Kiddos, aching souls, and the school-to-prison pipeline

Photo by Mike Mozart

I don’t make the connection until eight weeks into the summer.

“I really love what I’m doing with Reunion and Church of Christ, Right Now,” I keep telling friends, family, anyone on the street who will listen to me gush about my new love.

I feel moved when I go to jail. I feel deep meaning in the conversations and relationships and support groups with the ones coming home from jail, the ones long ago in jail and now leaders in the movement, the ones who’ve never been to jail and desperately don’t want their grandkids to go there. Jesus is in jail. The Spirit is in the vulnerability and open heartedness. The leaders of this movement are prophets and saints and I want to sit at their feet and soak up all their wisdom and commitment and love.

“On the other hand,” I shrug, “the after-school program stuff is fine—I just plan field trips and help out with a summer camp for kids. But I’ve been there before. I’ve taught reading before; I’ve worked in a summer daycare; I’ve written curriculum. I’m ready for something new. I’m ready to put my theology to use.”

Taking kindergarteners to the American Indian museum to build an igloo, after all, is not really theology. Right?

*

It is time to go on a trip with the middle school kids.

I squish into the van with them as we drive the twenty minutes to get downtown.

The three boys sitting on the seat next to me are bragging about how bad they are. “I’ve been expelled from three schools,” one says. “I’ve been expelled from one, but I have a feeling I’ll get kicked out of my new one,” another responds, trying to keep up. “My cousin got suspended,” says the goody-goody, bless his heart.

I want to roll my eyes. I am sure these kids are exaggerating. I keep listening.

“My dad has been in jail most of my life,” is where the conversation migrates. “Almost all my relatives have been in jail,” says another kid. “My brother had to go to juvy for stealing an iPhone from the store,” says another. “My teacher keeps telling me I’m gonna end up in juvy,” says the kid with the dad in jail. “You only get three strikes before you get locked up for good,” someone warns. “My cousin has four strikes though,” one protests.

And like that, the synapses meet, and my heart is weeping and praying for each of them by name.

These kids I work with in the mornings will become the incarcerated folks I work with in the afternoons.

It was only last night that our support group had a heart-wrenching conversation about belonging and love. So many aching souls in that room, confessing that they'd longed for more love from their mothers and fathers. They'd run away from home because of it. They'd ended up in juvy because of it. They'd sought love in all the wrong places, formed all the wrong kinds of relationships. Only to find now, at 28 or 37 or 59, that they are tired of the search. They are tired and they want to rest here in this community, in this place, where if they are brave enough to be themselves, there is love to be found.

And now, when these twelve- and thirteen-year-olds give their macho stories about their dads absent in jail, I know I am hearing the same story in a different tone of voice. In just a few short years, these boys are so likely to become the men in jail, wanting another way but not knowing how to repair relationships, how to break out of poverty without a little quick money on the side to get them started. They are so likely to become those tired men sitting around the table at support group. Because if it’s all they’ve ever seen from every man in their family, who can tell them there’s another way? I grew up without ever questioning if I’d go to college. Everyone in my family went to college. It was a given. What is the given for these kids?

For some of them—the troublemakers, the ones with a rebellious streak—the connection is not hard to visualize. But the little guy in the front row with the sideways baseball cap? The beautiful girl with a scowl who brightens as she comes up with the most thoughtful answer to every question? Surely not them, too?

And then my heart skips a beat, as I think of the sweet little kindergarteners I took to the museum yesterday. The tiny little girls and boys who hold hands and walk through the exhibits with their matching visors and garner the admiration of every stranger. The adorable little voices who chorus, “Thank you, Miss Katie,” and giggle so freely. The open hearts who stare in wide-eyed wonder at the whale hanging from the ceiling and exclaim, “Whoa!” every time I open the box to show them a new type of rock.

It is one thing for the moody, exasperating middle-schoolers to grow up to be incarcerated. But who will these kindergarterners grow up to be?

Lord, have mercy. May it not be so.

*

For the last two weeks, I want to soak up all the love and open-heartedness I can from the re-entry program, from the beautiful spirits of the men and women coming home from prison.

And then I want to take and fling it with all my strength into the hearts of the kids in the summer program, whether by presence or by conversation or, simply and desperately, by prayer.

