I send half the money I make on sales to nonprofits doing great work. One frequent beneficiary is Prisoner Visitation and Support, a nationwide network of volunteers that visits prisoners in military and federal prisons. For over 50 years, the Bureau of Prisons and the Department of Defense have allowed these volunteers to visit people who otherwise might have little or no contact with the outside world, even those in segregated housing or on Death Row.
My Quaker meeting has a prison ministry going back nearly 20 years that has given us the opportunity to provide spiritual support and friendship to Maryland prisoners in the state prisons. Knowing them has been a privilege, and spiritual gifts have flowed in both directions. That experience is the reason I agreed to serve on the Board of PVS. Each of the over 400 visitors who serve with PVS visits several prisoners, often driving hours to see them. Their presence tells the prisoner he or she has value and helps those who will one day return to their communities begin to envision a life after release.
A Maryland prisoner shared a poem with us many years ago about his feeling that he was considered “garbage” by most people. He had simply been thrown away, locked up, and forgotten.
When I shared something about my experience with prison ministry with my hairdresser, she got very quiet. Her beloved sister had been murdered many years ago. “When you take a life,” she told me, “your life is over.” I completely hear and understand this. If someone hurt or took the life of someone I cherish, forgiveness and the ability to wish them well would require an advanced degree in spiritual strength I doubt I possess.
But still: I don’t believe that God – whatever God is, and I just don’t have a term for that Creative and loving Spirit that feels right for me, so I’m going with God – throws stuff away. God transforms us all the time. Evolution is never over. There is something in us and around us that turns and shapes us if we are not too stiff and proud to allow it to work, or too beaten down to notice.
When I make jewelry, there is an ongoing process of transformation in many of the techniques I use. I may reshape a piece (26-gauge copper is very forgiving) or refire it. I can even tweak it a bit after firing. I sometimes recycle scraps and thread them through pieces to get very cool effects (when I can manage not to melt these thinner bits).
Admittedly, though, I do occasionally give up on a piece and throw it away. Of course, I am working with copper, which is relatively cheap. Now, if I were working with gold, which costs the earth, you can jolly well bet it wouldn’t go in the trash. I’d find some way to make it as beautiful as I knew how.
So is a human soul is more like copper, or more like gold – ?