Click here to download Voices From Prison – Issue #6

He trudges down the stairs from his cell a little rumpled, carrying a sheet of paper. “Something I wrote for you,” he quips as he sits near me on the metal seats at the table in the cellblock. His square face, dark buzz-cut hair, lips that make funny grimaces when he speaks, broad shoulders which I hit lightly sometimes as we converse, and endearing manner though he robbed his grandmother for drug money, make me love him like one of God’s lost sheep, even though when I walk away I think he may actually be hopeless.

We get increasingly communicative as we spend the half hour together in view of the female Correctional Officer and the other inmates who are milling around. At times he runs back to his cell to get pictures of his family (never shown to me in the past three years) and a book he offers me to read about a guy who carried a full-size crucifix around the world as his mission. Tom tells me he feels like giving up at times as he lays on his bunk with nothing to do. I draw him out about the depression he has spoken about before. Words like “empty” and “lonely” come up. I go for them, ask him about trying to write to his father who is a “mean old guy but I love him.” Tom says his dad is not the kind of guy whom you write your feelings to, this 50 year old truck driver who left his wife when Tom was seven years of age and the oldest of three, the mother a heroin addict and who died soon after. “No wonder you feel an emptiness,” I say, searching for his feelings. He doesn’t show any.

We get to talking about his fears of not making it when he gets out, maybe going to a half-way house. “Didn’t you do that the last time?” I ask. “Yeah,” he gives me a rueful look. I remind him of how he told me about his running wild in the drug scene, “how you would hustle while your girl friend waited.” I wanted him to remember that he had told me these things before. “Yeah, and then I made her get into a car while I waited.” “What do you mean?” I ask. “I know she belongs to me, even though she has sex with a john to get us drug money,” he explains, though his grimacing lips show me he realizes how crazy that is. “Oh man!” I hit him on the shoulder.”

This reminds me of something I read in Scripture this morning. I pick up his Recovery Bible he has with a few paper stubs marking key passages for him. “Hey, let me see if I can find something I read this morning. It reminds me of you.” I then tell him partly–with him picking up the thread–of the story of the birth of Ishmael. “A wild ass of a man,” I tell him. “What’s that mean?” he asks. I then find the passage and read it to him, while he looks over my shoulder:

You are with child, and shall bear a son; you shall call him Ishmael, because the Lord has heard of your humiliation. He shall be a wild ass of a man, his hand against everyone, and everyone’s hand against him; he shall dwell apart, opposing all his kinsmen.

I repeat, “You are like that Tom, a wild ass of a man.” Not sure he gets this or likes it, but I explain a little, “You’re always running wild, running to fill up the emptiness…” He continues for me, “…and doing drugs to escape it.” “Yeah!” I punch him on the shoulder, then blurt out, “It’d kill me if you died from drugs, you know?” He looks at me quizzically. I think this was the point when he ran to get the pictures of his family.

He shows me the pictures, faded color copies on thin paper with curled edges, and I see his good- looking dad and Tom’s brothers and sisters and their little ones. He points them out and names them. I ask their ages. His father, he explains, raised a few other kids as well as his own three. “They’re the children of his second wife. He’s been going with her a while but they just got married a couple of years ago. She doesn’t like me.” Tom is holding up one picture of his younger brother with a little child at his cheek. “That’s good to see a man holding a kid so close,” I say, “like a father’s love should be for his child.” Tom gives me his wide-open look.