Because my work is not divided this summer into two unrelated ministries. It is one. The love we share in the support group is the same love needed by the kids. If they can receive love now, perhaps they won’t smoke and drink to escape it all. If they can be wrapped in the grace and protection of the spirit now, perhaps they will find a different way than their fathers.

And for me--if this daily breaking of my heart can be captured and bathed in the Spirit, perhaps something beautiful becomes of me, too.

When we need everyone at the table

Imagine you are part of a movement to dismantle mass incarceration, in part through changing the prison-industrial system by which profits are made when more people are in jail. Imagine that representatives of this very prison-industrial system seek to join your cause. Will you let them stay?

Imagine you are part a community which wants to build supportive relationships across divisions of race and class. You want everybody to have a place in your community, a place to share their experiences and feelings. Imagine someone comes into your space spouting divisions of race and class. Will you let them stay?

*

About 10 folks in my organization, as a creative protest measure, bought one share each in the largest for-profit prison company in the US. Being shareholders, they attend the shareholder meeting every year to advocate for better ways, different profit incentives, various reforms. There may not be any visible results yet, but they are witnessing to a different way.

Meanwhile, some of the board members of the prison company have taken an interest in the efforts of my organization, the way they seek to support folks coming home from prison. They have taken an interest in our support groups, and our house for guys who've been recently incarcerated, and the jobs and education programs to which we are connected. They have given donations. They have come to visit. One may speak at our fundraiser.

The director of our organization acknowledged the dissonance. "Yes, it's goofy," she said. "It's an uncomfortable reality. When they first started giving us money, we weren't sure what to do. But then we thought if we didn't want to accept dirty money, whose money could we accept?

"Besides," she added, "we believe we need everyone at the table."

Yes. We can only break down systems of injustice if everyone is on board. Everyone. And that means that we have to be willing to engage with folks who disagree with us, who threaten our cause, with whom our relationship is complicated or goofy.

Because it's relationships and transformed hearts that we're after--not just new laws that leave old walls and divisions in place.

*

Photo by Jim Champion

In my internship, we have meetings called "Freedom Circles," which are dangerous things. Like an AA meeting or a summer camp sharing circle, the meetings start off with this week's leader reading or reflecting on a particular topic, and then there are 45 minutes before us in which anyone may speak. Which is the beauty, and the danger.

Because everyone is welcome at the table, and everyone has a voice.

Last week "everyone" included someone who was frustrated, someone who was angry, someone who was lonely, someone who felt wronged by the group. There we were, all of us broken together in the room, and the time was open before us, free for the seizing.

Several people shared, some speaking with candor and honesty, some with anger and walls, some with repetitive phrases that made me wonder whether this meeting had a point. There are days where the sharing is deep and succinct and profound, where someone gives us a window into her past, where someone acknowledges the pain he has caused others, where someone makes a new connection about her feelings of abandonment that have led to addiction, where someone admits he doesn't know how to fix his relationship.

This was not that day. A few folks shared. They mostly talked too long. They mostly exuded frustration and anger. After each person, we chorused "Thanks for sharing," even though saying it felt a bit disingenuous. After one angry outburst, I noticed sidelong glances and folks uncomfortably shifting in their seats.

The leader took it all in stride. Later, he would tell me, "that meeting went exactly how it was supposed to go." He proceeded with the meeting, explaining that we were all about to share the ritual of communion. He broke half of a hamburger bun and held up a punch cup half full of grape juice, then began passing them around the room, even as some of the other members of the circle continued looking around, unsettled, uncertain. I noticed a certain tension in my chest.

After a hesitating start, a woman offered the cup to her neighbor, saying, "This cup was given so that you may know that even though you are broken, you are not beyond God's love." Just as the reality of those words began to flood into all of us, the leader had begun singing. "Bind us together, Lord, bind us together with cords that cannot be broken...bind us together in love." A few of us joined in, and as we sang and shared and ate, something happened.

My breathing slowed and I turned just in time to see a man who had earlier been shaking his head at his neighbor in disgust and frustration, offering to him the bread and the cup. This was, for both of them, their first time sharing communion in our group. "The body of Christ and the blood of Christ, given for you," the man said as his neighbor took a piece. The neighbor then turned to me. I knew he was angry at me for an earlier miscommunication. But he pushed the cup to me and said simply, "The body and blood of Christ."

"Amen."

I thought how neither of us deserved this moment. None of us deserved to be at this table.

