an afternoon in prison => change

In December, I will have been volunteering at a local prison for 10 years. We go once a month on the second Thursday night of the month. We meet with the inmates for 60 - 90 minutes depending on the latest whim of the prison administration.

Today, we went out to the prison for a Saturday afternoon event. This was their equivalent of an all-day conference. Nine volunteers went in the morning for several hours and seven of us went in the afternoon for almost 3 hours. The inmates had arranged to have packaged Danish pastries and apple juice. One inmate said it was the first time he had apple juice in six years. This was a big deal for them. They are extremely fortunate to have an administration that strongly supports 12-step programs.

There were 11 inmates and 9 volunteers. That worked out as a good number for our event. While most of us have the default mindset that bigger is better, the reality is that we had a really powerful experience today.

We talked about change and spirituality as two separate topics. Most of us talked about change and then some of us talked about spirituality.

I read a book about change earlier this week. The big idea that I got as a take-away from the book was to expand my horizons sufficiently so that I occasionally fail in some project or another. Sort of like the boy who grows up wanting to be President. He studies really hard, gets good grades, goes to a great university, gets a graduate degree, has a great job, great family life and fails to become President. Failures don't get much better than that.

I had a lot of small change this week. Nearly all change is small and/or incremental. Added up over the course of the last 12+ years, I have made miraculous strides and achieved fantastic change.

I have a friend that wants to change, but is not willing to do the work. Her physical and mental health are failing rapidly. We went to dinner tonight. Her left leg was swollen from hip to ankle. She thought if might be a problem with her vitamins. I thought (to myself) her alcoholism is killing her and the swollen leg is symptomatic of impending liver failure.

I am grateful for the progress I made today by working on changing myself a little bit at a time most days.