Praying for San Quentin for the healing of all Covid-19

Please join with us in praying for those suffering from Covid-19 outbreak in San Quentin and all other prisons...

(Image by Sharon McCarthy)

Eldra's out and dedicated to those inside

Eldra Jackson III was my rock and guide when I was teaching Moving Meditation inside. He has been out for 4 years now and is taking on the leadership of Inside Circle Foundation and speaking out in inspiring venues. Here are a few ... 

Watch Eldra's Ted Talk...

go.ted.com/eldrajackson

Watch him tell his story

https://www.topic.com/video-eldra-s-story

Wisdom 2.0 Main Stage Talk - Eldra Jackson III

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqqPwOAkJwE

Inside Circle & The Work

When I was teaching inside C Yard of CSP Sac (New Folsom Prison) many of my students were also involved in the Inside Circle program. This documentary was filmed in the chapel where I taught many of these same men. It is such an honor to be associated with light.

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.artforjustice.org/images/hd_life-in-pa.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.artforjustice.org/lawson.html&h=435&w=288&tbnid=cSuo0z9_ShKtlM&zoom=1&tbnh=276&tbnw=183&usg=__xUuIfjRt5wRGCAZL1snGnlL7qPE=&docid=cIhYV8MTr4xFQM

At Night I Fly (Awardwinning Full Documentary) [Video]

At Night I Fly (Awardwinning Full Documentary) [Video]

Great reads for folks with interests like ours:
The Lioness Tale by Diane Pendola
The Lioness Tale, powerful story/fable opening up the prison gates to our discovering of the liberating spirit within each of us. also check out the 12 episodes of Interviews with healers and prison related thinkers lifting up the challenges of the Lioness.  She has a programs for people inside.
http://www.thelionesstale.com/

Dreams from the Monster Factory: A Tale of Prison, Redemption and One Woman's Fight to Restore Justice to All
Dreams from the Monster Factory tells the true story of Sunny Schwartz's extraordinary work in the criminal justice system and how her profound belief in people's ability to change is transforming the San Francisco jails and the criminals incarcerated there.

True Notebooks, by Mark Salzman  what a quick and powerful read. Getting right into the heart of the juvenile justice system and the heart of so many young men. If you have ever wanted to see inside the hearts of youngsters leading a life behind bars, this will satisfy you and disturb you both.

Images help us pray. Here are some directly related to the prisons and criminal justice system. Lets tilt the scales differently with the power of our conscious intention for positive change.

common root of evil

In Joanna Hoyt's blog, Living as if the Truth was true, I read this and have been sniffing it carefully, wondering if it was for real.

 ... weighing the evil I do against that done by someone else is basically meaningless, because we are not separate. Just as our courage, love, integrity are not ours alone, are from God, flow between us in ways seen and unseen, so also our cowardice, our hate, our falsehood come from one root and pass between us openly and hiddenly. And it seems to me that to deny this connection is to consent to a lie, to make an opening for hate, to strengthen evil.

What is Something You Have Done, Recently, For Someone Else?

What is Something You Have Done, Recently, For Someone Else? Close your eyes and say to yourself, "state prison." Your mind likely fills with images, colors, sounds, emotions - all harsh - and most of them are probably accurate. But there is more to find in prison. There is humanity.

IPP Volunteer Becky LoDolce writes about her experiences inside San Quentin State Prison in this month's New Cartographer magazine. Becky shares the special acts of compassion the men in her group have found to do for each other.... For the complete story,

click here

Laying on of hands

A story I read recently in a wonderful book by Judy Cannato called The Field of Compassion, How the New Cosmology is Transforming Spiritual Life, shows us one way to think about our Praying for the Prisons project.  The jest of the story is that a man name Nate Sears was out on the Cape Cod beach checking the piers for storm damage when he spotted three pilot whales coming to shore. Realizing that they were intent upon beaching themselves, Nate sent someone off for help and waded out to the first whale.  Instinctively Nate placed his hands on the whale and quietly held them there.  The thrashing stopped and the whale became still.  Nate was able to turn it around and point it back out to sea.  Nate used his hands to calm and turn the second whale as well.  As Nate was calming the third whale help arrived.  The whales returned to their natural habitat without further incident.  Nate’s willingness to simple hold them in their travail made the difference.  Nate’s actions were intuitive, spontaneous and significant.