The leader closed in prayer, and people began filing out. I stood to talk to my neighbor, apologizing for hurting him. He accepted my apology. By this time the rest of the folks had left, and I wondered if some of them had been put off by the halting meeting.

I hope not.

Because to dismantle mass incarceration, we need everyone at the table. To build true community, we need to welcome everyone to the table, broken people included. And as Jesus reminded me that night, communion is holy because it reminds us that we are all sitting at a table only by mercy--you, and me, and the one with the angry outburst, and the one with only frustration in her heart, and whoever else walks in the door tomorrow.

When you dare to be happy

Photo by David McSpadden

At Dayspring last Friday night, we entered the Great Silence after dinner, around 9pm. We kept it until 10am Sunday morning. In between, we could walk the lovely grounds, journal, read, pray, sit, eat, sleep, anything as we felt led. But we could not speak.

*

Me and silence, 2000 to present:

For a time, music was my silence, my retreat, my freedom. No words needed to explain myself, no people to explain myself to. Just me and eighty-eight keys in a small soundproof room, playing it out.

During a day of silence last fall, I breathed for the first time in a month. Then, I scribbled anger and disappointment at myself, all over my journal.

I am the awfulest person in the world at getting up in the morning. But just before dawn (especially in early spring) is my most favorite time to be silent, alone, alert.

Once on a technology fast, I experienced road rage such as I have never experienced before, until I pulled over to the side of the road to eat a peanut butter sandwich and make growling noises--yes I am that insane--since I couldn't turn on the radio to tune it out.

Silence is boring. Silence is edifying. Silence is restorative. Silence is terrifying. I crave silence and run to escape it all at once. In silence, I see God. I see beauty. I also see myself.

*

I came to Dayspring expecting something. Something angry, and difficult, and cathartic. Something with tears and a rehashing of old disappointments warring within me and (just maybe) a profound new insight that would change everything. I came in expecting that the silence would be, at its core, hard work.

So, anticipating the hours ahead, my first task when silence began was to read over every journal entry I've written since I started divinity school. It only took about 20 minutes. There weren't many, The entries there were consisted of wrangling and wrestling and anxiety and questions. Questions about how to approach my vocation, my marriage, my spiritual life, my relationships. How to process the painful things in my past.

God, I know I can't handle all of it this weekend, so please guide me to what it is you want me to wrestle with.

In the morning morning, after a deliciously fresh breakfast and a run through forested country roads, I was lying flat on my back, stretched out in the cool hallway when it struck me, clear as day, clear as the title of the weekend's program: "The Gift of Divine Time."

This weekend is not for you to wrestle. Having named the questions and anxieties last night is enough. Now, let go--not in avoidance or denial but in trust--and commend all into the hands of the Spirit. Now, simply enjoy. This silence is for you a gift.

*

Something shifts, and I am in the present.

It is a gift that I am here. The sun and the woman in the rocking chair next to me on the porch and the rain and the bed and the fresh food--all is gift.

It is a gift that I am asleep by ten.

It is a gift that I am here in community without needing to explain myself, to worry over my words. I confess I may enjoy people more when we can simply be together, no words.

It is a gift when the storm hits Saturday night, and I am sitting on the porch looking out at the lightning and the rain that has blurred my vision of the horizon and the wind that is making the trees sway violently. I startle when the first tree branch falls, but then I grin, glee splattered over my face as the wind blows the rain under the porch and against my skin. I stare down the storm until it passes, and retire for the evening.


It is a gift that I am running on these rolling hills just before breakfast. I don't want to turn around, I want to keep going, but I know my knees and I know my lack of fitness and further I know that there is more gift--scrambled eggs, fresh fruit, a cinnamon raisin bagel--all waiting for me back at the lodge.

It is a gift that I am for the first time walking a prayer labyrinth, like an interior pilgrimage toward God, and it is a gift that the spider on the porch is spinning her web, slowly, deliberately, in concentric circles, like a labyrinth.

I take in all the gifts, and somehow in taking in the gifts I feel all that is un-gift begin to unclench in me. It is not gone. There is work yet to do. But it is unraveling, and I think maybe it has even been instructive. I think maybe I am learning from this silence to be present in each step of the journey, to trust that I, even with all my noise and junk and wandering--am on a path with God.

