TENDERNESS IS THE CONNECTIVE TISSUE
BY TRACY SCHLAPP
Father Gregory Boyle of Homeboys Industries spoke with Adam Davis of Oregon Humanities on Wednesday night in Portland as part of the series “Consider This: Fear and Belonging.” Let’s start by saying that Oregon Humanities has provided generous grant support to Bridgeworks Oregon, and we are honored to be associated with them. Beyond supporting our work, they recently selected one of our own, formerly incarcerated PonyXpress writer Enrique Bautista to be a year-long storytelling fellow. If you didn’t read Enrique’s piece “Pickled” you are in for a treat. Enrique brings intensity and heart to his people, his community, and to his chosen life’s work, T.A.G, Taking Accountability Group. We are fortunate to know him. In the coming months we will be pointing to his work with at-risk youth.
Father Gregory has been working with his parish for thirty years to vitalize belonging, purpose, and healing by making space for former gang members who lived from a place of “belonging gone wrong” (a phrase he attributed to the Irish poet and theologian Pádraig Ó Tuama) to this shift: We belong to each other. Thirty years can’t be compressed into one sentence. Father Greg recently buried his 261st kid. Struggle and loss have lived right against the margins of the joy and love. What caught my ear the other night was his phrase: “Tenderness is the connective tissue.” My heart was transported to our writers.
When strangers walk into a prison they wear heavy suits of preconceived notions. We understand that our brains are predictive collectors of information, slanted toward reenforcing what we have previously considered to be true. It’s just simpler. (I haven’t liked mushroom pizza; I’ll choose a slice of pepperoni.) Father Greg’s asserts the notion that we are unshakably good, and we belong to each other. Starting there, what happens when we walk into a space looking for evidence to prove this bias? Well, first we may need to put our fear aside and instead listen to the people in the room. Sounds simple, but taking off our blinders requires that we allow our brains to have new experiences (danger!), repeat those experiences (uncomfortable!) and allow ourselves to build new paths (difficult!).
What does this look like in a maximum-security prison?
It generally starts with eye contact, saying hello, and shaking hands. We welcome new participants into the circle and make sure that they have a place at the table. It sometimes looks like starting the conversation over to make sure that the new people feel caught up. It looks like every social interaction you have ever had when you are meeting new friends. We do ice breakers, we introduce ourselves, we include new folks. The group understands that when people drop out, they are always welcomed back. At OSP, we tease and joke, but there is no need to make another person feel small. These folks wear boots weighted by their past; it is our jobs to lift each other up.
There is another level, built over time, and this is where we feel connection. This takes repeated experiences that allows the brain (working overtime due to life experiences of trauma, abuse, addiction …) to build new pathways. Writing and drawing, reading a poem together, singing, laughing — all these activities move us out of our self-conscious self to our communal self. This is where belonging really takes a swing.
In “Writing Together” Melissa Haley relies on the refrain: “Time together spent in the journaling space.” Through repetition, we build belonging. When we belong to one another, we afford personal space to encourage exploration and vulnerability. It is in these safe corners, our brains regulate, quiet, and heal. If the weft of this project is writing together, the warp is responding to one another. OSP editor Scott Bitter writes deeply considered, and profoundly insightful feedback to each piece he reads — the “sonic boom” of connecting brains that Melissa writes about. Scott and Melissa meet only in the pages, and yet the care he takes with this stranger is filled with enthusiasm that tenderly encourages her:
You transcend and focus on the process of cultivating each other through writing. Then, you give powerful voice to your group effort by speaking, sharing, rekindling, relating, receiving, inhaling, expressing, and exploring together. I suspect most readers outside of prison imagine journaling women in prison to do privately, individually. Your poem vividly describes a transformative process together!
Stressla Lynn Johnson has spent many years inside — and he would be first to tell you that he did not serve all those years equally. I have come to admire the sheer love that he brings into the room. It took years for him to move himself out of the darkness — long days of staring at himself in the mirror, page upon page of journal writing. This year, he has been studying in Professor Walidah Imarisha’s Black Studies program at Portland State University. It has been over 30 years since he has walked the Albina neighborhood. As act of political autobiography, Stressla writes “Place Pieces” about where his life took root, and where he has belonged, “Being In/ At That Park” is constructed with call-out words. We know it is spring when that smell of B-B-Q smoke wafts across Portland’s parks, our public spaces large enough to hold all the family and friends, children running to the slide. We belong to each other; we belong to a place.
We have a submission from Warner Creek Correctional Facility in Lakeview, Oregon (some 6 hours from Portland.) Geographical challenges interfere with our ability to spend regular time together; however, we made this platform to allow folks who can’t be in one of our regular workshops to still be part of the Pony. Cool Breeze writes about the “Miracle of We.” Miracles are the manifestation of faith. Our brains encounter something new, so we call it with magic or belief. Isn’t it marvelous? A Jesuit Priest arrived at the poorest barrio in East LA where eight gangs were at war, and he saw parishioners. And then, he practiced. | TDS