Say What Warden?

As I’ve written in prior blogs, this compound’s counselors have begun reducing inmate’s good time earning level anytime a charge occurs.  This policy is in direct contravention of the Department’s own due process DOP which specifically details how good time earning levels can be adjusted.  It is not an arbitrary process – any charge and your good time earning level is reduced.  Instead 830.3 sets forth a specific point system that must be followed. 

I have assisted a number of inmates in their challenge to their earning level reduction.  As I’ve noted in the past, it is readily apparent that neither officers, nor administration staff are fluent in the language contained in the policies and procedures governing inmate discipline.

So, I wrote the warden, just gave him a little “FYI” that his counseling staff was improperly lowering good time earning levels in violation of due process.  And what was the warden’s response?  He wrote:

“You may grieve this issue as staff application of this policy is following the warden’s dictates.”

How interesting that he used the word “dictates” (sounds much like “dictator” doesn’t it?).  So policy and procedure gets thrown out the window in the name of criminal justice.

Eventually someone will realize violating the law doesn’t give the government (in this case a DOC warden) carte blanche to do as it wishes.  Ultimately, real justice matters. 

This story, this fight will go on.

RIP Chuck Colson

Chuck Colson died April 21^st.  To millions of incarcerated men and women like me, Chuck Colson was a hero.  He represented the transformative power of grace.  He was a man, alone at times, who cared about the plight of the incarcerated.  In many ways, Chuck Colson saved my life.

That his life turned out the way it did proves what the Prophet Jeremiah told the scattered, defeated people of Israel whose sins and failures led to their collapse as a nation and exile to Babylon.  “God says ‘For I know the plans I have for you, plans . . . to give you a future and a hope.’”

Chuck Colson, lawyer, rabid-Republican, a right-hand presence to Richard Nixon, was known as a fixer. Anything Nixon needed done, Colson would make happen.  He was ruthless, brilliant, arrogant and deeply committed to Nixon and his success in the Presidency. 

It was Colson who went after Daniel Ellsberg – leaker of the famous “Pentagon Papers” which detailed America’s military failures in Vietnam – using a series of illegally orchestrated actions against Ellsberg to embarrass and discredit him.  Colson engaged the likes of Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy, who shortly thereafter gained notoriety with their botched break-in at the Watergate Hotel.

Indicted on a charge of obstruction of justice for his role in the Ellsberg affair, Colson ignored the advice of his lawyer and friends and pled guilty, no questions asked, no deal sought.  He claimed a religious conversion.  He’d “found Jesus” and he had to eliminate his old life before he could begin anew.  For that, he was ridiculed and lampooned.  Sentenced to one to three years in a minimum security Federal prison, he made parole after seven months.  His imprisonment had a profound effect on his life. 

His “frightening experience in confinement” taught him that prison, for the vast majority of those sentenced, was a horrible failure and not a suitable punishment.  Prisons, he argued turned prisoners into embittered individuals who could only “contemplate escape and revenge at every turn.”

Colson founded Prison Fellowship, a Christian prison program evangelizing the incarcerated and pushing for prison reform and dignity for those behind bars.  His work led to him receiving the prestigious Templeton Prize in 1993, a million dollar award given to the person who had done the most to advance religion in that year.

For inmates and their families – Christian, Muslim, atheist – it didn’t matter, Colson was a source of comfort and hope.  Few programs work well in prison.  Prison Fellowship is one shining success in a sea of despair.

A few days after my arrest, as I calculated and contemplated ending my life realizing my worst fears had happened – I was losing everything even though I’d prayed over and over for a way out – I ran across Colson’s autobiography, “Born Again”.  Shortly thereafter I instructed my lawyer that I would cooperate fully, plead guilty to all charges brought provided I could sign our home and personal effects over to my wife.  Lawyers, friends and a doctor told me not to do it.  “You’ll have no leverage with the Commonwealth.  You’ll have nothing if she divorces you.”  It didn’t matter.  I’d made a promise to God to put aside the old.

Many times, days that I thought would never end, I returned to something I heard Colson say.  He would go through everything again, he said, for the opportunity to experience God’s grace.  I thought of that often and it sustained me.

Colson was a brilliant, driven man.  And, like all of us, he was flawed.  Yet God had a plan for Chuck Colson.  God has a plan for all of us.

