In a Post-Pandemic June 2022, Joel and Chris sat together at Network of Religous Communities in Buffalo, New York and examined and reflected on Chris' travels to Seattle and San Fransisco via train, a pilgrimage.

Chris discusses his recent trip and the lessons, resolutions, and insights from his travels to the west coast, focusing on the spiritual aspects.

The conversation tends toward defining 'Pilgrimage' as setting an intention of questions and seeing what happens or unravels with the experience as an answer or response to the questions and intention.

After graduation from college, his path opened to extended compassion to the marginalized, the poor, and after college Chris entered into another phase of life, he lived in solidarity with people who were homeless, practicing presence and 'present-ness' with these communities.

Chris cites in his life the transformation from service to devotion: born into a challenging family, his compassion for others was cultivated, later manifesting into activism with the homeless communities and prisoners and inmates, seeking to address the Prison System.

Chris intentionally placed himself in the heart of suffering as an act of mercy to fulfill an aspect of his understanding of spirituality, and this helped him bridge his own suffering into compassion for others in community who are marginalized and suffer.

Chris was inspired reading the Buddhist Sutras and the New Testament, influenced by Buddha and Jesus.

Chris' understanding of activism and advocacy lends itself to cultivating and amplifying voices of the marginalized.

Chris shares he has been working with Jesus the Liberatory Seminary for over a decade, utilizing creativity and theology to amplify voices.

Prisoners share writings though Jesus the Liberator Seminary of Religous Justice, which has three books published:

• Prison Theology (Published, 2013)
• Dreamers, Romans and Prisons: Meditations on Crime, Illness, Healing and Liberation (Published, 2015)
• More to this Confession: Relational Prison Theology (Published, 2020)
  
  

Chris found that communal living developed skill building toward activism, repair, and restoration.

Chris talks about the 'why' of his activism, work, and devotion; the 'why' of activism identified by Chris is 'the general compassion for others, that is the 'why' of activism.'

This general compassion for people ties into activism and his pilgramages:

• helps Chris in addressing suffering
• 'pilgrimages' uncover how and why one acts the way they do
• Chris reflects on his initial pilgrimage, the Tenderloin District in San Fransisco
• Chris took an early pilgramage to Wounded Knee (i.e., 1890 Massacre), also reflecting on Sitting Bull and Black Elk

Chris reads from his writings.

The discussion turns to The Ten (10) Ox Herding Dipictions and the Marketplace as the last of the Ten (10) Dipictions.

The conversation opens to a quotation shared by Roshi Philip Kapleau:

• 'life is not a riddle to be solved, but a reality to be lived.'

Many struggle with 'The Why?' of Life, the talk outlines 'the why' is for the Divine and 'the how' is for people to respond to Life's complexities.

Biography of Chris Barbera:

Chris Barbera has lived in the backs of empty churches and intentional communities and worked on various social justice movements and has, for many years, administered an educational nonprofit, Jesus the Liberator Seminary of Religious Justice, which focuses upon developing a 'Prison Theology' with people incarcerated.

He currently li...

Pulled from the Archives of Unraveling Religion this June 2013 conversation with Chris Barbera explores discussion based on the book Prison Theology, published by Jesus the Liberator Seminary of Religious Justice, and opens the question:

• 'Can the criminal on the cross be the incarcerated, executed Godhead?'

Chris and Joel address America, Prisoners, and the Prison Industral Complex through a Restorative Justice lens and how to evolve and connect with spiritual teachings and pedagogical through a Restorative Justice framework.

'Prison Theology' is an extension of Liberation Theology:

• At their core, both express a ‘preferential option for the poor’
• Both work to articulate a theology that empowers people disaffected by dominant paradigms of power
• Both articulations are born among the struggles of oppressed people '…and so we start from where we are.'

About the book Prison Theology, eight different writers share their experiences and thoughts regarding incarceration in America.

Restorative Justice was born in Latin America, and the Vatican II Era, a grassroots, poor people movement, mobilization to return the spiritual aspect of those who have been marginalized and inprisioned.

