Casual Clubs can be lifesavers

                 Perhaps you belong to a casual club, or perhaps you don’t even know what I am talking about.  This distinction I, myself, only became familiar with after my husband, Jim,  and I joined the Eastern Illinois University Rec Center to work out just four years ago.  Have I heard other “casual club” members use this terminology?  Well, no.  But, I have come to believe this classification might be an original Rayma Kay Laughlin creation.

                Many who work out at the rec center are students, EIU faculty, and retirees.  Clearly, some have friends and casual acquaintances from being part of the Charleston community over the years.  However, Jim and I joined the rec just seven months after moving to Charleston in 2015 after living all our lives—about 66 years—in St. Louis, Missouri.  Our connections here were few but three of them were the reasons for this move: our daughter, son-in-law (EIU employees}, and first grandson, then five.  Joining the rec center at the university was our first venture here not associated with family, like kids’ baseball games, church activities, and family get-togethers.

                Right from the start, Jim and I enjoyed associating with the EIU student workers at the rec.  Jim and I are both outgoing, retired teachers, and at that time eager to make some personal connections in our new town.  Jim especially became engaged with athletes, some track and cross country students.  He, himself, attended Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville on a cross country scholarship and had competed at EIU while in college.  I, on the other hand, had never even heard of EIU until our daughter applied for a job here.  Before Jim’s sudden death in August, 2017, we had become casually acquainted with students and fellow workout folks, and I had begun calling them “casual club members.”

                Staying with our habit of twice weekly workouts after Jim’s death proved to be life-giving.  Upon my return to exercising, many people expressed their sadness and sympathy.  I believe some might even have prayed for our family.  News of a man appearing to be in good shape suddenly dying while riding a bike travels fast in a small town (20,000 including university students).  Because Jim had no identification with him, he was probably already pronounced dead at the Emergency Room by the time the officers found me, adding to the dramatic impact of our story. 

                This last week in the first month of a new year, 2020, has been filled with the tragic story of a very famous former basketball player, Kobe Bryant, his daughter and seven more dying in a helicopter crash.  All had left their homes the day of the crash expecting to return just like my husband had and so many others do every day but don’t come home as expected.  Of course, I have thought more of Jim and  that experience of sudden loss in my own life.  When I texted these feelings to my son and asked, "How about you?" he replied, “Agreed.  Lot of families in this situation changed instantly.”  Then we simply affirmed our love for each other.

                Survivors like us are not in a casual club, but I do feel a kinship with them as I do with other widows I now know.  But it is the rec center where I find continued “benefits” from my casual club membership.  I’ve even made a couple friends, students and adults, whom I see outside our rec center connections.  That is such a blessing for a person still feeling new to this community.  Just yesterday, I took the a new rubber cane tip that I couldn’t get on because the old, beaten down one wouldn’t come off.  I was on the way to “the club” when I discovered this problem, so I just took the new tip with me, knowing I would get help at the rec center.  Sarah, the supervisor, just took a tool and cut the old tip off.  Yes, a casual club member comes to the rescue once again.

                Such casual clubs and the opportunities they provide not only for personal fitness but also for socialization and simple acts of kindness are beneficial beyond measure for people like me who need more than exercise.  Real connections among us, not just virtual ones, can provide substance to our exhortation to love one another.  

Christ offers new beginnings

Going to jail is not usually where one starts over.  Hopefully, people would leave jail or prison having begun some process, program, spiritual growth, etc., that will send them off on a more positive path, perhaps even life-changing.  It does happen.  Movies portray such changes like The Birdman of Alcatraz, and books by Chuck Colson, who began prison ministry after his own imprisonment for the Nixon presidency wrongs.  He wrote, “ . . . only when I lost everything I thought made Chuck Colson a great guy had I found the true self God intended me to be and the true purpose of my life.”

                My road to jail began some years ago when I bought a book by Wally Lamb called Can’t Keep it to Myself and read Shakespeare Saved My Life by Indiana English professor Laura Bates.  Both books address the positive effects of writing and reading programs with inmates during their sentences.  I wanted to try something less grand—I can barely understand some of Shakespeare—but make some use of reading and writing to benefit people serving time.  A cook at the Coles County Jail told me some inmates there wait many days, even months, for a court date and/or final outcome of their situation.  So, I tried to contact the jail administrator but couldn’t get a return call. Finally, I decided just to go by the jail and see if I could catch up with this lady.  It happened that I not only got to talk to her, but someone was there who told me about a Christian program already up and running.

                I still don’t know the overall structure or outreaches of the Wingman program, but I decided to try out the mentoring outreach, taking one of the eight two hour slots a week to sit in a little visitors’ room waiting to be contacted by an inmate through something like skype.  Previously, all I knew about jails or prisons was what I have seen in the movies—well, that ship has sailed.  Just recently a much- needed mentors’ meeting at the jail aired some of the difficulties of the present system and included a tour of the actual jail, an empty area but a no less sobering experience.  Dismal,  gray, concrete block structure cells house multiple people who try to sleep on metal bunkbeds with 4 or 5 inch mattresses.  Here they stay 24 hours a day until they go through some tunnel to the courthouse or are released.  No daylight unless an inmate is making his or her way through the tunnel.

                For the Christian mentoring, inmates can login on their monitors, one in each cell, for a faith-based conversation on several topics with a waiting mentor.  The program also provides Bibles to people who want them and many do.  Since I am relatively new, I don’t know who will appear on the monitor and the same is true for them although regular mentors have certain nights and times and therefore, more regular connections.  The 30 minute sessions each inmate can have are fairly improvisational.  Ones I have sat in on or led involve listening, getting acquainted with the inmates and what they are needing or seeking, including matters of faith.  All of us try to pray before the 30 minutes ends; some even start with prayer.  I try to have some conversation first, initiating personal interaction.

                After a rocky start including getting bumped off my initial time slot and then having little interested inmates on a different night and missing a couple weeks around Thanksgiving, the mentor meeting enabled me to get my old slot back and start over on this venture.  At this point, I have probably talked to 12-15 individuals, mostly men, and have had some quite memorable experiences.  I would imagine and understandably so, some inmates get on the phone just to have some social engagement with someone on the outside.  But a few have especially seemed to be of a repentant heart, wanting to get right with God and the people they  love, and I hope I have encouraged them and brought them closer to feeling God’s presence with them.  One young man cried as we prayed at the end and after what he had shared earlier in the session, I believe his remorse was genuine.  I pray all of us mentors are offering something real on Christian fellowship and encouragement, clearly pointing them to Christ and His mercy for us all.