January 4, 2009 talk by Dan Callaghan,

Board of Trustees, UU Church of Tarpon Springs,

upon his release from the Pasco County Jail

Dan is living his faith...

Stone Walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage…Richard Lovelace

Dear friends—my brothers and sisters—I am so fortunate and so privileged to be back with you in our spiritual home. Thank you so much for your warm wishes during my recent sabbatical at the Pasco Land o’ Lakes Jail Facility. As a health spa, it’s hard to beat their price of three dollars a day, and I intentionally lost 5 pounds by just eating the mystery meats and delicious vegetables, most of them fresh-grown. My blood pressure was an astonishingly normal 124 over 84, perhaps due to the lack of snacks, sugary items, and salt. By my final day, I was up to 80 push-ups daily. But in truth, I am very much a changed person because of my 25 days of incarceration, and I like to think that particular pod of 50 or so inmates is changed too, and changed for the better as I am.

Without slighting all those who offered me support, I want to especially thank certain individuals. First, Mary Dresser, who spoke here in this pulpit on December 7 two days after I was handcuffed and sent to jail—she sent me both a copy of the Order of Service and the words she spoke that day. Dear Mary—like the spirit of union saint Joe Hill—I was here on December 7 because of your thoughtfulness. And Colonel Day—I appreciated your verse—I passed your beautiful card on or I would quote it.

And Mark and Ann Kanuck, thanks for sending me a complete copy of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail" which I read again and again during my in-carceration. His words humbled me with the immensity of his struggle to overcome our deeply embedded racism, and it sustained me with the clarity and sternness of his words for others to stop criticizing and get involved, causing me to question my own small act of civil disobedience, tiny, and flawed, and unfocused as it was. To paraphrase Senator Lloyd Benson’s debate with Senator Dan Quayle, "I thought I knew Martin Luther King Jr., and now I may know him even better, but Dan Callaghan, you’re no Martin Luther King Jr.

Mark and Ann, I gave your gift of Rev. King’s letter to my first cellmate in Pod A-600—nineteen-year-old Leo Dallas Giles, a young Adonis of a black man, recently released from all-day lockdown for initiating a riot in which he was severely pepper-sprayed and that effected many cells for several days after. The moment I entered Leo’s cell, he offered me the prized lower bunk instead of the plastic "boat" on the floor, even though his ceiling was decorated with photographs of his family and five girlfriends.

But when he learned that Anni and I met his Grandma and Aunt in Zephyrhills when a bunch of us from the Society of Citizens Against Racism (SCAR) drove over to join their protest to rename a numbered avenue for Martin Luther King Jr., Leo treated me like a revered grandfather, and showed Pops how things worked in jail. So Leo, who writes poetry, and sings like a bird, and quietly takes notes each morning from his copy of the Bible—Leo has Martin’s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" and when he finishes with it, Mark and Ann, he’ll sign it as I did, and pass it along to someone else. And Don Toll, who shares my love for both this church and for our PASAWOR writing group, he sent me a personal story that made me laugh while also saying a silent prayer that the two of us never become cellmates—because I’d die laughing. For brevity, it’s hard to beat Richard Baker’s one word: Repent!

So what’s it like being imprisoned for 25 days in A-600 Pod holding 50 men in a jail facility holding about 1000 men overall, all of your belongings reduced to the few contents in a gray plastic tub topped with bedding and a towel: a short comb, a shorter toothbrush and tiny tube of toothpaste, and a container of soap of car-wash grade? What’s it like being imprisoned in a large cage of stone and metal, the temperature constantly at 68 or so to thwart germs, with two tiers of cell holding three men per cell, each cell measuring perhaps 12 feet by 8 feet, some serving their sentence as I was—up to a year long, others waiting for transfer to state prison to serve many years, others waiting trial for assaults, burglaries, thefts, and murder?

