Chris Hoke

our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks

for joining us. Our guest today is Chris Hoke, a jail chaplain and minister to Mexican gang and migrant worker communities in Washington State. His experiences are recounted in his new book, Wanted a spiritual pursuit through Jail, among Outlaws and across Borders. Through his work with the organization Tierra Nueva, Chris co founded a coffee roasting business, Underground Coffee, which employs men coming out of prison and addiction and connects

them to agricultural partners in Honduras. Hoa's work has been featured on NPRS, Snap Judgment, and in print with Sojourners, Image Journal, Modern Farmer, and Christian Century. Here's the interview. Hi, Chris, welcome to the show. Thanks, it's going to be Your book is called Wanted, A Spiritual Pursuit through Jail, among Outlaws and Across Borders, which is a wonderful title. So I'm happy that we were able to get you on the show to talk. That's an I liked the book

a lot. One of the things that you say early on about the book was that it is a mix of true crime and spiritual adventure, which might describe the type of book that is most likely to get my attention of any kind that could be written. So I was I was definitely um interested in reading it, and I think I read it in about I don't know,

within twenty four hours. I think um and so I read a lot of books for for what we do, and uh, it's just it's great to get one that is both educational, enlightening, um inspiring and just playing fun to read at the same time. That's a it's a rare combination. So it was really nice job. Well, I'll only like what less than two months in publication days, and so hearing that, it's it's just a static for me to hear on my first books to thank you,

You're welcome. So we'll we'll get deeper into the book in a minute, but we'll start off with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed

and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second, and he looks up at his grandfather and he says, grandfather, well, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. You invited me to come to the

show of a couple of weeks ago. I looked at that parable and I realized it's seemed before I'd seen it, and some like Native American looking posters and different drug and alcohol recover centers like the lobby yea, I'm waiting for guys thro wom of the patments, And so I thought I knew it, but it never really thought about it for myself that when when knowing it, I'd be

on the show and thinking about it. What came to mind is is what if we didn't read the parable um about our own within the individual a good book from the bad wolf within me? But what if it was the good wolf and the bad wolf in inmates and then those who are locked up in society and having a responsibility and that's to ourselves individualistically, that to others, which do we feed in others in our in our

policies and our correctional system. And so I've seen, as being a chaplain in Scatuletorny Jail and Washington State here in the last ten years, um that these men have both inside them and that when they're fed a daily diet of control and distrust and being deprived of more and more of the basic human realities and of comfort and respect, um and and even touch. And that's that's something I write about in the book. Is a chapter called No Contact that came from a story I did

an NPR program a couple of years ago. Decide to just write it out, which is just my story about how when I met with these gentlemen the pastor it's a chaplin, a young pastor, if I didn't really have a pastoral style, but on myself eating and these one on one lawyer utationself them and when they were in a safe room, um and where I didn't have anything to preach it them, but I would just say it

can be pryed about that. And they often take my hand, um only and that kind of touched and they were just oh, they were just exhale, throw their head down on the table and just like rest. And then we were just right silently. It's just able to just blessed them. Opened the knee they opened in them. Um. And the

same thing was happening in these these groups. We were happening or men would be able to We could go around and laid a shoulder, the hand on the shoulder, and praise blessed them and been cursed whole life by society, about their family, by their enemies. Blessed these guys how much they were just weed, and to the most honest, tender confession and begin caring for one another. Other prods.

Several years ago, just the basic function of touch was taken away from less chaplains, and we went on one is it could only happened through the glass. And I saw when they were not said this kind of human basic of a physical context and mercy that they it was so much easier for them to become apart. In that kind of saying, when parts still have a place to keep, to break, they become part. And so when when we feed hurting men in our society, and I

can saying distrust, control, deprivation, they become worse. There the bad wolf grows. But they just agreed, hatred, fear. But when we when we see those in society where they were bad, um a diversity and support and compassionate hearing the trauma and the deprivation they've already had in their life, and how to give them what we want for our own children Um, how many of these guys are so

resilients may become leaders. And they're becoming leaders in our organization called cially the Washington State and there there's just so many treasures of society that are locked up in our jails and prisons. When we keep the good look inside them, they're really so many many of them are creative, dynamic, compassionate leaders. That's a very interesting perspective a with you know, the people that you work with. That makes a ton

of sense. And I think that's the first time anybody talked about has used the parable in you know, what are we feeding in the people around us? You know, what are we what are we recognizing? What are we drawing out of them? What are we looking for in them? Yeah? And just maybe, I mean just this conversation made me think of a book that had a great influence on me many years ago when I was in my early twenties with Um dost ask the novel The Brothers Kara

Malzov and kind of the spiritual mentor Father's Asima. This Orthodox Russian Rodox monk the holy Man. He oftentimes says all are guilty for all Um and when he was faced with the murderer. He knelt down and asked the murderer's forgiveness, which logically seems insane. Um. But the kind of Orthodox spirituality is that we're so interconnected, and so we as a society did not see the good rules in you, and so we I, on behalf of society,

asked for your forgiveness. You've been so deprived that you've gotten to the despicable state in your life. Yeah, but beautiful it is. What I'd like to do is read a couple of passages from the book that UM talk about. You know, I think that highlights some of the things that you were talking about here and just for our listeners, UM, you refer to it a little bit there, But basically,

the book is a story of you. You became a young appling in a in a jail up in northwest Washington, UM, And the book is a story of your journey through that, as well as several of the men that you met and their stories and and how that all intertwines with your spiritual view? Is that? Would you say that's a reasonably short description, that's somewhat accurate. Alright, So I'm going to read a paragraph here, and you're you're talking early on about how you were always the sort of person

that enjoyed the evening. You sort of came alive more at night than you did during the day. Yeah, boredom disappeared with the sunset. Now I wanted to step out the door and walk the warm suburban sidewalks and look at the desert stars. I wanted to read more books than write some myself. In this hour, I suddenly knew what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I wanted to pray. I don't think this was a religious impulse. I had no sense for tradition or ritual,

the bowing of heads or the folding of hands. No in trist in robes or prayer books. Nor was I longing for something transcendent in the sense of looking outside or above are mildly troubled suburban existence. Rather, I sensed there was a sweeter world hidden under the thin skin of this one. I thought that was a beautiful way of describing the spiritual search. Yeah, as I mentioned earlier with you know Dostoevsky's character, Father's Upsima, who's Orthodox Russian monk.

