We were supposed to start up again last week after a three-month break, but it didn’t happen because I forgot to remind the chaplain and he forgot we were coming. The series is “The Risen Christ: John 20 and Acts 16.” Seemed like a good Easter season theme. The plan is four weeks on each of the two chapters.

So, we bumped the schedule forward a week, and after our false start, finally got started with Sacred Stories this week.

But it was not a smooth take-off. First of all we were about fifteen minutes late for our 1:00 start time. Then we were told at the desk class would be in W21 (that big former pod). So we went there and waited. Finally a CO came but didn’t let us in, made a call. Then we find out the chaplain has the women up on the fourth floor so we go up there. 

Now it is already 1:30 but we do get going and things are going along well with good participation, sharing, questions (“What is a disciple?”) and connections being made to the story. Suddenly at 2:00 there’s knocking on the door. Two CO’s are there with a line of men and a couple of women. They tell us they have video court and we have to be out in two minutes and they don’t know where we should go.

We scramble to pick everything up (we have a lot of stuff out at that point) and by the time we leave (in under two minutes) they’ve decided to take us back to W21. 

So we retrace our steps down two floors, through two heavy doors and a couple of hallways, over to the old side of the jail. In W21 there’s water on the floor and two things that look like rowboats to catch the drips—Sea of Galilee images come to mind.

We go past all that and set up circle (again) at the back of the big space. And we continue. Thankfully my co-circlekeeper recalled where we were and who was about to tell us why her “Word I Heard” phrase connected with her feeling of being “upset” which she had named at check-in.

After everyone had a chance to talk about their “Word I Heard” in the second telling of the story (John 20:1-10), we did a read-around of “About the Story,” Then we acted it out, turning our circle into the tomb with linen cloth in one place and “the cloth covering Jesus’ face” in another. We identified a space around the boat-catching-leaks for the disciple’s house. One woman narrated (read) and gave stage directions to the women portraying Mary, Peter, and “the other disciple whom Jesus loved.”

All that back and forth to the tomb was eerily like all the back and forth we had done between the pod and the fourth floor classroom. The young woman who was Mary Magdalene, when she read in “About the Story” that one of the versions of Mary’s story says she has seven demons, said that was like her and she’d like Jesus to get the demons out like he did for Mary.

I told the women we’d act out the story again next week and continue with the next part of John 20. The young woman who was Mary said she wanted to be Mary every time. I said she’d have to learn her lines by heart There was only one spoken line in this week’s story; next week will be more of a challenge. Everybody said they’d be back. We’ll see…

From 2013 until March of 2020 a team of women from Grace United Methodist Church in Dayton, Ohio went to the local county jail on Wednesdays on a rotating basis. We went to jail to engage a circle of women with stories from the biblical tradition in a class we called “Sacred Stories.” In 2017 we also took the stories into a state women’s prison in Dayton, called “Circle of the Word.”

Three years later, the jail opened up to programming again, so on March 15 we returned to begin an eight-week series of stories from Mark’s version of the passion of Jesus and all four Gospel accounts of Jesus’ resurrection. After a recent class the women gave written feedback on something they enjoyed in Sacred Stories that day. Responses included:

• “Gaining more knowledge on Christ and why he died for our sins”
• “Using markers and hearing a story”
• “We got to play the stories out”
• “I enjoyed being Peter”

By presidential decree, April was national Second Chance month, and April 30 was Second Chance Sunday at Grace. Our newest Sacred Story team member, Heidi Arnold (below left), told the parable of “The Father and Two Sons” from Luke 15. Willie Templeton, Montgomery County Jail Chaplain and Program Coordinator (below right), was the guest preacher. And returning citizen Zakaya Bragg (below center) received her certificate for participation in the Sacred Stories class this Spring. It was a very special worship service.

My last entry was right before the pandemic shut everything down. The jail is still pretty shut-down when it comes to programming. Programs have started up at the prison again, but in the interim I got busy with other prison/jail/reentry work, plus aging issues, so I’m not going inside. I really miss teaching the stories, though, and haven’t given up the hope of doing that again, either in the jail or perhaps a half-way house.

