The table that marks the Meeting's three-year anniversary. Photo: Courtesy of Judith Roles.
Building community behind bars
Judith Roles writes about her experience as a Quaker prison chaplain
How do we make the Meeting a community in which each person is accepted and nurtured, and strangers are welcomed? Seek to know one another in the things which are eternal, bear the burden of each other’s failings and pray for one another. As we enter with tender sympathy into the joys and sorrows of each other’s lives, ready to give help and receive it, our Meeting can be a channel for God’s love and forgiveness.
– Advices & queries 18
I am writing this on a recent ‘snow day’, at the time we usually hold our prison Meeting for Worship. I am ‘holding in the Light’ each of the men who are part of our community at HMP Long Lartin, a men’s prison in the High Security Estate. This is a rare occasion, since Sarah Lane and I began the multi-faith ‘Silence Inside’, that the weekly Meeting has not been held.
