Spirit On The Margins

This week I had the opportunity to visit the men’s spirituality group that one of our volunteers leads at PPL Industries. It is a work site in which ex-offenders get an opportunity to transition their way back into the workforce.  I heard one of the more interesting stories I have ever heard in the past five years of doing this work.

PPL Industries Web Site

One of the men in the group that day announced that we was retiring because he didn’t need to work anymore. That caught my attention right away, because the men working in this facility generally have all they can do to get by on the $6.00+ per hour wage they get.  In fact, most will talk about the near impossibility of getting a job once you have a felony on your record, and it doesn’t generally matter how long ago that it happened.

He was serving a 100 year sentence in Texas for armed robbery in which gunshots were exchanged. He talked vividly about feeling the gunshots going through his body. While he was serving his sentence, he had a spiritual awakening, which according to him, led to a dramatic change in his behavior and lifestyle. He became a different man because of his surrender to God.

Nine years into his sentence, he wrote an article for the prison newsletter. A woman in Minnesota happened to see the article and was so touched by what he had said, that she began to write to him. She came to visit him in prison. They ended up falling in love.  And somehow, through the grace of God, he ended up being released from prison and placed on 25 years probation. He moved to Minnesota and ended up marrying this woman. Last year, after 22 years had elapsed, he was released from the remaining 3 years on his probation.

One of the most unusual aspects to this story is that the woman he ended up marrying is well off financially. That is highly unusual to see persons who find themselves in this situation to be able to move from poverty to a middle or upper class lifestyle. So, he hasn’t had to work, but he has because he wants to make a contribution to society. Unfortunately, with a felony permanently on his record, the best that he has been able to manage all these years is minimum wage jobs.

He is an incredibly affable man. You can’t help but like him as you hear him tell his story. He is so grateful for everything God has done in his life, including the amazing miracle of this woman he loves and who loves him, the early release from such a long sentence, and the miraculous twists and turns he has lived through.  What a privilege to hear his story.

Here are some quotes from an interesting study that speak for themselves.

“Policy makers have become increasingly interested in using faith-based programs to intervene with highly at-risk populations.  This idea is generally supported by empirical evidence showing that individuals who score high on measures of religiosity and spirituality are more likely to exhibit prosocial behaviors.”

• Does a client’s faith or spirituality influence the treatment process? If so, how?
• Futhermore, does a client’s faith or spirituality affect program completion and other indicators of success? 

“The current study assessed the success of the Ridge House Residential Program, a faith-based prisoner reentry program in Reno Nevada, in retaining clients and examined the intermediate outcomes achieved by that program, including program satisfaction and self-rated treatment progress.”

Ridge House 

“Faith and spirituality infuse much of the program’s orientation, mostly through client contact with spiritual staff…Almost all house managers and clinical staff or counselors (93%) indicated that encouraging the religious and/or spiritual development of clients is very important to their program, and the majority of these respondents (53%) indicated that demonstrating God’s love to clients is very important.”

“When asked directly in informal interviews whether the adjective ‘religious’ describes Ridge House, program leaders stated that the program is more appopriately described as spiritual rather than religious…Spiritual growth is fostered through the general ethos of the program. In other words, faith and spirituality largely exist implicitly; nonreligious social services characterize their program.”

“Of the 92 clients who entered Ridge House, 30 (32.6%) did not complete the program. Eighteen clients reportedly left because they did not believe Ridge House would assist them in meeting their needs, 8 were discharged by the program because they were not following the established rules of Ridge House, and 4 were terminated either for a positive urine analysis or for using illegal drugs or drinking.  Most dropouts or terminations occurred during the first month of treatment; half of noncompleters left within 39 days of the progam, and 75% left within 52 days.  For clients who completed the program, the average number of days in the program was 86.9.”

“Logistic regression predicting program completion revealed only one significant predictor; homelessness.  Having ever been homeless decreased the likelihood of completion of Ridge House.”

“It should also be highlighted that clients were significantly more likely to remain in the program if they reported taht their prison experience gave them a new sense of a higher power.  Of the 62 clients who completed the program, more than three fourths (77.4%) indicated that prison gave them a new sense of higher power.  Additional analyses found that the majority of these clients (53%) were satisfied with the program, and all of them (100%) also felt that their new sense of higher power strengthened their belief that they could change their lives.”

“…this study did not include an examination of end outcomes such as relapse, rearrest, and reincarceration.” 

It is certainly an interesting study that seems to raise more questions than it resolves about the link between spirituality and changed social behavior. The study acknowledges that there is a lot more research to be done on this subject matter before more conclusions can be drawn.

Outcomes Faith Based Prison Reentry Program

There was great article in the Tuesday, November 20 Source Section of the Star Tribune by Jeff Strickler, about the use of centering prayer in prison. Sister Mary White, a Beneditine sister at St. Paul’s Monastery in Maplewood, is teaching inmates at Stillwater Prison “how to find their own private freedom.”

She says in the article, (Centering Prayer) “teaches people how to go to a place in themselves that is wise, stable and infinitely spiritual. People who have been wounded in life often react violently unless they know that there is a place they can go to not carry out behaviors they have learned and automatically produce.” 

Definition of Centering Prayer 

Centering Prayer facilitates the movement from more active modes of prayer — verbal, mental or affective prayer — into a receptive prayer of resting in God. It emphasizes prayer as a personal relationship with God. At the same time, it is a discipline to foster and serve this relationship by a regular, daily practice of prayer.

It was distilled into a simple method of prayer in the 1970’s by three Trappist monks, Fr. William Meninger, Fr. Basil Pennington and Abbot Thomas Keating at the Trappist Abbey, St. Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts.

In the Star Trib article Jeff Strickler says, “Her (Sister Mary White) approach is based on Locked Up and Free, a program that has been heralded for reducing anger and frustration among inmates at Folsom Prison in California.”  I found this site with a compelling first hand description of someone leading Centering Prayer in that environment.

Locked Up and Free Newsletter 

And so we sat in silent prayer, in the lap of God, in prayer beyond words or thoughts, in pure faith, totally at the service of the Holy Spirit. After our first 20-minute prayer meditation, the silence breaks, a voice shares, telling of a life of craving, of chasing happiness outside of himself, chasing a God outside of himself, feeling disconnected, separated from everyone. He says he is finally getting it; God’s inside him, happiness comes from inside. Others nod in affirmation.

A lump rose in my throat that I could not choke back, I just stared misty eyed and nodded as he witnessed in such a gentle, placid and transformed voice.

He went on to tell of how he finally understands the clichés he’s heard his whole life. Forgive your enemies; do not judge others; to receive you must give. Of how he came to realize this in the past week during prayer, in an instant, snapping his fingers, of how there will be no more useless chasing, of how he doesn’t believe he will need to drink again, of how he feels so unconditionally loved, and connected, of how he trusts, of the feeling of being reborn… of being so free.

I wept throughout the second 20-minute prayer meditation and most of the way home. What a God of infinite mercy we have. I need to learn how to trust in his mercy always.