I. RELATIONSHIP WITH THE UNDERGROUND
Navigating phone calls, emails, prison visits, & our fears.
APPROACHING THE GATES
By now you have been writing letters with your incarcerated friend for a few weeks. Letters are the first tangible step through the many barriers between the prison realm and the land of the living.
You have already crossed a line most of society never even nears—due to fear, disgust, or unawareness. So, well done. You have begun a relationship. It’s simple. It’s radical. It’s just the beginning.
This month we will help you open up more of the gates of Hades between us and our incarcerated kin. Hades is the underworld, the underground, shown cracked open beneath Jesus’ feet in the early church icon above.
You’ll set up your email account for faster messaging. You’ll set up your phone to enjoy your first call. And you’ll get your online visitor’s application done (it takes a while to process, and by then you’ll be ready for a video visit, then hopefully a real prison visit!) Our work now is opening greater relationship.
There are barriers outside of us—which we will cross with letters, emails, phone calls, video chats, visiting applications, and actually crossing the miles between us to enter the prison gates.
There are barriers inside of us that we may only now be starting to feel.
There’s no video or book material this month. All the reading is right here. And some time set aside for visiting applications, phone credits, and video visits.
Ready? Let’s do this.
PHONE CALLS
Someone becomes more real when you hear their voice.
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If your friend is on JPay still, take some time now to set up an SECURUS account (below). Then put funds only on your phone number, not an inmate debit, so you’re only paying for when your person calls you.
If you’re already on SECURUS, click over to CALL SUBSCRIPTIONS tab and get set up.
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Take some time now to set up an ADVANCE PAY account on Connect Network.
Try once a month to start. Save the incoming number in your phone with your incarcerated friend’s name, so you know who’s calling now!
After that, it’s really just an awkward timing game. They’ll call you during their hours out of their cell, and if you miss it, you can’t call them back! Set a regular phone time in your letters or emails. Try once a month to start. Save the incoming number in your phone with your incarcerated friend’s name, so you know who’s calling now!
Take note of what it feels like to hear their voice. Tell them about it.
“I was able to talk with Antonio [on the phone] for the first time this morning. It was awesome to hear his voice. We’ve been emailing as well and the immediacy of that communication has really moved things along. ”
— Bill, Parish Team Member
VISITING
It’s not too early to get the visitation gates opening between you.
The last piece of this month’s work is to fill out the easy online visitor application. It takes a month or two to process, and DOC will notify your incarcerated friend when you’re approved or if there’s a problem.
VIDEO CALLS
Wendy MacNaughton @wendymac
During the pandemic, all in-person visitation was put on hold. So we learned the convenience and curse of (grainy, spotty) video visits!
Will this be a little awkward? Of course. But think of all the practice you’ve had turning to strangers in the pew behind you and ‘passing the peace’ in church. Or talking to someone new during coffee hour. At least this person truly WANTS to talk to you. And they’re probably more colorful.
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Once you get your visitor’s application submitted and approved, you can use SECURUS to make video calls, in addition to emails! You can see your releasing friend’s face on screen in real time, just like with everyone else in your Zoom-era life! Other teams are already doing this and we want to encourage you to make the digital leap this month.
It’s around $8 to schedule a 30 minute video visit. Yes, pricey. But think of the gas you’re saving—especially if your friend is locked up on the far side of your state! Bring your own snacks, right in the comfort of your home. Only approved visitors can be on the screen, so no group calls or other family members “sharing” your call. (Be sure to read the details and rules on the WA DOC website here.)
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Once you get your visitor’s application submitted and approved, you can use Connect Network to make video calls, in addition to emails! (https://ildoc.gtlvisitme.com)
(Be sure to read the details and rules on the iDOC website, from the link above.)
“Man, I’m excited that two of my team members got signed up for video visits and made their visit “visits” with me last week. It was so cool to see their faces.
Yeah the connection sucked and we couldn’t hear each other have the time. But its getting real now. They really care.”— Raul, currently incarcerated participant
PRISON VISITS
Everything gets very real when you drive across the actual geography between the human warehouses, often in remote areas, and the communities we normally call home.
For some of you, this is a one hour drive. For others, this may be a two-day pilgrimage. But pilgrimage is probably the best way to see this step, no matter the distance.
Now, you may already be feeling the real distance between you and your incarcerated friend. You have only begun a passage through the gates of Hades of our time.
You might feel fear when you approach the facility with its towers and walls and barbed wire. Or when you pull up to the intercom, say you’re here to visit “_________,” and you are told to leave your belongings in the car. When you step through security pat-downs and walk down long institutional halls, afraid of doing something wrong, you may start to feel why so few incarcerated people get any visits, and what families have to endure in order to see their kin.
