Cory to Corey: A Story of Unexpected Connection
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In a previous post, I referenced Elizabeth Lesser’s Cassandra Speaks. I was in a book group to explore the book and we were fortunate enough to have a Zoom conversation with the author. When asked about the impact of her book, Lesser mentioned a man named Corey Arthur (though I only knew his first name at the time) who had written her about the book. Both her book and his letter inspired the homily I shared with my church community on August 29. My words were also sent to Corey and he responded to me.
What follows is my reflection and, with Corey’s permission, his response. Since I edited his words for the homily, it feels particularly important to share his full unedited response here.
Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time
Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-8; James 1:17-18, 21-22, 27; Mark 7: 1-8, 14-15, 21-23
Good morning. It’s interesting to be considering critiques of hand-washing and dish-washing in this pandemic time. Of course, Jesus wasn’t critiquing the acts themselves, but the way the Pharisees and scribes spoke about them to discredit Jesus. So let’s get into these readings about cleanliness and purity. Woo hoo!
In the first reading Moses shares God’s Law with the Israelites. He cautions them to neither add to it nor subtract from it. If we believe that God is Love and that God’s Law is an extension of God’s Being, then these statutes and decrees make clear the ways of Love. The second reading reminds us that we are birthed through God and that we have the power to save ourselves by tending to and acting on God’s word within us. We are reminded that coming to the aid of widows and orphans, the least among us, and keeping ourselves uncontaminated by the world are how we practice “pure, unspoiled religion.”
In the gospel reading, Jesus rebukes the Pharisees and scribes for holding human traditions higher than God’s Law. Perhaps these human traditions are the additions or subtractions Moses was warning about. Jesus says that nothing that goes into us makes us impure. It’s what we put out into the world that sullies us.
Whew! What a task Jesus has put forth- to take what goes into us and make sure that what comes out is clean and pure. When I think of all the yucky stuff we ingest and are supposed to clean up, I’ll admit I feel overwhelmed. We are immersed in the intertwined systems of patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism, all of which breed shame, blame, judgment, criticism, ideas of deserving and undeserving. Ingesting so much human-made muck, it’s no wonder that we put back into the world what we take in. Trying to transform toxicity into purity is no small feat, especially when we keep breathing in the noxious fumes and especially when we’re trying to do it alone. However, I don’t believe we’re meant to do this work by ourselves.
Recently I read Elizabeth Lesser’s Cassandra Speaks. Throughout the book, Lesser invites us to examine how we think about power. Lesser notes that in our patriarchal culture, what are considered "masculine" qualities and expressions of power are valued more than "feminine" qualities and expressions of power. She invites us to consider how we might do power differently. She encourages us to think more expansively, to reimagine how we think about and participate in our families, our workplaces, our communities, our world. None of us are whole until all of us are whole in this interconnected world. None of us are free until all of us are free. On a recent call with Lesser, when someone asked about the impact of the book, she shared the story, and later a letter, from a man named Corey, who is incarcerated for having committed murder.
Corey went to prison when he was 19 for robbery and murder. His actions, which today’s readings refer to as evil, I’d call extreme, yet unsurprising, consequences of the systems we live in. Miki Kashtan describes evil as “utter disconnection,” “the most horrible state we can be in, when absolutely nothing matters, not us, not anyone else, not life itself.”
For reacting to his own utter disconnection with more disconnection, Corey has been incarcerated for over 25 years. He writes, “For longer than that, I've participated in and been subjected to the traditional way power has been done in our urban ghettos and criminal justice system. That patriarchal brand of power has only begotten the senseless death of a good man and the making of a societal monster; me.” Corey recognizes the toxic air of patriarchy he’s been breathing.
He writes about how two women had “thought there was something salvageable, worth saving in what was left of my humanity… In the space of 2 years these ladies managed to do to me what steel cages, assault rifles, prison guards armed with batons and billions of taxpayers’ dollars failed at… [T]hey [along with a few others] transformed me from the horrible person I was, into what I currently am. Today, I am a published writer, an award-winning artist, a community leader that led his prison community through a global pandemic, and I am a mentor to the younger prisoners.” If I could talk to Corey, I might challenge his assertion that they changed him. Instead, I’d suggest that they connected with him and then accompanied him in his transformation; he was a willing participant in his purification. He humbly welcomed the words of love offered him, he allowed the love to take root, grow, and bloom.
In Cassandra Speaks Lesser names people like Corey’s companions, as well as teachers, nurses, and social workers, climatologists, and others, “first first responders,” the people who “save lives before they need to be saved.” First first responders are practitioners of connection, sowers of love. Corey says his first first responders offered him “radical acceptance…They created a space where I could be my authentic self in all the best and worst of ways. They helped me see the ways I was screwed up. They saw me for who I could become if I wanted to.” I believe they helped Corey bring to new life parts of himself that were languishing or even had died. With their accompaniment I believe Corey re-parented the parts of his young self that hadn’t received the care he needed growing up.
