Kairos Louisiana

Letters from Kairos Members

GOD’S SPECIAL TIME, INDEED!

In the original Greek of our Jewish-Christian scriptures, the word “time” is used in two different ways.  The word “Kronos” is used when referring to linear time---hours, days, weeks, etc.  “Kairos,” on the other hand, is used to refer to the time set by God for a particular occurrence.  Kairos is “God’s Special Time!”

For almost two years, now, I have had the privilege of serving as one of the “clergy people” on a retreat team which goes into Louisiana’s large penitentiary for women.  Our goal is to serve as catalysts, leaven, in helping these women to experience God’s love and to experience the effect which openness to that love will have on the way we treat one another.

As a retreat team, we spent six weeks getting to know and love one another so that we could genuinely model for the prison residents (The system calls them “inmates,” but we call them “residents.”) what we hope they will choose to become for each other.  One doesn’t have to be in their environment very long at all to realize that although this prison is located in a little town called “St. Gabriel” --- one of God’s special messengers of good news --- most of the people whose voices they hear day and night are anything but messengers of good news to these women.

The international and interdenominational organization which sponsors these prison retreats is called “Kairos.”  And my experience assures me that it’s very well-named.

• When forty-plus busy women (and a few men who serve on “the cook team”) commit several Saturdays, and one Friday evening as well, to preparing themselves to serve as a retreat team, you know this has to be “God’s special time.”
• When all these people, from about as many Christian denominations as you can think of, leave their denominations and their personal theologies at the door in order to focus on the heart of Christianity---Jesus and people---you know this has to be “God’s special time.”
• When in just a few weeks, these people (many of them former strangers) become vulnerable with one another and are formed into a loving, serving, supportive, non-competitive community; you know this has to be “God’s special time.”

And all of this is before we even set foot on the prison grounds.  Once we get there, we see:

• walls which are thick with distrust and anger beginning to crumble as the women who had built these walls begin to see and to experience things they have never experienced before: love, trust, vulnerability, honesty, and even music/laughter/dancing not induced by alcohol or drugs;
• women who have known abuse from little on choosing to participate in a forgiveness service which brings tears to our eyes;

• women who have never had a birthday party in their lives seeing their names written on a birthday cake, receiving a birthday card, opening personal letters from every one of the staff members, hearing “Happy Birthday” sung to them, as well as a song whose words include: “You are loved; you are beautiful; you’re a gift of God, God’s own creation….God danced the day you were born.”
• women who have been taught that in order to survive, you have to look out for yourself and trust no one, beginning to share each other’s heartaches and help carry each other’s burdens;
• “prayer and share” groups among the residents meeting every Wednesday evening as a follow-up to their initial retreat experience.

I could go on and on!  But I’ll conclude now with a bit more about the Kairos Retreat Ministry which continues to impress me:

• Every semi-annual four-day retreat includes reaching out to the entire prison population, not only the thirty-six or so residents who are actually participating in that particular retreat.  The retreat staff brings in a dozen home-made cookies a day, for four days, to all one thousand or so residents, most of whom never get home-made cookies.
• The Kairos staff arranges for people outside of the prison to be praying for retreat participants around the clock during the entire four-day retreat.
• Kairos staff members are very careful to encourage residents to learn to depend on and to build community among themselves.  Therefore, contact between residents and staff members is very limited and controlled.

However, Kairos promises follow-up support in doing this by:

• allowing one letter a month for a year from one staff member to one resident who participated in the four-day retreat;
• returning to the prison for afternoon reunions several times a year;
• faithfully sending two staff members to the prison every Wednesday night (whether it be an ordinary Wednesday or Thanksgiving Eve, Christmas Eve, New Year’s Day, July 4 --- whatever!) to join the residents for their prayer and share groups.

The feedback which I’ve gotten both from other staff members, as well as from the prison residents themselves, convinces me that---at least for now---I need to continue serving in prison ministry when I can.  However, by now, it must also be obvious what Kairos and its ministry has come to mean to me as well.  It is for me personally “God’s Special Time,” indeed!

S. Linda Songy

Holy Cross Sister

August 15, 2006