The experience began when my other cellmate, young Jim and I entered the A-600 pod from the initial pod where everyone spends some time before being assigned to their new home. Shouts of greeting went up, the politest of which was "Fresh meat," causing a clamor as I carried my stuff and my boat bed up to my cell. And then that fearful moment was over, and I never faced any physical threat to my person or my prison virginity during the next 23 days. After that mob scene, dozens of strangers made an alien, a stranger in a strange land, welcome. I witnessed that outburst almost every time fresh meat—I’m sorry—tenderfoots—entered the pod and I’ve wondered about this ritual. And I now think I understand the true message: Be scared, newcomer. This is our world, not yours. Stand there wallowing in your own myth of sexual attack, but that’s your world, not ours—so soak in your fear for a long, frightening moment—that’s your ticket to enter our world. Once, with some aspects a little different, I called it Marine Corps boot camp. And after that first five or ten minutes?

A guy in his forties named Roy takes me under his wing—he’s been in prison as well as jail—showing me how to order from the commisary using the touch-screen mounted on the wall so that we spend our dollars before the state claims theirs, how to protect my brown bag of commisary stash when it arrives, and then offers to store my supplies of oatmeal cookies, Skittles, and shaving cream safely in his cell full of tough veterans, and from time to time, he opens my sack to show me it’s all still there—not a single Skittle gone. And until my freeze-dried coffee arrives, Roy makes sure I have a cup in the morning and the evening—coffee is gold in this place—and when I ask him why he helps me, he simply says, "God told me to." Before I leave he asks a favor of me, to use either my internet book business or our church to send him a prized King James Bible from home. I assure him I will do that.

In one larger cell on the bottom floor, a black man in a wheelchair that I soon call our pod pastor—William Earl invites me to join his spiritual circle—he’s a Southern Baptist who has committed much of the Bible to memory, and when I join a half-dozen inmates in his cell, I join hands with men so tough-looking that you’d cross the street to avoid them, and each of them in turn offers testimony, each asking the Lord Jesus to protect their families, to bless their fellow inmates, to keep harmony and peace within the pod, to heal their failings, and to watch over me, and humbled in this truly holy moment, when my turn comes, I say to them "It’s a blessing you were born. It matters what you do. Whatever you know of God is true. And you don’t have to go it alone." And I think to myself, Brother Jesus would understand, dying as he did between two criminals.

When cellmate Leo’s high school friend Tito comes into the pod—several of Leo’s relatives are already elsewhere in the jail—the noise level trebles as the young men talk their gangsta talk and catch up on news from home, so the corrections officer asks if I wouldn’t mind moving from Leo’s 610 down onto the pod floor until a cell is available. The advantage is that when everyone is locked in their cell, a couple or three of us have the whole floor to ourselves, and we’re first in the food line.

Then an angry white giant named Big Slow who is bipolar and missing his meds offers to take me in, and insists on sleeping on the floor so Pops can again have the prized lower bunk. Big Slow shares his cell with one of the toughest convicts in here—Bill, a Paiute Indian whose crime is attempted murder, and he’s been in prison since he was 17. He stayed out of trouble for five years, with a good job in a convenience store raising a family with two children, but his anger got the best of him, and he’s waiting a transfer to prison to begin serving his 5 years. Bill is covered in tattoos, two portaits in detail of Satan on his chest being the most predominant, and you’ve seen his stone cold gaze in some Hollywood film—but Bill’s gaze is real and earned the hard way. I went up to Bill who never smiles and apologized for not asking him if he minded me moving in and he says, "It was my idea, man."

From 11 p.m. until 4 a.m., Bill paces back and forth in our cell as quiet as a cat, and he does 300 push-ups and day, eating food gathered from three or four people. He’s in training to survive prison so he can get back to his family. Bill regrets what he did, regrets his anger, and vows to get back to his wife and children and never return to prison. He sits at the little metal desk for hours creating intricate lettering like a scribe doing an illuminated manuscript, writing letters to his kids, knowing they will celebrate their first of at least five Christmases without him. and he spends hours, scowling, as he instructs the two of us in Prison Etiquette and Survival 101, and when Big Slow leaves, he teaches our new cellmate Paul, how to survive in jail. Paul is 18 years old, initially jailed for attempted murder with a bail set at $150,000.