You have entered the foyer of Hades. And you are embodying Jesus’ incarnational movement, entering the avoided realms of punishment and disposal, just to enjoy someone’s company.
It’s best to go in pairs. It’s how Jesus sent folks out. And it makes the commute cheaper and more fun. There’s built-in time to process on your way there and back. And it shows your friend you are part of a community, not a lone relationship.
When you finally sit down at a little assigned table and meet your person for the first time, just savor them. Don’t worry about solving any reentry plans. Laugh about how awkward this might feel. Share what was going through your mind as you drove out there. Ask every question you got. Ask them to let loose all their questions about you. Try to be aware of God’s delight humming through and around you both in that visiting room.
Be sure to click below for specific visiting hours and guidelines of each prison facility. Note what not to wear, which ID to bring, when to show up, all that. It’s painful to make the drive then get turned away for some small detail.
THE GATES OF HADES ARE THICK
Now, dealing with these online applications, figuring out the systems, collect calls, let’s be honest. It’s frustrating. It’s not catered to customer service. Don’t repress that frustration.
You are experiencing the actual barriers between the land of the living (“contributing members of society”) and the underworld where society has disposed of those who are “unwanted.” You are feeling how thick the gates of Hades are. They have been designed that way since ancient times. Today, it’s countless strange forms, programs, debit cards, and poor scheduling. There’s no customer service number, with helpful representatives. The gates of Hades look different in every age, every society.
Think of what the loved ones of those in prison have to deal with every day, just to maintain a relationship! You can see how kids lose touch with their parents. How these gates gradually end relationships, and they become ghosts, “dead” to the world.
You are doing something rare. You are pushing through these gates, wading through the steps, for no reason other than belonging to the heavenly movement of Jesus that descends to the depths for Love’s sake. May you feel, in these frustrating digital steps, that you are indeed part of Jesus’ movement in today’s world. Why else would you put up with this crap, if not biologically or romantically connected? You are entering God’s heart and movement in this, a divine love that “descended to the dead” (as the Apostles’ Creed says) with the physical incarnation of invisible Love.
Jesus told his disciples, when he founded this movement (or, ekklesia, translated as “church”), that the gates of Hades can’t stop us (Matthew 16:18). This is what we were made for. Hell can’t keep us out.
Or in.
Revisit that icon at the top and rest in that for a few minutes.
Now, take a break before the next segment.
BARRIERS WITHIN
“I do a good job at imitating caring. But I’m not sure I’ll have an easy time dropping that armor.”
—Jim, new Parish Team Member
The gates of Hades aren’t just the structures we navigate. Jesus called the community to not just roll away that heavy stone from the cave, but to then draw even closer and help remove the grave clothes, the layers of protection and fear between us.
Here’s a story of one One Parish One Prisoner team learning to name and gently remove these layers under which we all hide.
When Erin was invited by her pastor to join a One Parish One Prisoner team at their little Lutheran church last year, she came to the initial orientation with some fear. And questions.
"So, say I do this, and I write letters to this guy Wally in prison," she asked Sam (pictured below) at the orientation, "What on earth would I even talk to him about, given our vastly different lives? I mean, how do I bridge that huge of a gap?"
That's the question many people ask us when they get started.
Sam is our first accidental beneficiary of what later became One Parish One Prisoner as he returned from 27 years in prison. He’s now an Underground Ministries board member. Sam answered, "There's no gap."
It's not what I would have said.
But it stuck with her.
This is the story she told a year later at their church's Welcome Home Prep Sunday. The One Parish One Prisoner team members hosted an ice cream social after the morning service, telling the wider congregation more about the man in prison they've come to know and love over the last year of letters, calls, release planning, and learning.
They shared how this process changed their lives, and how the larger community can help welcome Wally back from the underground of mass incarceration with a Welcome Home basket of many basic needs, and with a growing fund to "roll away stones" of debt, collections, fees, rental deposits, and other barriers to the land of the living.
Erin stood to speak in front of the church.
"So I believed Sam, went home and wrote my first letter to Wally, just putting it all out there: I'm a middle-class white mother who homeschools her kids; my life might seem boring. I just went for it and told him about my lifelong struggle with mental health, how I have massive anxiety and even panic-attacks sometimes."
The packed basement grew very still, with full attention.
"And I got a letter back from Wally. He told me he was relieved to get my honest letter. He told me he had mental health struggles, too."
Erin continued, sharing how she grew to learn more about and trust not just Wally, but how this happened between the members of the wider team.