I remember another Scripture passage and try to paraphrase it, “God is describing himself as a father here, holding up Israel….no, he’s holding Ephraim, to his cheek.” I make a gesture with my hands against my cheek. With excitement now, and while making a joke about how I am not as good as the Baptists who can remember the precise citations for these passages, I grab Tom’s Bible again and search. “It’s from Hosea, I think.” I begin to page through the minor prophets. Miraculously, I find the passage in a few minutes. “Hosea, Chapter 11,” he says, pointing to it as I begin to read:

When Israel was a child I loved him, out of Egypt I called my son. The more I called them, the farther they went from me, sacrificing to the Baals…(“false idols,” I explain to him.)…and burning incense to idols. Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, who took them in my arms; I drew them with human cords, with bands of love; I fostered them like one who raises an infant to his cheeks; yet though I stooped to feed my child, they did not know that I was their healer…

I pause. I so want to make sure this young man from the streets, whose mother was a heroin addict and whose father and family won’t talk to him, gets the connection with him and God. I shift my face closer to his, look in his eyes. “So, even if you have done things you are ashamed of, or feel empty and hopeless, let God go down there to that place and love you, claim you Tom…he wants to, don’t you see?” He nods his head slightly. “Even if you are a wild ass of a man like Ishmael, God can’t bear to lose you…see?” I read further, particularly wanting him to hear the feelings of God shown in this Bible passage. “Look! It says God roars,” I tell him. Clenching my fists and widening my eyes, I show him what I imagine God’s passion is for him, for us. “It’s not just an angry roar, Tom; it’s a hurt roar, the roar of a man in love whose been left…he doesn’t want to be like humans and simply destroy what has hurt him, left him, thrown away his love. He will roar until we return to him. “I point back to the passage, “…like trembling sparrows and doves,”

Our time was getting short. He asks if we can pray before I leave. We join hands in our fashion, he gripping my fingers intensely with his head down. I ask if he wants to pray first. “Yeah,” he says. I joke and say he’s the only one who does. “All the others want me to do it first.” He prays for his family, then for me and the other guys in the jail, and finally for himself. Soon we end. As I leave he asks if I could bring him a copy book to write in. “I’ll try.” We shake hands. “I’m gonna get a cup of coffee now, Father Paul, and go back to my cell and read those passages.” “Good.”

Later that night I remember him and our time together. I had felt some hopelessness in his regard as I walked away earlier. Over three years now working as a prison chaplain. I recognize Tom’s addictive patterns and how drugs destroy even the best of intentions of these inmates. “It is a spiritual disease, a hole in the body, the heart, the soul,” explained one of them as he showed me the Big Book of AA recently. I pray anyway, “Please Lord, bless Tom. I love him as you do.” Making a gesture as of a father pulling his child up to his cheek, I say, “I beg you Father, don’t let my son be lost.” I’ll roar later…

-Fr. Paul Morrissey, OSA

St. Rita’s Parish Rectory

Please join us weekly on Wednesday evenings from 7:30-9 P.M. at St. Rita’s Parish Rectory 1166 South Broad Street (at Ellsworth) in South Philadelphia. Use the rectory door on the left of the Church. Welome!  (Call ahead 215-331-3640 to check for cancellation due to weather, etc.)

Adeodatus is a spiritual program helping those recently released from prison adjust to and remain in society through prayer, support and understanding of Christ. Meeting once a week in communal fellowship, it is the belief of Adeodatus that every person is good and worthy of another chance in life, and that in helping them we help their families and ourselves.

Click here to read our Prison Ministry newsletter.

On April 5 he had remembered it was his birthday and cried bitterly. There was no cards, no cake, no recognition by anyone that he was alive. We talked about AA and places for help, but he admitted he still loved alcohol too much to give it up. I told him unless he controlled it in the end it would win. Briefly, slightly wistfully he acknowledged the demon but then changed the subject. Although I was 10 minutes passed giving him a few bucks, I was drawn to give more even though he didn’t ask for it. I told him that God didn’t forget his birthday and gave him 20 dollars. He was someone and he got a birthday present no matter what he did with it. His joy was intense.

So there we were on the Walmart parking lot surrounded by people buying more stuff. It was strange to find a man with nothing at a place that boasts it has everything. I wondered who was richer Joey or the shoppers. I reminded Joey that Jesus had little of this world just like him. They were friends, Jesus and him, travelling the cruel way of the cross. But now and then He uses someone to remind the crucified that are not forgotten and are so loved in their passion and suffering. Joey and I parted as friends and he went off to Burger King for dinner. The sun was setting over all of the franchises and the cars continued their endless suburban parade. America 2010.

