I’ve been thinking about doing this series for several months and now is the time! My appeal is all filed, I’ve got over a year experience inside FCI Lompoc II, and I feel led to prioritize this topic the next few months. I will continue to write my daily/weekly journal, and my blog on “Facts of Life in the BOP”, but the focus of this series will be a deep dive into various topics I otherwise wrote about in my journal, as they arise.
Some of the areas I’d like to deep dive into, in no official order are:
– the emotional ups & downs being locked up
– how reading helps maintain perspective
– personal journey before lockup and inside prison
– ambiguity of the prison process on life
– relationships on the inside and outside
– faith based questions like “why does God not rescue me from prison?” and many others around trials/tribulation, self pity, faith itself, serving others, and many more
I don’t necessarily have any purpose in writing this series, other than feeling the Holy Spirit leading me to do so. It may be for others, or myself, or even other purposes that come to light someday in the future.
Today is Sunday morning, and I’m in the Education/Library center from 8-12. Since I signed up, I am thereby skipping the 9:30-11 am lockdown and count we do every weekend & holiday day. It’s as quiet as it can possibly be in a prison environment, and I have a clear, calm mind putting me in the mood to do today’s blog post. I cherish these quiet times as they are so rare in this Lompoc facility, just nice having space to think in peace and quiet, and concentrate and write. Its literally impossible to do so otherwise, except maybe 6-8 am on Saturday and Sunday mornings in our Unit. Even here in Education/Library during weekdays, the guards don’t enforce “quiet” policy, as so many inmates just come here to socialize, see friends, and get out of their Unit. Really makes the library useless for normal purposes which people use libraries for on the outside.
As I write this series, I really want to try and not be too “inward prison” focused, so will work hard to avoid that. Being in a cell, or even a Unit, tends to make inmates inward focused, one of the downsides of the BOP successfully prepping inmates for successful reentry. It’s an easy trap to fall into, especially with all the other issues I’ve outlined in my blog series “Facts of Life in the BOP”. That’s why I titled this series “Life and Faith”, as I believe faith helps all of us avoiding the “inward , me focus” dilemma that so many Americans have, and especially inmates.
One of the few perks of prison life is having more time to read, lots of extra time I might add! As I’ve come to appreciate, its a double edged sword. Partially because lots of “self help” or “Spiritual” books don’t really apply to prison life. I find myself sometimes thinking , yeah “easy for you to say that”, frankly much like I would have said before coming here. Not to say being here is terrible, like worse than having cancer or being a soldier in a fox hole during World War I, but its certainly not as simplistic or easy to apply real world perspectives as some write.
Interestingly, one of the most practical books I’ve found to help people rehabilitate outside or inside of prison isn’t the Bible or Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren or any other similar writing. Its actually a book Alcoholics Anonymous puts out titled “Daily Reflections”, kind of like their version of a “daily devotional”. In its simplest form, AA is about solving a problem by submitting to a Higher Power, and being part of a like minded community to assist each other, be held accountable, and then live a purposeful and productive life serving others. Sounds like a lot of churches and religions who arguably haven’t been so successful achieving that purpose based on what I’ve seen and read about!
One example in the AA book from March 18:
Title
“The more we become willing to depend upon a Higher Power, the more independent we actually are”.
Comment below Title on each days message-
“I start with a little willingness to trust God and He causes that willingness to grow. The more willingness I have, the more trust I gain, and the more trust I gain, the more willingness I have. My dependence on God grows as my trust in Him grows. Before I became willing, I depended on myself for all my needs and I was restricted by my incompleteness. Through my willingness to depend on my Higher Power,, whom I choose to call God, all my needs are provided for by Someone Who knows me better than myself-even the needs I may not realize, as well as the ones yet to come. Only Someone Who knows me that well could bring me to be myself and to help me fill the need in someone else that only I am meant to fill. There never will be another exactly like me. And that is real independence.”
As you can see, this could easily apply to any community inside a prison and outside as well. I share this because its striking that one of the hardest diseases to cure, alcoholism, is proven to be cured with such a simple model that includes faith and a higher power. Not one God or another, but whichever God/Higher Power you believe. If this model works for a hard to solve problem, think what it can do otherwise? A Higher Power (aka faith in a God) plus community, what a concept!
Interestingly, here prison I’m taking a required class under the First Step Act titled Thresholds. They take a similar approach to AA- “A unique and personal program, it allows you to address major life challenges with the help of your own religious tradition and personal values. “God is an acceptable way to refer to the one you revere and worship”.
Its too bad so many spend their life questioning faith or trying to disprove the Bible, Judaism or Allah or Mormon doctrine or let circumstances convince them there is no Higher Power, they just lose sight of this basic well proven solution to their many issues, big and small.
Ironically, today in another devotional the message was one of “the power of God’s children loving each other, regardless of their religious practices or doctrine being the “right” one, just having a Higher Power in common”. I just counted, here at FCI Lompoc II we have 14 different religious services, believe it or not. Effectively 14 doctrines to reconcile in to a Higher Power/God. As my Faith to Faith devotional states today “But that’s not God’s way of doing things. He doesn’t have a long list of doctrine demands to meet”. Maybe that’s why AA and Threshold stay away from such silliness and ignore denominational squabbles and just bring people together in the unity of faith and belief in a Higher Power?
Now there’s some food for thought! Couldn’t say it any better, that’s the foundation for the series and thus a good part of this series will further explore life and faith intertwined as I write about the various topics from, of course, a prisoner’s perspective! BJ