Bill accepts my nickname—D.I. for drill instructor. And Bill’s face changes completely when he smiles, when he laughs. He makes jail kool-aid for us: 3 or 4 hard candies like cherry or watermelon dropped into an empty coffee plastic bag with hot water added, shake well until your arms get tired, then using the little plastic comb provided, wedge the bag over one of the airconditioning vents so it cools. Then hope the guards don’t come by and confiscate it, then drink slowly. He shows us how to take the thin plastic tubes of ink we are given without the plastic casing that could become a weapon, wrap it tightly in sheets of borrowed official forms, and then tie it in place using threads pulled from the towel so that you have a pen you can comfortably grasp.

As we get closer to Christmas I tell Bill my Christmas present to him is going to be guarding our cell door from 4 a.m. until as late as he wants to sleep, so he can sleep safely on his belly, a luxury he’s given up as he prepares to return to prison where sleeping lightly on one’s back can save one’s life. But instead I offer to take some presents with his artistic Christmas cards to his wife Kristen and his little boy and girl, and for a long, long moment, the toughest convict in the pod is frozen speechless and then gives a little nod of thanks, but never sheds a tear. Bill is the real thing, and he aims to survive.

Each day I share supper at a table with two men around my age. When Bob tells me he served in the Navy and then joined the Army rising to the revered rank of First Sergeant, I call him "Top," a term of endearment. Joe served in the Air Force and was a consultant to banks world-wide, developed early software for business and has prepared videos for Governor Jeb Bush and Charlie Crist. If I told you what insignificant charges placed them behind bars for many months waiting for their opportunity to challenge their charges, youd think I was crazy, and you’d say "Not in America." Okay, I’ll give you an example. Joe arrived at the home of the woman he’s divorcing with a form in hand giving him access to the house to remove his belongings on a certain day. When he sees his wife is still at home, he goes to a nearby gas station and asks to speak with a deputy. He shows the deputy his form, and the deputy notes that the form becomes official at 12:01 p.m. and it’s only 10:30 a.m. off to jail he goes, and after many months, there he waits for his day in court. The three of us old guys discuss travel, films, and literature as we sit among the young speaking their youthful babble loudly, and we stay sane. Joe lived in France for many years, and Bob has a beautiful home on the Caribbean island of Dominica. I remember talking with Bob and Joe about our military service and the three of us share stories, and we three old men, remembering our old brotherhood, sometimes share some teared-up eyes.

Every day, small acts of respect and kindness abound. You cross paths with someone and it’s a handshake and how you doin’.

Coffee is black gold, but no one is denied a precious sporkful, our one eating utensil. Saltine crackers covered with Ramen noodles are offered to friends, or a couple of cookies, or a piece of a delicious cinnamon bear claw or fig Newton. Books are read and traded from three metal shelves full of tattered worn paperbacks—no hardbacks allowed, as those of you know who tried to slip that contraband into me. A seat is offered, food items traded. I don’t find a single person planning a new crime or bragging about an old one. Everyone I meet accepts responsibility for the crime that placed them here, though some offer stories of being innocent this time, but say maybe it’s justice for the crime they got away with long ago—you know, karma? So what goes wrong? Why do so many of them return again and again to this jail, to prison? The common denominators I see and hear are a lack of education, drugs, alcohol, and abuse as a child.

