KICKOFF HOMEWORK
To best prepare you for the live Kickoff Orientation, we ask you to watch a few essential videos ahead of time—BELOW—from the comfort of you own home.
TOTAL TIME: 45 MINUTES
COMMITMENT REMINDER
4 hours / month (on average)
Read monthly learning modules - .5 hour
Monthly team meetings - 1.5 hours
Write two letters (or emails or phone calls) - 1 hour
“Rolling Away Stones” (JPay setup, housing prep, driver’s license, etc.) - 1 hour
2-year journey with team and releasing friend
Monthly learning, prison letters, relationship-building, reentry planning - 12 months
Reentry work and personal accompaniment - 9 months
Reflection and discernment forward - 3 months
THE DAY YOU GET OUT
The New York Times made a startlingly intimate video portrait of incarcerated men during their first hour of release, at a bus station in Texas. There is no commentary.
To consider:
What do you see these men feeling? Wanting?
Normally we think of prisoners as people to fear. What might these men be afraid of?
What’s missing from this first day out of the prison facility?
MASS INCARCERATION
If the last video was the up-close-shot of those leaving the tombs, this is the big-picture-flyover of the social tomb system we’ve built in America. Here’s two quick videos—a clever 4-minute summary, and a more somber 3-minute visualization—of the vast human burial system we are dealing with:
HERE’S WHERE YOU COME IN
This is how One Parish One Prisoner is a new answer to the problem depicted above: by mobilizing communities like yours into direct relationship and reentry support.
A BLESSING
God of the Resurrection,
Thank you for calling this community member reading this right now closer to your sons and daughters still inside the tombs we’ve built.
We invite Your Spirit to lovingly begin a deeper conversation with our new friends on both sides of the prison walls, where Your Voice can be heard throughout this journey ahead.
Help us follow Your lead together. Help this team love and grow in vulnerability and trust together.
Help us, now and throughout, to let go of anxiety or control—and welcome your kindness into our own shadows.
Amen.