Failing as a Prison Monk

When Jesus Saves an Imprisoned Soul

In prison, I found a book about human kindness. Within its pages were letters from convicts about problems they faced (which prisoners do not freely share with each other) and answers that I could relate to in the replies from the publisher’s staff. “Commit random acts of kindness” stuck in my head. And so began a change in my life.

Included in the book were instructions for Far Eastern meditative breathing techniques that later became transferable skills useful for contemplative prayer. Though I had spent many scattered hours of my life in Zen moments either riding a motorcycle or awed in forests, I had never practiced breathing in a meditative manner. 

In my repeated periods of prison solitary confinement, it was deep meditation that allowed me to revisit all my past. In that way, I confronted every “where” I had gone wrong in my life and resolved to redirect my future to a better path. 

A long-haired chaplain, Harry Williamson, was sowing seeds at the second prison I was assigned. He had begun as a Jesus Freak of the Sixties, ministering to the junkies in the San Francisco heroin-shooting galleries and somehow landed, twenty-odd years later, just outside of Atlanta, sponsoring an AA group for convicts. Harry was relatable—one did not feel too sinful to sit in on his sermons. His demeanor was meek, but I respected him greatly for the effort and sacrifice given to a life of ministry. “We must comfort the body if we wish to save the soul,” was a Harry-ism.  

Leaving that prison as my security level was lowered, I spent several years on a Georgia Correctional Industries’ construction crew. The work was hard but kept my body physically fit. The traveling from job to job fed my old traveling bone, and the lunch break meditation on rooftops kept my soul attuned to the Universal Soul. 

Rules changed and men with sentences as long as mine were no longer allowed to work the construction jobs. I was transferred to a prison with mostly older men who had served enough time to be past acting upon the rebellion and hate of incarceration. They and I settled in to spend our time as comfortably as possible, awaiting a parole that isn't promised.

Lifers do time in focused chunks. We may spend six months wholly concerned with sports on TV, a year reading a book or more a day of only one genre, months of never missing a yard call, other months of never going out for yard at all. So when I met an old friend and he asked me what I was doing lately, I said I had just finished a year of isometric exercise and was needing something for mental health.

"Try Jesus," was his smiling reply. 

"I was baptized as a child. It didn't seem to take," I replied.

"Give Him six months, if you don't like it, the devil will take you back in a snap."

Ha-ha and we parted company. “Why not?” I said, “Six months of life is nothing.”

A quiet young man in my dorm appeared a serious Christian, so I asked to borrow books from him. He loaned me a two-volume New Testament from the Orthodox Christian Church, filled with essays and explanations about the gospel, as well as accounts of Saints and miracles that have occurred and been witnessed in more modern times, not just the classics. This was edifying material, and my six months became a couple of years of increasing interest, as I began correspondence with priests and monks for Orthodox instruction. I learned that the Universal Mind I had been seeking to contact in meditation was the Mind of Christ that St. Paul had preached.The same young man came to me one day to say there would be an Orthodox priest holding weekly services soon. Should I care to attend, I was welcome.

Of course I would attend. I had felt more desire for a Christian life in two years of studying Orthodox material than I had in twenty years of Baptist services. The greater part of my turning away from organized religion had been frustration at the lack of dogmatic answers to what seemed to be common-sense questions any Christian would ask. I had become a fan of world history in the prison libraries; the Orthodox provided libraries of documented Church history that I needed to know.

Before the new service began, there were flyers posted by the chaplain, but only seven convicts showed up to meet the priest that first day. It was Harry Williamson, the long-haired chaplain from my second prison camp. Now named Father Christopher Williamson, or Fr. Chris, as everyone addressed him. He had entered a monastery shortly after I had left him decades before and, in time, was ordained a priest. Now he was back in Georgia leading a church near this prison, and he had received both Church and State permissions to visit weekly to hold services and attempt to plant an Orthodox cell of prison monks. 

In a year’s time, Fr. Chris received confirmation that my youthful submersion-in-living-water baptism was recognized by the church. In the meantime, we studied our catechisms in preparation. Fr. Chris then anointed me with sanctified oil and holy water as the sacrament of chrismation, joining my body to the Orthodox Church of America, and thus to the Apostolic Catholic Church worldwide, which dates its beginning as Pentecost, 33 AD. I, a homeless orphan with no living next of kin, now have fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters in the millions, along with food and shelter from the elements around the globe. 

