I. RELATIONSHIP WITH THE UNDERGROUND
We want to be clear about something “from the gate,” as they say in prison: our primary goal is not to fix someone out of prison.
That turns our friend into a project. It has nothing to do with love.
RELATIONSHIP VS. PROJECT
Our primary goal is not to “do this program right” so that our friend leaving the underground “succeeds” (really, so that we feel we succeeded).
Neither is our primary goal to help our new friend become a “productive member of society,” as that miserably utilitarian phrase goes. (Though being productive is a common byproduct of a flourishing, resurrected life.)
The immense performance pressure to be successful—as a measure of life and relationship—comes from our culture, not the gospel.
Part of our transformation in this journey is letting go of that addiction to control people and situations, even when we mean well. It’s right there in the Welcoming Prayer we use every team meeting: “I let go of my desire for control. I let go of my desire to change someone else.”
We’re also learning to give ourselves the same grace. Like your person coming home, you will most likely “fail” in various ways. That is, you’ll both make some big mistakes. You’ll both get nervous and default into old protective patterns. You’ll both disappoint someone and yourselves.
Good news: that’s ok! This is how we find level ground with the incarcerated. We all need some mercy, understanding, patience, and support.
This is what we call KINSHIP. The discovery that we aren’t that different from one another.
“Success” in this journey, if we have to use that word, is opening new relationships of embrace and trust. Success is learning how to be faithful. Success is mutual transformation.
We can’t force it. We can only choose to stay connected, stay open to what comes.
We stay in relationship. We write another letter, risking greater honesty.
And God works through that mess, in surprising ways.
From the Welcoming Prayer, again: “I let go of my desire for approval.”
Take a deep breath. The pressure’s off.
Pressure off of you, to pull off another person’s “successful” reentry. To make the program “work” for those watching.
And the pressure’s off your friend, too: they don’t have to carry the burden of your expectations, faking a big smile, terrified of letting you down. They have permission to be a mess as you learn—as a team—how to welcome God’s love into all our messiness.
Love is the highest gift of God. There is nothing higher in religion. If you are looking for anything else, you are looking wide of the mark.
—John Wesley, 1703-1791
THE PARADOX OF CHANGE
Listen to these stunningly simple words from the beloved spiritual writer and Jesuit priest in India, Anthony de Mello. They point us to a great mystery that defies most of our instincts about human change:
“I was neurotic for years. I was anxious and depressed and selfish. Everyone kept telling me to change. I resented them, and I agreed with them, and I wanted to change, but simply couldn’t, no matter how hard I tried. What hurt most was that, like the others, my best friend kept insisting that I change. So I felt powerless and trapped.
Then, one day, another friend said to me, ‘Don’t change. I love you just as you are.’
Those words were music to my ears: ‘Don’t change. Don’t change. Don’t change . . . I love you just as you are.’ I relaxed. I came alive. And suddenly I changed!
Now I know that I couldn’t really change until I found someone who would love me whether I changed or not.”—Anthony De Mello, Jesuit Priest in India
This is the kind of environment, the kind of relationships we want to create together. For our incarcerated friend, as well as for each other.
Do you have a story like this? Do you have an experience of people telling you, expecting you to change—and it trapped you? Have you experienced a relaxed, faithful relationship that actually helped you flourish faster?
Be still for a moment and locate that muscle flexing inside you that wants to demand your incarcerated person change, as “part of the deal” that earns your time and love and attention. Talk to that part of yourself, listen. Even if you can’t convince yourself to enter Fr de Mello’s words quite yet.
FAITHFULNESS IS THE GOAL
That’s Alex, in the photos above. You’ll get to know him in more of the videos each month. That’s him in county jail on the left, where we met. Then when he got out, time we spent together at barbecues, meeting his kids. He wasn’t ready to “change,” leave the gang life or his addiction. But our relationship—intermittent, not goal-oriented—was more important than forcing him into treatment or lecturing him about what drugs and violence did to him, his kids, the community. We savored our rare friendship when he came around.
Then that’s him back in maximum-security prison. We stayed in touch, wrote letters, for many years. One day I got a letter from him. He said he was ready for a new life, a different way. He knew who to reach out to, whom he could trust. Then that’s us on a fly fishing trip in Utah. The last photo is his engagement party. Alex is now a college graduate and our lead reentry navigator on staff at Underground—faithfully accompanying many more men and women out of the tombs, as they are ready.
“My biggest fear getting out of prison, leaving the gangs, was ‘Am I going to be ACCEPTED?’ I had real bad anxiety. From the fear of failing.
But I had a group of people I could rely on. You guys never gave up on me. I knew you loved me and I could trust you.”—Alex
Alex now speaks regularly on panels at conferences and webinars about how we need to replace the word “change” with “HEAL.” He always hated the way people told him he had to change. “Why would I change who I am? I knew I was a good person inside. I always had this good heart. But I had a lot of trauma, hurt, rage, and hopelessness inside me. What I needed all along was not to change, but to heal. And healing takes trust. And time.”