Outwardly, Colson was the same man, still driven, still amusing, still engaging.  But inwardly he was a new creation.  That his “new” life didn’t begin until he was in his late forties gives me hope. 

The work Chuck Colson began with prisoners and prison reform will continue.  And for that, those of us in here can rejoice.   Chuck Colson and his story of faith will never be forgotten.

Job Fair

Something new happened at Lunenburg yesterday.  That in itself is surprising.  The thing about prison that is most difficult to bear is the time, the monotonous rolling forward of time.  Day in and day out there are the same announcements at the same time.  Days repeat days; weeks repeat weeks.  And years?  You watch the calendar click.  It’s maddening.  You live your life almost like Bill Murray did in “Groundhog Day”.  If you’re smart, you avoid the temptation to get comfortable with the monotony.  You design your day according to your needs.  You exercise your mind – and your body – and you resist the urge to be institutionalized.  And, in spite of the drudgery, you remain – at least in your mind – free.

Every so often, however, a day comes along which reminds you the monotony can be broken.  College graduation was one such day and the joy, the freedom I felt that Friday in January has sustained me.  Yesterday was another such day.  Yesterday, the LUCC Transition teacher and his aides sponsored a job fair for approximately 100 inmates who leave in the next 90 days.

This was not your typical job fair.  For one thing the majority of employers were contractors.  Second, there was an emphasis on mini-workshops with the Virginia Employment Commission and various non-profit organizations who assist released felons with a myriad of re-entry issues.

I was asked to attend to assist our Goodwill rep who was meeting with twelve of our IT grads who leave within the next 60 days.  It was remarkable seeing these men, resumes and portfolios (of programs completed) in hand looking a potential employer in the face and answering truthfully about their crime, their incarceration and their skills.

And I learned a few things.  First, there is a national fidelity bond that is free to an employer – providing $5000 (more is available for a small premium) of coverage for employee dishonesty – who hires a convicted felon.  “Even applies to a disbarred attorney convicted of embezzlement.”

Second, a significant number of released felons may be eligible for disability payments.  Extensive periods of incarceration may cause post-traumatic stress disorder.  It seems ironic but the “system” designed to encourage responsible behavior is, in fact, one of the main causes of PTSD and anti-social behavior.  Prisons are viscous, filthy, Darwinian environments.  It should come as no surprise that they do not encourage rehabilitation but promote the opposite.

Third, there are employers willing to give ex-cons a second chance.  One recruiter with a national construction firm told me “God gave me a second chance.  How could I not do the same thing?”  A few guys with significant construction training (and licenses earned while here) were made offers.  A few more were told to “stay in touch”.  The results weren’t great, but there was hope.  And in a place like this hope sometimes is all it takes to get you through.

The job fair wasn’t like anything experienced “out there”.  Recruiters had to clear security.  Guys had to be screened to get in.  There was a two and a half hour window to get the entire program in before 11:30 count.  And, it wasn’t some DOC initiative, some project spurred on by Governor McDonnell’s “re-entry initiative”.  It was the brainchild of this institution’s transition instructor, “Mr. Nick”, a twenty-five year veteran of the DOC prison re-entry process.  Mr. Nick believes in the power of hope.  His four aides – two of whom are college students I tutor – carry out his instructions.  Their goal:  to give every exiting inmate a chance at work after release.

Prison is a terrible experience.  It goes against every human emotion and is counterproductive for changing most lawbreakers into “good citizens”.  And against that backdrop Don Quixote – like men and women still launch themselves against the windmills of hopelessness and recidivism.  They believe a man with a job, a man with an education, can succeed.

We need more job fair days, more college graduation days, more days of hope and less groundhog days.

It's All Where You Stand

A number of recent incidents reminded me of my college advisor.  He’d tell us over and over “Where you stand depends on where you sit”.  In other words, your position on issues is largely determined by where you come from.  One man’s war hero is another man’s terrorist.

America post 9/11 has had a love affair with the military.  It has become fashionable to thank any man or woman in uniform for their service.  Yet, less than 1% of the American public is actually involved in the “war effort”.  Never before have so few born the burden for so many.  But the disconnect gets worse. 

Of the 1200 inmates incarcerated here, roughly half are veterans.  Many are young, under 30, who served in the post 9/11 military.   But there are no parades for the guys in here.  They’re just inmates.  Many of these vets have drug problems, post-traumatic stress disorder.  It was OK to send them to Iraq and Afghanistan and it was OK to send them to prison.

