“What kind of place would this prison be, if it was governed by compassion?”

Moving Meditation (Qigong) on C yard at CSP-Sac today, took me another important step in working forward the prayer that our prisons become places of healing and peace. Lately I’ve been thinking it was one step to ask (pray) and another step to visualize (manifest) the new possibility.

I had been explaining about visualization and we practiced, after a deep opening, visualizing the empty chairs filled, and any barriers dissolved that were keeping the other students from getting to class.  And I was getting ready to bring up the big visualization project I hoped they’d all participate in and the door opened and three more students came in and filled the empty chairs.

Gathering them into our centered Qigong state, I suggested that we all ask the question: “What kind of place would this prison be, if it was governed by compassion?”  Not seeking the answer right yet, just opening into the question as we practiced. We talked about everything being created out of our imagination, if not ours, God’s, or our ancestors. We imagine and the creative process begins.  If we can’t even frame the question, if we can’t even wonder about the possibilities, how can it come about?

I told the story I read about in the plane coming home last night from Pittsburgh, of the groups who gathered in the church basements in divided Germany, daring to ask the question that seemed so far fetched: “What would Germany be like a thousand years from now when the Berlin Wall finally came down?” A movement of prayer groups began gathering all over Germany to ask these questions and imagine a new future. And the  unimaginable became history, in dramatically less than a thousand years.

So why not us?  Why not ask the question that seems so far fetched? Why not see where our creative minds might take us?

“What kind of place would this prison be, 
if it was governed by compassion?”

Coming home I was thinking about conditions, prison conditions. Certainly prisons are one of the most conditioned places on earth.  The rules are tight, the conditions kept severe and deliberate, as controlled as possible.  I was holding that up against our discussion of holding the future of the prison in the unconditioned field of potential, in the possibility that compassion or unconditional love might become the purpose orchestrating the conditioned life of our prisoners.

Here is a play of opposites if ever there was one.  And that seems to be exactly the challenge that God has put me up to.  If we can visualize this, anything is possible.

Typically we think these are two opposites, conditional and unconditional.  Unconditional sounds like freedom and that is seemingly impossible in the context of the prison system.  The prison’s very purpose is to take away freedom and impose conditions upon those they wish to punish. So to juxtaposition compassion, which is often thought of  as unconditional love, with the conditions of the prison, and its deliberate withdrawal of freedoms, finds us quickly dismissing the notion as impossible. Out of the realm of possibility. Is it?

Perhaps it is, if we continue on perceiving the prison’s as God-less places, perceiving prisoners as devils, and dismissing resurrection as fantasy. Let us stop choosing to be blind to the unconditional presence of God in whom the prisons live and breath and choose their future. Any kind of condition can arise from the unconditional.

Our prisons could look very much the same, the prisoner’s sentences remain the same, and public safety still be the primary reason for isolating people behind bars.  Within all the conditions that are required for prisons to fulfill their purpose within society, we could conduct our mission with compassion.

Compassion is certainly not the opposite of public safety.  Compassion can be full of rules and expectations, full of conditions.  Yet compassion believes in love as the primary agent in healing.  Compassion leaves no one out, delegates no one as hopeless.

“How would our prisons be, if compassion were the governing principle?”