Their families have to pay through the nose for collect calls

I wear what I want -- colors, styles of my choosing that compliment how I want to look in the world.  They must wear ill-fitting smocks of blue polyester with PRISONER printed loudly across the legs and backs.

This is all as prison is and who could expect differently? And today, my heart opens to the absence of the natural world in their lives.

When I wander in the forest I see them everywhere:  the young tree struggling to grow out of a rock; the multi-topped tree trying new ways when the old life was cut off; the piles of thinned out trees waiting to be burned; the valiant who survive anywhere, somehow, and the those who crowded life and have been cut down for it.

They are never far from my thoughts, for they are a piece of who I am, a piece of my consciousness.  We engage together in the fundamental stream of life force energy.  The vitality that under girds yin and yang, the yin and the yang harmonized, the new flow created when yin and yang play fruitfully together.  We have surfed together on the energy that carries us towards our highest potentials, danced with the pull of the moon, the stars and the sun; and drawn from roots of our humanness sustained by the grace of the earth. 

We fumble, we partake, we reject and we embrace.  Together we are moved and deliberately move into a field of awareness that sustains all life.  As we have these experiences, they shift who we are, they shift the nature of our physical energy, our psyche and our spiritual energies.

The consequences of our experiments can not be left at the door; can not be left inside the prison chapel; are not relegated to just our hours together on Wednesdays or Thursdays. 

For me the energy that sustains these men, sustains me, and that energy travels with me in the forest, garden or on the dance floor. It is fundamental, and as such I cannot shake it.  Many times I find myself gathered into their story when I should like to focus more clearly on what is at hand, my family, the forest, the weeds of the garden.  I used to shame myself for not being able to control my thoughts better. 

I am coming into an understanding now that because of the depths of our practicing together, especially the depths of intention that I hold for us to know and experience the universal vital nature of harmony; in that field of communion, where we move together deep inside the play of yin and yang, of prisoner and free volunteer; we have a binding, a sincerity of energetic connection that has become an integral part of how I experience life at a fundamental level. 

The colloquial way of saying this might be that “they have gotten in my blood, or under my skin.”  Not in a way that has to do with the specifics of who they are, although those with greater Te or sincerity, integrity play forward in my mind often. Not in a way that threatens my vow to the institution to avoid undue familiarity.

They are a part of the ground of my being now, inside any deep experience of communion I have away from the prison setting when I have invoked the holy within me and have surrendered to the holy around me and dissolved the distinction between the two.  Then, in that field of energy that grows the garden, melts an old tree into the ground, or inspires a composer to a great dance beat, I find myself at the ground of our beingness.  While we each may describe this place somewhat differently or take different paths there; it is the same vast field of primal source energy, balanced harmonized Qi, the source of life, the source of inspiration. And there they are, my traveling companions.

So now as I sit inside an old hollow stump of silver and char writing on the ridge top, I remember them, and I pray that the energetic field of consciousness that binds us will transfer this bounty of green, this beautiful map of the cycle of life in the forest, the howl of the wind and the strength of the sun, in some way to them.  Inside their depths, from the roots up…and when I practice with them next time, may this quality of knowing the field together, activate in not only the subtle realms, but also in the more conscious realms of our awareness.  Together may we explore the possibilities that extend both into our life paths and those that carry us no matter where we life or what label we have across our backs.

I was asked to write something for The Vital Force, the journal of the T'ai Chi Chih community about why I go inside.  Other blog posts from earlier years have sought to answer this same question. There is a piece of the mystery happening here that seems reluctant to be pinned down with words.  Is this difficulty, an indicator the authenticity of this call?  Perhaps, nevertheless it seems to serve me and others to keep trying.  Here is the latest attempt:

Often I am asked “Why do you go inside? Why is this so important to you?” I have answered many ways over the 10 years I have been answering this call. Silly or serious answers seem to scratch only the surface. A few weeks ago a student inside, of considerable integrity, asked, and the answer that stumbled out felt closer than I have come yet to putting words around this call and response, this “pull” and “push” that drives and sustains me as I offer 4-7 programs 2-3 days a week.

