Five years of showing up together
Contemplative life brings us, again and again, to the recognition of our deep unity — the oneness that lives beneath every division we imagine. And at the same time, we live inside the human condition, where division is part of the texture of almost everything we do. Organizations, or, as some prefer to think of them, organisms, are not exempt. Organized groups of human beings carry tensions and challenges not unlike (indeed, outgrowths of) those carried by individuals.
We mark a small anniversary this month, holding both truths.
In May of 2021, a handful of people who had met together just once were formally named the Contemplative Outreach Prison Outreach Service Team (COPOST). This month, the team turns five.
The ground from which it grew
The seed for this current iteration of the Team had been planted several years earlier. At the 2017 Contemplative Outreach International Conference in Denver, the gathering itself had been reshaped to surface grassroots voices. The Governing Board specifically invited Ray Leonardini and all the volunteers known to be doing prison outreach in our own various corners of the country. About a dozen of us were able to attend – for most it was the first time in a room with others carrying this prayer inside the walls. Conversations took place about what might be possible if we were better able to network and to walk beside each other.
It took three and a half years (and a pandemic) for that conversation to become structured support. In the summer of 2020, Contemplative Outreach Ltd. leadership asked Chandra to serve as a liaison and to help identify the needs of prison outreach volunteers, beginning with sending out a survey. The survey went live in January 2021 and closed at the end of February. The results were tallied in March and became the foundation for what came next.
It was April 15th when the volunteers who had offered to help determine next steps gathered on Zoom to brainstorm and start planning. The results had very clearly echoed the desire shared at the earlier Conference: opportunities to pool resources and learn from each others’ experience was a clear mandate. With COVID continuing to make it impossible for most volunteers to go inside, there was heightened eagerness for communal commiseration – as well as frustration and even a bit of time available for channeling in a new direction. (These were prison volunteers cut off from their imprisoned companions on the journey!).
Once the survey results were in, momentum built quickly. In a matter of a few weeks, the decision was made by Contemplative Outreach leadership that we should be considered a service team, and COPOST was born. Monthly volunteer support groups were organized for existing volunteers, ideas were exchanged about how best to reach out to and support those who wanted to start going inside… a panel was convened for the 2021 Contemplative Conference in September, and in October, the Outside the Walls (OTW) community began meeting weekly. The following spring (2022), a member of OTW joined COPOST as as liaison — since then, the team has had at least one member carrying lived experience of incarceration: Lawrence first, then Phil, and now Gary.
How PCF and COPOST work together
People sometimes ask about the relationship between our two organizations – or even between what was at one time three, before Praestolari and PCF became one.
COPOST is a service team within Contemplative Outreach Ltd. (COL*), “an international, interdenominational community of individuals and small prayer groups committed to living the contemplative dimension of the Gospel in everyday life. A commitment to the daily practice of Centering Prayer is the primary expression of belonging, which transcends geographical, cultural and religious differences” (https://www.contemplativeoutreach.org/community).
(* We choose to use COL as the abbreviation rather than CO because for many in our community, "CO" will always/only ever stand for "Correctional Officer".)
COPOST's role is to live out this mission of the larger “organism” within the particular context of people and communities affected by incarceration. All who practice Centering Prayer are part of Contemplative Outreach. The irony is that while practitioners inside locked facilities can actually often appreciate our transcendent unity more readily than those of us who take physical freedom for granted, the profound, systemic isolation on the temporal level offers real hurdles to experiencing that connection in a consistent way. COPOST helps bridge that gap, for people on both sides of the walls. The team works to make the vast body of expertise and materials (Thomas Keatings’ books, the Contemplative Outreach News, Theophilus letters written by a team member, and many other resources) more accessible to those living inside the walls; they recently completed a major project of compiling 50 “items” that are now uploaded on tablets via Edovo, an app available to a growing number of residents of locked facilities throughout the U.S. Equally importantly, the team offers opportunities for others in the wider COL community to write letters, volunteer, and get started going inside to share the prayer.
PCF also aims to serve and accompany residents and former residents, chaplains, volunteers, friends and family of those experiencing incarceration, and anyone else affected in any way by the realities of incarceration (and whom does that not include?). We are continuing to develop the infrastructure and financial resources without which it’s challenging to share the prayer across the walls and impossible to do so at scale. We hire team members with lived experience when we can, track resident movements within the system, and continue to share and develop prison-specific resources, such as Holding Still, Ray’s books, Locked up and Free, and the Centering Inside newsletter.
The difference between COPOST and PCF lies partly in how the two entities are resourced and what we are able to provide – as well as in the fact that PCF, as a stand alone 501(c)(3) with a mission specifically focused on people affected by incarceration, is better positioned to take on mitigating the many hurdles this work requires. (Stay tuned in coming months for more on the software we’re developing to do exactly that.) We’re able to share widely the rich materials developed by PCF’s founder, Ray Leonardini, which speak directly to (and prominently feature the voices and experience of) those with lived experience inside. Ray is a gifted teacher and mentor to many who share the prayer inside. While he is now enjoying retirement, we’re honored to carry on and expand his work.
What's emerged in our partnership is something neither of us could carry alone. Each brings what is most ours; each trusts the other to attend to what is most theirs. The fruits of that trust are real, when they are easy to see as well as when they are less visible.
Letters are one of the places this partnership puts itself into people's hands. A small but growing community of COPOST volunteers responds individually to letters from people inside writing about the prayer, about living contemplative life inside, about the questions and consolations that come up in silent practice. PCF handles the mailing logistics that make sending those response letters possible. The letter program is a quiet ministry of presence: the simple act of being written back to by someone who shares the practice.
Building this partnership has been anything but straightforward. The relationship between the PCF community and Contemplative Outreach has a real history, with moments of friction alongside mutual recognition and gratitude. We share that not to revisit past issues, but to celebrate incredible progress. Only once there was a service team within Contemplative Outreach (i.e. COPOST) was a meaningful bridge possible between COL and PCF — a bridge we continue to build, carefully and steadfastly, together.
If you'd like to read COPOST's own description of its mission, it lives on the Contemplative Outreach website here.
What five years looks like: the retreat this October
The fruit of this partnership is rich and varied – it’s definitely a case of our being more capable in partnership than the sum of what we could do separately. A prime example (in addition to the letter writing) is the co-sponsored Centering Prayer Intensive retreat for those who have experienced incarceration, held annually for the past three years and returning this fall. COPOST sees to the staffing of the retreat, while PCF/Praestolari gets people to it. Neither of us could possibly accomplish independently what we are able to do together.
COPOST and PCF are co-hosting a seven-day silent retreat at Anawim Bethany Retreat Center in Frenchville, Pennsylvania, from October 14–20. The same three seasoned Contemplative Outreach volunteers who led last year — Jennie K. Curtis, Rita Weick, and Patricia Hutchinson, each of whom has also accompanied people experiencing incarceration — will return as retreat staff, and Jessie Owens will again join us to offer body work.
The retreat is designed for people who have experienced incarceration and who have had a daily practice of Centering Prayer for at least six months. For many retreatants, a week of silence on 140 acres of wooded hillside is something that may have been long desired, but has always felt completely out of reach.
Learn more about the retreat here.
PCF works to remove financial barriers so that formerly incarcerated retreatants can actually come. That can mean help with the costs of attending the retreat itself, and in some cases it means helping cover expenses a family takes on when a loved one steps away for a week. Our aim is that the cost of participation not be what keeps someone from a week of silence, community and practice. Those who are able are always welcome and encouraged to be part of funding this important opportunity.