My article for my parish newsletter

Messenger Article for JUNE 2009

This is the season of Pentecost. We as a community celebrate Jesus’ promise of the Holy Spirit as a guide and teacher. I have been thinking a lot about the meaning of Spirit and of the Pentecost reading: “…And when he comes, he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgement…
The early Church believed that the Holy Spirit spoke most clearly “in Synod.” That is in groups and communities who invited the HS to come and teach, lead and guide them. That is why we read in Acts 15 of the Council of Jerusalem and in Church History about the Council of Nicaea (as in the Nicene Creed). As Christians, we not only live in community, but solve problems in community, invoking the Holy Spirit God has sent us.
Our growing prison population is a symptom of the brokenness of our community. There is an organization in Monroe County which presented a program called “The School to prison pipeline.” They want to break the progress of our children’s hopelessness at the school level. We can argue whether to blame the schools, TV, suburban sprawl, the automobile, any number of things for our isolation and separation, but we can see the results: there are a growing number of young men and women who are unattached to any healthy community or family group. They firmly believe that they have no hope for achieving any kind of future, and so they live only for today, only for themselves. They are truly of the World. When this belief system runs up against our system of laws and justice, they become inmates. When they don’t have the strength to survive, they take refuge in drugs and alcohol, which offer refuge from the reality they live in.
Jesus promised we would be sent the Holy Spirit saying “He will testify… and you (must) testify…” What are we to testify? We can and do through Prison Reentry and Aftercare, that the premise on which the prisoner based his or her belief is wrong: They CAN have hope. Jesus’ Incarnation and Resurrection and Ascension have turned the world upside down. There is a future to achieve, and they have no disadvantage, there is no bar to their receiving it. Jesus did not preach revolution against authority. His sermons went deeper. He preached revolution against hopelessness, against acceptance of the world’s judgement.
At some point in many inmates’ lives, they realize that they have made mistakes and have spent all their energy fighting the consequences. Frequently in a group I will find many of the men I am talking to who say “It seemed like a good idea at the time and no one told me otherwise.” We then talk about finding friends one can trust who have good judgement, and of making decisions ‘in community.’ And we talk about learning to be that kind of friend. Prison ministry takes a member of the Church and puts him or her in position to speak along with the Holy Spirit to these people who have become outsiders and to help them.
But Prison Ministry does not only occur in the prisons. It happens within our neighborhoods and within the walls of our church as well. Our Christian faith must inform our politics. Not partisan politics, but the politics of what we ask our political system to deal with, what we ask our selves, our families, our neighborhoods and our communities to focus on. To combat the prison issues, we must start early: we must not let the World have the biggest say in children’s and youths’ lives. We can visit people who are imprisoned but not incarcerated. The Holy Spirit, if asked, can and will come into our discussions about this issue. Each of us can become a member of prison ministry by bringing up the subject.