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...

Sitting down with Chris Barbera at Network of Religious Communities to record this trailer, Joel opens to discuss, introduce, and summarize three recorded conversations, previously archived, and these newly edited talks include:

• 2009 'Real Flowers Of This Painful World,' Compassion Manifest For All Beings, Spirituality Forged Through Practical Application: A Conversation With Chris Barbera
• 2013 'Prison Theology,' Restorative Justice and Equalizing Voices, An Examination of The Prison Industrial Complex: A Discussion with Chris Barbera (scheduled release end of July 2025)
• 2022 A Pilgrimage, Journey Of The Heart: Examining 'The Why' Of Life With Chris Barbera (scheduled release end of August 2025)

Reissued, these previously archived talks with Chris are introduced and Joel and Chris address a summary of each episode and arrive at discussing the importance of mentorship in life as a part of societal restoration, the need for positive role models, both mascline and feminine to offer wisdom, guidance, and counsel to people who would otherwise be without it.

Music: Natalie Merchant 'Owensboro' and 'Poor Wayfaying Stranger' both from 'The House Carpenter's Daughter' (© 2003 Myth America Records)

• Medicine as a great human equalizer
• Toward human rights, once people step away from the border of the hospitals, they become categorized and labeled 'Palestinian' or 'Israeli'
• If you believe in Humanity, we must all stand for all
• Human Rights is deeply tested in Gaza, people must stand up for human rights
• Advocate not for peace but for dignity, justice, freedom, and human rights for all: peace will follow when these conditions are cultivated

• As a poet, every voice is important in the world, every voice represents humanity.
• Regarding Gaza, this is an overwhelming tragedy of sorrow
• The importance of actions based on one's convictions
• The power of the military industry complex to overide the voice of the majority and humanity's collective voice
• How can we be heard, how can we be listened to?
• Who is listening?

The idea, our obligation is to our humanity, looking within our selves we recognize our humanity

In Part 2 of this heartfelt talk, David and Joel discuss poetry as a transmission, what the heart of one poet offers to others, and their community, and the notion of transmission from 'mind to mind from mind' within the frame of poetry.

David recalls a story of Maj pulling up in David's driveway in Maj's Chevy Nova and Maj reciting Antonio Machado's 'Last Night, As I Was Sleeping.'

David and Joel discuss David's forthcoming memoir 'Prayer Wheel' and Maj's influence, open readings in Kent, and death and how it is healthy to openly discuss death as a preparation for its coming.

The unique quality of the Kent poetry community and Kent as a epicenter and confluence as a spiritual portal, and Kent's poetry commmunity as wisdom holder and torch-bearer drawing poets to the Kent community.

Dreams as a connection with our ancestors and those dreams as a conversation with messages from our ancestors for us, waking us up to what we need to see our lives more clearly.

Hearing the voices of the living and the dead, and how we tend to the dead as a reflection of the quality of our life.

David offers the Mayan teaching that the other world sings us into being.

David and Joel close out the conversation with discussion of the 40th Anniversary Celebration of the Wick Poetry Center, and winding down David reads 'Kissing Lightening.'

Biography

David Hassler is the Bob and Walt Wick Executive Director of the Wick Poetry Center at Kent State University and cofounded Traveling Stanzas, a community arts project which brings poetry to the most urgent and evolving needs of our communities through expressive writing interventions, interactive exhibits, and digital platforms. Most recently in May 2023, Hassler presented the Poets for Science project with poet Jane Hirshfield at the Nobel Prize Summit at the National Academy of Sciences. Hassler is the author or editor of ten books of poetry and nonfiction, including Dear Vaccine: Global Voices Speak to the Pandemic. His play, What We Learned While Alone, drawn from the Dear Vaccine anthology, debuted at the National Academy of Sciences in October 2022. Hassler is also the author of the play, May 4th Voices: Kent State, 1970, based on the Kent State Shootings Oral History Project, which was produced in 2020 as a national radio play. Hassler’s awards include Ohio Poet of the Year, the Ohioana Book Award, and the Carter G. Woodson Honor Book Award. His memoir 'Prayer Wheel' is forthcoming. His TEDx talk, “The Conversation of Poetry,” conveys the power of poetry to strengthen communities. In addition to his creative writing publications, he has co-authored articles on poetry, technology, and healing in the Journal of Palliative Medicine, the Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, and the Online Journal of Issues in Nursing.

Part 1 as the conversation begins, David and Joel share David's introduction and talk about poetry as a growing voice to address 'what troubles us' and the community of poetry providing a sense of belonging.

David gives a history of the Wick Poetry Center and his academic career.

The conversation examines 'how do we make sense of the world and manage our own life?' with and through poetry.

Discussion turns to the topic of death and the loss of David's mother as a source of need to write and make sense of the grief and loss for David, and how he was influenced by Maggie Anderson and Maj Ragain.

David shares his travels to Japan and Obon Festival in Japan and David's connection to the festival and its relationship to his mother's passing, his coming to terms with her death through poetry.

David reads his own poem 'Obon.'

Also discussed, how Maj Ragain lit the light of poetry in others.

David shares a dream about Maj, how he felt Maj visited David in the dream, and Maj shared to David, 'you cannot touch me.'

Threading the voices of poets, living and dead throughout the ages, poetry as a way of keeping poetry alive for our Kent poetry community.

David reads his own poem 'Sharing The Drum That I Am.'

Biography

David Hassler is the Bob and Walt Wick Executive Director of the Wick Poetry Center at Kent State University and cofounded Traveling Stanzas, a community arts project which brings poetry to the most urgent and evolving needs of our communities through expressive writing interventions, interactive exhibits, and digital platforms. Most recently in May 2023, Hassler presented the Poets for Science project with poet Jane Hirshfield at the Nobel Prize Summit at the National Academy of Sciences. Hassler is the author or editor of ten books of poetry and nonfiction, including Dear Vaccine: Global Voices Speak to the Pandemic. His play, What We Learned While Alone, drawn from the Dear Vaccine anthology, debuted at the National Academy of Sciences in October 2022. Hassler is also the author of the play, May 4th Voices: Kent State, 1970, based on the Kent State Shootings Oral History Project, which was produced in 2020 as a national radio play. Hassler’s awards include Ohio Poet of the Year, the Ohioana Book Award, and the Carter G. Woodson Honor Book Award. His memoir 'Prayer Wheel' is forthcoming. His TEDx talk, “The Conversation of Poetry,” conveys the power of poetry to strengthen communities. In addition to his creative writing publications, he has co-authored articles on poetry, technology, and healing in the Journal of Palliative Medicine, the Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, and the Online Journal of Issues in Nursing.

Part 2 the Panels opens to discuss:

• 'What makes us come alive?'
• 'What is your 'note' in life?' (Rumi's 'be your note.')

• Activity ​
• When meeting new people, old karmic connections?
• In our Dharma, our work
• Henry's discussions, Sohbet, mystical discussions on mystical subjects, with his teacher.
• How do we find what makes us home in the world?
• How do we cultivate spiritual discernment in Life?
• The World as ourself
• Is there preparation to receive 'flow' states?

• Where does the spiritual path begin?
• What are the implications of having a guide or spiritual teacher?
• Teachers seeing into their students
• Tears as an indicator of one's spiritual path
• Sufism as a path of 'heart'
• Karma of helping others as way of being helped