One of Richard Baker’s acquaintances described his stint in the Pasco County jail as "cot and rot." Outside the pod there is a rec area with two basketball balls and hoops and chewed-up Styrofoam footballs available every few days, or Bible studies for two hours, or a Roman Catholic service that the four Mexican attend with a few others, and that’s it—prison policies favor keeping order while stifling growth. I speak to two Corrections Officers about offering a class teaching beginning English to the Hispanics, but one just shakes his head no, and the other says, "Not by an inmate." My offers to teach a class in journal writing or remedial English, or creative writing receive the same reaction, and there’s no paper or writing tools unless I buy them through the commissary and wait for their arrival days later.

So things are accomplished in a clandestine manner. The four Mexicans and I collaborate on preparing a list of helpful bi-lingual phrases and they help me with Spanish as I help them with English, chief among them is a favored "Quiero irme a la casa"—I want to go home. Ignacio and Alejandro both come from small villages in central Mexico, and most of their $8 an hour went there. I give them some colorful cards to decorate their cell walls, one showing a vaquero with a horse and a colt in a desert setting which reminds them of home. Each morning I’m the reader to the prayer group of a chapter from Rick Warren’s The Purpose-Driven Life, the man President-Elect Obama has chosen to give the prayer at his inauguration. I help inmates write letters, and their legal papers, and do a little counseling when depressed inmates stop talking, stop eating.

Mimi, a gang member, sees me pacing in my open cell as Bill once did for exercise before his transfer to prison, and asks what I’m doing. I tell him I’m looking for a way out. He flies up and down the steel stairs wearing the flip-flops, even though men carefully walking sometimes trip or lose either a flip or a flop. I tell him I’ve figured out how he does it—he’s glued his feet to his flip-flops with toothpaste. He and Bepo who is movie-star handsome, powerfully built and full of nervous energy, are close friends, and I hear them tell a gang leader from the pod-next-door in Spanish that I killed a cop. The gang leader, a muscular Peter Sellers, crosses the yellow line and comes up to my cell. I tell him I didn’t kill a cop but a cop got a tiny cut between his thumb and index finger, and throws an ugly fit calling me a liar. I tell him and his gangstas that I don’t lie, that they’ve disrespected me, and to keep away from me until they apologize. The boss keeps away, Mimi heads off to prison, and Bepo apologizes after reading a copy of my U.S. Supreme Court petition that I give to my old friends Bob and Joe. Bepo becomes a good friend, and hugs me at least once a day, and is considering my offer to adopt him. He’s facing life in prison, though.

Gabriel, a gigantic blond surfer from Huntington Beach was forced off the road by an elderly driver with his three kids in the car and when the man comes to his car and punches him through the window, big Gabriel punches the man back, and here he sits, separated for the first time from his wife and family. He’s been in jail before, but not for years. Roy, who leads the Bible study, was drunk and shouting as he’s accused of entering the home of a woman angry at her husband, and when spittle hits a police officer, he’s not only charged with burglary but battery on a law enforcement officer. Since he’s innocent he refuses to plea bargain, and he sits and waits, for over a year.

Young Paul with a Crips tattoo on his big strong right arm yells at a drunken man driving too fast through his neighborhood—he’s been hit three times by cars growing up to 18, and the man hits the brakes, gets out and yells obscenities at Paul and his 20 or so friends and friends of friends playing basketball and just hanging at his house—and when Paul approaches the man standing at his car and tells him kids are in the neighborhood, refusing to hit a man he thinks is 65, four of the men at his house—he doesn’t know their names, attack and beat the man. They are not in jail; Paul is, as he waits for his mother to raise the bail, perhaps by selling their home. And here he sits into his second week, a kid who has worked and supported his mom and sisters since his father died four years ago, putting up fences for a well-known firm. And young Bobby, who worked for five years at the Clarion Motel before being injured, seeking money to buy cigarettes and Pampers for the daughter he’s raising alone with his grandmother, puts pliers in his back pocket and slips through a torn fence into an open wreck of an abandoned motel near the Cotee River seeking copper to sell, and he’s charged with carrying a puncture-causing weapon—a knife. Is this justice? Does this form of justice make us safer? Is this compassion for the least among us?