Source: http://sundialmoments.blogspot.com/2010/04/joey.html

My initial instinct was to assume that Spiritual Health can be achieved. And, it sounded like something I would really like to achieve. But, there I go again, adding a new goal to my endless ToDo list – “achieve spiritual health.”

I turned to the internet, for better or worse, to see how others have defined this concept. And, I soon realized that spiritual health is something to practice not to achieve. Much like pursuing bodily health and fitness, it’s an ongoing practice, a lifestyle. After losing 15 pounds, it’s not too uncommon to gain the weight back. Some days I’ll eat well and exercise. Other days I will turn lazy and eat poorly. I’d assume one’s state of spiritual health fluctuates in the same way.

I eventually found a nice and short article describing one woman’s thoughts about Spiritual Health. Kara Bauer says that to her, spiritual health is:

• Peacefulness
• Presence
• Simplicity
• Acceptance
• Compassion
• and Self Awareness.

Kara’s article is also titled “What is Spiritual Health”. Give it a read and let us know qualities define Spiritual Health for you. For me, Kara’s idea of being present struck me the most. I’ll leave you with her words.

A spiritually healthy person is very in tune with the present moment and doesn’t live in the past or in the future, but instead fully accepts the current moment as the only “real” moment in which to experience life. When someone is present, they are able to experience their senses in ways they otherwise wouldn’t, resulting in clarity and fresh thinking. (click here to read more of Kara’s Article on Spiritual Health)

Thomas Merton spent his early years without the constant presence of loving parents. In his years as a young man he embraced the street life of New York city with all of its detours from God. Finally, he sensed the void, found Him, converted to Catholicism and became a Trappist monk. Tom became one of the great minds of Catholic literature in mid twentieth century America, writing many works reflective of God’s attempt to speak to us over the noise of our times.His Prayer of Trust reflects his journey and really, all of us trying to do the right thing.

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope that I have that desire in all I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.And I know that if I do this, you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore, I trust you always, though I may seem to be lost in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me toface my perils alone.”  -Thomas Merton

Violence in the City of Brotherly Love

“We live in two worlds—they only notice each other when they collide.” The new play about violence at the Interact Theater is worth attending.  Those who are shot to death in Philadelphia and those who shoot them collide these two worlds. The story is told of one young man, who came to Philly last year to be a teacher and was shot to death for his Ipod. It makes one weep. He was white, from Minnesota. His murderer was Black, from a Philly ghetto. Victims and victimizers. Two different worlds. Sometimes.

There were 305 murders in 2009, down from 333 the year before (Philadelphia Inquirer, 1/5/2010). Approximately 70% of those who are killed in Philadelphia are Black people killed by Black people. Mostly these are young men. Numbers. And increasing day by day as we lock them up out of sight. Lock their bodies up, and their hearts and souls too—until they serve their time and get out. To do what?

This is not a just sob-sister story about the basic humanity of prison inmates. Voices of victims cry out too. Victims often in the same world as those who harm them–ghetto worlds where children grow up on the street and learn to fight to stay alive.  Sections of the city—some black, some white, some Hispanic—where a common poverty creates the environment for selling drugs to make a living. Selling bodies too. Selling souls if the devil offers you the right price. What would you want for your body? Your soul?

This play shows the “numbers” racked up each year in Philly of the murdered and the murderers. It is powerful when it gets inside the heads and hearts of those who are in prison for these crimes. Thugs?  Brutal inhuman bastards? Heartless killers? More like you and me than we would think. The cry of the victims through the mouths of their survivors, pierce one’s heart as well. My son just wanted to teach, to help…

Numbers… None of them are simply ‘numbers,’ though the statistics treat them that way. They are flesh and blood. They are you and me. They are ‘Jesus Christ in prison’ if you have eyes to see (Mt. 25:36).

On the street you can be free as a lark, yet chained in the prison of your heart.

