Setting Prisoners Free
Father Jim and one of his horses
When you are a writer, and if you are honest, so much of your time is spent wondering if anyone out there in cyber space has read your hard sought words and whether anything you have written might have found its way to, and resonated with, a heart of flesh. You listen attentively for that distinctive “ping” that comes through a dark and nameless online audience and suddenly identifies itself as friend. You don’t often hear it, but when you do, it is a most magical moment in time.
I had been writing essays for Dappled Things a while when one day I heard that ping. It was embedded in an email from a retired priest living in West Texas. He wanted me to know how much he liked a particular essay of mine and how it had hit home with him. The gratitude was genuine and the words simple and direct. He had completely understood what I was trying to say - this total stranger whom I had never met; who had unknowingly filled me with newfound joy at the mysterious power of the written word; a word that goes where it will. I wrote back, and as the next few years rolled on, I would receive more emails of the same sort. They were always a surprise; I always wondered what had caught his eye this time. We slowly became friends across the miles from here to Texas.
I found out he was a writer. He had a blog filled with his thoughts on priesthood and vocation, on ranch life, on the healing power of horses and all the graces his chosen way of life had bestowed. I loved his writing style, so different than my own. His name was concise and comforting: Father Jim.
One day, I got another email. Father Jim was passing through St. Louis on his way home to visit his family in Ohio. Would I like to meet? He didn’t have to ask me twice. We set up a breakfast at my local pancake house, and what a joy to finally see him "in the flesh". So often, my inner image of someone I have never met is completely off - the real person being so different than what I imagined. But this time I was spot on. Tall, soft spoken, witty, and kind. This is how he always came through to me in our emails back and forth, and he was exactly that in person. He was a man "all of a piece" so to speak. It was delightful.
It was evident from the very first word that Father Jim loved West Texas. We talked about the terrain, the gorgeous hidden canyons that no one seems to know about outside of the Lone Star State. He spoke warmly of the hard-working people, the weather, all the books that have been written about the history there. The amazing horsemanship of the Comanche Tribes. The incredible ingenuity and spunk of the original ranchers. He had both my husband and me charmed by his quiet passion for this, his adopted home and its people, expressed through his unique voice.
Father Jim is a retired priest who spent most of his life back east in Ohio. He grew up on a large farm and did a fair amount of horse training on his father’s place. So, when he got to Texas, he bought a small piece of ranch land and acquired two horses. He travels about every weekend in a region as big as West Virginia saying Mass, hearing confessions and getting to know the people. Being an admittedly reserved and quiet German, he laughs about being startled at first by the open affection and the all out hugs, given so impromptu, by his Hispanic parishioners with their lively talk and energetic ways. He has grown to love their zest for life, their hard working generosity, and their enthusiastic faith!
Being a long-time writer himself, he eventually volunteered to teach a creative writing class at a local prison near his town. He told me how some of the men there are quite gifted and creative. He also helps out at a shelter where convicted drug addicts are given a chance to live out in the world with their families. They come to the center each day for counseling and drug checks. This way they avoid the bad effects of prison life and are given a chance to work in the world united to their families and friends for support. As his contribution to making this experiment work, Father Jim makes a point to come to the center to hang out with whomever is there, and to simply to talk and share a cup of coffee. He once told me that he had read an essay I had written about Mary Magdalen to a group of his addicts and reformed prostitutes and that they had been visibly moved. It humbled me to the core that God had used my words in such a way. I wondered about this unique priestly call he had received by moving to West Texas, and in its turn had drawn him into prison ministry working with addicts and prostitutes who sought healing and restoration.
Listening to him talk, I wanted to write it all down. There were so many beautiful and practical insights about the healing power of art, about the emotional hardships of prison life and the many efforts to address them, about living the Gospel within his unique call. This interview was my attempt to gather together all that we discussed over pancakes that early morning. I thought it important that his thoughts should reach a wider audience and perhaps find a heart that might just be searching for this kind of vocation and was waiting for that distinctive “ping” to answer.
Father Jim with the author and her husband
Denise: Can you tell me a bit about yourself? Where you grew up? How you ended up in Texas?
Father Jim: I was raised on our family farm in Ohio, the youngest of six children. The day-to-day field work and barn chores, along with the deep faith of my parents, made the presence of God as real and palpable to me as the clucking of chickens, the wool of a lamb, or the colors of autumn leaves in the woods. I can never remember a time in my childhood when I did not want to become a priest.
Eventually, I entered the seminary. In addition to my theological studies, I earned a master’s degree in speech at Northwestern University. Along with teaching homiletics, I was privileged to serve as a pastor in numerous rural communities. In my free time, I broke colts and trained horses. After I had served the Archdiocese of Cincinnati for twenty-eight years, Bishop John Yanta, then the bishop of Amarillo, Texas, urged me to apply for a transfer to his mission diocese which was, and still remains, in desperate need of priests. I was granted permission to relocate to Texas and have served the Church in that diocese for the past fifteen years.
Can you describe your writing journey?