The unemployment rate for veterans of our post 9/11 military excursions is above 20%.  The rate of homelessness and PTSD and suicides is staggering.  “Thank you for your service.”

Remember when the Mannes were ordered into Fallujah after four contractors were killed in an IED attack and their bodies drug through the streets and hung from a bridge?  Brutal, disgusting, no respect for human life.  That’s what we said.

What’s been in the news recently?  Photos of US Soldiers urinating on dead “enemy combatants”, or having their photo snapped while they hawk and smile over the dead.  We’ve had evidence presented of soldiers going into villages and slaughtering innocent women and children.  And the tribunals who hear the cases hand down general discharges and suspended jail time.  Meanwhile, we pray over the loss of innocent life on 9/11.  I ask you, is the life of an Afghan child any less important than a stockbroker?  Is an American, sitting in his office and killed by a terrorist a more tragic and more cold-blooded death than an Urdu shepherd hit by a “smart bomb” dropped by a Navy bomber?

Where you stand is indeed determined by where you sit.  It’s easy being pro-military when your son is comfortably ensconced in some university.  Its easy taking a tough on crime approach until someone you know gets caught up in the system. It’s easy having all the answers until you’re bombarded with questions.

This place tears at my soul.  I am daily confronted by people I would have normally had no regard for.  And yet, I see a gang leader, a drug dealer, a murderer, and see my own failings, my own weaknesses.  Do you make a distinction between the man who kills in a drug deal gone bad and the marine who shoots a child in an Afghan village while on his third tour of duty?

And what of the Secret Service agent who solicits a prostitute in Columbia, a nation known as the “Thailand of the Americas” for its sex trade and use of underage females as escorts and prostitutes.  He’s fired.  Should he be charged with statutory rape, child sex abuse?

Where you are is largely determined by where you’ve been.

Prison is horrendous yet it’s caused me to ask myself fundamental questions about what I believe.  And ultimately, I think that’s what faith is about.  “Love the Lord your God and love your neighbor as yourself.  On these two commandments the Kingdom is based.”  Not a bad theory on which to base your life.  Not a bad lesson to learn while you’re in prison.  Not a bad place to stand.

Ken and Bobby

Ken and Bobby.  Who are they?  They’re the two best know Republicans from Virginia on the National scene.  And, every week they make headlines.  What they do daily effects every Virginian, especially the nearly 40,000 of us locked up in Virginia’s prison system.

Ken is Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli.  A darling of the right, Cuccinelli none the less has overseen a series of court decisions and headlines that have called into question his leadership as chief legal officer of the Commonwealth.

And Bobby?  That would be Governor Bob McDonnell who ran for office on a platform of openness and bipartisanship.  Instead, Virginia government has been declared one of the three most susceptible to corruption by a recent independent study and witness to budget deadlock because of the numerous heavy-handed decisions Republican Party leadership made to block Democrat participation in key General Assembly governance.

How, you may ask, do these two gentlemen affect what goes on in prison and why should you care?  Because these men are both lawyers and elected to uphold the Constitution and Laws of the Commonwealth.  They, therefore, need to act with the utmost integrity and enforce the law justly.  Inmates already believe the system is corrupt.  These guys provide them the proof. 

Here are a few examples.  This week the Virginia Department of Corrections was lampooned with the dubious “Muzzle Award” given by the Thomas Jefferson Center for Protection of Free Expression.  The Jefferson Center recognized VDOC for a “lifetime achievement award”.  Josh Wheeler, the center’s director said VDOC “has earned this recognition for a pattern of disregard for First Amendment rights of Virginia inmates.”  For three straight years the center has lambasted VDOC for its denial of inmate first amendment rights even as Governor Bob announces “the incarcerated have civil rights”. 

How ironic.  AG Cuccinelli continues to unsuccessfully defend repressive First Amendment denials by DOC.  And, he continues to lose.  Who pays when a judge orders DOC to lift their book and magazine subscription restrictions and awards the prevailing inmate $100,000 plus in attorney fees?  Virginia’s taxpayers.  Over the last two years VDOC has either lost or settled (in the face of pending adverse judicial action) six inmate-led lawsuits challenging limitations imposed by DOC on religious materials, foreign language CDs, and access to both classic and modern literature.  All of this has been done under the leadership of Ken with Bob’s acquiescence. 

