Excerpt from a Letter that I Hope Will Change the Course of My Life

Someone out in the ether found me. my writing and personal story and thought I would be a perfect fit to work with incarcerated men. I followed up his suggestion to contact a faith-based organization that might employ me to do exactly that. It is a long shot, but then so am I. All I can do is keep pitching, keep creating, keep doing good work without expectation of reward.

Here’s an excerpt from the letter:

I would never compare my short-lived experience of being adjudicated, incarcerated and serving probation (the latter easily the worst of all, a total racket creating a new debtors’ prison enriching private contractors) to the men serving long sentences in OSP. But I understand all too well the stigmatization, marginalization and brutal trauma associated with entering and exiting Oregon’s criminal justice system. I survived. I want to help others survive, too, and prosper. I’ve learned so much. I want to share that knowledge.

A little about my relationship to Christianity. I grew up in the church as the son of a preacher and missionary and spent several years with my family in Brazil in service. As an adult I drifted away from this background, but have continued to draw upon the sermons Jesus preached and the parables he taught. There is nothing like engaging others with the parable of the lost sheep to teach what it means to help people who desperately need it. In fact, I developed a writing workshop based on that parable.

Wish me luck readers.