Hard-Earned Wisdom From Inside San Quentin Prison

Insight-Out is an extraordinary program founded by Jacques Verduin, a man I met briefly in Assisi, Italy as part of a larger global network of innovative initiatives supported by The Fetzer Institute.  Insight-Out is an in-prison rehabilitation program and includes the one year GRIP program - Guiding Rage into Power - for San Quentin inmates. Here is one story recently showcased in their newsletter.  It concerns a lesson most of us would rather avoid, but none of us can say our lives have not been punctuated by the darker aspects of fate.  How we engage this fate, including unfairness and hard times, is at the core of the soul's maturation:

My night was like any other night. It was 8PM, time for “close custody count” (all prisons have ‘institutional counts’ wherein they count each prisoner’s body to ensure no one is missing or has escaped. Not being there for count is considered a serious violation).

Read the rest

here

...