lessons from Prison

Once a month I go out to the local prison to participate in a 12-step meeting. Tonight's meeting was canceled due to a prisoner killing a guard two weeks ago in then prison chapel. The guard was by herself in a place where the cameras did not work. Nobody noticed she was gone until after she did not show up for the shift change.

The inmates are on lockdown until Monday. The guards are mad about the lack of legally mandated safety equipment and the prisoners don't like being in lockdown. The prisoner that killed the guard was already serving a life sentence.

I volunteer at the prison for my own self-interest. When I first started going out there nine years ago, I felt great commonality with the inmates. They know what a life sentence behind bars is. Having to use a wheelchair for the rest of my life is also a life sentence to living in a metal cage—just that my cage is a lot lighter and goes more places.

After a few years, the thing I got most out of going to prison for a meeting was the serenity that the inmates in recovery have. While the Washington State Reformatory is not the worst (roughest/meanest) prison in the state, it is still prison. Nonetheless in a crowded limited tightly-controlled living situation, the inmates in recovery have remarkable serenity.

I have learned from their example that serenity is an “inside job”. Thanks in part to the lessons learned in my prison visits, life's little irritants bother me a lot less than they used to. I am grateful for that and many other lessons learned while volunteering at the WSR.