Trust, sharing key to transformation

The phone rang, it was Carrie, a friend of mine who with her husband moved to southern Utah a couple years ago. She shared an interesting and profoundly important activity she is involved in. It speaks to all of us.

She visits a local prison regularly, leading a men’s group and a women’s group. They meet in circles. When she started, each group had five or six attendees and now it numbers 30 or more each session.

Carrie’s beginning message was simple yet profound: “Look. We are all really the same. We are all prisoners to something. It is the hanging on to this burden that makes us angry and fearful and holds us in bondage.”

In these circle experiences, the sharing, the questions, the stories, the listening to each other and the personal breakthroughs are phenomenal. The foundation of the whole thing is building understanding, self-esteem and personal empowerment through changing attitudes, minds and behavior.

This whole idea that “we are all prisoners to something” got me to thinking about our present political situation and our world problems. Where are we going as a nation, as a world? Have we served our time being held prisoners to fear, anger, greed and guilt? Isn’t it about time to get out of our self-made prisons?

Just like Carrie and her “circles of trust” inmate gatherings, we too need open discussion, serious listening, willingness to change and an attitude of hope and trust.

I firmly believe that there is, right now in America, a growing movement for serious dialogue and transformation. In fact, there is already much good work being done we rarely hear about. We seem obsessed with listening to all the rants and ravings and negative news. We need to change this. We can change this. We had better change this.

– Bob McClellan, Polson