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Outreach of The World Community for Christian Meditation

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Unlocking Freedom and Joy

April 22, 2018 by James Bishop Leave a Comment

James Bishop and Daniel Fox both spoke at St. John of the Cross Parish Center in Western Springs, Illinois on 24 February 2018. The talk, titled “Unlocking Freedom and Joy” started with James speaking about his life circumstances that led to a ten-year prison sentence, during which James learned about meditation. James spoke of how that meditation helped him heal.

This is the first part of the talk, with James Bishop’s story.

Unlocking Freedom and Joy with James Bishop from Meditatio on Vimeo.

Morning of Meditation – Unlocking Freedom and Joy – Christian Meditation in Prison
Guest Speaker: James Bishop (International Coordinator for Prison Outreach)
February 24, 2018
St. John of the Cross Parish Center
5005 Wolf Road, Western Springs, IL
Sponsored by the Christian Meditation groups (wccm-usa.org, wccm.org)


This is the second part of the talk, with Daniel Fox’s story.

Unlocking Freedom and Joy with Daniel Fox from Meditatio on Vimeo.

Morning of Meditation – Unlocking Freedom and Joy – Christian Meditation in Prison
Guest Speaker: James Bishop (International Coordinator for Prison Outreach)
February 24, 2018
St. John of the Cross Parish Center
5005 Wolf Road, Western Springs, IL
Sponsored by the Christian Meditation groups (wccm-usa.org, wccm.org)

Filed Under: News, Social Justice Tagged With: 12 step, addiction, alcoholism, justice, meditation, prison, recovery

Meditation in Prison

January 28, 2018 by James Bishop Leave a Comment

James Bishop
James Bishop, speaking at Georgetown University, March 2013

James Bishop will be speaking about Meditation in Prison on Saturday, 24 February at St. John of the Cross Parish Center in Western Springs, Illinois. James Bishop, an oblate of The World Community for Christian Meditation, spent ten years as an inmate in the California Substance Abuse Treatment Center and State Prison. While there, he discovered Christian meditation. And it changed his life. James, who suffered as an alcoholic with severe obsessive compulsive disorder, tells a compelling story of tragedy and triumph, and how Christian Meditation helped him discover the causes of his problems as well as how to deal with them.

“Few people would be grateful for having spent ten years in prison. But James Bishop was imprisoned for a decade, and hails it as a lifesaver.”
‐Mary O’Regan, Catholic Herald, London

Saturday, February 24, 2018, 9:00 am – 11:30 am, hospitality 8:30 am, at St. John of the Cross Parish Center, 5005 Wolf Road, Western Springs, IL.

For more information, contact: Betsy at +1-708-246-8315 or email to wccmchgo@gmail.com


Filed Under: News, Social Justice Tagged With: addiction, alcoholism, meditation, prison

Meditation in Hong Kong’s Stanley Prison

March 10, 2017 by James Bishop Leave a Comment

In a recent Meditation podcast, we spoke with Catherine Cheung, who talks about a vision that led her to visit prisoners in Hong Kong’s Stanley Prison. Stanley is one of six maximum security prisons in Hong Kong. Catherine’s outreach of meditation has even led one prisoner to forgiveness. Listen to the entire podcast below, or use the link here.

Filed Under: News, Social Justice Tagged With: meditation, outreach, prison

Life As We Know It

August 22, 2016 by James Bishop Leave a Comment

"Mindfulness" Photo by James Bishop
“Mindfulness” Photo by James Bishop

The word “Mindfulness” means being aware of the present moment, of what’s around us and what’s happening inside us. WordNet describes it as staying aware, not just being aware. And it seems that we can be made aware of these things, but only fleetingly. That awareness vanishes, and we have to work at returning to it.

The meaning of “what’s around us” can change, and I learned this personally some years ago after spending a decade of my life in prison. Upon release, I realised that there were so many things I had forgotten. I was no longer “used to” things that most people take for granted. Things like carpeting, silverware, and the complexity of a restaurant menu. These were things I had not experienced for some time, and I had to re-learn ways of dealing with them. I had suddenly become very aware of my surroundings because they were so drastically new to me.

I met my friend Fred in prison. He was serving a life sentence for a crime he did not commit. He saved my life on one occasion, and I never forgot that. I worked to help get him out of prison, and to my joy (and certainly his), he was released earlier this year. Fred spent twenty years, two decades of his life, in prison. Worse, he had allowed his mind to accept prison as his reality, believing that he would spend the rest of his life there. During my stay in prison I knew that I was getting out, so I tried to keep that in mind. Fred’s case was different.

