[ hold :: this space ]

I’ve been working over this last week to get ready for NCYC, a national youth convention organised by the Uniting Church, and few other things happening in the women’s prison and in the basement during the next 6 weeks. We’re curating a sacred space for 1400 people next Wednesday evening at NCYC - an extraordinarily tricky event that is waking me at 3 each morning with its impossible permutations - and i’m also doing a workshop on Lament on Monday afternoon. I’m not sure i’ll get to much else during the week, disappointingly, but Shane Claiborne is speaking and he’s always brilliant…

So there’s not much time for writing here, but before i forget it all I wanted to get down a few things from the last couple of weeks… It’s a bit disjointed, and i’d keep it as a draft but maybe it’ll make sense to someone else too!

Christmas day in the prison was lovely, but very, very sad. Like last year, there was ten minutes of absolute silence at the end of the service, out of which the men gradually came and started telling their stories - speaking of families who would be visiting them the next day, or those who would be conspicuous in their absence; of things they wished for, prayers they wanted.

I’ll put up the service because it worked, though the words don’t communicate what it was like [download it here: ptphilipxmas]. The service again was evidence of how words are always changed and interpreted by the context in which they are spoken. What seemed pretty optimistic in the planning was actually very subdued and melancholic in reality. But then the story of christmas isn’t actually about happiness, and to make it such turns it into a story for everyone else.

I’ve been thinking about that while I’ve been watching the news this week as the situation in Gaza unfolds. It seems ironic that this is all happening at a time when many churches are telling the story of Jesus’ escape to Egypt - which has to be one of the most fraught passages in the New Testament. For some reason it’s all been bringing to mind a phrase I read in an article last year written by a Rwandan community development worker: ‘God spends each day travelling the world, and comes back to Rwanda to sleep’.

The absence of God has been a theme of the last year - unintended, as these things normally are. I began the year inspired by the story of restorative justice in Rwanda, and have used that as a foundation for some of the work we’re doing here. It’s perhaps appropriate, given how difficult all that has been this year - how unending and complicated the task is - that i read this article last week. I’m so profoundly grateful for the way the article ends because, you know, that’s the truth of so much of what we do. Just turning up and being faithful doesn’t guarantee success. Quite probably most of what we are trying to do will fail. And we’re playing with heart-breaking stakes.

If the beginning of last year was defined by hope and great dreams, this year it’s coloured with a prayer that hope isn’t what’s needed to survive or keep going. I think i ended last year feeling pretty flattened by reality, but with some perverse instinct to keep doing what we’re doing. Hope doesn’t factor into it; just a knowledge that it’s only by doing this that we find - and keep - our humanity.

the benediction for worship in Port Phillip Prison on Christmas Day

The story tells us
that it’s those who wait in the world’s shadows
who are the first to know the story of the Christ-child
born into darkness,
bringing great light.

So leave here today
- you who know shadows
and trust the promise of light -
to be carriers of the rumour of peace
and the truth of love.

Pray for the justice another is waiting for,
and speak of the hope another needs to breathe.

And may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ
the love of God
and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit
be with us all

amen.

[I won't be blogging again until after christmas... may yours come with peace...]

i can’t remember an advent quite this busy or complicated. It was partly self-induced, but other things ended up on my desk or in my calendar that were quite out of my control.

Last night was the last of the things I have to ‘perform’ before Christmas Day. I was in Port Phillip Prison with Ross, the UCA chaplain; we were leading worship in the Marlborough Unit, which houses men with intellectual disabilities and acquired brain injuries. I saw some old friends there, a few who had been out and come back, and met some new guys. The very best thing was seeing Alf and Trevor who wrote a couple of psalms when we did that last year in the unit, and giving them copies of the ‘Hold This Space’ book [available through Proost] in which they are published. They were a bit chuffed.

We arrived as the men were finishing dinner, just after 5pm, and worship started around 6, so we chatted for a while. The men would come up one by one and tell their stories of what was happening at home, of lawyers and appeals, of loneliness and longing. For some of the men, the Marlborough Unit is the best and safest home they have known. For them, getting out of prison is a terrifying thing. The world isn’t safe.

We’ll be back there to do worship on Christmas Day next week. I woke up with an idea for that service in the middle of last night, which I wrote down at the time, but I’m too scared to look at it in case it’s crap!

