Night has passed into day has passed into night has passed into day 100 more times. The past 100 days have, once again, sped rapidly by. One of the major highlights of the past 100 days was the Celebrate Recovery® 5K run that I was allowed to organize mid summer. After jumping through many many hoops and a rescheduled date due to a freak August rain delay, we finally were able to run on September 5th. That morning at 4am I was awoke by thunder. The only rain clouds on the radar for the entire state were hovering over Taft, OK. Luckily, it was more sound and fury than precipitation. When the yard opened at 8:15 am everyone assembled at the athletic field as I had envisioned. Registration went smoothly. Everyone put on their bibs and we started the event. The last person crossed the finish line just before count time. The event was envisioned as a way to attract attention to our Celebrate Recovery® weekly meetings. Many thanks to our faithful sponsors for stepping up and making this event possible (1)(2).
Over the past 100 days I have also earned my OHSA-30 Hour Construction Certification (Occupational Health and Safety Administration) as well as my EPA Universal License (Environmental Protection Agency). Both of these designations will allow me to easily find a $30+ hour job when I am discharged. Recently, several of my CareerTech Career Readiness and our HVAC/R graduates have been hired at Aaon in Tulsa and are earning solid middle class living wages with full benefit packages that are allowing them to rebuild their lives. Thank God for second chance employers like Aaon whom see value in the person and do not judge individuals by the label that some overzealous prosecutor and overreaching archaic legislation slapped upon them. Keenly aware of my penchant for writing, another highlight of the past 100 days was an invitation the Warden extended to me to create a yard e-newsletter. After a month of rounding up writers and creating templates, the inaugural edition of the Dunn Dispatch was uploaded to our tablets on October first. Today I submitted the November edition for approval and publication. It has been so well received and appreciated by the residents as everyone can now receive the same information at the same time on their tablets instead of the drip, drip, drip of unreliable rumors as they leak their way across the yard. I accepted his invitation as I believe that the more community that can be fostered here, the less hectic, hostile, and hopeless the lives of the men that are forced to reside together becomes. It is in this sense of community that healing from the issues that contributed to their incarceration can be pro actively dealt with as 1000 of us live together in very proximity to each other. I typically do not play video games. I never have enjoyed them (with the exception of Atari's Adventure in the mid 1980's). This spring and summer a new game was offered on our tablets called Dysmantle. Everyone was talking about how much fun it was to play. Each morning there were multiple conversations revolving around the progress they had made the day before. I started to feel like I was missing out on an integral aspect of our shared cultural experience. The game only cost $6 so I downloaded it to my tablet. I was instantly hooked and simultaneously frustrated. I am not a natural gamer. My frustrations with dying over and over and over again resurrected my use of a few certain words that I thought that I had buried. It took several weeks of playing, but I finally finished the storyline to my satisfaction and immediately deleted it off of my tablet .... only to resurrect it recently and replay the storyline with the knowledge and experience that I had acquired from the first round. It has been much more enjoyable this second time around as I experience some of the finer nuances and design features the content creator's have built in.Navigating a life of proactive personal productivity has been one of my key survival tips on this incarceral journey. Over the past 18 months I have had my passport stamped with a visit to Celebrate Recovery® every Friday afternoon. Spending time ministering with other like minded men at CRI® continues to be one of the most important parts of my week(3). Prison is already a place where Oklahoma shrouds its addicts, conceals its houseless population, and hides away it citizens with mental health issues. It is from this group of men that we try to encourage hope, health, and healing from life's hurts, habits, and hang-ups. It is not always easy, smooth, or pretty during our Friday meetings. I am so proud to work with dedicated Step Study facilitators who patiently led their share groups using talk therapy and cognitive behavior tactics to help each participant find the mental, emotional, and spiritual relief that they are seeking. Goodness knows how much we men need to be able to share about the things that have happened to us in our lives so that we can heal from them. Unfortunately, OKDOC (in fact our state in general) does not value investing the time and resources necessary to help individuals in emotional and mental distress recover from their trauma. This is true for OKDOC, true for Oklahoma public schools students, true for Oklahoma veteran's services, and especially true for those with both diagnosed and undiagnosed mental issues and cognitive decline. I praise Jesus for Steve Lewis, Rich Bartlett, and the Southern Hills Baptist church in Tulsa for seeing those needs and for standing in those gaps.