I had a bad habit before I went to jail of being impatient when conversing with even the best of friends after several minutes, thinking of this thing and that thing I should do, but in that jail pod with no place to go and nothing to do, conversation is everything, and I am now a reformed conversationalist, who enjoys the moment with a friend, as long as the moment lasts.

I wrote up a visitation list but when I went to hand it in, I was told it would only be rejected if I didn’t put down each person’s full address and date of birth. The entire process is unnecessarily complicated, requiring certain days, certain hours, certain standards of dress that I didn’t think Richard could meet, and seemed demeaning to both me and my possible guests, so I threw out the list. On my wish list were Reverends Wes Stevens, Meredith Garmon and my Southern Baptist friend, Rev. Dr. Rafael Amengual, but also Russell Means, the Oglala Sioux activist who put 5000 people in the streets of Denver to stop a Columbus Day parade, Peter Matthiessen who writes about wildlife, American Indians and Florida who was beaten by New York State Troopers as he left the Mohawk reservation years ago, Joseph Heath, general counsel to the Onondaga Nation of the Iroquois Confederacy—the Haudenasanne, Janet Reno, former attorney general with whom I’ve communicated regarding the Krewe of Chasco fight, and friends like Richard Baker and Clay Colson.

I also rose each morning, remembering Minister Emeritus Rev. Wes Stevens, short and sweet prayer: I’m alive. Thank you. The day is yours. And each day I dedicated to a particular hero of mine and yours too possibly: Crazy Horse, Gandhi, Thoreau, Dr. King, Wes Stevens, Medgar Evers, Hubert Humphrey, Michael Collins, Che Guevara, Jesus—though I call him Joshua ben Joseph, Dag Hammarskjold, Jimmy Carter, Lech Walesa, Nelson Mandela, Stephen Biko, Al Gore and Thich Nhat Hanh.

With Christmas approaching, I suggest a Christmas Eve service, and was told by the old timers—nope, never done, won’t be permitted, the inmates won’t just refuse to participate, they’ll throw things. So I prepare a plan for what I called the "First Annual A-600 Pod Holiday Christmas Celebration," and begin recruiting an All-Men’s Choir. Pod Pastor William Earl and I send a request form asking the assistance of the prison chaplain, a rather stern man I just saw once delivering a copy of the Bible to an inmate-—he didnt stay. He comes to see Pastor William Earl to tell him no, he couldn’t possibly provide copies of Christmas songs and hymns, it just isn’t done, he is sorry. He leaves the pod and returns several minutes later to say, "All right, I’ll run off five copies of three songs—which ones do you want?" We chose "Silent Night," "We Wish You a Merry Christmas," and "Joy to the World." To supplement the five copies, I recruit two young gangstas to help me in making enough copies in long hand so that we can give them to anybody who wants to sing along with the "professional" choir—several young men and a couple of others give us six—though Leo is again locked down and will have to sing through his bars.

We debate letting the corrections officers know, but it’s decided that even if we could know who to ask for Christmas Eve, we might endanger their job by asking them to ignore infractions such as possessing contraband—I’m asking people for their empty plastic cereal containers which I clean out—we need about 50 to fill with cookies and candies for the party after the First Annual Holiday Celebration, and we’re using 11 pillow cases to make certain that the men who never receive commissary have some treats for Christmas. It’s a serious infraction to possess items for which one cannot produce an inventory sheet. I ask two members of Pastor William Earl’s circle to read the Christmas stories from the New Testament of Matthew and Luke, and Roy agrees to give us an opening prayer, while Pastor William Earl and I give brief sermons prior to gifting the most needy, interspersed with songs by the choir.

