Thursday, March 28, 2013

RC in Prison Day 1

I co-facilitated my second “Restorative Circle” class and Practice group Tuesday. This circle was as moving to me as my first. Somewhere in my mind Snoopy is doing his happy dance. I have fire in my heart that is fueled by a mixture of awe and gratitude. So grateful to be doing this work. I've been having a hard time categorizing my work this year during my sabbatical. My ministry and professional career path are in re-formation. This certainly could be called a prison ministry, but the organizations that send me into the prison don't use such terms. We enter into prison to facilitate "Nonviolent Communication" and "Restorative Circle." These are considered educational not religious programing. Just the same, we're doing soul work. Although I use little religious language, we do indeed encounter something holy, mysterious and sacred. Below I retell my experience of Wendy. (name changed to maintain confidentiality). It was the first day of our 10-week class in Restorative Circles * (RC). We began by asking each woman why she had chosen to take this class. Wendy said that she had been accepted into the program that allows mothers to have their babies in the prison with them for their first 5 years. She said that she wasn't getting along with the other mothers and she didn't want to get kicked out of the program. Her tone of voice and language seemed tough, angry; every sentence delivered criticism and blame, attributing the cause of her problem to others. I heard pain in her voice. I imagine everyone heard it. The question is whether this pain would get acknowledged. That makes quite a difference. My work is to hear into the heart of what people are saying, to help this be expressed and heard. As facilitators, we certainly can't control others. Fortunately, the process offers people opportunities to try new ways of connecting. Sue, my co-facilitator, directed us to break into pairs to do a sharing/ listening exercise. There was an odd number of women in the circle, and Sue asked me to pair with Wendy. This listening exercise is not actually part of the RC process. We choose some exercises that we imagine increase the chances that learning will take place in the short time we have with them. Sharing and listening in pairs fosters connections. We believe it increases willingness to “jump in,” - offering a real conflict they have for the group to practice on. In our dyad, Wendy told me that she would be leaving class in a few minutes to meet with the counselor. I encouraged her to take her turn, and she did. As she started in on her story, she seemed more unbridled than she had been during the “check-in” with the whole group. Her voice was still hard, but it seemed to me that the energy of her expression was flowing. I heard anger and blame in her words. I also heard the pain of her existence. She had many complaints about the officers (who don't like to be called guards), and about fellow inmates: "The women are mean to me. They ostracize me and treat me like an outsider. I think they are afraid of me. I've had to be the way I am here; plus, they know how I got here. I was an accomplice to a homicide. So they keep their distance. They exclude me." She looked down frequently as she spoke. Her flurry peaked with these sentences: "They see me as a violent person. They don't see that he beat me and tried to gang rape me.” The next moment was liminal space. It's this space between words where the most important communication happens. It is also something like the moment at the top of a swing or trampoline when one is neither rising or falling. Hard lines soften. In these moments, I pray wordless prayers. I've just come to expect to joined in such moments by the presence of the divine. In this moment I felt calm, confident, and yet aware of the uncertainty. Unless there is support, or unless safety is sensed, the quivering of the voice ceases, the posture and composure return. We've all become quite skilled at the habit of composing ourselves. In that tender timeless moment, she shot me a glance that checked to see how I reacted to what she said. How would I see her? Would I see her as a category; a criminal, a violent person, an accomplice to a murder? I believe she looked to me to see if there was room to release some of the hurt she was carrying. I don't speak but I trust she sees my answer. "Yes, Wendy, it is safe to talk about it." Wendy turns her head down again. She makes no sound, but the tears come. When she next speaks her voice has changed. It's softer. And so to her words. When she speaks of the officers and the other women, she acknowledges them as people with their own needs. The difficulty of her situation is still there, but now she brings it in closer to her. Her session ends, and she leaves to keep her appointment with her counselor. She returns in less than 10 minutes not the half hour she had said she would be gone. She gets back just in time to hear us ask "So who has a conflict that they are willing to let the group use?" I wasn't surprised when Wendy volunteers. Wendy has a lot of difficulty choosing one act to bring to the circle. I imagine that it all seems overwhelming to her. It's as if she is saying "you have to know how everything happened, how it all just piled up..." I think she wants us to understand that all those events made it so that everyone is against her. With the support of the facilitator, she does identify an act, and picks women in the circle to “substitute” for the ones involved in the conflict. As the circle proceeded, Wendy seemed to move in a pattern similar to the earlier session: she began with anger and blame, but ended with a very different story and different attitude about the others. It seemed to me, that the women in this circle take her side. I imagine that the real people would be more defensive. Part of me longs for for more authenticity and balance. However I have the sense that Wendy is getting a lot of support. At the end of class the other inmates express a lot of appreciation for Wendy's willingness to share her situation. I imagine that Wendy has experienced a very different world than the one she had been living in. We'll never know exactly what effect this day had, but I suspect that Wendy was seeing a new world. I saw it; I know that I'm changed. I feel encouraged to remember these worlds and the difference between them -- the world of pain and blame, and the world of hearts being shared and received. I know a little more how I want to live. ~~ *Restorative Circles is a way that a community can address conflict in order to seek restoration. It was developed almost 20 years ago by Dominic Barter, a trainer with the Center for Nonviolent Communication. More info on NVC here: http://www.cnvc.org and RC here: http://www.restorativecircles.org/