Light Up This Joint—A Prisoner’s Story
—Mickey Owens

Over and over Kim has asked me to put more into this last chapter. She says it lacks the soul of most of my other chapters. After many months of trying to give her what she’s asked for, it occurred to me that the problem is that I haven’t had the soul to give to this part of my story. My spiritual journey has had its ups and downs, its ebbs and flows. Sometimes it’s been easy for me to feel the Spirit and sometimes God has felt so far away as to be almost nonexistent. I have found myself in one of those times.

Sometimes it is hard to feel grateful. Sometimes it is hard to see the Light. Sometimes it is hard to find meaning to my existence or feel Divine support in the living of it. But being aware that this has been an ebb in my spiritual tide, and that I am in control of the flow helps me. The word “repent” in the Bible was originally a Greek word meaning “to face another direction.” I know the Light is always in my life and that seeing it is dependent upon me looking in another direction—to take my focus off the many shadows and dark spots in this place and look back toward the Light. When I once again come out of the valley of the shadows, the contrast will make the light all the more brilliant.

I am now in the Autumn of my life and as much as I wish for it, I will not likely take my last breath in a mountain cabin, but right here, in a house of steely architecture and steely dispositions. My cabin in the mountain was heavenly, but I know heaven is accessible anywhere, even in Pleasant Valley State Prison. It’s simply a matter of facing another direction. Sometimes a simple turn of the head, even a slight change in focal point, takes monumental effort, but I am making the shift and once again beginning to feel at peace. I believe that God is a happy God and is even happier when we are happy. I look at a card that Kim sent me; on it are butterflies rising up and she has written, “Rise up and the whole Universe rises up with you.” That is my intention.

Kim says she believes there are people on this planet whose soul purpose it is to anchor the light for the rest of humanity, to keep the Divine flame burning through the dark nights of the collective Soul. She thinks I am one of these people. I can feel the truth of this. I may live in a 6’x10’ cement cage, but in me lives darting dragonflies, the pure play of children, peaceful afternoons along the Arkansas river, a mountain meadow, a family of coyotes, the kindness of strangers, the hugs of friendship, desert sunsets, Nora’s smile, the never-ending love of my mother, and the wings of the Holy Spirit. They carry me high above the steel and concrete in which my body resides, to a place where there is only light, life, joy and love. I soak up the goodness until I am ablaze with it, and carry it back with me to my cell and really light up this joint.

Excerpted from Life Sentence Live Purpose by Mickey Owens with Kim Whiting.

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