The men (or probably better said, the men’s souls) “pulled” me in. Jim Hecker (original inmate teacher) had been visualizing a class while practicing for a year before it was manifested. It didn’t take more than a simple invitation, and that “yes” was out of my mouth before my mind had a chance to ask any questions. Still, 10 years later, they still “pull” me inside.

When there is a deep sincere hunger, the Holy responds with food. I have been “pushed” by spiritual forces that have visited me in my dreams and humbled me with the honor of carrying healing love inside. My other life activities have played supporting roles to enable this call, nothing seems to get in the way.

Once inside the sanctuary of the chapels, the men’s sincerity pulls the teachings out of me; the moves, the words, the stillness always are fresh and vital. Once inside the patterns of movement and stillness, the love of the universe pushes through. I feel so very much in the middle of these two powerful currents of Qi: all that is seeking an opening to bring harmony inside this place defined by its lack of harmony; and, all the hunger for the harmony, from those who seek refuge from the label of PRISONER stamped upon their lives. Through grace I have a roll in the expressions of these powerful Qi flows. “May I stay grounded, sincere, and open to ever expanding flows,” is my prayer as I enter. I leave, spent and grateful, in awe of the magnitude of blessings I have received and witnessed while offering myself.

Here (inside the prison chapel teaching) I am who I am meant to be. Here, I open inviting the flowering of the love inside me that yearns to be expressed, shared, and released. Here, I am the gift god means us all to be to one another. Here, I have no doubts of the goodness inherent within each of us. Here, I am guided to see beyond betrayal, domination, posturing, and many other manifestations of fear humans inflict upon each other. Here, inside all the contrasts, my coming makes possible an expression of harmony, an alignment with the energy of love, an internal cultivation of peace, inside me, inside the men, inside the prison. Here, I have found my place in a community of souls eager to seek together and be called forth by the harmony.

Quaker author Parker J. Palmer wrote "Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you." It is a good thing to be acting out of the divine blueprint for my life. Yet many times over the years my sense of self importance, my pride in “going inside” and of being their spiritual teacher, the ugly savior energy and other such egoic efforts to capture the spirit’s flag have caused me much consternation, sent me on sabbaticals and into therapy. Over and over I have been returned, humbled, seeing a little more clearly, allowing my life to do what it intends to do with me: push and pull forth harmony, until the foundation of all life, becomes my life.

This blog has been quiet lately because I am taking another break form my prison work, this time for the birth of grandsons expected in April and May. Ive been at a Spiritual Directors International conference and am now retreating at a near friends home outside of Washington DC.  My meditations this morning inspired me to read some of Quaker Healer John Calvi's writings on his web site ( johncalvi.com) and what I found was a great recipe for folks like me, in times like now:

 

"Friends today are called to put out so many fires of injustice; cruelty, militarism and poverty; it may be that we haven’t been so busy since the days of King Charles and Cromwell.  If this is so, then Friends should be called to greater spiritual disciplines than ever before – spiritual disciplines because the crux of our faith is to listen for the Divine message and at upon it.  Listening and acting have become more difficult as the noise of the world from suffering and deceit has risen.

So, what disciplines should we attend to?  Perhaps these:

• enough silence, listening for the Divine, trying not to hear yourself
• enough rest and nurture to be clear vessels to receive Light
• enough stillness to feel our humility as fragile carriers of Light
• enough comfort to offer our best effort
• enough strength kept up for the long haul
• enough concentration to focus while listening
• enough love of life to see beauty while surrounded by pain"

from "A Call to Spiritual Discipline"  Friends Journal May 2007

Funny how truths collide. In listening to one of my inside students last week speak about his difficulties with his work supervisor, I responded with a teaching that had a mere glimmer of a thread into a teaching I had once received.

He did not need to feel helpless. Nor did he need to turn to his habit of stoic resentments and stubborn justifications of his actions. He had some active, prayerful steps he could take. He could stay clean of resentments and judgments. He could activate his own connection with the spiritual support field. He could know deeply that they were both loved unconditionally by God.