Our Prison system is thrashing about in its self destructive process of answering “bad with bad.”  May our prayers be the quiet and steady hands that will bring calm to the agitation and turn the self-destructive process around.  May we realize that what must happen first and foremost is to bring love’s power to bear.  From Love, the natural process of healing will flow forth.

Let us also pray that it become intuitive and spontaneous for us to pray for all those who get swept in our criminal justice system and are making their living inside of it.  That would be a turn around of major significance!

“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?”

Juvenile Justice

This Blog Talk Radio interview by Herb Blake is with Fr. Michael Kennedy is a Jesuit Priest who dedicates his life to seeking Social Justice for juvenile offenders and at-risk youth. In addition to his political activism, his spiritual ministry takes him inside juvenile halls, jails and prison as he works to ignite a spirit of hope in the hearts and minds of young men and women. Seth Weiner is an attorney and the Co-Director of the Center for Restorative Justice at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, CA. Seth is a tireless advocate for Restorative Justice. He not only works to educate future attorneys about the value of fundamental fairness for everyone, he also takes his message out into the community.

I think you will be inspired by it!

Insiders at New Folsom tell their transformation story

This site is full of my students, explore it!

Prisoners for Peace Website

Higher Consciousness Movement within the prison walls and beyond.

We, the Prisoners for Peace at New Folsom Prison, Sacramento 

believe and want the following:

 

1.      WE BELIEVE THAT PEACE CAN COME THROUGH THE CULTIVATION OF ONE'S OWN CONSCIOUS.

2.      WE BELIEVE LIVING IN THE HEART SPACE/CHAKRA CAN GUIDE US THROUGH THAT CULTIVATION SAFELY.

3.      WE BELIEVE THAT TAKING FULL RESPONSIBILITY FOR ONE'S OWN HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS CAN ILLUMINATE THE WORLD AROUND THAT BEING.

4.      WE WANT TO BUILD A BRIDGE BETWEEN THE FREE COMMUNITY AND THE PRISON POPULATION ON A CONSCIOUS LEVEL.

5.      WE WANT TO HELP PEOPLE BECOME AWARE OF THE SHIFT IN CONSCIOUSNESS THAT’S ALREADY TAKING PLACE.

Whats this about?

Several times while traveling recently I have had the opportunity to share this deep concern of my heart, this Calling.  And from inside me the words stumbled, while the spirit of the words made it through and we have several more champions rallied to this cause, it was made clear to me that I need to work on my "elevator speech".  Here is what came this morning as I am anticipating taking the cause up at the Prison chaplain conference later this afternoon:

As Einstein said, you can't solve a problem with the same level of thinking that created it. 

So this essay is a call to activate our spiritual problem solving techniques, 
prayer in its many forms and formats, 
to address the brokenness of our prison system, 
to address the brokenness in our society 
that relies only on revenge and banishment 
to solve problems of criminal behavior, and 
to activate our deep faith, 
that through God all things are possible, 
into our actions.

our longest stride

Diane Pendola has put out another wonderful reflection in her season essay called Earthlines:

Can we destroy evil by destroying a person who incarnates evil? Or are we all diminished by this choice,  sinking us as a community towards the evil we seek to eliminate? Jesus said, "Those whose sins you forgive are forgiven. Those whose sins you retain are retained." I wonder, if by championing the death penalty we do not continue to retain the sin in our own communal body? In a cosmotheandric reality we are not a collection of individuals, we are a community of persons. As a community of persons, intrinsically interconnected with one another, can we choose to live by the higher values of our human natures?  Can we lift up the most wounded members of our body rather than seeking to destroy those parts of ourselves that stubbornly resist destruction (as history demonstrates) but which still remain an open possibility of transformation? I am not saying that the perpetrators of this horrible crime should ever be on the streets again. But can I - we -see them as human, as  human beings capable of great evil,  perpetrators of great evil but more than the evil within them? This is very difficult. But it goes to the heart of who we understand ourselves to be as human beings. Human consciousness is  responsible for the greatest evils in the world- and the greatest love. Do we believe that evil is an ultimate power? Then there is no possibility of forgiveness and the law of karma eventually devours us.  Do we believe that Love is the ultimate power? Then forgiveness is possible. Then we can re-invent what it means to be human.