You can be chained in a prison dark, yet free as a bird in your heart.

Philadelphia is the City of Brotherly Love. We live in two worlds here—we only notice each other when we collide. Where are you in these numbers? What can you do to reach across the divide?

-Fr. Paul Morrisey, O.S.A

“Dance me to the children who are asking to be born.”   -Leonard Cohen

Kathleen’s Story

How to start? I have 4 sisters–3 older, 1 younger. My mother and father never got along that I can remember. My mother was mom to a point. My father was never there. All he did was drink. I can remember the day we—as in all my sisters and mom—were outside on the steps, just talking with our friends.  Even my mom, because she was the mom of town (smile).

Anyway, my dad was coming home from the bar. All of us were like, “Here he comes.” The next thing we know he was fighting with my mom because she was outside with all of us. He was calling her every name in the book that would not be a nice name.

Well, my life: I have been to jail the past 3 years in a row—2006, 2007, 2008. This year is the year I have been here because I asked God to help me save myself from the street. I am also having a baby again. All the years I been locked up I had a baby. But this baby is blessed.

My boyfriend did not want me to have this baby. Being pregnant in prison is no fun. I was going to kill my unborn child. I prayed to God for help with his child. I keep on praying, praying. Then when I talked to my children’s father, I told him that I had killed the baby. Before I told him this though, he said that if I did not do it he would not bring my son up to see me. It has been so hard for me to talk to my babies’ father every day, having him think I killed our child. Yet at the same time, I wanted to see my son. This went on for almost 2 and ? months. I keep on praying, asking God to help me.

In the middle of the summer I was on the phone with him, and I told him. The way I said it was, “I got to tell you something.” He was like, “What?” I started to cry because I knew he would hate me because of what I have done–lie to him. Then I told him that I never killed the baby. He was like, “I hate you!” and hung up the phone on me. I called right back but he did not answer the phone. This went on for three weeks after. I could only talk to my son because of my boyfriend’s mother (who was taking care of our child.) This was so hard for me, to lie to the person I love. But I knew if God did not want me to have this child then God would of never put it inside of me again. Being pregnant in prison is hard.

The baby Doc here is good, but could be better. Since I have told my kids’ father about me not killing our child, he came to see me. This was the first time since I had told him. He is still upset, but today we talked about it for some time. I don’t bring it up all the time, but without God’s help I know I would of never been able to tell him that he is going to have another child.

This was not easy to keep it from him, but God understands today that what I went through was good because right now I’m having a LITTLE BABY BOY. I am blessed to have God in my life, not because he wants to, but because Kathleen asked and prayed for God to save me and do what God needs for me to be a better child of God. This is my story. My advice to the women out in the street or in the prison: if you are having a child, pray to God to make the right decision before you do something that you really don’t want to do because of your boyfriend. Remember this: God also knows what he wants for his children before it ever happened to anyone. I hope I help someone out with my story. God bless each and every one. -Kathleen

A Brief Reflection

Kathleen is a 28 year old white Roman Catholic woman and a recovering drug addict. She has had eight children, including the one she is pregnant with. Six of her children have been adopted. “The kids’ father,” as she refers to her boyfriend, is raising one son who is three years old. Kathleen, as you can hear in her words, made a critical decision–not to abort the present child in her womb. In Philadelphia, when a female inmate is pregnant and about to give birth, she is brought to an outside hospital for the delivery. She is then allowed to stay with the child for 24 hours “to bond.” After this, the child goes to a foster family or approved family member or friend until her term in prison is finished. In Kathleen’s case, a friend of hers will keep this child until she gets out in about a year. At that time she plans to be reunited with her boyfriend and the other child.  Whether in prison or not, every year Kathleen’s situation is magnified thousands of times across the country and millions of times around the globe.

Co-Editors:

Father Paul Morrissey O.S.A. & George Munyan

(tattoo on the palm of an inmate… from Isaiah 49:15).

Rose, stripped of my soul, I suffer without you. (tattoo on his throat).