I write today because I came across a prayer card from 2017. It touched my heart. I hope it was answered as the woman wished.

Pray that I keep my walk with Jesus strong and get my kids back Sept. first.

Summer 2017

I pray that her walk stayed strong, and she is now with her children as a healthy mom.

We just finished a six-week Sacred Stories series at the jail. I had planned to do stories from the Gospel of Matthew, more or less following the Sunday lections, but the first week a woman asked about the Adam and Eve story (the loss-of-paradise part) which resulted in a lively conversation. So I asked,” Do you want to have that be our story for next week?” There was a most enthusiastic response.

Last week at the prison we engaged the story of Jesus beginning his ministry, proclaiming “the good news of God” and calling his first four disciples. The story is set in the context of John’s arrest. One of the women commented, “We can all relate to that.” Of course. These stories have powerful connections for people on the inside.

Not this time, but some previous series, we did the “I Wonder” activity. I found the cards when I was prepping for last Friday. The I Wonder activity gives each person in the circle the opportunity to ask any question they have of the story, to express what they wonder about it.

When our “wonderings” are complete, someone reads them all. Then in a second round, when the talking piece comes to them each person has the opportunity to comment on any one wondering. Here are the the questions and wonderings asked of this story on that occasion:

• Why was John arrested?
• I wonder how Jesus was feeling about John being arrested and if that’s why he wanted them to repent
• I wonder what the good news is
• What did Jesus envision about the Kingdom of God?
• I wonder why people could just drop everything and follow him?
• What did a bunch of fishermen need to repent from?
• What do I have to do to repent?

What do you think?

Last week was the first of seven Fridays leading Circle of the Word at the Dayton Correctional Institution for women. Our theme for this Fall is “Good News: Stories of Mark 1.” My co-circlekeeper, Hope, and I started with the story of John the Baptizer. It was an excellent Circle, a very good beginning. Fitting, as our story opened with: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”

One reason it was such an excellent circle was because of degree of interest in the “About the Story” information page. Even the reading went exceptionally well, with impressive attempts at reading the Greek words for explaining about the acronym for Jesus Christ God’s Son Savior. ICTHUS.

Good questions were asked; close attention followed as Hope and I answered and as others contributed to discussion.

One person wondered about the reference to Romans, and what the issue was with them. So I told them about the conquest of Jesus’ people over the centuries by various invading armies and about the ruthlessness of the Romans. They were fascinated, and it was clearly new info for them. It laid the groundwork for understanding why “the crowd” eventually turned on Jesus, because he didn’t work to deliver them from their enemies, the Romans, but instead taught them to pray for their enemies. We talked about that, too, in the context of explaining the meaning of Christ, Messiah, “anointed one.”

Another question had to do with the reference to laws in Leviticus about leprosy which came up in the paragraph on baptism and the notion of cleansing. So they learned about leprosy, which prepares them for the story at the end of chapter 1 about Jesus healing a leper.

And they learned about what it was like to be a leper (or have some skin disorder that was believed to be leprosy) and have to stay away from people. I used the word “ostracized” and made the connection to being in prison. They named it as “shunning.” And one women asked how to spell “ostracized” because she was taking notes.

They learned about the role of the priests. I pointed out that they were like judges, deciding when people were properly cleansed and could return to their community. Another connection to the last story in Mark 1 as well as to their experience.

These discussions led to more about Leviticus with its catalog of laws. When I explained that these were interesting because it showed the kinds of issues the community back then were dealing with since you don’t normally make a rule unless there’s a problem. They completely got that dynamic, being so common in prison.

As good as all this discussion was, the activity involving “sequence cards” turned out to be one of the best things I’ve experienced in COW, despite the fact, maybe because of the fact, that initially I thought it was a disaster. More on that another day.

Click to watch the trailer.

A Conversation about Growing Up Black