It is a gift that I am sitting before the lily pond where the geese go for rest, and I am reading over and over Mary Oliver's "Morning Poem" (look it up) and she is telling me that notwithstanding my sometimes-leaden spirit there is "somewhere deep within you/ a beast shouting that the earth/ is exactly what it wanted" and she is challenging me to dare to be happy, to accept this as gift, to love the earth and the community and the place God has given me.

For this moment, at least, I wholeheartedly do.

*
(An appendix)

Labyrinth
You will have entered, perhaps, with joy.
On a sure path to the center.
You will wind and double back enough times you feel
you might have returned to the place you started,
as though moving backwards.
This only means you are in the thick of it.
Then one day, having relaxed into the rhythm of your steps,
perhaps without noticing it--
you will find yourself there.

Where? A rock, on which is laid a feather, a stone,
some broken pottery.
It is not, perhaps, what you expected to find here.
You find yourself looking outward, at all that impelled you.
From the rock, it appears beautiful.
You want to run to it.

Wait.
Close your eyes, breathe in gratitude.
For waves of green. For each bird
chronicling your journey.
Each stone leading your path.

Then, a moment after it has been too long,
you will begin the slow journey out, which is
perhaps the most important part.
And when having made your final turn,
you find in your pocket the tiny shard
of pottery, you will understand that you
must turn toward the center
again.

Open-hearted

To be open-hearted: this is my touchstone for the summer.

You may guess that is because I see in myself over the last couple years, a tendency towards walls, towards clenching, towards closed-heartedness. I am not sure why I stopped playing the piano and writing tears into my journal and keeping my soul open to the kind and unkind things that people said. I only know now, that it is easier to watch TV than to write in a journal. It is easier to tolerate people than to love them. It is easier to be busy than to be still.

To be open-hearted­ comes with such risk.

*

I was the epitome of an open heart, then. I was aching and frightened but so tender, so ready for healing, ready to meet God, however terrifying God might be.

So I sat, broken heart and all, fears and failures and all, on a roof under the stars in Tanzania and I said to two people whom I had met less than a week before, I am going to need community.

But who tells two people you have just met that you are aching from a rough year and desperately need their friendship? Deep needs should be reserved for a friendship of six months, at least.

The hazy, humid air was silent except with the buzzing of mosquitos, and I wished I hadn’t said it, but the words were unswallowable.

Wondering if you’ve said too much is a byproduct, I think, of life open-hearted. I was just naïve enough to hope these people might actually care. (I was lucky. It turned out that they did.)

*

This summer, I am trying to be naïve enough to imagine that people care.

To imagine that I might have something to offer to the woman sitting next to me who is just out of prison, motivated for her recovery from addictions, and desperate for a job. To imagine that she might have something to offer to me. It may be a long shot, but I have to be prepared for the moment when it comes.

To intentionally drain the demanding, sarcastic tone from my voice before I speak to my husband. Instead, to tell him how soft and vulnerable I feel, how unlike myself. Perhaps, in that one moment he misinterprets my tone, senses me accusing again, and snaps back, I will hurt. But I keep my heart exposed anyway, because the oxygen and the yearning will bring it healing.

To let theology be simple sometimes. “I don’t question God,” the man sitting next to me says at support group. “I just ask for help for myself and others for today.”

To return with trepidation to my long-abandoned journal, unafraid of what I might learn about myself, about God. Even if the truth hurts, it will set me free.

*

Church of the Saviour is a good place to be, for all of this. It is rather a way of life, here, to ask and be asked, “what is your deep need?” It is hard to get far here without sharing from an open heart.

In one of the groups, I am asked to share my “money autobiography”—all the thoughts, feelings, and experiences I’ve had around money throughout my life.

When I was in perhaps middle school, I asked my mother about how mortgage worked. This led into a conversation about her income, worth of the house, debt, and various other personal financial details. At the end of the conversation, she told me that I should probably not discuss any of the information with others. They are not the types of details that we share publicly.

They are not. And yet, in this community, sharing them is part of the practice of being open-hearted and together. So I try to share honestly about money—not dollar amounts, but the experiences of giving and receiving, of shame and conflict and generosity and hurt and acceptance and power that have surrounded my life as a person in an economic world.

I enter the room anxious, but when I leave, I know that we all have struggles with money, and no matter what the details—rich or poor, envy or shame—we are in it together. We need each other.

*

Three days later, on Sunday, there is a period in the church service where people can share aloud their gratitude, or their prayer requests.

