Let's Face It: All Alone, I'm Not That Interesting.

Photo courtesy of Mike Sanborn

     In the Community Resilience Circle I have been meeting with, an outgrowth of the Transition Newburyport initiative in my city, we have been talking about the effects of profit-driven societies on human relationships.  It turns out there's a lot to think about there, but one of the points I walked away with is best expressed by Charles Eisenstein in his article. "To Build Community, an Economy of Gifts," published by Yes! Magazine. (http://www.yesmagazine.org/happiness/to-build-community-an-economy-of-gifts)                                                                                               

       "... community is nearly impossible in a highly monetized society like our own," Eisenstein writes.  "That is because community is woven from gifts, which is ultimately why poor people often have stronger communities than rich people.  If you are financially independent, then you really don't depend on your neighbors -- or indeed on any specific person -- for anything.  You can just pay someone to do it, or pay someone else to do it." 

      I don't know about you, but I realized recently, during the heat of on an hour-and-a-half long session of Bikram Yoga, that I'm feeling pretty isolated by the way I live.  Yes, we live in a close neighborhood and, with my children, there is a bit of a swinging gate existence with neighborhood kids coming and going.  But I have found that if I do so much as give a tomato from my garden to a friend, the immediate urge is to repay me - to even the score.  
      I find Eisenstein's idea of the "economy of gifts"compelling because it reminds me that we all have both gifts and needs, and when we share those freely we can open up countless possibilities in the ways we live together. It is my belief that if we accept and allow both our gifts and an honest expression of our needs to flow more freely between us, we might be able to glimpse and move toward a more connected way of living.  In fact, I suppose that is what motivated me to start this blog, 

      The piece below is written by a friend of mine, Martha McManamy, whom I deeply admire for the way she tends to step over boundaries and into new realities freely and often.  In this instance, she is writing about her work with the Alternatives to Violence Program, through which she manages to shed light on the consequences of a throw-away society (in this case the throwing away of people) and demonstrates the beautiful outcomes possible when we marry gifts with needs.  I am fortunate to have many friends like Martha, who are working in the greater community diligently and from the heart.  (If you are reading this, you're probably one of them.) I am really grateful to Martha for being willing to share her writing here, because, let's face it: all alone, I'm not that interesting.

      So, this from Martha...

  

      I am lucky – and I used the term advisably – not to be a member of a group whose incarceration rate is one out of every nine people, that is, black men between the ages of 20 and 34. Rather, I am a white, middle-class, middle-aged woman. My involvement in prisons began with a seed of discomfort I have held for some time. Who ARE the people we as a society have caged away, some for the rest of their lives? And so I took the first small step, by participating in a training program created by Quakers in the 1970s in New York State, which has since spread around the world. It is called the Alternatives to Violence Program (AVP). I am now a trainer in the program and am looking forward to offering the training in Spanish next week to a group of men who are more comfortable with the Spanish language. 

Alternatives to Violence Program (AVP) Experience “On the Inside”, MCI Concord 

     “Nancy, I’d like to do that Light and Lively exercise after lunch...” 

     “I’ve been thinking about that all weekend, and I think…” 

      The conversations swirl around me as the AVP workshop at MCI Concord, “on the inside”, begins. Our group consists of 14 prisoners, mostly African American, of whom 3 are trained facilitators, and 4 white middle-class women from the outside. It’s not hard to tell who is a prisoner here by race, class or gender. But when I look closely, I see a different story. When I look beneath all these differences between “us” and “them” in my mind and heart, I feel that I have entered a monastery of sorts, where the inmates are focused on learning about themselves and improving their interactions with the world. True, this is a self-selected group. Unlike in some other programs, prisoners do not win a reduction in their sentence for attending AVP, so their presence is entirely voluntary and offers a contrast to most of the rest of their schedule. 

      Right from the beginning, I notice a deep level of sharing that would be unusual in most groups on the outside. On my first experience inside a prison, I expected to be surrounded by a group of “hardened criminals” who were unwilling to share much, people who were mired in shame and fear of each other and themselves. I was surprised when we did an exercise early on asking us to name, in front of the entire group, positive and negative influences on our lives, as well as the resulting effects on us. Absent fathers and racist societies were mentioned, but also loving relatives, success in school and at sports, good marriages, and children who continue to love their fathers in prison. Many comments were accompanied by deep feelings, verging on tears. 

     Later in the week, we reviewed “The Anatomy of an Apology” and then were given some time in silence to write a letter of apology to someone. The silence in the room was profound, even worshipful. Afterwards, one of the younger men said with much happiness and relief in his voice: “I feel so much lighter now! I can’t believe it! How would it be if I wrote letters to ALL the people I need to apologize to?” I noticed all the prisoners carefully tucked their letters away, one sliding his inside his sock. I wondered how many of these letters were delivered, and if so, how much healing could result? 

      I brought my own assumptions to this workshop. I had been cautioned during the orientation that they might try to “set me up” so that I would compromise myself by bringing in some contraband they could use. I also came with a package of emotions ranging from anger and disgust at these men’s crimes to anger at a society that is willing to make humans pawns in this vast prison industry, which wastes lives and talents at enormous cost to us all. However, I learned that many of these people are not throwing away their lives, even though some of them have life sentences with no opportunity of parole. They are reading, thinking, praying and meeting together to do what they can in their limited situations. They are gaining the wisdom to see others with compassion and love, and to avoid violence next time, inside as well as outside prison. They are willing to trust each other and name their truths aloud.  Watching them take these risks, I found it easier than I would have thought to lay aside my preconceptions and to share some of my inner truth. For the days that I was inside, I truly joined this little monastery and it became a journey of exploration for me as well. 

      So if you are considering going to a weekend retreat to gain wisdom and understanding of your own life, and to open your heart, why not spend it learning those things with the people in prison? 

Please!  If you have some thoughts on this topic, feel free to post your comments below.  And, if you have some of your own writing on environmental sustainability, social justice and spirituality,  email it to me at jblooker@comcast.net and I'll see what I can do to get it posted.