Graciously, in between session #2 (November 2024 - July 2025) and session #3 (September 2025 - March 2026) of CRI® our sponsor, Steve Lewis streamed Season 5 of The Chosen for our graduating participants and as as way to attract the attention of potential new participants. Over those five Fridays we served 125 pounds of pop corn (+1200 bags) and 10 gallons of coffee to 750+ viewers. Many of those attending these viewings have become our session #3 Step Study participants. One of the final scenes of the final episode absolutely broke me down. In the scene, as Jesus was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane the viewer is shown a cut away of Joseph coming to comfort the adopted son that he raised. As the father reaches out to run his hand through his sons hair and bring him some comfort in his most pain filled moments I could not help but well up as that is all I long for too. I just want to be comforted with a father's embrace. To have my head rubbed. To be told with actual real life words by my parents how proud they are of me, to use that actual P-word, would mean so much to me: epecially being told how proud they are of how I have handled myself in prison would really be reassuring, but that is a fantasy that I gave up on a long time ago. I also see myself as Joseph in that scene just wanting to embrace my own children (#YHLN) and let them know how much I love, truly cherish, and desperately miss each one of them #YHLN.
Spending the first decade of my incarceration mentally, emotionally, and spiritually fighting against adapting to this place as my reality and vehemently rebelling against becoming institutionalized I finally yielded a couple of years ago. One of the biggest lessons I learned from my deep abiding friendship with CMcD is that there is a huge difference between becoming institutionalized and accepting the reality of your circumstances. Because of the great weight of the loneliness, rejection, and depression that was exacerbated by the covid pandemic I knew I had to pivot when I landed on this yard 3 years ago. Due to my desperation for a friend I could have 100% confidentiality with, my daily facilitation of our Career Readiness class, as well as my reaffiliation with Celebrate Recovery, I finally allowed myself to make a uniquely singular friendship: a friendship that saved my life. Those three decisions led to a few more friends and finally more valued acquaintances than I truly thought that I would want in my incarceral life. I opened myself up to true meaningful relationships and brotherhood. I have allowed myself to create a new family. These new relationship have restored the sanity that my life was missing. Just like Jesus taught those fortunate 12 youngsters that he directly discipled and physically interacted with on a daily basis there is true love that can be found in close affiliation with brother-in-arms. While not a romantic love or a modern "western based philosophy of machismo and physical Eros" based love, it is that much deeper authentic and Biblical "ancient eastern philisophical/phileo" based love that can fill those voids (4). Now that I have stopped fighting mentally, emotionally, and spiritually against accepting the reality that is this place, that is this time of my life, I finally am beginning to feel like myself the self I was prior to meeting Myrtha Mikle(5). My big takeaway from this past 100 days is that pain can be your prison or your passport. I have chosen to continue to see this incarceral journey as a way to navigate down the road and grow into the man I am meant to be while supporting as many other men along their journey as well.
(1)1440 Promise, SHBC, Saunders Family BBQ Sauce, Boulevard Christian Church in Muskogee
(2) I have a Unit D 5k fun run scheduled for December 6th and another CR end of session graduation run scheduled for March of 2026
(3) Thank you Steve Lewis, Southern Hills Baptist Church, and Celebrate Recovery® for providing the avenue that allowed this change to take place. Our CR is experiencing growing pains as our attendance has quickly jumped from 7 to 17 to 27 to 77. We have almost outgrown our meeting place. Men are finding so much healing in their step study groups that we've increased that part of our weekly schedule to an entire hour. Praise Jesus for the chains that are being broken. On Friday, October 31st the Southern Hills Baptist Church will be showing our cardboard testimonies https://youtu.be/xPwtobWBjJQ and my personal video taped message of gratitude for their sponsorship. I hope that you will be in attendance.
(4) Read Day #4676 "Christopher" and #4300 "Validation". Thank you CMcD, Nordic, SC, LM, WW, and so many others whom have helped me find this new sanity, this new level of brotherhood. Thank you Steve Lewis for becoming a spiritual father. One of the ways I've maintained my sanity and fought off depression is by leaning in to these acquaintanceships and friendships over the past 100 days by playing volleyball. I am not a natural athlete. I really have to put effort into playing most sports. These guys play balls-to-the-walls sand court volleyball. I am also often the oldest guy on the court, by far. I really enjoy team sports and just playing on a team. These guys are all about the win. However, I am older and shorter and slower and refuse to dive for a hit. So, when the completion seems serious I bow out. I can only hit the ball "correctly" 60% of the time. Now that the daylight hours are quickly fading, so is the opportunity to play, so I've pulled out all together so as to honor their time, but I really miss it. Today I found myself moping around the track just wishing I could play ... and they would let me ... but the losing team wouldn't be happy ... so it seems like the right thing to do. I just really miss this time to connect, and missing playing with those guys has taken me by surprise.
(5) https://ManassehEphraim.blogspot.com/myrtha-mikel-day-3338 It was 16 years ago yesterday that Myrtha Mikel weaponized a false allegation of abuse in order to preserve her employment. She was on the verge of receiving a write up. As she admitted in court three years later she lied because she was angry that she was passed over by some young white boy. She was a pissed off DEI hire who became a "Karen" before there were "Karen's".
