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.