In Pursuit of Mysteries

Prison Banquet

Yesterday was the annual banquet for the Wiccan inmates at McNeil Island CC.
Each religious group is allowed to have one banquet event every year where
guests and relatives can come and share a holiday with the men. The group used
to do it for Yule and the winter solstice but they moved it to Samhain a couple
of years ago.

Last year, the Samhain Banquet was the first time I met the men and was
introduced to the group. My friend Monk brought me along because he'd been doing
volunteer work with them for a while and I was interested in possibly helping
him out. As most of my friends now, this changed about seven or eight months ago
to me taking over the group as Monk was deployed to the Middle East for a bit of
God and Country.

This event is also the one reliable day where I get to celebrate a sabbat
with the men. Normally, since the Sabbats are seasonally aligned and our meeting
schedule is oriented to the conventional calendar, I meet the men for a study
group but don't get to do ritual work with them. They do this on their own and
we are fortunate that they're allowed to do so. Since the banquet occurs on the
same day, I get to do both with them on Samhain but it makes for a long day.

I got up early, drove down, and took the ferry to the island, meeting the men
about 9:00 AM. The group had designated officers for their rite and we proceeded
to raise the circle and do their Samhain rite. The whether was quite nice but a
bit windy. An unintentional bit of hilarity occurred because they use quarter
candles for the cardinal points and each quarter caller would do his ritual
piece and then try to light the candle…again…and again…and again… Since
I was just a participant, I didn't advise them to just let it go so we got to
see this for three of the four quarters before people started understanding that
it just wasn't going to work. heh. The ritual itself went pretty well and they
are going to give me a copy of it to keep for records. They do decent ritual
work and put more heart into it than many pagans that I know.

After the ritual and the cakes and "ale," there were three and a half hours
until food and space setup for the banquet. It takes me about an hour and twenty
minutes to get to the site (not counting the ferry) so leaving and coming back
wasn't a real option. So, I wound up sitting in a locked room in a prison
reading the first Harry Potter work and killing time. After setup, there was
another hour and a half before inmates could show up and wait for guests. Guests
arrived around 5:30 and then the banquet commenced.

It's an unusual experience to see the men interact with anyone other than
each other or officials from the facility. Seeing them with their families was a
nice experience. They obviously really hunger to spend time with them and it is
tragic in many ways that this is their only chance outside of occasional one on
one visits. I chatted a bit with the guys that didn't have any visitors. They
get the fun of the banquet (and the food was quite good) but it must be
bittersweet to watch the others with their families.

It adds another dimension to working with the guys to get to spend this much
extended time with them and to see another side of them. For the most part, I
like the guys, even the ones that I know committed horrible crimes. They are all
trying to better themselves and there isn't one of them that doesn't seem
entirely sincere in their beliefs. The questions that I get from them about
practice and ethics and such make it clear that many of them are really
struggling to both survive their current situation and to be good pagans.