A Teaching Handbook for Wiccans and Pagans (27 page)

Prison ministry serves some of the people who can benefit most from counseling and support, and who are least likely to get it. McCollum describes his first realization about how important this work can be:

I realized how much difference you can make by going into a prison. If you start by recognizing the high value of one human life and spirit—what that is really worth—you really begin to see the great work we can all do in our community by just taking on one person and supporting their spirit, whatever that is, in some positive way.

But this work isn't easy. One of the things Pagan teachers worry about when considering prison ministry is the potential danger. McCollum agrees that Pagan prison chaplains need to be careful:

You've got to learn the ropes if you're going to do that work. You have to have a lot of empathy, and you have to be pretty sharp and on your feet, because prison is a dangerous place. There are inmates who will do bad things to you, there are staff that will do bad things to you, and you just have to be really careful all the time and really be thinking a step ahead. You also have to be someone who can command respect. Inmates know weakness. They're trained from the moment that they get in prison that you take advantage of the weak, so you can't walk into prison acting like you're afraid or that you don't know something or you're worried about what's going to happen to you. You have to come in there totally confident that you are in charge, and all those inmates will see that and they will follow what you say. But it takes a period of time to build a relationship with them to where you're really safe, so you have to learn your stuff.

I asked McCollum what it takes to do prison ministry successfully.

It requires a lot of fortitude—ability to stand up against a whole system that is stacked against you—because there are a lot of people in the prison system, even with all the positive steps we've made forward, who really don't want you to be there. So you have to start first of all by being willing to take some level of abuse and come out on top.

The fortitude McCollum is referring to is not just the strength to teach Paganism. It's also the strength to stand up for people who don't have much of a voice and deal with pushback from corrections personnel who didn't want Pagans to have access to chaplaincy services:

I have a certain stubbornness. When somebody starts pushing, trying to stop me from doing something good, I push back harder than however hard they push. And I just keep bringing together as many resources to push back until in the end I hopefully can succeed…. I've gone into prisons, I've been beaten up, I've been thrown in a cell and arrested and charged with false charges and had people spit on me. I mean, you would not believe the kinds of things I've had happen to me. And every time they do something like that, I just decide that that behavior can't continue. The next person who comes in can't be made to have to deal with that. And so I take 'em on, and so far I've done fairly well.

The work that McCollum has done in California and elsewhere to allow incarcerated Pagans access to religious services has paved a path for others who wish to do the same.

Like clergy of any other faith, Pagans doing religious services in the prisons need to be very professional and set a good example. McCollum states:

Up until three or four years ago there were a lot of people who just assumed that because they are high priest or priestess or something of some small group that started a year ago, that all of a sudden they're also qualified to walk in and be a spiritual leader or something in a prison. That's not really the way it works.

He also told me a story about the importance of acting like a professional in the prisons:

You have to not do things, especially while you're in the prison, that would reflect badly on Paganism in general or on the work that you're doing…. Sometimes Pagans feel that their spirituality puts them outside of social responsibilities, and so, for example, they think, “There are rules in the prison that don't apply to me because what I'm doing is somehow sacred.” I once worked with a man working as chaplain who felt it was appropriate to bring illegal substances into the prison because he believed that they had a spiritual component to them and were supportive for the inmates and good for them, even though the law said that he couldn't. The person actually believed he was doing something good by doing that, and he justified it by saying [the substances] were part of our religious practice, which of course then shut down the religious practices for every Wiccan in the institution, because the institution said, “Well, we're not going to let that happen here, so we're not letting any Wiccans in here.” There have been many, many of those kinds of instances.

McCollum stresses two important messages with inmates: the idea that the gods love them and the idea of their inherent sacredness:

When I started doing this, inmates were pretty much exposed only to Christianity and almost entirely Protestant Christianity. There was a little Judaism and Catholicism thrown in there, but it's really minimized in the prisons. And what those particular kinds of faith groups teach the inmates is that you are evil, you are bad, you are evil from creation, from the very beginning, because of the sins of Adam and Eve and such, and that you can never be redeemed until you actually die and stand before God and be judged. I go into the prisons with a different message.

I'm primarily a Goddess worshiper, so I go into them and I say, to begin with, our Creator/Creatrix, whatever it is, is like a loving mother. She never abandons her children. You could do all kinds of terrible stuff, and she might really be ticked off about it, but she's never going to cease loving you or trying to help you. That really resonated with the inmates, because the largest number of inmates in institutions typically do not have a role model as a mother or a father. Many of them live on the streets and have had all kinds of social issues, come from broken families and things like that, so just the concept that there might be some sacred holy mother up there who cares about them becomes really important to them.

The other thing I teach is that our particular tradition is as much about creating community and acknowledging and recognizing the sacredness in each of us. I tell them that every one of us, according to our belief system, all originate from the same source that created everything, and so we have, like, a piece of God inside of us. So there is no one who can be entirely bad or useless or unable to contribute, because we are all sacred. And once we know that, we as a community come together and acknowledge and recognize the sacredness of one another … all of a sudden all these men and women come together as a family, which is something they never had.

