Pretty much everything I know about gardening I learned in prison. For a little over 25 years, I have participated as needed in a ministry called Kairos, a nationwide prison ministry with incarcerated persons.  Kairos, which means “God’s special time” is found throughout our prison system in Louisiana but I have only participated in the retreats held at the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women (LCIW). 

 At LCIW every incarcerated resident has a job, so this particular Kairos weekend I was partnered with one of the women who worked on the lawn and garden detail.  This was at their old campus near Gonzales, Louisiana and I must tell you, those grounds and flower beds looked like something out of a Better Homes and Gardens magazine.  So, as you can imagine, this woman knew her stuff.

Throughout the weekend you have opportunities to sit and talk with your person who is incarcerated to hear their life journey, if they choose to tell you, but that often comes much later in the weekend.  First you must build rapport. Although it never ceases to amaze me how easy that is and how much I have had in common with many of the women I have met. One way I like to break the ice is to ask them about the classes she has taken, what she likes to do in her down time and her work in the prison.  When we landed on her work, her face lit up.  

Now no one will ever accuse me of having a green thumb.  My husband claims that I can kill an air fern, so needless to say, I was soaking in all she had to tell me about her work.  She loved watching the flowers that lie dormant through the winter, bloom with great brilliance in the spring after much care plus a little water, sun and fertilizer.  She spoke of plants that needed extra attention because of mishandling or a hard freeze and how she felt so accomplished nursing those plants back to life.  And then she told me something I have never forgotten, trees like crepe myrtles, rose bushes and other blooming plants like azaleas, need pruning and the target date is always between Valentine’s Day and Daylight Savings Time.  I asked her why pruning was so important, and she told me that it was a way of cutting away the dead branches that was robbing the plant of its ability to focus on new growth.  

By the end of the weekend, she was beginning to realize that her work life skills she was learning while incarcerated was also good advise for her real life relationships.  We both were.  Together we came to realize that some relationships need special care and extra attention. Maybe even some fertilizer in the form of kind words, forgiveness or apologies to help them bloom again. Other relationships might need some pruning of hurtful feelings and resentments while still others might just need to be lopped off all together because they are bad for us, toxic, rob of our joy or perhaps even suck the very life out of us, keeping us from focusing on new growth.   

I never expected to learn so much in prison, but I absolutely did.

On the journey,

Ramonalynn Bethley

Ramonalynn Bethley is the pastor at First United Methodist Church of Alexandria. If you would like to contact Ramonalynn, you can email her at DrRevRL@fumca.org