This fall, I have spent every Thursday in the Minnesota Correctional Facility in Stillwater. Upon arrival, five of us (chaplains and chaplains-in-training) walk through multiple metal gates that offer ominous clanging echos each time they close behind us. In the chapel, the four “insiders” greet the five “outsiders.” We set up chairs and offer hand shakes (because hugs are not allowed).
Together, these nine people form our clinical pastoral education (CPE) group, supporting one another as we practice spiritual care. Those who are not incarcerated serve at various Volunteers of America sites: mental health treatment, an alternative high school, public housing. Those who are incarcerated practice spiritual care as mental health mentors, restorative justice facilitators, and through one-on-one conversations with the men in their cell block. Every Thursday, we meet in the chapel to offer one another feedback and encouragement.
When it was Michael’s turn to lead the morning devotion, he walked to the whiteboard in his prison blues (jeans and a light blue button down) and wrote the word GRATITUDE in big black letters. In his sweet Southern drawl, he invited us to name things we were thankful for while he wrote them down. Michael kicked it off by telling us he was grateful for a good night of sleep and a conversation with his mother the day before.
The juxtaposition of Michael’s straightforward expressions of appreciation and his incarcerated reality gave depth to the spiritual care he was offering the group. Gratitude, for Michael, wasn’t simply about manners and nice feelings. After 25 years in prison, gratitude has become part of a larger emotional and spiritual survival strategy. Living behind bars, Michael practices gratitude to re-claim his humanity and dignity. By cultivating the capacity to recognize good in small moments, Michael re-orients his relationship to others and to the world by refusing to give in to despair.
As Michael (a beautiful and flawed human being) taught our group (of beautiful and flawed human beings), gratitude is essential to our humanity. Practicing gratitude helps us pay attention in a different way. It pulls our attention to the good. Not to deny injustice or to erase anger, regret or loneliness, but to focus on what we want to foster. As a shared practice, expressing genuine gratitude helps us affirm the worth and dignity of the people we live with and work with. Saying thank you is shorthand for I see you and you matter.
I left that Thursday conversation reflecting on what a deeper practice of gratitude might mean in my own life.
- How might I identify the good that needs some attention even in a seemingly impossible situation?
- How might I practice affirming others’ individual contributions in ways that say I see you and you matter?
- In my communities, how might I help to create a culture where we deliberately practice gratitude as a way to see and affirm one another?