Then there is the pending class-action lawsuit brought by eleven inmates denied parole.   Arguments and briefs are underway and the court has tipped its hand finding Virginia’s parole system questionable.  For approximately 9,000 Virginia inmates, still under the old parole system that initial finding was a first where a court actually “got it”.

Governor McDonnell presides over a Byzantine corrections system that does little to rehabilitate, little to break the cycle of hopelessness and discrimination that leads many released felons to recommit. 

This past week when his budget finally cleared the Virginia senate by one vote (a lone Democratic senator from Northern Virginia crossed party lines to vote “yes”), Governor McDonnell spoke to the press and said “that’s $600 million for our K through twelve education.”

But what of the $1.1 billion that is spent sustaining a broken prison system where rape, hepatitis C and mental illness flourishes?  Where inmates have poor medical, mental health, and drug and alcohol treatment?  Where a significant number are kept in overcrowded dirty facilities?  Where money is spent on barbed wire, not education?

Virginia’s prison system is a rat hole.  Ken and Bob are the two chief law enforcement officers in the Commonwealth.  It’s high time they take their responsibilities seriously.

Guggenheim

Guggenheim.  What does that mean?  I have no idea.  I know it’s the name of an art museum in New York.  I also know it’s a person’s name.  But what does it mean and if I call myself “Guggenheim” does is suddenly change who I am?

There is a very troubling effort underway, primarily in the mass of young, black inmates, to recruit these men into “the knowledge”.  As I’ve written in past blogs, both the five percenters and NOI (Nation of Islam) are growing sects in prison.  Coming on the heels of the Trayvon Martin shooting you can feel the palpable rise in racial tensions in this environment.  It’s driven by ignorance, self-loathing and envy. 

Shortly after the Trayvon Martin shooting, Fox News contributor and author Juan Williams – a black man – wrote an Op Ed piece in the Wall Street Journal.  In it, he decried the race-baiters (Spike Lee, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson) who flocked to Sanford, Florida to decry the “racially-motivated” murder of the 17 year old Martin.  Black celebrities and athletes – even a U.S. Congressman – donned “hoodies” and denounced the “open-warfare on young, black males.”  Williams asked a simple question.  If 90% of the murders of young, black males are at the hands of other young, black males, where is the outrage in the black community?

I found Williams’ argument very moving and insightful.  But Williams was not alone.  USA Today Contributor Dewayne Wickham penned virtually the same column.  Bill Cosby announced the Martin shooting was about guns, not race.  As I customarily do, I engaged a few of the guys in here in that “observation”.  What, I asked, did they think of the Williams and Wickham and Cosby theory?

“Sankofa” answered for the group of perhaps fifteen guys.  “They’re all house negroes, sucking up to the white man”.  Who is “Sankofa”, the forty-year old man making this statement?  He’s a friend of mine, Jay, a rather bright forty year old from Baltimore in the middle of a second degree murder sentence.  Six months ago Jay legally changed his “white name” to Sankofa an African-dialect word meaning “freedom”.  He has become a leader of the post-African movement.  Everything about Africa is wonderful; everything Western is vile.  Ironically, the books, the “history”, the “knowledge”, trace its roots to Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam.  It is built on revisionist history and completely devoid of fact or logic.  Simply put, I know more accurate African history and current events than any peddled by Farrakhan or the revisionists who peddle their distortions in prison.  Much like the white supremacists in here with their toxic views on Judaism and their holocaust denials, it is lie and misconception . . . and ignorance to the “nth” degree.

I recently read a book by Stanford University professor Richard Ford titled “Rights Gone Wrong”.  Ford, a black scholar, offered a detailed explanation of what he called, “The Balkanization” of the Black community.  He argued that much of the civil law created to stop discrimination and the criminal law created to end drug dealing and gun violence in the inner-cities was racially neutral and well-intended.  However, its application and abuse by parties on both ends of the political spectrum brought us to our current climate of racial toxicity.

The Black community, he argues, is not a monolith.  It is deeply split by those blacks who have reached educational and economic parity with the white middle and upper middle class versus uneducated, poor blacks.  Get an education, get a good paying job, and a middle class black family looks – and behaves – like a similarly situated white family.

