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Posts from the ‘The Jail’ Category

May 30

2 Comments

God and the Devil are at War

“Can I ask a question before we even start today?” It was Monday afternoon and there were around fifteen of us sitting in a circle on plastic chairs in an airless prison chapel with bad lighting. The question came from a young man who I’ve enjoyed getting to know over the last few months. He’s thoughtful, deliberate in his speech, deeply serious (alarmingly so, at times). When he speaks, people listen. “Yeah, of course,” I replied. “What’s your question?” He furrowed his brow, took a breath, and said, “What’s the point of being good?” Well, that’s the kind of question that can uncork an opinion or two. Read more

May 18

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The Best Possible Outcome

I have adopted something of a standing policy on “praying for release” during prayer time at the jail. Usually, the prayer requests are heartfelt pleas for family and friends, for hope, peace, and courage while doing time, etc. But sometimes, one of the guys will say, “Well, I’d like you to pray that I can get the hell outta here!” To this, I am beginning to offer a standard response: “I will pray for the best possible outcome at your bail hearing, trial, etc.” I say this knowing full well that “the best possible outcome” from a more detached perspective—and certainly from a perspective that considers the victims of their offences—might well be that they remain incarcerated. But it’s a prayer that I can pray with integrity. And they usually seem happy enough with it. Read more

Apr 21

14 Comments

An Act of (Active) Love

Something I’ve learned over a decade and a half of pastoral ministry, is that people interpret and cope with their suffering in very different and very personal ways. Some cannot tolerate the idea that God could play any causal role whatsoever in their pain. God is their co-sufferer, labouring to bring goodness out evil, redemption out of brokenness. God is the salve, not the source. Others, take refuge in a highly specific and highly personal conception of God’s role in orchestrating the events of this world. Their torments come directly from the hand of a meticulously sovereign God whose will, while sometimes inscrutable, is always done. And then there are others—most of us, I suspect—who find ourselves somewhere between these two poles. Read more

Apr 19

8 Comments

Wednesday Miscellany

A morning tour through the news left a few itches that seemed to need scratching. And it’s been a while since a Miscellany post, so…

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Let’s begin in with the latest instalment of the “We’re losing our religion in the west but we still seem to weirdly miss it” category (surely R.E.M. must be getting tired of their song title being used for articles like this?). The image of a Gothic-style Catholic Church being turned into a skate-park pretty much sums it up. Six thousand to ten thousand churches close and/or are repurposed along these lines every year in America (it would likely be similar story in Canada). Church membership and attendance is falling off a cliff. We still like the idea of God or the divine or some kind of cosmic energy or… something. We can’t really tolerate the idea that there’s nothing beyond. We’re spiritual but not religious. So we like to tell ourselves, at any rate. Read more

Mar 29

6 Comments

Hang On, Judas

Judas was on the agenda at the jail this week. We’ve been working our way through John’s gospel over the past few months, paying special attention to Jesus’ encounters with real people. We’ve been trying to locate ourselves in these stories and to see what they might teach us about ourselves and about God. We’ve looked at Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman at the well, the woman caught in adultery, the blind beggar, Lazarus, etc. Good stories, each one, and not too difficult to locate ourselves in these characters. But Judas? Well, Judas is a different animal. Especially at the jail. Read more

Mar 22

2 Comments

Jesus, Remember Me

Over a dozen guys showed up for bible study at the jail last week. At least half, I had never seen before. It was an enthusiastic bunch, and the conversation ran off in all kinds of directions. A reading from John 11 about the raising of Lazarus quickly morphed into a discussion of everything from the dead bodies that emerged from the tombs in Matthew’s account of the crucifixion to what happens when you die to the harrowing of hell. We also talked about zombies. So, you know, a fair amount of terrain covered. Read more

Feb 28

3 Comments

Numbered Among the Defective

Troy* never reads from the bible when it’s his turn at the jail. “I can’t read,” he says. “Well, I can read… I can read when it’s charts and bullet points and diagrams and s*** like that, but not when it’s just a bunch of endless lines on a page. I get mixed up. I’ve got dyslexia or something. I’ve got a lot of things.” I don’t doubt this. He often rocks back forth on his chair, his hands drawing patterns on the page of a bible that is rarely opened to the right passage. Sometimes he whispers to himself while the conversation is going on around him. I always assure Troy that it’s fine if he doesn’t want to read. He listens, though. I know he does because he’s never short on commentary. Read more

Feb 14

11 Comments

Deliver Us from Evil

I’ve remarked often that the jail is where certain forms of progressive theology go to die. You don’t hear much about inclusivity or diversity or bespoke spiritualities or wellness and self-care at the jail. What you do hear is an at-times-uncomfortable amount of talk about judgment and salvation and damnation and spiritual warfare and atonement. You hear about heaven and hell and purgatory. You hear about how forgiveness and mercy sound pretty nice and I’ll have some of that thank you very much, but they’re too goddamned hard for Jesus to expect of us. Read more