Had I been caught breaking these little rules, I have to tell you, I intended to snitch on you guys. I often got a lot of mail during my time under lock and key, a record 38 pieces one day but that record was broken Christmas Eve when I received 58 pieces of mail containing 65 cards. As usual, half the pod gathered for mail call, and they were amazed but not angry as I received piece after piece. Most received nothing, and one guy got two letters, but no card. I quickly went up to my cell and opened your envelopes, finding beautiful cards upon which I placed the name of each and every inmate in the pod, with one also for the corrections officer on duty. Then I held my own Mail Call, handing your holiday card to every person. I lost track of the hugs they gave me to pass onto you, and the thanks they expressed, a number saying your card was the only one they got.

Now here’s something this old atheist says is a coincidence, but might be considered a small Christmas miracle. I’m sitting in a cell with Pastor William Earl and veteran convict Roy, and I hand Roy his card, a beautiful one signed by Craig Sroka, and Roy bursts into tears. He tells me that he has a son named Craig he hasn’t seen in years. What are the chances that with over 60 cards, that Roy would receive Craig’s card? Craig, you made a father very, very happy.

So, Christmas Eve at about 9:30 p.m., with the TV crowd involved in a show, and a bunch of the guys playing an animated card game that involves flinging the cards down from a great height, the first Annual A-600 Holiday Christmas Celebration gets underway, and with the first stanza of "Silent Night," the TV is turned down and the cards get a rest. The choir stands in a semi-circle near the bottom tier of cells, and then Roy gives a poignant prayer for our families and for us, and after the first reading, I give my little sermon.

I tell my brothers, mis hermanos, that whether Jesus the baby became a man with a message of love who died between two criminals or was God born to suffer and save our souls, Christmas Eve is a special night, that Jesus suffered, and he recognized the spark of divinity in each of us, that Jesus represents the hope that whatever our failures our shortcomings as human beings, we can become better than we were, better than we are. I tell them that the name of my faith—our faith—comes from our original belief in god, not three in one; and that this god is loving and merciful, and if there is an afterlife, we all go there—no exceptions. I tell them we pay the price for our sins, our crimes in this world—and who knows that better than us?

I tell them what unites our faith is four things: it is a blessing you were born; it matters what you do; whatever you believe of the divine is true, and you don’t have to go it alone. I tell them I’ve learned a great deal being here in Pod A-600. It’s not just that they’ve treated me with kindness and respect; they treat each other that way too, giving them examples of what I witnessed. I tell them that although we avoid the word—these are acts of love toward each other and even toward the corrections officers. They say, "I share your pain. I understand what you’re going through. I appreciate not being alone or afraid here, and that even here, life is good." I tell them a moment of weakness brought us together, and here and now, we are a band of brothers, and that our birth and existence and comradeship, no less than that of Jesus, is truly a blessing. I tell them I won’t forget them, that I will tell my church, and the West Central Cluster, and the Florida District Director and our UUA in Boston about them, and will seek a closer approximation of true justice for them. And this I will do. When the service ends, and the party ends, I’m still getting hugs in lieu of the macho fist bumps generally preferred, and thank-yous, and I’m told by veterans of our penal system that never before have they experienced a Christmas Eve Celebration. I tell them that next year’s Second Annual Holiday Christmas celebration promises to be even better. Everyone declines to attend, including me.

An hour after Christmas ends, the morning of December 26, corrections officer shouts, "Callaghan, roll ‘em up," and it’s time for me to leave. The cheering and shouts of well-wishing begin, and I hear men calling out to me as I carry my gray tub with bedding on top down the metal stairs, and the men, my brothers are standing at the bars of their ever-lighted cells, and they are clapping, and cheering, and I say to them as I salute, "It’s been a pleasure serving with you. Take care of each other. Take care of yourselves."

So I came home to Anni, recently arrived home from her marvelous and quintessential UU mission, and learn that my oldest son Chris is safely home from his fifth tour in Iraq, and that our beloved granddaughter Alethea will join us the next day. And I know this has been a special Christmas, a most meaningful Christmas, with your help. Such a gift, such joy, such thanksgiving. I am truly blessed. Thank you.