Oh God, so many of your children are suffering behind bars. (1 in every 100 Americans). Many of these have caused others to suffer as well–people they have victimized, their own families, including wives, husbands, parents and children.  The children and siblings of those in prison are six times more likely to wind up in prison themselves.  Much of this is due to addictions. The effect of addictions spreads like cancer.

Show us how to stop this, please.

This issue of our newsletter focuses on addictions. Incarcerated people are not the only ones imprisoned. Many of us are addicted—to alcohol, drugs (including prescription meds and pain killers), sexual conquests, money/gambling, power and control. Even the obsessive use of technology. These “false gods” hold us captive.  Wake us up, Father, to the prevalence of these fake fixes in our families and ourselves.  Show us how to take steps to heal this “spiritual disease” as it is called in the “Big Book” of Alcoholics Anonymous The following story by “Cliff”could have been any of us…I’ll call it “Heroin, My Love.”

I remember when I was four, I was adored, but in the wrong way. As he shut the door…the fright…the life nobody knew how I had to fight. I used to cry inside, feeling so afraid of being alive. What happened to me put a void in my soul, making me hate everything and my heart was very cold! I remember my mother used to tell me God will take care of everything. I used to laugh and say that’s a bunch of crap…

I remember being sexually abused by my father and hating my life (hating God). I believed in nothing nor nobody. Going through those years I was crazy. I ended up in a place nobody wanted to be – juvenile detention. They called it Gladiator School. I spent two years there and learned very quickly how to cheat, lie, steal, and especially, how to fight. I got out of that place and started doing drugs because before that it was just beer and pot. But now I was older and my friends did all kinds of drugs. We did everything but heroin because we always thought once you did that you were a junkie. I remember selling drugs at a young age, got my first adult arrest for one ounce of cocaine when I was nineteen years old. I thought I was the man. I had it all at this age. I went to court and my bail was $25,000. An hour later I was out. I thought at the time that these people who bailed me out were my family…that they cared about me. But the truth is that they thought I was going to rat or because they made a lot of money off me at the time. I realize that now…

I was always trying to fill a void that was inside of me. If it wasn’t women, it was drugs, clothes, cars or friends. I was always trying to be accepted in life. The truth is I had no idea who I was or where I belonged in life. When I was twenty-four, I jumped bail on a drug case I had. I ended up in prison with no bail. By now I was so strung out on cocaine that I didn’t care about anything. I tried heroin for the first time. I remember my celly shot me up. It was everything I was looking for in life. It took that void and filled it. By the time I got out of prison this time I was off to the races. I found my true love, heroin. It loved me back by taking everything that I ever had in life including my soul. I was Satan’s partner because I hurt a lot of people to get my drug, and nothing or nobody got in my way when it came to my love…

By now I’ve been in and out of prison quite a few times. I found God in jail but something always took me back to my old ways and my addictions. Today, I am starting to understand “why.” See, I always counted on myself. My pride would always get in the way of growth. Plus I was looking for something that always been there but never knew it. Today I know that I need God and people in my life to show me how to live. I pray on this void I have for my Lord to fill it and it works. I am a thirty-nine year old man and I want a life. I am putting my foot forward to get one, asking for help from God, and the All Mighty is putting people in my life to help me.

It’s time to face my disease. I know I am an addict, but God loves me and I’ll be free, free of the chains of myself. But it has to be you that take the steps to change. I ask everyone this, “What do you want to do with your life, spend it in jail?” I don’t! I spent half of my life in jail. It’s no way to live! I am a prisoner now, but I know in my heart that I am free, and I want to keep that freedom on the outside. God has shown me the way to be right. You are me and I am you. Don’t forget that God loves you too!  -Cliff

(click here to download the PDF)

But, Why Not Me?