...  I am engaged in an experiment that demands the longest stride of soul I ever took. Those relegated to the dark cells of our prisons and the rejected corners of our minds are us. We rise or fall together. We cannot deny the evil that is within us any more....

    The human heart can go to the lengths of God.

            Dark and cold we may be, but this

            Is no winter now.

            The frozen misery

            Of centuries breaks, cracks, begins to move,

            The thunder is the thunder of the flows,

            The thaws, the flood, the upstart Spring.

            Thank God our time is now when wrong

            Comes up to face us everywhere,

            Never to leave us 'til we take

            The longest stride of soul one ever took.

            Affairs are now soul size.

            The enterprise

            Is exploration into God.                             (Christopher Fry, The Sleep of Prisoners)

I suggest reading the whole essay and getting on her email list! 

Haola and Happy Holidays

Death Row Prayer Cards

Today I discovered this story on the Death Penalty Focus website that told  of Ray McKeon's  creation of the prayer cards for Death Row inmates in 2002.  Having one of these prayer cards on my dash board for a year or so was a powerful experience as I would pray for the Death Row inmate, his family, the victim and their family. It was me that was transformed.  Prayer by prayer I opened to the humanity both suffering and healing.  The power of these simple cards really is at the root of this current Call to Prayer.  Thanks Ray!

Work of unimaginable significance

Today I was at a local Restorative Justice Meeting and had a deep inquiry conversation with my co-author of the phamphlet and then this opens up in fromt of me in my inbox.... four steps forward today!

 There's Nothing "Magical" about Societal Healing by James O'Dea

"Yet we know that our collective wounds can be addressed and that societies can make progress in healing the most virulent wounds of the past. Social healing tools involve learning about the role and practice of deep dialogue; learning from the basic insights of mind/body health and healing; drawing from contemporary insights into the nature of consciousness and human capacities; testing new approaches to collective trauma recovery; practicing modalities of listening including compassionate and integral listening; promoting forgiveness and atonement; learning about different cultural approaches to restorative justice; exploring the process of truth-telling and mutual acknowledgment; and exploring the interface of personal narrative and historical narrative where subjective experience is empathically honored. None of these approaches is particularly fast-track.
...
This is work of unimaginable significance for humanity, requiring the ability to access reservoirs of courage and compassion. It is work on the long road of healing. The miracle is that it is able to encompass any past horror and resolve it in a way that it no longer ends up in the hearts of future generations.
Maybe, just maybe, a day will come when a wave of love will enter unhampered into the hearts of coming generations with such power that it washes away all the toxins of hatred.
And not unlike the hundredth monkey who learned to wash the mud off her yams and started a revolution, whose innovative behavior entered the field of awareness for other monkeys to copy, maybe reconciling love in enough humans will tilt the whole human enterprise away from its contagiously wounded past. Until then, one healing step at a time, and then another, and another."

Spontaneous Evolution

Last night I saw Swami Beyondananda and purchased the book, Spontaneous Evolution his alter ego Steve Bhaerman wrote with Bruce Lipton.  It looks like an excellent chance to dialogue on the evolution of the prison system.  Even if this is a conversation solely between the book and myself, I feel good about it being in the common.

In the introduction they lift up the biological example of a caterpillar becoming a butterfly.  Both have the same DNA but are receiving and responding to a different organizing signal. From within the dying cells of the caterpillar, a new breed of cells energy called imaginal cells emerges and creates an entirely new form.

Those of us deeply engaged in awakening the potential of our prisons to become a healthy, healing environment contributing to the betterment of our collective human story on this planet, are the imaginal cells, it is from us that an entire new form will emerge.  Our prayers send the signal and collese the energy the (our) imaginal cells need for the transformational process.

As Swami Beyondananda enjoys saying, "we are the answer to our own prayers!"  And even as we may not have an articulated vision for what that answer might be, we offer up our prayers.  We can trust that the information for the new way forward is in our collective DNA.  Every spiritual tradition calls us to move from fear to love, this is the overarching evolutionary process of human life. All life forms seek their free flowing nature.