We talked a lot about the difficulties associated with doing prison ministry, so I asked McCollum about his successes too. He told me about a woman he worked with:

She never wanted to be anything, never wanted to do anything, was on drugs and every other kind of problem. She came to Wicca to just sort of check it out and got more and more involved, and I saw her all the way through prison and her getting out, and got her into a halfway house in Long Beach, California. That woman, it turns out, was illiterate. She had to learn to read things in order to do her part of rituals. People would give her something, and she'd act like she knew what it was, but she had no idea what it said. So she struggled to teach herself to read enough to be able to learn how to do her parts of the ritual, and gradually got better and better.

When she got out, she shared that and said she wanted to dedicate herself to the Goddess and teach other women how to become literate…. She was successful in the halfway house, but she decided to stay on as staff and teach all the women who were illiterate how to become literate. And she in fact did that, but she went way beyond that; she began to write poetry and won a number of poetry awards and actually became this very well-known poetess. And she is still doing that today. So we can have such a huge effect on someone like that.

I asked McCollum for some final words of wisdom for Pagans considering doing prison ministry:

You really have to have a spiritual desire to do the work. You have to be a person who is connected to whatever source spirit or divinity is, because that's what it will take to support you to actually do the work. You can't just be somebody who says, “I think it will be cool to go into prison. It'll make me look good to do this.” That doesn't work, but if you're inspired by your own spiritual path to go do the work, then you'll do well.

As you can see, Pagan clergy work is very nuanced and requires a great deal of self-confidence and diplomacy, so it is probably best done by teachers with some experience under their belts. But these services are also needed desperately by our community, so if you feel called to become a Pagan clergyperson, try not to be discouraged by the complexities. If you have any aptitude and interest in this work, and you feel it is something you must do, I encourage you to help others by walking this path. However, I also encourage you to seek training and mentorship—and maybe even an internship—from those who have walked the path before you. Good clergy, like good teachers, are not created in a vacuum, and a supportive network is a must for this kind of work.

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Conclusion

Okay, Now Go Change the World!

When I try to distill all my years of teaching into a simple sound bite or idea—something upbeat to leave you with as you begin your teaching journey—what I come up with is that teaching, to me, means hope.

I remember my first day of student teaching English to tenth-graders. I was just a few years older than they were, I was pretty sure they would eat me alive, and I was scared to death. It's a generally accepted (if not scientifically supported) fact that kids can smell fear like sharks smell blood in the water. But what helped me conquer my fear was hope—hope that I could help these kids, many of whom were disadvantaged. Hope that I could give them a safe space to learn, away from whatever problems they had outside of class. And hope that maybe I could inspire them to like reading and writing and expressing themselves, even just a little bit.

Teaching means hope not only for the students right in front of you, but also for the future. Teachers have a unique opportunity to have an impact on the world around them. They can help shape thought and influence future generations. They can be role models and set examples of being a positive force in a community. They can help a community be more interconnected. They can inspire. And teachers can be agents of extraordinary and powerful change.

Patrick McCollum told me:

You can change the world. I mean, many Pagans are concerned about many different aspects of the world we live in: pollution, the ecology, human rights, equal treatment, and pluralism…. Here is a place to walk your talk, to actually get in on the ground floor and do something to bring about the things you believe in.

Envision the world you want to live in. Envision a positive future for the Pagan community. Teaching can help make it a reality.

I don't want to blow sunshine up your skirt here. If you teach, there will definitely be challenges. There will be situations that freak you out, make you cry, and maybe even make you question yourself and your purpose. But don't let that stuff throw you. There will also be moments of gnosis and sublime beauty, epiphanies and breathtaking discoveries, and communion with the Divine.

Patrick McCollum commented to me on how when you're working in tune with the Divine, the Divine tends to look out for you:

I would say that in our traditions teaching is a sacred thing, and I think that people who are interested in wanting to teach can put a lot of store in that—that the work they're doing isn't just work, it's sacred, and that if they will give themselves over to that idea, they'll not only shift and change for the better, the people they work with and help will too….

There seems to be a force that takes care of you and makes sure you're okay if you put yourself in line with the sacredness. Our whole religion and spirituality is about that. That's something that people really want to think about and really want to try to move into it as a priestess- or priesthood. Not so much “you have to be a high priest or priestess of a group” or something. Take it on as a walk on the sacred path. That's what your particular sacred walk is going to be.

Teaching is a rich, rewarding way to align your spiritual beliefs deeply with your daily life and walk the path of your gods. And when you're aligned and walking that path, you're truly following your bliss. Remember that your work is vital and desperately needed by our community. And remember that as a teacher, you are an agent not only of learning but also of hope.

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