This question, in the mouth of a friend of Augustine’s, is the key to understanding Augustinian Spirituality. In Book Eight of his Confessions, Augustine describes himself in a garden in Milan before he finally took the step to commit himself wholly to Jesus Christ and to be baptized. In one of the most dramatic conversion stories in Christian history, Augustine describes how he is struggling with all of his sexual passions; he can not become chaste as he wishes. While in the midst of this inner struggle, he tells us, “a mighty storm arose in me, bringing a mighty rain of tears.” He leaps up and runs into a remote section of the garden. While sobbing out of control under a fig tree, he hears a child’s voice singing over and over again, Tolle, lege, tolle lege, which means “Pick it up and read it.” Augustine experiences this as a message to him from God. He returns to the bench where he had been reading St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans. He seized the book, opened it, and read silently the first text he found: Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and impurities, not in contention and envy, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provisions for the flesh in its concupiscenses. (Romans 13:13) “A light of utter confidence shone in my heart,” he tells us. “All the darkness of uncertainty vanished.”

It is a stunning story, perhaps even polished up to grab our attention and lure us in as we read it. Except for the opening line, there is one significant feature left out of this summary. I believe it to be at the heart of understanding Augustine and Augustinian Spirituality. During this dramatic encounter with God, Augustine’s dear friend, Alypius, was sitting on the garden bench nearby. To ignore this, or to erase the conversation between Augustine and Alypius which followed, is to miss the unique gift to the Church that Augustine and Augustinian Spirituality offers.

“Then leaving my finger in the place or marking it by some other sign, I closed the book and in complete calm told the whole thing to Alypius and he similarly told me what had been going on in himself, of which I knew nothing.” And I here paraphrase what Alypius asked his friend in so many words: But, why not me? He asked to see what Augustine had read. Augustine showed him the passage from St. Paul. “He looked further than I had read,” Augustine tells us, “I had not known what followed. And this is what followed: Make room for the person who is weak in faith.” (Romans 14:1, tr. Boulding) Alypius applied this to himself and told Augustine so. “And he was confirmed by this message, and with no trouble wavering gave himself to God’s good will and purpose.” Augustine and Alypius are converted together.

Except possibly for the Emmaus story (Luke 24:13), this is the only story I have heard of where two people are converted together. It offers a model of a spiritual journey that is of great importance to the Church today. In contrast to the individual person or soul’s journey to God–the classic model of the spiritual life made famous by St. Ignatius and St.Teresa of Avila—the Augustinian way is to travel together to God. In fact, Augustine describes earlier in the Book Eight mentioned above how he and Alypius were told a similar story of two young men who were converted by reading the book of St. Antony of the Desert together, and how they had given up everything to follow Christ. It seems very likely that Augustine wanted to evoke the same reaction in the readers of his Confessions. Hearing another person’s story of how God changed his once lost heart can be the flame that ignites the hearer to discover God calling him or herself. This is how the Gospel has moved people through the centuries. It is how Augustine changed. It is even more powerful when two are changed in this way. And so Augustine hopes that in ones and twos we will be touched by his conversion as we hear the story of his exploding heart. Together to God—the Augustinian Way.

To make this point unforgettable, in Book Nine of his Confessions, Augustine describes how he had a similarly profound religious experience with his mother, Monica, at his side. They too were near a garden. The famous painting by Ary Scheffer even portrays the two of them hand in hand. Isn’t it clear that, for Augustine, sharing our faith journey together in the deepest way is the path to God? This is the main rationale for the liturgy. We worship together in community to experience God together. There are many other examples of how we are already doing this, but the present moment in our Church’s history seems ready-made to claim the Together to God image for Augustine, and for ourselves as his followers. The more we understand and practice this pathway to continuing conversion, the more we can help others use this image to complement the classic conversion models of an individual soul and God. Finally, for those of us who take vows to live as Augustinians, we have to admit that living together in “community,” and praying together, does not necessarily mean the deep and Scriptural sharing of souls and hearts that Augustine demonstrates in his Confessions—Anima una et cor unum in Deum. But we can identify this path as our ideal, and we can try.

Together to God—but, why not me?

Why not us?

-Fr. Paul Morrissey, OSA