"I spoke to him last night on the phone, about today, actually. How public speaking scares the crap out of me. And Wally told me, 'You got this, homegirl.'
We've become like mental health buddies."
She seemed almost radiant, invincible to shame now. We all laughed and joined in her—or, their—new freedom.
"I figured," she paused, "if Wally can face his fears in opening up to all of us, trusting complete strangers with his life, as he kinda learns a new way of life, then his courage inspires me to face my fears. I can speak in front of you all today, and risk sharing more of the real me with all of you."
Bingo.
This is what we call mutual transformation. It's not clear who's helping who.
A retired man on the team stood up. He's never been open about his alcoholism with the church, he said. He's kept that private. But he knew his years of experience in recovery, his involvement with The Twelve Steps, would be an asset if he joined this team and welcomed someone home with recovery needs.
"I know people in the clean and sober houses, where the groups meet," he said. His area of shame became a gift, a strength, and contribution to the learning team and to Wally. This stoic man in a rural community, his voice trembled and other men his age in the Lutheran church basement had wet cheeks.
Wally's brother Tony shared, as well (below). Tony visited a team meeting once to meet the strangers writing to his brother, then found embrace and joined the OPOP team himself! He generously shared his own raw story of healing and recovery, offering experience and expertise toward his brother Wally's upcoming reentry.
In turn, the team has fallen in love with Tony and found ways to support Tony's next life steps along with Wally's. Unclear who's helping who as the embrace grows.
Another woman on the team was concerned when she first joined the team last year when she googled Wally's name and learned about his charges.
"Not many people know this about me," she shared with some of the team back then: she had experience with domestic violence in her past. "I might not be the right person for this, I'm afraid."
But that opened up much larger, new conversations inside the team about how many people in churches have suffered violence in the home and never, ever talk about it. "And how much violence in the home might still be happening here with the families coming on Sundays?"
Kinship so quickly, as Father Greg Boyle says.
The church members realized they never would be doing this—openly addressing this shared, painful reality in our stories—if it weren't for a relationship with a guy with open DV charges returning from prison!
This led to a church hosting its first domestic violence education and training—led by an organization dedicated to helping churches become safe and heal from within.
Churches are full of wounds that need attentive healing. Mental health. Addiction. Domestic Violence. We've struggled to heal on our own. We’re practiced in shame management. We're hiding it.
But in this church basement, I saw a multi-generational community breaking out of its own confinements, learning how to welcome the rejected parts of themselves.
This happened as they practiced God's embrace around someone whose past is less hidden. This is the magic of mirroring that we keep witnessing.
When folks resisted Jesus' invitation to roll away the opening to Lazarus' tomb, and welcome the one they feared, Jesus said, "Didn't I tell you if you trust me on this, you'll actually see the glory of God?"
When Wally walks out the prison gates, he will be embraced by a community bringing more of who they are than they thought was possible.
“It seems as though the more shame we have, the deeper we go into our caves. We do not want anyone to see it. We put a stone in front of our cave, so no one can get it, and we cannot get out.”
— Ray Leonardini, Founder of Prison Contemplative Fellowship, from Toxic Shame and Contemplative Prayer
FOR TEAM DISCUSSION
What stood out to you in the story above? Could you relate to any of the team members’ fears, anxieties? Could you relate to any of the underlying issues that came up?
Some of your team may not yet have written your first letter. If anyone hasn’t yet, now is a time to be more prayerfully curious about what those blocks are. Ask yourself and ask God in the Welcoming Prayer time of your meeting, and invite your team to humbly explore with you: What’s beneath this block for you/me? (It’s usually not a time issue. Normally there’s something truer, scarier to explore. And more freedom to experience through taking this step, together.)
CONGREGATIONAL CONNECTION: There are many barriers to connection in our world. Consider your church and think about any barriers that might exist (stairs to the Bible study, hard of hearing, can’t read music, can’t afford the fellowship dinner) and dream of ways to remove those barriers in your church.
ACTION STEPS
WRITE YOUR NEXT LETTER: ABOUT THE BARRIERS BETWEEN US. Tell them about what barriers you’re facing to be in relationship. The sign ups getting complicated? Online applications taking a while? Hesitant to share your address? Old wounds from your past kicking up fresh fears? Try just putting it out there, and asking for help.
SET UP YOUR PHONE ACCOUNT. Try sending a quick note to make sure they’re getting it.
SUBMIT YOUR ONLINE VISITOR’S APPLICATION—Get it processing.
PHONE: Figure out how to put just $10 on your phone’s number. Then invite your incarcerated friend to say hi.