As we pray for the prisons to become places of healing and peace we are taping into the deep evolutionary nature of life it self seeking its own true nature.  As we pray for the prisons we are activating this natural desire and energizing the millions of imaginal cells seeking the new way.

As we pray for the prisons, we naturally shift away from old beliefs focusing on the worst in people, and begin to believe in the possibility of transformation for everyone and every institution. The stronger our beliefs, the greater the opportunity for this shift to occur within our lifetime.

Radical change in mindset (for example shifting to a belief that slavery is immoral) has taken centuries, and decades (shifting belief that tobacco is unhealthy), and now years (global warming). In our interconnected world we can shift very quickly towards fear and love (9-11).

Prisons as a special kind of health care delivery is very possible, we have the information, we have the creativity, we have the skills, all we need is the desire.  Prayer takes the desire hidden in our hearts into the collective field. Prayer is an act of empowerment, for such an effort will only manifest as a result of the shifting of our collective will.

Clues inside a community of fellow seekers

Everywhere I read these days, I see clues to the overarching question that runs through my veins.... How does energy collect and harmonize around the purpose of transformation of our prison system (indeed criminal justice system) into a system dedicated to healing, a system that is live giving, that releases the creative potential of all the individuals involved and our society ...

I want to capture these clues, these slights of hands, in hopes that in the collecting we might discern creative ways forward.  But one clue does not make a good blog post, and often when I discover them, all I see is their twinkling.  Each twinkle seems unlikely to illumin much of the way forward, and yet perhaps collected ...  so this blog post will be a cumulative effort, a little here and there, and perhaps it will be a reader that slips behind the clues into the mystery.

Lets start with the one that I just found.  

"To become a Gandhi or a Martin Luther King, Herrymon suggests, we need to base our activism not on an intellectual analysis or on a personal desire to "save the world," but rather on a deep commitment to the Way of Truth. This commitment requires giving up our ego-centered perspective and joining in a community of fellow seekers."  Source

This clue right now seems to be about joining together with others who care deeply, and committing our selves to the deeper way of Spirit's desire for us, vs my desire for the prisons. Learning to pray less from my personal agony over conditions and challenges, and to pray more from within the Big Heart that holds us all and all potential ways forward.


The article continues: "Non-violence springs from a recognition that my neighbor is just as important, just as sacred in the eyes of God, as I am."  and I substitute: Non-violence springs from a recognition that every prisoner & every victim is just as important, just as sacred in the eyes of God, as I am. 


and sites Isaiah: "All they that take up the sword shall perish by the sword" (Matthew 26: 52), and Isaiah, "Your hands are full of bloodshed, wash yourselves clean, banish your evil doings from my sight, cease to do wrong, learn to do right, make justice all your aim, and put a check on violence" (Isaiah 1:15-17).

..."Lao Tsu’s purpose, which was to avoid "naming things and cogitating theories."  To this I hear to stop calling the current system names in a childish way saying this is bad, this is wrong, I hate that!"  and to stop seeking a theory of change that arises out of the existing conditions and approaches to what I call the problem. Ambiguity is an essential part of the way.


In the footnotes:  6. Herrymon’s tone is uncompromising and bleak: "It is essential to grasp the nature of the destruction that we may indeed bring upon ourselves: a destruction not just of evil places or of evil people, but a destruction of all places, all people. For the torment of our times, for the evil in them, for our wars, for our fears, we are all responsible. The pacifist is as responsible for war as the militarist, the doer of good works as responsible for poverty as the oppressor, the man of prayer as responsible for ignorance of Truth as the blasphemer. If but a handful among us were completely given to the light of Truth, our world could not remain sunk in torment. But there is no such handful. There is no remnant. All are responsible; each one is responsible. There is no purely personal salvation; if we do not seek to be joined in Truth with every living human person (and, in a sense, with every one who is dead) we shall be damned separately. There is no indication that the Kingdom of God is to be won by merely personal initiative" (The Power of Truth, pp. 7-8).

These comments came while reading:   Quaker Theology #6 -Spring 2002, "Herrymon Maurer and the Tao of Quakerism"  by Anthony Manousos

Evin in his sin...

Love a man, even in his sin, for that love is a likeness of the divine love, and is the summit of love on earth
-Dostoevsky