WHAT WE HOLD

BY TRACY SCHLAPP

I drink a cup of black tea and read before I get out of bed every morning in the winter. In the summer, I get up and swim. Evenings usually involve something with my hands (knit, mend, draw…) before I crawl into bed and return to my book. The parathesis of these rituals sets my internal clock. It is the practice of my daily walks or drawing patterns in my sketch book that help me reorganize my thoughts and help clear my head. I have come to appreciate that holding a book, or a warm ceramic mug, the action of the knitting needles, and the feeling of my paint brush against the paper are important regulating to my circuitry.

Our writing workshop ritual begins with the ringing of the brass singing bowl and a reading of poem. We all participate in a free write for five minutes to get things rolling. Like many things I do, it’s inexact (I might forget to pack the bowl for instance), but our goal is to create continuity between our time together. The ritual settles the group and prepares us for the work at hand. Our conversation teasing out this theme of ceremony and ritual has been lively and at time confusing. Our writers come from so many different cultural and religious traditions, we found it most interesting to let them write and see what they discover.

We prompted our writers to consider the roles ceremony and ritual have played in their lives and the adaptations they have made in prison. During a free write session, Buddha Toby Phandanouvong from Oregon State Penitentiary asked questions of his ceremonial practice: “What is my ceremony for? What does it do? Does it matter as much as I think it does? Does it help anybody, myself included? Or do I inaccurately place value on my habits and practice?” Buddha asks good questions. He struggles to place atonement into ceremonial practice.

Le’Var Howard from OSP created a distinct list of ceremony and ritual and the adaptation he has made in prison: “I shoot alone and work on drills like a new dreamer, one step after the other, elbow and chest out. Flick the wrists.” The practice, the drills are the muscle memory of this childhood attached to time spent with his brother and cousin. For a person serving life, there is visceral need to replay these memories physically.

From Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution, Wallace Moreland recognizes the ways that he brings ceremony to his life in prison to keep his mind, body, soul on the right track: “This is the way that I cope with my present situation. I have a ceremonial approach to everyday life and wind down is a very pertinent part of the ceremony. Like Wallace, Kevin Clay is concerned with how each of his rituals fortifies and prepares him for bringing a stronger self to his community: “Reading self-help books is a daily ceremonial practice. I take notes on points in the book that help me grow. Strengthening the mind is great for the impact I have on myself and others around the world.” Both men exert discipline and structure to their days.

From Coffee Creek Correctional Facility, Ray’eena Giles writes Recovery-ing Traditions:
To stay from tradition,
and break the chain of addiction,
to which you so desperately cling.
You take a moment of pause,
to glorify pain that you caused

Also from Coffee Creek, Amy Zimmerman: “The ceremony of chemo carries on with at least thirteen more sessions and some radiation with the hope of ringing the ceremonial bell.” For both writers, physical recovery relies requires a steady drip of good medicine.

Shalyn Troxel ritual takes the form of writing guided meditations to share with our workshop group. The act of creation and then ceremonially reading her work lights her from within: “Feel the breeze blowing gently through your hair, and the warmth from the sun kissing your skin. You let these comforts into your heart and bringing forward internal peace.”

We have the good fortune to have our staff advisor at Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution participate in our workshops. Ms. Halbert writes alongside the men. Her authenticity and encouragement have made the group even stronger. Scott Bitter, our OSP editor, stopped us the other day with a huge smile on his face. The idea that a DOC staff person had submitted to the PonyXpress struck him as a victory, we agreed. From her free write: “My smudging practice is my favorite ritual because it’s what gets me out of my head and connects me from my heart to Spirit. It grounds me.”

In the prologue of Love’s Executioner, the preeminent psychiatrist Irvin Yalom writes: “…the architecture of the human mind makes each of us even responsible for the structure of external reality, for the very form of space and time. It is here, in the idea of self-construction, where anxiety dwells: we are creatures who desire structure, and we are frightened by a concept of freedom which implies that beneath us there is nothing, sheer groundlessness.”

As we read one another’s writing, we expand our ideas of how ceremony marks seasonal time, which connects us to the ever changing natural world. We are connected by human traditions, to link us backward to our ancestors and forward to the world that is yet to be. And we recognize that rituals, like that morning cup of tea, hold us, as much as we hold them. | TDS