I got home and was flicking randomly through some websites, something i haven’t done for weeks. There’s lots of talk about the Advent Conspiracy stuff, which looks brilliant… and which I’m all for in theory. But you know, I just felt guilty. I’ve got nothing left of myself to give to anyone this year. I just thank god that christmas presents are an option.

for worship next week in Port Phillip prison

Not all anticipation is hopeful,
and not all waiting is good;
so we pray for those for whom this season brings only despair.

We pray with those here in prison who long
for a decision from the parole board
for any news from a lawyer
for a phonecall from a loved one that never comes:

God of the waiting, turn anxiety into peace.

We pray with those we know who long
for a diagnosis and healing
for death
for life:

God of the waiting, turn fear into joy.

We pray with those in the world who long
for bombs to stop
for gunfire to cease
for wars to end:

God of the waiting, turn hatred into peace.

We pray with all who long
for arguments to be stilled
for a new way to be made clear
for justice to be made real:

God of the waiting, turn dread into love.

And we pray for those of us who no longer wait,
because our dreams have been shredded by the razor wire that surrounds us,
our hopes lie crumpled under the weight of systems and structures,
and our courage has been mocked by the reality of life:

God of the waiting, can you wait for us?
In this Advent, turn our despair into hope.

Amen.

i’ve been invited to be part of steering group for an exhibition on Women in the Torah, to be held at the Jewish Museum late next year. I’m really enjoying being part of a conversation with people from another faith, in an environment where i’m the guest, not the host; where mine is the minority perspective.

Rebecca, who is curating the exhibition, talked about a conversation she had with Rachel, a Muslim, who is also going to be part of the steering group, about the story of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar, and her discomfort with the way the story plays out for Hagar. Rachel’s reply was that it’s not how the story is understood by Muslims, that from their perspective, what happens to Hagar is a necessary part of the divine plan. Hagar exits stage left from the Judeo-Christian story, and ends up centre stage in a whole new story of faith.

I wrote here once before about those in our stories of faith who are abandoned by the side of the road. I think i need to rewrite that…

In a few weeks time we’re beginning some work with women in Dame Phyllis Frost Prison, exploring some of the stories from the bible that will have particular resonance for them… the rape of Tamar, Lot’s daughters, Hagar’s story, Dinah’s story… These are characters who have largely been left abandoned by the side of faith’s road. i hope we can find the faith they might take centre-stage in…

We had the PPW communal justice network meeting today in DPFCC [the women's prison]. Janey Muir-Smith, director of the Judy Lazarus Transition Centre, met with us to talk about transition and post-release issues, and what we might be able to do to help. The primary issue outside the prison is housing, the primary issue inside the prison is mental health.

There was another conversation about the rental crisis on the radio on the way home - the vacancy rate in melbourne is the lowest on record, and it’s only going to get worse as there are more foreclosures, etc. Not only does this mean that the cost of renting is at record levels, it also means that the competition for each property is fierce. The program host was interviewing people - employed professionals - about their lack of success in finding places to live. What they didn’t talk about was what that means for those who are much further down the pecking order: when the applications for each property number in their hundreds, and include accountants and lawyers, who would pick someone fresh out of prison?

The uniting church is short of ministers. i suspect there are a number of congregations who are renting out manses. perhaps the church should ask them to rent their manses to those who will get housing nowhere else. i’m going to find out a bit about this during the week…

We’re beginning a process with prison chaplains in a couple of weeks which involves looking at Mark - next year’s lectionary gospel - and getting them to explore how the gospel can be interpreted from within and into the prison context. The plan is to put the chaplains’ insights together with some prayers, images and music to create a worship resource that they can use throughout the year.

i’m preparing for the workshop that will kick start the process, and opened up Francis Moloney’s commentary on Mark to discover this quote on the dedications page:

Bella memorized, repeating phrases, until her fingers were so tired they gave up resisting and got it right… But when she finished memorizing - bar by bar, section by section - and played the piece without stopping, I was lost; no longer aware of a hundred accumulated fragments but only of one long story, after which the house would fall silent for what seemed a very long time.

Anne Michael, Fugitive Pieces

i keep getting frustrated by fragments. i just want the long story without the work it takes to get there… here’s to memory and rehearsal, patience and resilience…

The next meeting of the Port Philip West network is on Sunday afternoon, at the Dame Phyllis Frost Correctional Centre. We can’t take any more into the prison this Sunday, but if you are interested in being part of the ongoing work of the network, let me know. The network is working in three particular areas: advocacy [in government and communities], post-release integration [mentoring, housing and employment], and post-release support [metcards, phone cards, toothpaste, clothing...].

