Play as Prayer

March 4, 2011

Anne,

I thank God for you. Your prayers have speeded my reunion with the Son! Fr. Watson came today with a generous heart, offering the sacraments of reconciliation and communion! Yee haw!

I asked if he could use a hand in making rounds since he works as full-time chaplain here. Last month the facility put the kibosh on Mass for inmates as one general congregation. Now he makes the rounds... He can use help from the wider community since volunteers are needed to run Bible study. He just can't handle it all by himself and unfortunately no inmate can lead Bible study. He attributed the policy to radical inmates.

Tonight just before lock down, I got a knock at the door. "Everybody calls him Cuernos," Cole says. Why, because he's from Honduras? Because he has a job that makes $28 a month? (That's upper class in contrast to the $14 made by a guy who quit his post in the kitchen, explaining "I was sick of it.") By the way, Cuernos means Horns; immigrant does not. He has no family in the United States, thus no money on his books, no letters, not that mail from a village in Honduras could be impossible, just inconvenient. Once a month he uses the commissary cash he earns to call home at a price of a dollar a minute.

Ach! I nearly fell over getting out a soup for him. "There you go, friend," I said, fair pay for his advice tonight about how I could call a cell phone or email. Check that, a dignified wage is....any suggestions, anne? Cute guy, slender face swallowed up by an oversize XXXL jacket and headphones. He listens to 93.3 KUBE on his taped up radio. He lights up when I tell him I play pool. "OK, amigo, tomorrow we play."

Anne, once I read a column in a Seattle newspaper by Pat Howell, SJ reflecting on the prayer of play. Yes, we forget God takes delight! I might boldly abuse my lay status to claim something in play Eucharistic, or at least sacramental. You?

Chris