The Main Thing
There it is!
Stephen Covey, the author of Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, coined the phrase “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing”.
But, what is “the main thing”? That is where I get off-track.
Take for example, prison ministry/mentoring. First, I was a volunteer in the weekend retreat inside Torres*. During the retreat, I felt the loneliness that permeated the retreat. In response, I wrote letters to the men in white** in my retreat family. That wasn’t enough, so I attended prayer and share on Wednesday evenings.
One of my brothers told me he valued receiving letters from me and seeing me at prayer and share, but he wanted more time with me. Through the grace of God and the actions of an official, I was given the unique privilege of mentoring men of my choosing one-on-one for an hour at a time.
As I mentored, I became intimately aware not only of the myriad injustices that hourly permeate Texas prisons but also of my inability to do anything about it. I found myself taking my anger and frustration into my time with my brothers.
In driving down to Torres one day, I acknowledged that I had nothing in common with the men I was mentoring, and I could do nothing about their conditions. The immediate response I received was—“You can love them!”
There it is—“the main thing!”
It is so easy to drift away from “the main thing.” I have been unable to turn loose of trying to change Texas prison conditions. I started this blog believing that if enough good people knew what was really happening in prison, conditions would change. I wrote letters to the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, my state representative and state senator and the state representatives and senators of the committees overseeing prisons.
I wrote two articles and tried to get them published by Texas Monthly, The New Yorker, O, the Oprah Magazine, AARP, The Atlantic and the Texas Bar Journal. I wrote criminal law professors at eight Texas law schools.
I’ve received two responses—one from the Texas Bar Journal declining to publish my article and the other from an outstanding law student at South Texas School of Law, who has been enormously encouraging.
The other day as I was moaning, Elizabeth said, “Drew, there will be others who bring changes to the Texas prison system. Your job is to love those men.”
There it is—"the main thing!”
* A Texas medium security prison near Hondo, Texas.
**All inmates in Texas wear white.