Word on the street is that the next state election [which is not due for a couple of years] will be fought on law and order.

We want to believe in the essential, unchanging goodness of people, in their power to resist external pressures, in their rational appraisal and then rejection of situational temptations… We simplify the complexity of human experience by erecting a seemingly impermeable boundary between Good and Evil. On one side are Us, Our Kin, and Our Kind; on the other side of that line we cast Them, Their Different Kin, and Other Kind. Paradoxically, by creating this myth of our invulnerability to situational forces, we set ourselves up for a fall by not being sufficiently vigilant to situational forces.

The SPE [Stanford Prison Experiment]… reveals a message we do not want to accept: that most of us can undergo significant character transformations when we are caught up in the crucible of social forces. What we imagine we would do when we are outside that crucible may bear little resemblance to who we become and what we are capable of doing once we are inside its network. The SPE is a clarion call to abandon simplistic notions of the Good Self dominating Bad Situations. We are best able to avoid, prevent, challenge, and change such negative situational forces only by recognizing their potential power to “infect” us, as it has others who were similarly situated…

Any deed that any human being has ever committed, however horrible, is possible for any of us - under the right or wrong situational circumstances. That knowledge does not excuse evil; rather it democratizes it, sharing its blame among ordinary actors rather than declaring it the province only of deviants and despots - of Them but not Us.

from the truly chilling Lucifer Effect: How good people turn evil, by Philip Zimbardo

The more reading i do on the prison system, the more horrific it gets.

this is an article worth reading on Victoria’s prisons, from the Age today. It’s a frightening description of the abuses of power that are going on within the system. One of the more sickening paragraphs:

In February, Australia’s only independent prison watchdog criticised the lack of transparency of Victoria’s prisons. The Western Australian Inspector of Custodial Services, Professor Richard Harding, described the system of monitoring abuse and corruption in Victoria’s jails as “well short of what a democratic society is entitled to”. Against this backdrop, prisoner abuse keeps occurring. In 2005, asthmatic remand prisoner Ian Westcott died in his cell after scrawling a note that read “asthma attack. buzzed for help. No response”. The intercom in his cell was broken.

I’ve been reading The Lucifer Effect: Understanding why good people turn evil this week. It’s written by Philip Zimbardo who led the research project the Stanford Prison Experiment. He’s exploring in the book the situations and dynamics that lead to good people turning evil. I’ll blog more about it when i’ve finished, but there are two things from what I’ve read today that resonate with the article from the Age:

Most of us hide behind egocentric biases that generate the illusion that we are special. These self-serving protective shields allow us to believe that each of us is above average on any test of self-integrity. Too often we look to the stars through the thick lens of personal invulnerability when we should also look down to the slippery slope beneath our feet.

And then, talking about what it is that happens to make good people [like you and me] turn evil:

Dehumanisation is one of the two central processes in the transformation of ordinary, normal people into indifferent or even wanton perpetrators of evil. Dehumanisation is like the cortical cataract that clouds one’s thinking and fosters the perception that other people are less than human. It makes some people come to see others as enemies deserving of torment, torture and annihilation.

I’m finding the article and the book chilling. We began the communal justice project as an issue of justice for the prisoners. I’m getting more convinced though that prisons aren’t just destructive for those who are sentenced to live there, but that they are slowly and insidiously corroding our society.

back at the office today, listening to the gale force winds outside and revelling in the freedom that comes from not having looked too closely at my diary for the next few months… by memory it’s not a busy few months, event wise, and the plan is to focus heavily on worship in prison … including working with a group from the women’s prison to plan a christmas alt worship service… [i suspect a midnight mass is completely out of the question, but it would be wonderful...]

this is a psalm from William in Exeter prison…

How long must we wait, God?
Every day is the same.
Time to do yesterday again.
Each door, each day to keep me.
No news from home.
No home for hope.

How long must we wait, God?

The only things that happen are
the rattle of keys
banging of doors to keep me
Feed me, watch me and work me.
The circle I walk has no end.

How long must I wait, God?
All we do is what we’re told,
When we’re told.
How we’re told.
Till we’re old.

How long must we wait, God?

Every day we ask for a breath of different air.
An old face to see new.
A family to bring me home.

How long must we wait, God?
Every day we wait for a gentle touch
the softest breath
freedom for my mind
The walk with no doors

How long must we wait, God?