In most churches in my experience, church prayer requests follow an unspoken rule of being restricted to aunts with cancer, travel safety, and grief for a lost relative. But here today, a woman’s voice is cracking as she speaks about her friend whose father is returning from ten years in prison, and another woman is crying with joy about her sister’s return to this country after two years abroad, and a man in the back shares that his work has, and a grandmother says she is just so grateful for her daughter-in-law who has been a pillar of strength as her son is going through a hard time.

You sit there listening, and if there is something on your heart, you feel that maybe next week you might be brave enough to share it. You feel like people really want to know what’s going on with you, like people are really willing to tell you what’s going on with them. You feel there is a sense of deep caring and deep trust. It gives you inspiration, and you think you feel the walls crumbling a little bit in your own heart.

A grain of wheat

My last couple blog entries, I noticed as I pondered a title for today’s post, have been about mourning, grieving. Apparently, in addition to being a summer of sunny walks and delightfully simple bike commuting and silent retreats and deeply intentional ministry, this is also a summer of grieving, if I will let it be. Based on my experience of God, I can only suspect this means that new life is just around the corner.

Photo by Capture Queen

It's been a year since we lived in Cherokee, but John and I visited a couple weeks ago. It was a perfect sunny day in late spring. We drove past blue ridges and walked small-town streets. While he worked, I went to see elk in the park and ran on my favorite trail by a rolling brook.

Over a pensive cup of hot chocolate, I thought: this is quite possibly the most beautiful place I have ever lived, maybe even will ever live. I thought: And I never loved it.

Perhaps this is why a guard goes up when I hear the word Cherokee. To say Cherokee conjures up disappointment, not with the town and the lovely people there, not even with John for having brought me to a place where it was hard to find outlet for my gifts, not even with God for the loneliness I experienced there. To say Cherokee conjures up disappointment with myself for being unable to live into the gifts and beauty that were before me.

So I missed out. And in an attempt to rebuild and find new community in Durham and move into bright futures of real careers and family and community, in wanting to leave the past behind, I have not let myself mourn for what might have been, for the beauty that eluded me.

*

This summer in Washington DC feels like a homecoming. Biking along the familiar streets—having instant familiarity with the neighborhoods and networks of half the people I meet because of the smallness of this city—running into old friends on the street or at the park—all of these things have made my first two weeks here rich and lovely.

All of these things remind me, too, of what I lost when we moved away from here.

Even if we moved back, the area around the metro has been built up and gentrified, the grocery store gutted and redone, the church that was my primary community disbanded, friends have moved away. Maybe most importantly, I am no longer a single twenty-something with other twenty-something friends who spend hours eating and laughing and sharing on Friday nights.

Marriage, it turns out, is a kind of loss. You have to release one thing to cling to another.

*

For a school assignment, I ask my internship supervisor for a verse from Scripture that captures the spirit of the Church of the Saviour. She thinks for a moment, then shares a saying of Jesus.

Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. (John 12:24)

The Church of the Saviour movement, she explains, believes that wholeness—both inner wholeness and the growth of a healthy community—is only possible through the steady work of dying to our egos, letting ourselves break open for others. 

Am I ready for this? Am I ready to walk through the grieving process towards wholeness?

In church Sunday, a man spoke about the void he had felt for the past two years, since his father died of cancer. There was a dullness, an emptiness, like a banner over his every step, and he was constantly aware of his desire for it to go away, to let him get back to clarity in his work and family life. And then in a flash of intuition he realized that God was in that nothingness. The very feeling he wanted to purge was the place where God and joy and love could meet him.

I’m a nodder, and as he told this story, I nearly bobbled my head right off of my shoulders. I felt I knew exactly what he was talking about.

When my grandma died, there was a dullness to life for about a year, that same strip of void traveling along above me wherever I went. In some ways I miss it, because in that aching hole she was always with me. I also knew without a doubt that God was in that place, in that death, in that grief, slowly cultivating something that would spring forth anew.

What I had not thought until Sunday was to relate that experience to the past few years that have felt so spiritually vapid. What if God’s presence is in the very dullness I’ve tried to avoid? What if I have to lean into that disappointment for a moment to meet God in the place God has been presenting Godself to me? What if I need to accept gravity, become dead weight for a fraction of a moment, and fall to the ground like a grain of wheat pregnant with fruit and beauty?