Fred is staying with his sister, and I went to visit both of them a few weeks ago. I had spoken to Fred shortly after his release and before our visit, and we both agreed that we experienced some of the same things that prisoners go through: paranoia, distrust, and the shock of things like silverware and restaurant menus. However, I hadn’t realised the extent of difference between my situation and Fred’s. His sister confided in me that he was much different now, even different than when he was in prison, when they would speak on the phone or visit him. Something had changed upon his release and it was much more than what I had personally experienced.

For those of us who have been in a physical prison, it so affects us that it does not leave our dreams for many years, and for some it never leaves. I still occasionally have “prison dreams,” and many of the friends I met in there experience the same. It’s like when someone loses a limb and they experience “phantom” nerve impulses – the brain telling them that the limb is still there. For us, the brain is telling us that the prison is still there, that it has become a part of us, whether we like it or not.

Life as we know it, here on the outside, in the real world, has the same effect on us. The longer we live in the world, the more it grows on us and becomes part of us, whether we like it or not. It is, in effect, our own prison. We are in the world, but not of it.

Meditation does not promise to free us from this prison. Rather, it offers us a way of walking through it, a way of maintaining contact, not so much with the world in which we are, but the world from which we are. We become more mindful of it, more mindful of our relationship with it. We are not just made aware of it, but with continued meditation, we stay aware.

Filed Under: News, Social Justice Tagged With: meditation, mindfulness, prison

Waiting For Monroe

August 18, 2016 by James Bishop Leave a Comment

Patience is a virtue. As virtues go, I am dreadfully short on several of them, and patience seems to be one of the more difficult for many. No one likes to wait. Daniel Goleman, in his book Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence (Copyright 2013 Daniel Goleman, HarperCollns Publishers) notes, “In some ways the endless hours young people spend staring at electronic gadgets may help them acquire specific cognitive skills. But there are concerns and questions about how those same hours may lead to deficits in core emotional, social, and cognitive skills.” And our ability to wait, our patience, is one of those core skills. Goleman continues, “Our focus continually fights distractions, both inner and outer. The question is, what are our distractors costing us?”

I’m a late-comer to the world of the smart phone; I was incarcerated for ten years and missed out on much of the world’s technological advances. And this was particularly difficult for me, having worked in computer software for the previous ten years. But one of the great lessons one can learn in prison is patience. Patience is a luxury of those who have time, the one asset of which I had plenty in prison, but is so rare in the “real world.”

Many people, after their first meditation session, seem to be looking for the immediate effect. “I’ve invested ten or twenty minutes here, and what did I get out of it?” It may seem like we get nothing out of it at first, but slowly, over time, with patience, we begin to see the fruits of our investment, and one of those fruits is… patience.

I’ve just returned from a visit to Corcoran State Prison here in California. I had visited Monroe once before, and we continue to write. Monroe was in the “SHU” (Secured Housing Unit), a sort of prison within prison. It is a place for those prisoners being punished for crimes committed whilst in prison (as if prison was not enough punishment in the first place).

I’ve been awaiting Monroe’s release, which was scheduled for the next year or two. Now, it looks as if he may be in for another eight years. It’s difficult for many to deal with this kind of frustration. I’ve known men who lost their sanity shortly after losing their prison release dates. Monroe takes it in stride. He wants to get out, but he accepts that it may take a while longer. It may take a little more patience.

On the last day of the visit, I sat in the waiting room watching the friends and families of prisoners. They were waiting for their visits, and most were waiting for the release of their friends or family members. When Monroe’s name was called, I got up and made my way through the metal detectors and automatic gates, past the electric fence, to the visiting room. I recognized the guard at the desk, and he recognized me. He asked how long I had been in prison, and I told him that I was there for ten years. The visiting room was crowded, and the guard noted that I had been let in a little late due to the crowding. He asked, “Did you have a long wait?”

I smiled. “Not nearly as long as my wait to get released.” He nodded in understanding, but he only partially understood. I didn’t mean my release from the physical prison as much as I meant my release from my self-made prison. And that release came from perseverance and patience. And that perseverance and patience came from meditation.

James Bishop is the International Coordinator for Meditation in Prisons

Filed Under: Social Justice Tagged With: incarceration, patience, prison, social justice

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