When I was in grade school, work on our farm did not allow me time for sports so, during recess at school, I was usually the last kid to be picked for a team. When I entered high school, my lack of athletic ability led me to join the speech and debate team. My favorite event was the oral interpretation of literature. This is where I first discovered the transformation that occurs when a reader submerges himself into another world, be it real or fictional. Speech and debate led me to read more widely and carefully, and to write about what I read.
I wrote my first book, Words of Worship, while teaching homiletics at the seminary. The book’s goal was to help priests apply performance and rhetorical skills to the celebration of the Sacred Liturgy. Later, I also wrote a book for preachers on congregational analysis entitled, Preacher in a Hard Hat. Since then, my other books have focused predominantly on the overlapping of God’s story of salvation with our own humble stories: raising families, earning livelihoods and walking the journey of life in a spirit of reverence and joy, faith and love.
What genres of literature are natural draws for you?
I enjoy reading contemporary fiction. In fact, I haven’t owned a TV in over thirty-five years and do not make use of social media. This personal interest in short fiction has led me to write and publish several short stories of my own, one of which received an honorable mention in the JF Powers Short Fiction Contest and another was long-listed in Craft’s Flash Fiction Contest.
Short fiction—if well-written—illuminates areas of life that are often “under-reported” in regular, day-to-day conversations. It is in these regions of hope and longing, fear and disappointment, sin and faith, that modern-day illustrations of the Gospel vividly emerge. As a preacher and a writer, I strive to bring the peace of Christ to bear on these practical yet deep realities. For this reason, my writing usually focuses on ordinary people in ordinary circumstances discovering redemptive experiences or sacred underpinnings in their daily routines and circumstances. For example, one of my recently published stories included a country deputy and a funeral director. The protagonist in the story that I’m currently writing is a welder at an oil refinery.
When and how did you begin working with prisoners? What gave you the idea to offer them a writing class? How many prisoners are in the class?
My first experience of prison ministry was in West Texas where I served as a rural pastor in a town whose main employer was a state prison. At that time, a Bible study at the prison evolved into a group of about seven students writing personal reflections on passages from the Gospels. Given the unique environment of prison life, many of these essays offered unusual perspectives on the well-known stories and parables. We eventually collected the prisoners’ work in an Advent meditation booklet but, disappointingly, permission to print it was not forthcoming. It seems, though, that the seeds had been planted.
Later, after retiring from parish administration, I took up residence at a small ranch near the same prison and have resumed offering a creative writing class. There are currently four very focused and dedicated students in the class.
How did you first present the class? What sorts of things did you have them write about?
The first few months of the course centered on various qualities of good writing: clarity, description, the use of variation and contrast, etc. An organization called PEN recently published a book for writers in prison called, The Sentences that Create Us: Crafting a Writer’s Life in Prison. Our class format is a combination of following the writing prompts contained in this book as well as group sharing and critique of writing projects chosen by the students from their own work.
Have you seen any changes in them since they began to write for you?
My four students have diverse interests. Two of them are working on spiritual memoirs while the other two enjoy writing short fiction with an occasional poem thrown in for good measure.
There exists a high level of camaraderie and trust between the four participants which is unusual in a prison setting. I am frequently amazed at the honesty and depth of their writing as well as the high quality of the work that they produce. In some ways, as a priest familiar with serving families and individuals in times of crises, I find common ground with the tragic realities in the lives of my students. With them, I marvel at the ways in which the act of writing often reveals unexpected insights into the mystery of life and the serendipitous connections it uncovers between biblical stories and their own. A recent example would be an inmate’s reflection on the connection between his childhood experience of fear and respect for his swimming instructor and his efforts to relate to God in a mature and productive way.
What do you see as most challenging to a writing life in a prison setting?
Writing is a self-reflective activity that requires a level of peace and security in which to deeply flourish. In a prison setting there is a sense of “black and white” thinking among the prisoners - a focus on shear physical survival. Though I cannot cite any study or statistics, I do believe that this tendency is related to their being in an environment where trust is rare and fear is prominent. When a person is consistently “on edge” and in “fight or flight” mode, the opportunity - indeed, the ability - to look inward is greatly compromised.
A recent comment by one of my writing students on the effectiveness of PREA (the Prison Rape Elimination Act) in establishing greater accountability on the part of penal institutions to protect inmates from assaults leads me to suspect that a greater sense of safety allows for deeper personal reflection. This notion is also supported by the positive change that I have personally witnessed between the time that I previously ministered in this same prison (2009-2010) and what I now observe.
One change that has been implemented to great effect is the establishment of Faith-based and Sober-living dorms. Prisoners can apply for and be part of these ‘communities’ set up in various cell blocks. The men meet during the day to pray and have classes on their faith and they read the Bible together. They live a true community life with meals, a dorm life and recreation. They begin to trust and share thoughts with one another. This trust and peaceful community life, away from the gang related violence present in the other parts of the prison, gives them the opportunity to reflect more deeply upon their lives, to see where they might have taken a wrong road, and to read the Bible in a more self-reflective way - they begin to see themselves in the people mentioned in the Gospels and how Jesus as God and Savior relates to them in that setting. This gives the prisoner the courage to confront his own personal demons and to seek reconciliation and real inner change. This self-reflection leads him quite naturally to the point of telling his own story in writing, relating it back to the Gospels.