Most importantly he could release, with his prayers and attitude, her (his supervisor’s) personal healing journey to the higher powers. Her work was her work. His work was his. They were bound together by the challenges of their relationship (the triggers and mirroring they were for each other); as well as the healing energy of God’s unconditional love and regard for them both. As his awareness was active in that larger energy of healing, it would support (without obligating) her participation in the same field. Invite the healing for himself. Invite the healing for her. Then watch for Grace, listen and follow.

Today, as I am combing my journals for poems, watching the rain fall quietly outside my window, I find the same teaching in my own journal. In 2005 I had been reading Walter Wink’s Powers that Be (p111). He wrote of how praying for your enemies submits them to a power greater than their oppression of you. This does not deny their power to enact injustice, but proclaims a greater overarching power of justice to which both sufferer and oppressor can turn to for inspiration, salvation and forgiveness. This style of prayer calls upon the “angel” of the oppressor to accountability of Divine Truth.

Then a few pages later on Valentines Day I wrote:  The key to freedom is meeting oppression with love.  Not escaping oppression by rejecting or fleeing, but engaging oppression with the dynamic of love.

In the prison system all kinds of us/them relationships exist. Staff, inmates, and guards see their lives and actions as negatively defined by those around them. Everyone suffers, everyone oppresses. Another way can open!

May all of the potential facets of this diamond in the rough learn how to pray for the light to shine through themselves and each other. For surely the potential is there for the friction to merely be the hands of the Holy chiseling out a diamond.

Am I teaching the men coping skills so then can "go with the flow" of all the violence dished out at them -- by their fellow prisoners, by the nature of their confinement, by themselves, by the institution, by society?

Am I teaching skills to roll over, expose your belly and take all the treading upon with an inner smile?

QiGong practices will provide tools to endure the harsh, violent dehumanizing time of incarceration.  QiGong connects with a bigger field of harmonized energy filled with potential.

QiGong shifts the human body, psyche and soul in overt and obvious ways as well as subtle and subversive ways. To bring your body into a state of harmony and balance has consequences that you may not choose deliberately.  Ripples vibrate flowing out from the center of awareness we cultivate, shifting our essence and relationships and surroundings.

I teach QiGong in prisons as a process essential to my personal journey.  As I learn to serve those who seem so different from me, I know them as essentially the same as me. The ability to be change, to be peace, and the motivation to change violent behaviors, institutions, traditions arise from an internal place. When we know personally the place where peace and change dance as brother and sister.

When the impulse to become an instrument of change, and instrument of peace, comes from that core connection with the root of all life – with moving stillness – it is emerges from a source much greater that the self – then our service rolls out on the flow of God’s love and reaches amazing places.

Revolutionary change, such as what is needed to turn the prison system and cycles of human violence and alienation inside out, will not come from anger or fear– even though anger at prison conditions and fear of violence is a natural response. It will come from insight into the nature of human violence by those who have been there, someone who can see the path out, because they have suffered inside the belly of the beast.

Someone like Victor Frankle who in watching his comrades in concentration camps loose their sense of purpose quickly die, while those who founds scraps of purpose, stayed alive in their souls, and could live off moldy crusts of bread.

Someone like Nelson Mandela who could lead a nation through tribunals of reconciliation because he knew, and yet could see beyond, the poison of human hatred that had held them captive for years.

One of the highest visions I hold is that my coming, and the tools of movements of balance that we share, will quicken (catalyze/nurture/stimulate) such leadership – and the comradeship and internal support essential for systematic change as well as personal change.

I trust that as we cultivate balance and harmony within the chapel, it does not begin and end with our class. There are thousand sparks of divined light in any prison – God flows on the human kindness that operates even clandestinely undercover.

The truest revolution is a revolution of the heart. The healthiest change is one that happens from within, organically seeking the greater potential we all have as our human birthright.