Better yet, fulfilling all the promises Jesus made for my earthly existence, my soul and mind are joined to Christ’s—to the limited ability that I am worthy to comprehend, anyway.

What more could a pilgrim need? Communion with the faithful. 

It was with especial joy that I was able to share the cup of the precious blood of Christ with my friend Fr. Christopher Williamson a few times before his body died and released his soul.

Fr. Christopher Williamson

At midnight, three, six, nine am, noon, three, six, and nine pm, the prison counts every head. At those same times of day, for nearly two millennia, the Orthodox faithful are praying all around the planet. Even if alone, I pray in unison with the entire church. It is blessed that at each hour when I pray, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us sinners,” the entire prison stops moving so that count can be conducted. Be still, and know God.

Prison attempts to be the equal but opposite energy of a monastery. That's my own thought. Equal is undoubtedly wrong, but the physical effect of evil is strong here, both in inmates and staff. Demons visit monasteries to do spiritual battle with the faithful where all other means of distraction from the contemplation of God are banished. Christians visit prisons to battle the enemy by spreading the gospel where all the seeds of sin have come to fruition.  

For a score of years now, I have striven to unobtrusively introduce drops of calm in this pool of chaos: continuing to commit random acts of kindness while adding prayer to the environment. God works to a noticeable degree. After only a few days of praying nightly for each individual in a cellblock (“Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on and heal the soul in bunk 1,” repeated for each bunk), the atmosphere of the living unit changes from animosity to patience. 

The enemy notices and strikes back. Pre-pandemic there were some murders and suicides, in spite of various Christian services being held seven nights a week and Bible studies held during business hours most workdays. For the Orthodox, there was a weekly sacrament of communion, when the body and blood of Christ was consumed in remembrance of His sacrifice, for all of us who believed in Him. 

Covid protocols ended all visitations from the outside. The enemy lost no time in making permanent changes to adversely affect ministry.

Post-pandemic there are only two services for Christians and one for Muslims each week. All are held during working hours, where it is unlikely any prisoner will be able to attend spur of the moment. It is difficult to schedule a crisis in one’s life that may bring them to the great spiritual hospital in time of greatest need. Accessibility to the open doors of a church is fundamental to salvation. Comfort the body to save the soul.    

Murder and suicide events in prison tripled annually from the pre-2020 rate.

In attempting to model the miracle-working fathers of the ancient church, I strove to copy their monastic lifestyles, with poor results. Reading the accounts of the fourth-century desert fathers in the Middle East, one finds accounts of when being robbed of the precious little the solitary monks possessed, they would help the thieves load their animals and reveal to them items they had missed. Such removal from the cares of this world and reliance upon God for mere existence provided them the spiritual strength to repel the demonic attacks and temptations they faced in overcoming their own will so as to completely follow God’s. 

I reached a personal barrier when my worldly possessions consisted of three items I could not bear to part with. My Bible, given me by my Godfather, an address book and diary containing a lifetime of personal notes and friends, and the photo album half-filled with the obituaries of family and friends of a past life that I rarely look at.

I fail miserably in comparison to the real monks. Here in the desert of prison, because of my good behavior, I am denied the solitary cell in which to pray without ceasing. Markedly not a problem for the prison administration, I am usually housed in the worst behaving dorms for whatever good effect I might have upon the environment. Not because the prison regards me as a shepherd, but because I am to them an old goat convict who is expected to butt the sheep into line.

When sneak thieves relieve me of some food unseen, I am forgiving and count myself blessed in having been the source of meeting someone’s dire need of sustenance, someone that the enemy prevented from asking my help in meeting. 

When confronted by robbers bold enough to demand I give to them, I fail in my faith and end up fighting the occasional one so as not to have to be subjected to more. It does no man any good to find robbery easy, and if I lay down for the strong, the weaker will be emboldened to become robbers as well. So I fight the strong and afterwards feed the weak with the food I held onto. These fights result in no great physical harm needing medical attention, and there are no guards anymore to report such activities, so still I am denied the blessing of solitary confinement.   

For that failing, I am not a monk at all. I have laid one hand upon the plow and looked back. I am merely a pilgrim yet upon the path towards becoming the human being who reflects the image of Christ from the smelting pot that is prison.  

JShawn Guess is the author of scores of newspaper columns, several journalistic magazine articles, many nonfiction slice-of-life essays, and an ever-growing compilation of fictional short stories that can be seen at Filtermag.org, The Appeal, The Doe, and elsewhere.

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