Each of the prisoners can spend up to a year in this faith-based, sober living setting before returning to life in the greater prison. It is the hope of the program that each man brings what he has learned to the other men he encounters - spreading and applying religious teachings to the life of individuals and thus to the community at large - affecting real, inner change through personal reflection and conversion, which is the best kind of rehabilitation - an inmate taking personal responsibility for his own change.
After speaking with Father Jim, I pondered the idea of using the arts to affect inner change. I asked him if any of his writing students would like to address that thought with some reflections of their own. One student replied to this query and I was very moved by his answers. I have shared them below.
Writing Student:
This is a wonderful opportunity. Thank you! Here are my answers, as concise but as thorough as possible. I hope they hit the target.
For me, art is a safe haven of expression. It allows a non-judgmental platform to release fears, wonders, hopes, and cries of the soul. Art is a ship of exploration. It is very difficult as a prisoner, given a history of broken trust in human relationship, to find a safe place to say what we mean.
When I write, when I act in a play, I can "bleed out loud". Because it’s art, it is subjective. Such subjectivity frees me from the objective world. Art is my way of saying "I need to be heard, void of your need to fix the problem. Just give me your eyes and ears - see and hear me before jumping to canned solutions.” Such opportunities to release these hidden depths helps me to explore and express difficult emotions. The release of it all, whether through music, writing, or acting brings almost an "accidental rehabilitation". You discover yourself almost without knowing it. But art takes stability and an environment devoid of fear.
Behind bars, security is paramount. There is an alarming staff shortage which is currently strangling out programs and opportunities to experiment with the arts. Such suggestions for " programming" by inmates are often not taken seriously without the backing of current staff or free civilian volunteers. On my particular unit, a correctional officer needs to be present in every location at all times. They are simply spread too thin. And what I believe is a false narrative concerning "monsters and mayhem" in the prison culture, many times squelches any consideration by a free world volunteer to ever step in to serve the inmates in this way. There are, from time to time, art contests through the education department. But expansion into other territories is often quickly dismissed for reasons of staff shortage, or the possibility of security threats.
My personal belief as to what art forms would be most helpful to prisoners would be creative writing and drama. I have a rather extensive experience in both given my life out in the world. Mostly writing (poetry, chiefly) and artwork (sketching, painting) are celebrated to a certain degree as being quite helpful to self-reflection and rehabilitation. Yet classes to develop such arts are non-existent, or if they do exist they are rare. To my knowledge, there are no prison programs for the theater arts.
Drama, to me, would be the paramount expression which could lead to an increased rehabilitation and help create a better sense of community. The sheer time it takes to ready a performance would alone draw men to better understand themselves and each other. And the stage acting classes, again, could draw men into self-exploration without that stifling air of "you're the problem and I am the solution" programs which seem to permeate the system.
For me, an insight gained through Father Jim's class which has helped the most is the gained appreciation for the art of story. It is amazing the faded and darker memories I have been able to write about and share in our small group which I haven't ever been able to talk about, or would rather not mention in traditional therapy sessions or even religious circles. The art of story has awakened me, not only to deal with deeply seeded emotions, but also to an ability and creativity I have never felt safe enough to risk. It has been a new dimension of freedom. The incarcerated individuals of our nation need such opportunities.
After reading these thoughts, so truthfully put forward by this inmate, I begin to see the urgent need for many younger, creative men and women to consider serving the imprisoned with their art, be it drama, painting, creative writing or poetry. This would be such a worthy use of an artist’s life. Perhaps Father Jim and his student simply needed to be heard in order for this seed to be planted in artists and teachers open to the grace present in this vocational possibility. The returns, I am thinking, would be a hundredfold.
As I watched Father Jim drive away that morning of our meeting, I tried to take in the whole experience. The most beautiful thing about this man is how humbly he wears his priesthood. His life is always in the trenches, among those who are so highly human and trying desperately to kick drugs and often failing at it. But they return to the path getting up over and over again from their addiction calvary. His is a service of comfort and companionship and not so much a vocation to success and statistical change. He travels their roads and stops when they stop and gives the Sacraments and is always there for them hidden in the flat lands of west Texas, riding his horses in the canyons where he exclaims that one MUST pray when seeing that red rock shining in the Texas sun. He uses his own writing as a vocation to his prisoners and drug addicts. That they may find their voice in a world that has hardly ever listened to them. What a beautiful use of a priesthood. I am so glad he is my friend.
Some days are always to be remembered; the days that make me wonder anew at the ways of God; at the beauty of a life that goes where God wills it to go. The genuineness of a solid, given, hidden life living just underneath a loud and raucous world of striving 'influencers' and celebrity clergy. It builds my faith. It brings joy to my heart. It makes me humbled that such a man as Father Jim is my friend.
Deo Gratias.