The discussion moves to these topics:

• The notion of the Bodhisattva, responding to the cries of the world
• Jesus as a Bodhisattva, who is considered Jesus?
• Do money and wealth correlate with character, worth, and human value and dignity?
• A person is free when they are allowed to work through their trials and tribulations
• What is a crime versus what is criminalized?
• Equality of the Law, a realistic approach to Justice

Judgement and Punishment

• What is judgement?
• Who determines the fate of others?
• To evaluate how to better address the infractions society creates

Looking at Society and the Individual

• Reconciliation: what is it?
  • bringing the sin and the rehabilitation from the sin together, refiguring and understanding it
  • society and inmate, reconciliation
  • victim and offender, reconciliation
  • when the victim has the strength, to offer forgiveness to the offender
  • looking at the context and circumstance of life of the inmate
  • Chris emphasizes the work should come from a place of love, concern for another person, regardless of the actions

Forming community, connection in community with theology, religious justice, education and Universities that have prison programs, and utilize them to work toward an equality of voices.

Chris' work helps to create a network unifying the connection between the church, the university, and inmate.

Chris shares his vision and hope where advocacy addressing the Prison Industrial Complex is going.

The Church and the University are within the inmate, Prison Theology and Liberation Theology seek to cultivate this understanding.

Biography of Chris Barbera:

Chris Barbera has lived in the backs of empty churches and intentional communities and worked on various social justice movements and has, for many years, administered an educational nonprofit, Jesus the Liberator Seminary of Religious Justice, which focuses upon developing a 'Prison Theology' with people incarcerated.

He currently lives intentionally at the interfaith nonprofit, Network of Religious Communities.

In short, he has lived and worked with poor people at the intersection of grassroots justice movements, spiritually lived ideas and experiences in relation with institutional structures, traditions, and nonprofit efforts, as well as at the intersection of poetry and theo...

Pulled from the Archives of Unraveling Religion, this September 2009 episode recorded at the studio in the Home of The Future, Chris and Joel speak of the Erie County Holding Center Federal Investigation Findings of Human and Constitutional Rights abuses which open the talk to the practical responses from ancient and spiritual foundations and teachings to point the way and address to the conditions and actions that violated human and constitutional rights that were recorded and documented in the Federal Findings and Report.

Erie County Holding Center under Federal investigation, and Chris discusses the response from the Erie County Holding Center Leadership, 'consider the source' inferring that because the investigation addresses human and constitutional rights abuses of inmates and prisoners, there should be no concern, dehumanizing the reality that inmates and prisoners are human beings.

Chris and Joel expand the talk to Native Teachings and how labels and stereotypes dehumanize Native People concealing the deep wisdom and sanctity of Native People, the embodied connection with ecology and Nature, spirituality and honoring relations.

Regarding County Jails and Holding Center, some of the voices coming out of the Holding Center, what the experiences taught people who were/are prisoners and inmates:

• wisdom born out of suffering
• suffering is part of our world
• suffering has helped created the greatest teachers of the world
• making wisdom out of the suffering of the conditions of the Erie County Holding Center

Chris and Joel discuss incorporating meditation and ancient teachings applied not only to inmate and prisoners but also those as advocates and activists for the prison system.

The talk turns toward insights regarding the practical way of understanding projections of the mind toward others (e.g., inmates) as one's own dark aspect (e.g., Prison Leadership).

Also discussed, William Blake's Poison Tree:

'I was angry with my friend;
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.'

Supermax Prisons seek to deepen isolation techniques for inmates:

• 'what is that really about?'
• how is that considered ethical treatment of human beings
• how does that contribute to the rehabilitation and restoration of people in prison
• Siddhartha Gautama, 'ignorance is the main cause of human suffering.'
• we create our own (human) experiencemuch of our choices are based on unconscious aspects of our human experience
• 'Cause and Effect' (i.e., Karma) is not (another) Law, but rather it is Reality Expressed, a practical expression of the Unity of Existence.

'Be Still and Know that I am God:'

• what does that mean and how can it be applied to healing our prisons and prisoners
• karma is also 'work' (i.e., another interpretation)
• 'you want to know my faith, look at my works'
• if you want Justice in this world, find injustice and address it
• spirituality as practical, a practical solution (i.e., spirituality is practical when applied with care)
• when religion becomes a superstition, too abstract, or metaphysical, people lose genuine connection with God

Joel asks Chris what he hopes to see for a vision of the future

• Community Action, call to action
• Legal Route, class action law suit
• Awareness

Joel and Chris close the talk referencing the Ba'al Shem Tov ('everything you see is a teaching for Divine Service to God') and Native American Teachings of animal spirit and animal totem.

Biography of Chris Barbera:

Chris Barbera has lived in the backs of empty churches and intentional communities and worked on various social justi...