Father Greg Boyle of Homeboy Industries, the most “successful” gang intervention and prisoner re-entry organization in the world, tells us that success is only a byproduct of a larger, relaxed love.
Resurrection is God’s work. We get to be part of it, help roll away the stone. And be changed in the process.
Our goal—Father G and Mother Teresa remind us—isn’t success. It’s FAITHFULNESS. As we faithfully stick with someone carrying more than we can imagine, as we let go of control, let go of our fears, and let our hearts be broken, that’s how the light gets in. Something much better begins to happen.
Please read (and re-read throughout this experience) the essential and beautiful chapter below. It is core reading for us at Underground Ministries. Click the arrows to advance pages. Or, Click here to buy the full book for yourself or your team. Definitely worth it!
FAITHFULNESS IS A LONG WALK
Here’s one more story, up here in Washington State, that might help you imagine where we’re going.
I got off the phone with Terrance, who’s only been out of prison a few months. He’s still wearing an ankle monitor, not even past his official “release date” yet.
He told me his One Parish One Prisoner team all gathered this past weekend, on a sunny Sunday morning, excited to see him again, in-person, after a year of letters, emails, calls, planning and then pandemic distancing. He’s doing well, signed up for community college classes.
So one team member asked, after about an hour of catching up about their lives now, “So what’s next? Do we keep meeting? Are we done?”
“I just stayed quiet,” Terrance told me on the phone. “I thought I’d just see what they are thinking.”
He told me another team member said, “I think so.”
Another said, “Well, maybe with Terrance. But I think we start with the next guy now?”
And the rest of the team agreed.
We are so used to programs helping the maximum number of people. This makes people into “clients served,” which asks very little of our hearts or lives. We are less used to actual relationships with those from different backgrounds than us. Without meaning to, we often relapse right back to “program” mode.
Terrance sounded hurt, telling me this on the phone. “The next guy? Oh, ok. It’s like that, then? I mean, I dunno.” He paused, not wanting to sound ungrateful, not wanting to sound foolish:
“I thought we were building lifelong friendships. Isn’t that what this was all about? I feel kinda dumb for wanting that now. I mean, if this was just a little bit of help when I get out and ‘see ya later, good luck,’ I coulda just used the resource center downtown. I didn’t know this was just a short walk kind of thing.
I don’t want to sound ungrateful for all they’ve done and all their kindness, but I thought this was about a long walk together.”
— Terrance, released participant
Terrance understood this journey. Let’s focus less on short term “success” markers and rather aim for the kind of faithful, rich relationships that can take a “long walk” together. Our "program” modules don’t go past two years. But let’s imagine a future where this new friend is part of your community for years to come, in good seasons and bad.
RUPTURE + REPAIR
This “long walk together” does not mean we somehow avoid any problems or conflict for the long haul. Quite the opposite. It’s actually our fear of heartbreak or hard conversations that usually causes us to flake or drift away (or get “too busy” to continue connecting). It’s what keeps many relationships—in religious communities, in online friendships—shallow and unsatisfying. We don’t fully belong to one another until we go through some bummers together.
It’s a holy dynamic for all human bonding that child psychologists call “rupture and repair.” Things go wrong. Feelings get hurt. Disagreement, conflict. People run away. Shit goes sideways. Our early, lovely connection is ruptured.
But then what? Far too often, that’s the end of the relationship.
But people of faith (same word as “trust”) should be skilled at moving through both rupture and repair—wound and healing, separation and return, death and resurrection. The story of Jesus’ arrest, betrayal, execution, burial, resurrection and return to his terrified and despairing friends is one of the greatest religious roadmaps through divine-human bonding.
We’ll be using this language a lot more throughout the journey ahead. Rupture and repair.
Don’t run away. That’s faithfulness, the only kind of “success” we can control. Something we can’t plan will surely happen. It will rupture what we think we know. It will transform us.
We are practicing resurrection together.
ACTION STEPS
WRITE YOUR INCARCERATED FRIEND: about a time you failed, did not succeed, really blew it, disappointed yourself or others. Or a time something you love broke (your vase, your boat, your marriage). Tell them how you handled that, how it felt. They probably think you all are always “successful.”
SEND THE PRINTABLE PDF of this module and the Father Greg chapter above to your incarcerated friend inside the letter. Ask them—and yourself—one of the questions above.
ASK what “success” would be for them in this reentry journey, and how you can support their dreams, even if it means passing through some failures first before getting there.
CONGREGATIONAL CONNECTION: One person from your team, share during your church’s prayers about your hopes and fears with OPOP.
FOR TEAM DISCUSSION
Have you already felt the anxiety growing inside, the pressure to make this a “successful” project? Does this module’s message—and different definition of success—come as a relief? As a difficult invitation?
Father Greg says success/failure doesn’t have much to do with the gospel. What do you think he means by that? How can that shed light on what Jesus could be inviting you into—through this relationship with someone returning from prison?