As I’ve detailed numerous times in this blog, I struggle to understand what it means to be black in America.  For many of the young men whom I’ve met and befriended I realize their life experiences were so vastly different from the ones I tried to provide my own sons.  And there is no doubt that we are a nation with deep racial wounds and lingering prejudices.  The condition of poor black families in America is deplorable.  That a young black man has a better chance of being incarcerated than being a college graduate is disgusting and should shame every decent American, but the growth of “African” revisionist thought in prison is not the solution.

How dangerous is this ignorance?  Sankofa told me the other day that poor uneducated whites have it better in America than millionaire blacks.  I asked him if he knew who Charles Murray was.  Naturally, he said no.  I explained how Murray is a social scientist who has written throughout his career on the split in America along intellectual and cultural lines.  What Murray found, I argued, was that it’s the poor and ignorant vs. the wealthy and cultured.  It’s the haves versus the have-nots.

Ignorance.  Ignorance leads uneducated men in here to grasp at quick, easy to understand apologist theories for their incarceration.  Ignorance drives men to refuse to accept responsibility for their actions and to believe their criminal conduct is really a political reaction to a racist society.

Ignorance is a cancer.  It is destroying young black men in prison.  No program the government has prepared challenges this ignorance.  Only one thing can fight ignorance:  EDUCATION.

America is a divided nation.  The simple explanation is race.  But simple isn’t always right.  When a white person clutches their bag when seeing a young black man, or utters some asinine comment like “Obama hates white people” – they are as wrong – and as ignorant – as my young black friends in here.

America is a Balkanized country but it’s not Balkanized by race, but by lack of education.  Ignorance is rampant in prison.  Then again, it’s pretty prevalent in the “free world” as well. 

So I told Sankofa, and the Dominator, and Sincere and I God and Divine, to call me “Guggenheim”.   “Why?” they asked.  “Felt like I needed a new name to represent the new me”, I said.  “That’s stupid”, they told me.  Precisely my point. 

Sex Offender Visits

A new directive was handed down this week by Richmond regarding visitation procedures for sex offenders.  As I have written in the past, the status of sex offenders in this facility presents an uneasy existence.  Simply put, sex offenders are the lowest of low in a prison.  Even the officers hold sex offenders in contempt.  No one is held in lower esteem than child sex offenders and child pornographers.  Sex offenders live in constant fear that their depraved crimes will come to light.  While bounties do not exist for their heads on this compound – as they do at so many higher level facilities – sex offenders are routinely targeted for theft and extortion.  Perhaps it is justifiable.  After all, sex offenders have done – in many cases – unspeakable horrors to their victims.  Still, it is difficult to watch anyone live in fear.

So, this past week Richmond announced a new policy for visits to sex offenders.  Effective immediately, minors will no longer be allowed to visit sex offenders.  That’s no minors, not even the offenders own children.

When I first arrived here at Lunenburg, there were no prohibitions on sex offender visitation. Shortly after my arrival, a new directive was handed down.  Sex offenders were prohibited from having any children on their laps who weren’t their own.  Sex offender visits were closely monitored by staff (yes, the officers know who the sex offenders are.  The inmate “master list” has a code for sex offenders).  Sex offenders didn’t complain.  To do so was to draw attention to yourself.  And, that was the last thing a sex offender would want to do.

That policy has stayed in effect for two years and there have been few – if any – problems reported.  So why the new rule?

As I have disclosed previously in this blog, I struggle with my feelings regarding sex offenders.  I abhor what they did (and contrary to prison “myth”, the vast majority of sex offenders are not incarcerated for “statutory” sex charges, i.e. “I didn’t know she wasn’t eighteen!”)  I also deal with the knowledge that many of the child sex offenders are serving sentences substantially shorter than mine.  Those frustrations are tempered each day by the knowledge that in God’s eyes I’m no better nor worse than that man and God’s grace shines on child sex offenders, embezzlers, and law-abiding folks the same.  None of us are deserving, yet all can receive.

Still, it’s tough to not jump on the “those sick bastards get what they deserve” bandwagon.  But, in looking at the new rule, a number of questions popped into my head.

First, if sex offenders are so awful and their behavior so suspect that DOC can’t trust them in a controlled visitation environment, what are they doing being housed at Lunenburg, a low custody, dormitory-style housing environment?