Feb 7

5 Comments

Absolute Soul

“I’ve had a bunch of revelations in my life.” The words came from an inmate sitting across the table at the jail recently. He looked impossibly young, was skeletally skinny, indigenous. His face somehow managed to look deadly serious and impishly goofy at the same time, a hint of a smile always threatening to break out into the real thing. He was a big fan of rap music, poetry, anime. He knew his bible well, rattling off passages and references by memory. Read more

Jan 17

7 Comments

The Question the Whole World Revolves Around

“You know that bible verse that talks about the greatest three things, or whatever… you know, the three things that remain and how the best one is love?” The question comes from a young man at the jail. He has this wild look about him, hair everywhere, restless movements, a frantic, searching gaze, cuts on his hands. One is still bleeding. He gets up now and then to go tear a few strips off the toilet paper roll on the bookshelf to slow the flow. He follows this up by spraying disinfectant on his hands (there’s a bottle in the corner by the overhead projector, a lingering remnant of early pandemic days, I suppose). “Yeah, that’s 1 Corinthians 13,” I say, trying to keep tabs on his movements. “It’s one of my favourites.” “Yeah, I read it last night,” he responds. “I like it, too. But he’s missing one. There’s a fourth one that should be in there.” Read more

Dec 22

4 Comments

Far as the Curse is Found

He comes to make his blessings flow
far as the curse is found. — Joy to the World

I often tell people that the bible sounds different when you read it in jail. The same is true for Christmas carols. The words and the melodies sound different when sung far away from festive church sanctuaries, when instead of candles and creches it’s just concrete and plastic and reinforced glass. You’re drawn to different lines of the familiar songs. Read more

Dec 13

5 Comments

The Violent Take It By Force

And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force. — Matthew 11:12

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I am not a violent man. I have never been in a fight. Not a real one anyway. I suppose there were hockey skirmishes and the ordinary fraternal conflagrations of childhood, but these little irruptions don’t really count. I was invariably terrible at violence. At heart, I am a peacemaker, if of a conflicted sort. Read more

Nov 29

The Lion

You have to sign in for the weekly bible studies at the jail. Name, unit number, time. Records must be kept. And so, the clipboard dutifully makes its way around the circle. One guy always has a massive grin on his face as he writes his name. I’ll call him Adam. I know why Adam is smiling. He has a standard practice by now. He writes his name, as per the requirements. But then he always leaves a few blank lines before writing another: “Jesus.” This day, he expands a bit. “Jesus of Nazareth.” He hopes he’s spelled Nazareth right. Read more

Nov 24

In Extremis

To be a pastor is to regularly find oneself in extremis. Pastors are expected to bring consolation and hope into extreme situations: contexts of depression, addiction, suicidal ideation, crushing poverty, relational breakdown, violence, existential despair, intellectual doubt, debilitating illness, and ultimately, of course, death. Or, more precisely, to point to the One who promises these things in (and beyond) the fractured and chaotic world of human experience. But what happens to the possibility of consolation when you don’t believe in this One anymore? Read more

Jun 13

4 Comments

There, But for the Grace of God…

Over the past few months, I’ve had a number of people, close to home and from afar, comment that they’ve appreciated my reflections and stories that emerge out of Monday mornings spent at the jail. I’ve obviously appreciated the affirmation, even as I sometimes privately wonder if I’m dancing a little too close to the line of voyeuristically exploiting the pain of hard stories to make a bit of theological hay. In my more optimistic moments, I believe these stories need to be told to bring a bit of humanity into a place where stereotypes and casual dismissiveness abound, to shine a light on the glimmers of hope, to bear witness to the sadness, etc. At other times, I wonder if I’m doing little more than wordily rubbernecking as I pass the scene of a car wreck. Read more

Jun 5

2 Comments

Wednesday Miscellany: Proselytism, Parasitic Morality, and a Punch in the Mouth

I sat in on an attempted proselytism the other day. It was in the chapel at the jail. One of the young women had been pontificating about how she didn’t really believe in God, but she figured there was probably a higher power that was orchestrating things down here. Life was mostly about merging with the energy of the universe and nature and discovering how everything’s connected and all religions basically say the same thing and that it’s all about love and peace (she said this after introducing the word “perping” to my lexicon and talking about how sometimes it’s just so much fun!). She was, in other words, a well-tutored member of the burgeoning SBNR (spiritual but not religious) category of the post-Christian West. Read more

May 27

5 Comments

Death of a Simple Narrative

I am learning that the jail is very often a place where simple narratives go to die.

This morning’s lesson was ostensibly about learning how to stop blaming parents and take responsibility for our own actions but, as is usually the case, the conversation tends to meander off in all kinds of loosely-related or unrelated territory. There was a younger indigenous woman who was sitting quietly while the lesson was read. She had spiky jet black hair streaked with blond, a few tattoos on her face, one that looked like a tear drop of blood. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she sat in stony silence throughout our time together. She didn’t look like she had much to say. Read more

May 9

7 Comments

Unstuck

There are questions that I encounter as a pastor that haunt me. I’m not necessarily thinking about the “usual suspects” here. Questions about the existence of God or why we suffer or the challenge of pluralism or the historicity of this or that biblical story or the conundrums of interpreting this or that passage or doctrine. These all represent familiar enough terrain and present their own challenges to faith. But the questions I’m thinking about today are much more personal in nature. Read more

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