SUCCESS
It’s not what you think. Come back to this page often.
We want to be clear about something “from the gate,” as they say in prison: our primary goal is not to fix someone out of prison.
That turns our friend into a project. It has nothing to do with love.
“Love is the highest gift of God. There is nothing higher in religion. If you are looking for anything else, you are looking wide of the mark.”
Our primary goal is not to “do this program right” so that our friend leaving the underground “succeeds” (really, so that we feel we succeeded).
Our primary goal is not to help our new friend become a “productive member of society,” as that miserably utilitarian phrase goes (though being productive is a common byproduct of a flourishing, resurrected life.
The immense performance pressure to be successful as a measure of life and relationship comes from our culture, not the gospel.
Part of our transformation in this journey is letting go of that addiction to control people and situations. It’s right there in the Welcoming Prayer we use every team meeting: “we let go of our desire for control, we let go of our desire to change someone else.”
We’re also learning to give ourselves the same grace. Like your person coming home, you will most likely “fail” in various ways. That is, you’ll both make some big mistakes. You’ll both get nervous and default into old protective patterns. You’ll both disappoint someone and yourselves.
Good news: that’s ok! This is how we find level ground with the incarcerated. We all need some mercy, understanding, patience and support.
This is what we call KINSHIP. The discovery that we aren’t that different from one another.
“Success” in this journey, if we have to use that word, is opening such relationships of embrace and trust. Success is learning how to be faithful. Success is mutual transformation.
We can’t force it. We can only choose to stay connected, stay open to what comes.
We stay in relationship. We write another letter, risking greater honesty.
And God works through that mess, in surprising ways.
From the Welcoming Prayer, again: “I let go of my desire for approval.”
So take a deep breath. The pressure’s off.
Pressure off of you, to pull off another person’s “successful” reentry. To make the program “work” for those watching.
And the pressure’s off your friend, too: they don’t have to carry the burden of your expectations, faking a big smile, terrified of letting you down. They can be a mess as you learn—as a team—how to seek Christ in the mess.
THE PARADOX OF CHANGE
Listen to these stunningly simple words from the beloved spiritual writer and Jesuit priest in India, Anthony de Mello. They point us to a great mystery that defies most of our instincts about human change:
“I was neurotic for years. I was anxious and depressed and selfish. Everyone kept telling me to change. I resented them, and I agreed with them, and I wanted to change, but simply couldn’t, no matter how hard I tried. What hurt most was that, like the others, my best friend kept insisting that I change. So I felt powerless and trapped.
Then, one day, another friend said to me, ‘Don’t change. I love you just as you are.’
Those words were music to my ears: ‘Don’t change. Don’t change. Don’t change . . . I love you just as you are.’ I relaxed. I came alive. And suddenly I changed!
Now I know that I couldn’t really change until I found someone who would love me whether I changed or not.”
This is the kind of environment, the kind of relationships we want to create together. For our incarcerated friend, as well as for each other.
Do you have a story like this? Do you have an experience of people telling you, expecting you to change—and it trapped you? Have you experienced a relaxed, faithful relationship that actually helped you flourish faster?
Be still for a moment and locate that muscle flexing inside you that wants to demand your incarcerated person change, as part of the deal that earns your love and attention. Talk to that part of yourself, listen, even if you can’t convince yourself to enter Fr de Mello’s words quite yet.
FAITHFULNESS IS THE GOAL
“My biggest fear getting out of prison, leaving the gangs, was “Am I going to be ACCEPTED?” I had real bad anxiety. From the fear of failing.
But I had a group of people I could rely on. You guys never gave up on me. I knew you loved me and I could trust you.”
Father Greg Boyle of Homeboy Industries, the most “successful” gang intervention and prisoner re-entry organization in the world, tells us that success is only a byproduct of a larger, relaxed love.
Resurrection is God’s work. We get to be part of it, help roll away the stone. And be changed in the process.
Our goal, Father G and Mother Teresa remind us, isn’t success but FAITHFULNESS. As we faithfully stick with someone carrying more than we can imagine, as we let go of control, let go of our fears, and let our hearts be broken, that’s how the light gets in. Something much better begins to happen.
Please print and read (and re-read throughout this experience) the chapter below as a group. Use the questions at the bottom to talk together about how radical this shift in our purpose and definition of “success” will be.
Click to purchase some paperback copies for yourself or your whole group. Definitely worth it.
CLICK THE PAGE ABOVE for readable/printable PDF of just this all-important chapter.
FAITHFULNESS IS A LONG WALK
Here’s one more story, up here in Washington State, that might help you imagine where we’re going.
I got off the phone with Terrance, who’s only been out of prison a few months. He’s still wearing an ankle monitor, not even past his official “release date” yet.
He told me his One Parish One Prisoner team all gathered this past weekend, on a sunny Sunday morning, excited to see him again, in-person, after a year of letters, emails, calls, planning and then pandemic distancing. He’s doing well, signed up for community college classes.
So one team member asked, after about an hour of catching up about their lives now, “So what’s next? Do we keep meeting? Are we done?”
“I just stayed quiet,” Terrance told me on the phone. “I thought I’d just see what they are thinking.”
He told me another team member said, “I think so.”
Another said, “Well, maybe with Terrance. But I think we start with the next guy now?”
And the rest of the team agreed.
We are so used to programs helping the maximum number of people. This makes people into “clients served,” which asks very little of our hearts or lives. We are less used to actual relationships with those from different backgrounds than us. Without meaning to, we often relapse right back to “program” mode.
Terrance sounded hurt, telling me this on the phone. “The next guy? Oh, ok. It’s like that, then? I mean, I dunno.” He paused, not wanting to sound ungrateful, not wanting to sound foolish:
“I thought we were building lifelong friendships. Isn’t that what this was all about? I feel kinda dumb for wanting that now. I mean, if this was just a little bit of help when I get out and ‘see ya later, good luck,’ I coulda just used the resource center downtown. I didn’t know this was just a short walk kind of thing.
I don’t want to sound ungrateful for all they’ve done and all their kindness, but I thought this was about a long walk together.”
Terrance understood this journey. Let’s focus less on short term “success” markers and rather aim for the kind of faithful, rich relationships that can take a “long walk” together. Our "program” modules don’t go past two years. But let’s imagine a future where this new friend is part of your community for years to come, in good seasons and bad.
Action Steps
WRITE YOUR INCARCERATED FRIEND: about a time you failed, did not succeed, really blew it, disappointed yourself or others. Or a time something you love broke (your vase, your boat, your marriage). Tell them how you handled that, how it felt. They probably think you all are always “successful.”
SEND THE PRINTABLE PDF of this module and the Father Greg chapter above to your incarcerated friend inside the letter. Ask him/her—and yourself—one of the questions below.
ASK what “success” would be for them in this reentry journey, and how you can support their dreams, even if it means passing through some failures first before getting there.
FOR DISCUSSION
Take inventory. What did you have in your heart when you first heard of this invitation, to join One Parish One Prisoner? Which plans/hopes can stay and which can be let go?
Why do you think we prize success over faithfulness, when it comes to working with others—especially those experiencing poverty, oppression, or incarceration?
Have you already felt the anxiety growing inside, the pressure to make this a “successful” project? Does this segment come as a relief? As a difficult invitation?
Father Greg says success/failure doesn’t have much to do with the gospel. What do you think he means by that? How can that shed light on what Jesus could be inviting you into, through this relationship with someone leaving prison?