A fundamental problem with Virginia’s correction paradigm is that the vast majority of facilities – and, by implication, inmates – are low custody.  I have serious reservations about a system that says a murderer or child rapist is a “violent felon”, yet then allows those inmates to serve the bulk of their sentence at a low level.  If sex offenders are so suspect in their proclivities that they can’t be trusted in the Lunenburg VI room, what are they doing here?

And second, how does denying a sex offender access to his children coordinate with Governor McDonnell’s “re-entry initiative” which states that “90% of all inmates will return to their communities”, and “a goal of re-entry is to promote family support for the returning offender?”  It seems to me limiting structured visits is contrary to those goals.

I don’t know what the answer is.  As I said earlier, I’m very conflicted on the issue.  I do believe child sex offenders have a mental illness that needs to be addressed and prison isn’t the best place to address it (then again, prison isn’t the best place to address most nonviolent criminal behavior).  And, child sex offenders tend to also have been victims themselves.  Somehow, that cycle has to be broken

There’s no easy answer.  I’m just not sure DOC’s new visitation policy helps in any way.

Incarceration Nation

CNN’s Fareed Zakaria recently revealed in a Time magazine column what those of us inside already know – America is now “Incarceration Nation”.  America, “land of the free” and “home of the brave” has over 6 million people under “correctional supervision”.  That’s more people than Stalin held in the Soviet Union’s infamous gulag system.

There are many reasons for this, some benign, some well-intentioned, too many the result of political myopia.  But, as Zakaria noted, the worst of the American political system can be seen in the growth of the prison-industrial complex.  “Tough on crime” politicians – in Virginia it’s been “abolish parole”/longer sentencing politicians – helped fuel the money trail.  “Many state prisons are now run by private companies that have powerful lobbyists in state capitals . . . Partly as a result; the money states spend on prisons has risen at six times the rate of spending on higher education in the last 20 years.”

Governor McDonnell touted relief for Virginia families facing ever increasing tuition demands from the Commonwealth’s university system.  He gave higher education lip service while turning a blind eye to the bloated, badly mismanaged bureaucracy that is Virginia’s Department of Corrections.  Thirteen thousand employees, almost 40,000 inmates, over $1 billion a year to maintain a system that houses a majority of those inmates in level 1 or 2 facilities, all the while the recidivism rate remains flat and not one dollar of state money goes to the very program that reduces recidivism:  college education. 

Like his predecessors, Governor McDonnell talks a good game; most snake oil salesmen do.  But, Virginia needs leadership.  And, leadership means it’s time to change the way things are done.

In a May 2011 release, the Institute for Higher Education Policy advised that the single most effective determiner to recidivism was an inmate earning a college degree.  No prison program has a more lasting effect in breaking the cycle of recidivism than college.  Ironically, forty-three states participated in the study.  Virginia chose not to.

As I read the Institute’s findings and reflected on my own experience in here working with the college students, I understood how right, how easy, it is.  Give an inmate an education and you give them hope and skills to make it on the outside. 

So why does Governor McDonnell refuse to spend even one dollar on the college program here, a program internationally recognized twice in the last month?  Why is the Governor willing to spend millions on a software program that is easily manipulated (questions seek to determine remorse and empathy levels) to identify “recidivism risk” rather than any money on the one identifiable method of eliminating recidivism?

Perhaps things will change.  The founder of Governor McDonnell’s law school, Regents University, recently came out in favor of prison reform and dramatic reductions in America’s incarceration levels.  Rev. Pat Robertson joins a growing list of Republicans and Conservatives who are calling for drastic changes in America’s love affair with corrections.  The leaders in that movement, RightOnCrime.org released new polling data from the Pew Center which showed 84 percent of respondents agreed that tax dollars could be shifted from prisons to community corrections alternatives for non-violent, low risk inmates.  Significantly, 77% of responding Republicans and 85% of independents agreed.

Perhaps change is coming to America’s, to Virginia’s, love affair with prison.  Each day I pray that today is that day.

Dear M

The other night I received your card.  Thank you for your words of encouragement, inspiration, and prayer.  Ironically, that very week I’d read a series of devotions on the same subject.

I’m not sure you read this blog.  I assume you do because you were able to get word to me.  It meant a great deal to me to read and reread your note. 

It is deeply appreciated.

Larry