Lesser coins another term, “innervism.” Innervism is the act of connecting or reconnecting with “a wiser, stronger, more essential version of [ourselves].” Innervism is the work of composting, taking the rot we ingest and making it the fertile soil of love. Corey writes that innervism “can be nasty work but, hey, I'm a work in progress.” Aren’t we all?
Jesus is inviting us to innervism, to connecting with the purity of God’s Law that lives within us, that opens our hearts fully, that connects us to ourselves first, and every other person after that, until we truly know that every single one of us matters. As that awareness grows, perhaps we can be like Corey, acknowledging the harm we’ve done, the harm of the human systems created outside of God’s Law of Love, and, moving from innervism to activism, vow to practice purifying not just ourselves, but the sources of our unhealthy consumption.
In this regard Corey has big plans: “I want to change the criminal justice system. I know that if we can reproduce the relationship model I have been learning and extend it to all prisoners it would have a significantly positive impact in furthering restorative justice and providing real rehabilitation to prisoners. Or, at least it would be a huge leap in exercising power differently, thus correctly inside of prison. My experience is living proof of… how we can do power differently with women at the helm of the ship in partnership with men.”
May we do power differently, leaning into God’s Law of Love, tending to God’s word planted in us, accompanying each other so that we may move from evil toward love, from utter disconnection toward radical purifying connection.
Corey Devon Arthur’s Response
Greetings,
I hope my words find you well. I received your letter. Thank you for finding my words worthy enough to include in your homily. I read it several times before I realized I was reciting it from memory. You did an amazing job. My only critique is that you didn't use my full name, Corey Devon Arthur. I know it may sound like a strange thing. However it is important to me.
I am a person. Our names are essential to our personhood, thus humanity. In prison they stop at no end to reinforce the idea that I am not a person. That I am an inmate with a DIN number. That I am the property of the state. I protest in the voice of my humanity. I am a person. I have a name.
You challenged the way I conceptualized the roles of my first first responders in my redemption and transformation. I accept.
"Go your ways, behold I send you forth as lambs among wolves." Luke 10:3. The ladies who healed me didn't just connect with me as you said. They engaged and clashed with me on numerous occasions. In the beginning I was deeply entrenched in my former state of darkness. Or as you wrote, disconnect. A term I happened to agree with, brilliant.
These ladies believed in the good that was still left in me. They believed in it so much that they endured and overcame my stubbornness. They answered the pleas of that little boy who never grew up beyond the first wave of his childhood traumas. The same little boy that society and the criminal justice system pushed off to the side in order to focus on punishing the very same monster it created.
True, my desire to change was there. Although I could barely perceive it. It could not have blossomed if these ladies did not willingly expose themselves to some pretty awful stuff and get it out the way.
These ladies were more than my companions. They were my protectors, healers, and comrades. They came down to the low ends of the wastelands and helped me to slay the monster I'd become. At the same time they saved what was left of the boy and built him into a productive man. It's hard to make you appreciate the depth of vicarious trauma they endured for a single step forward with me. It was nasty work I tell you. I was there for it all. There is only one reason to explain why they subjected themselves to such an endeavor; love.
Please take a moment to read Luke 7:39-50. The criminal justice system with all its patriarchal knowledge and resources gave me a cell / cage to become an animal in. They gave me a wooden baton, chemical agents, gloved fists, and steel toe boots to wound my flesh. They mandated me to attend boiler plate programs to rehabilitate what no one can say for certain. They tell society justice has been served. I rebelled against all their treatments. In response they increased their doses ten fold. I only became more cold and reverted deeper into the dark. It's where we go at the bottom in the wastelands to cope with what we can't understand or accept is being done to us inside of society's prisons. I can assure you nothing good happens down there.
On the other hand these women who did not know me, with meager resources, their spare time, hearts and life experiences simply loved me and called me friend. They embraced my humanity. They did not abandon me when the hard work of innervism was taking place. When I reached out from any random cell I had faith that I could find their warmth waiting to heal me.
Thank you for allowing me to share in community with you. I hope that we can do this again. Your homily brought a blanket of comfort to me. I recently went to my first parole board hearing. I was denied. Perhaps the timing of me receiving your words was a part of God's plan for me. Sharing in community with you has helped me to endure. Thank you.
The irony has not escaped me that we share the same name, although I spell mine with an "e". I suspect such a connection did not go unnoticed by you either. I wish you a most peaceful evening, Cory Lockhart. I hope to hear from you soon.
One
Corey Devon Arthur
Corey and I have exchanged a couple of correspondences since the above and I suspect we’ll stay in connection. Because of him, I’ve also learned about Empowerment Avenue, “a program for incarcerated writers, artists, musicians, and thinkers committed to the radical act of paying incarcerated people fairly for their labor.”
