apcampbell

From Rebecca’s Pocket comes the link to the inspiring tale of Robert Materson,
a man who taught himself how to embroider while serving a 15-year
prison sentence.  What strikes me significant about this story is
that Robert was caught in a world of suffering, and it was the simple
act of stitching that not only led him to freedom, but also to a
integrated life of community involvement.   How did this
happen?

At first, Robert came to fully recoginize his situation and pray for a
way out.  He then reflected on positive images and good memories
from childhood and tried expressing them through stitching, starting by
ripping a piece of cloth off of his bedsheet and borrowing a needle
from a guard.  
He found joy in this process, for it allowed him to “start breathing in
the air of rebirth and regeneration.”  After pursuing this with
consistency and single minded intent, he found integration or, as he
explains, “I came to see how God was working in my life.”  
Once his work started to be recognized outside the prison, he started
feeling free:

Even though I was incarcerated, there was part of me
that wasn’t. I could be locked in a cell and know that there were
people looking at my work in Hartford or New York or wherever it might
be. It gave me a sense that I was free.

How
many students out there feel as if they are in imprisoned?  Would
an educational institution encourage the pursuit of a particular
activity if it led to integration, fulfillment, and a sense of
freedom?   Where is the space for such pursuits in
educational institutions?   Why do we shut people out of these
experiences through rigid curricula and imposed educational
goals?   Who creates standardized learning criteria and why
do we place such a premium on their achievement at the expense of
happiness, wholeness, freedom, personal growth, and creative and
emotional expression?   What kind of society are our
institutions contributing toward? 

I think these are the type of questions that Jeremy has been asking over at Lifestylism, what Will recently wrote about, and something that Robert Patterson referred to as the ‘Imposition vs. Invitation‘
approach.   Clearly our institutions need a structural change
so as to allow young people to flourish.  On the one hand, such a
change would require a paradigm shift in the minds of educators and
administrators, something for which we’d have to wait an awfully long
time.  On the other hand, rapid change could come by providing the
prisoners with a “needle and piece of cloth,” so that they too could
start stitching their way to fulfillment.   Personal
Web-publishing in combination with social networking tools are clearly one form of
this. 

More importantly though, in addition to tools, we need to give young
people the kind of space necessary to reflect on their situation and
start listening to the call within.  Once people can get in touch
with this source of direction and bliss, a society of new values and
new sensibilities is bound to arise.   Contemplative
practices and daily reflection should be an integral part of what takes
place in educational institutions, from the students, to the teachers, and to the administration itself.