QiGong moves us into a state of fluid participation with universal energies of a greater wisdom, love and harmony than our own. As we move our various dimensions of being into harmony we emerge transformed.  This deeper level of participation with the life force that knows nothing of lockdowns, cell bars, guards and gates, and will carry us towards a time when prisons are a thing of the past.

Sometimes when I speak of going inside Folsom Prison, people on the outside have a hard time with the fact that I am moving, laughing, sharing and meditating with murderers, rapists, drug dealers and car thefts.  And also those who are in on parole technicalities and a few who have been falsely accused.  For the most part I do not know their crimes, (and they do not want me to know). Up until now it has been easier that way; easier for me to know each one as just as I find them that day in the chapel.  I don’t ask. It’s my business to teach meditation not to pry into their pasts.

Occasionally, their crime or sentence, directly or indirectly, arises during a conversation.  Or I have a chance to read something they have written which speaks about the road they have taken. One man, who I see quite regularly, has “lost count of how many people he killed.”  Whether this statement was for shock value or for real, I still don’t know.

Outsiders will ask, “How do they live with themselves?” 

Some of the men inside lock it away, or bury it all under a tale of self justification or self victimization.  Most keep silent, preferring not to speak of their past with people like me. Some learn to tell their story in different ways as they shift perspectives during the journey of their personal and spiritual transformation.

Two men have spoken directly with me about this over the 9 years I have been going inside. Their approach spoke of years of self reflection and healing, and as I have journeyed with them their actions have been in alignment with their words.

Their philosophy goes something like this: 

A life for a life.  My friend/enemy/victim/wife no longer has a life.  My actions took away his life from him and took him away from all his family and friends; it took away the contributions he would have made in the world.  That’s a permanent-no-going-back fact.  I am still alive.  I owe/dedicate/offer my life energy in return for the loss; it’s all I have to give and is still not enough.  I dedicate my life to service; however I can find the opportunities, right here in prison.  May I contribute to the worlds betterment times two – to honor him and to make honorable my own life.

Moments of beauty are precious inside the prison walls. 

One evening I heard tales of how shocking it was to come into the visiting room for the first time. Each of the two men I was listening to had stories of coming off right out of years of solitary confinement and suddenly finding themselves in the presence of women and children. Neither of then knew what to do; they literally went into shock and had to be helped to take the next steps to find their visiting families. 

Tears came to their eyes speaking of the happiness that comes with being present to children, watching them play, laugh and cry.  They sighed and spoke softly when telling of how it is to see all of the beautiful women.  "Women are all beautiful when you haven’t seen one for years."  "The energy is so different in the visiting room, so real, so full of variety."

One of the biggest heartaches of being locked up is not being able to contribute.  There is a long waiting list for the job of reading books for the blind and only a couple of positions available.  Chapel clerk jobs are coveted.  Most of the jobs available are full of down time; very few intail what we would call meaningful work. 

Finding meaning in your life, having purpose is fundamental; and a fundamental challenge for prisoners.  Two conversations recently brought forth examples to share.

One older man, who has always been a tinker and go-to, fix-it kind of guy, is now lost without his workbench.  His last job was fixing guitars so others could make music.  He knows that he will die here in prison because of some stupid mistakes (he did not elaborate) and he finds it such a waste not to be able to work, not to be able to fix things, not to be able to contribute.  “They can keep me here for the rest of my life if they need to,” he said, “just let me do something useful!”

Another recently was privileged to tend the Native American’s garden while they were on lockdown.  He was so full of joy and satisfaction when he spoke of the gift of being able to get his hands in the dirt and pull weeds, and to watch as birds came for the water, and the plants grew under his brief time of tending. He was getting hassled by other men and the guards for “going Native,” but found those easy to bear in exchange for the blessings of entering into the cycle of Nature for a tiny period of time.

The Sacramento Tree Foundation used to have a program where 1st and 2nd graders sprouted oak seedlings as a science project; and then the seedlings were cared for my inmates at Folsom until they were big enough to plant out in a park or school.  The project was canceled years ago.

The men I come in contact with are hungry for meaning in their lives.  There must be a way.