I'm discovering now as I go into as I study mysticism as as trying to find a language for this kind of spiritual experiences I've had with men in the Scatchy County jail for years. Um. As my study of mysticism has brought me into a closer study of Orthodox Christianity. UM. Orthodox in the sense of kind of like even pre Loment Catholicism, like the first three years of Jesus as

followers and how they understood interpreted Jesus's teaching. So we haven't the gospels, and so much of it is this Um, I don't know, I got called practical mysticism, like like the Catholics kind of relegative. The Mystics they're kind of the weirdos. They're on the outside. Um. They had these experiences and monasteries where the Orthodox never they never kind

of ghettoized the Mystics. Everyone had this kind of very they called u nolenic or intuitive kind of spiritual center to them, this kind of radio inside of their minds and their hearts. Um. And that it's it's getting more in touch about within ourselves, not having an abstract kind of after life narrative, but something that's very here and now. And so I think I think I always intuited that maybe the Orthodox monst to say, as a kid, despite

my kind of evangelical upbringing about what prayer was. I think I was intuitive that it wasn't just a transcendent thing, but that the Kingdom of God was here and hidden, and that when we were given eyes to see, we could touch into a hidden row that can transform how we lived in act. Yeah, you also say in another place that and I love this this line that creation begins not in a clean vacuum, but in the place

of darkness and chaos. And I think that's so. It ties to what we talked about on the show a lot here, because we talked very often about how it is those very challenges we have that can make us great, not not necessarily in spite of them, but because of them. Yeah.

I mean, I've just I've seen guys have spiritual awakenings in jail that I've never seen happening myself, for someone I know in a church or in religious colleges they go to, but in a place of total came I mean, imagine be getting locked up like not only is your life have enough calso and darkness to get you there, but once you're there, everything is falling apart. You're in the midst of your in the midst of your nightmare, and that that's where a relationship with yourself and God

can begin. It just it seems so right that that's the first two paragraphs of the Bible, and so that's in the book. I'm saying, that's how this. I came up here to the Northwest to learn with this guy, Bob Blood, who was writing a book called Reading the Bible with the Damned, because I want to read the Bible, but I did trusting the church is just the marey

those around. But I've came up here to be with this dude, and that the jail became a seminary and how you read even the first page of the Bible is like that sounds right. Yeah, you describe some of those early readings when you were first in the jail and and with Bob, and when you started going back yourself. And I'll read another part here, which is when we leaned over these ancient stories from opposite sides of the table,

we saw ourselves and our lives reflected back. Men born blind, guys who lied and screwed over their brothers, like Jacob, self, pity and profits like Elijah, on the run from governments they assaulted, hiding and suicidal in the deserts, violent persecutors like Saul, having mystical encounters with the risen Christ out

on the roads. These flawed characters always came up against the presence a voice, sometimes an angel of vision, and received the unexpected new site with mud and spit in their eyes, a felt presence that wrestled with him till dawn, a fresh cake in a jar of cold water in the desert, forgiveness, and a calling to tell the nations about this experience. Yeah, you want me to expand on that? You can? Um? Is it is it interesting for you

to hear your own stuff right back to you? Yeah? Yeah, I mean just just with a different audience in mine. Like I don't know who's outside my window out there in the podcast darkness right now listen to this, but just awareness of strangers could be hearing that instead of me just kind of tweaking at the glowing screen of my word processes. For me to just hear those words now, yeah, it reminds me what I was trying to get out in the first place. Um, which is uh, there's there's

no system in the Bible. There's no such thing as systematic theology. I mean, it's it's it's maybe a helpful category, but it's there's always this just raw, elusive, mysterious spiritual presence at work, doing scandalously beautiful things and meeting nobody's in the in the wreck of their lives, and then later on they go to tell about it, and then later on the people in the you know, temples and people robes and people degrees, are the ones that try

to make a system out of it. But there's just the Bible is just a series of report after report, and I would say, you know, flawed report for flawed report of like forensic reports of I don't know what the funk happened. Uh, I was blind, and now I see I was trying to kill myself in the desert and shake my fist. The heavens and mercy opened up my heart that found myself seat and refreshed, and now

I can't stop telling people about it. And that's so these are just reports after reports that something is loose and alie about there. And that's what I'm trying to pursue. In our email exchanges, I expressed that I'm not Christian, but I love the spiritual search that you describe so much in the book. And you talk about the early monks, you know, often known as the Desert Fathers, that would would go out and they were, you know, they were

searching for God. And one of the things, as it says, that they cherished tears as a sign of God's presence, that they would pray for the gift of tears, so that through sorrowing you may tame that which is savage in your soul. And I think that's such a um. I know for myself that often those moments of that

opening that seems to accompany tears. If it's not like the tears that I get when Chris kicks me in the stomach, but the kind of tears that come when when you just see something so beautiful or powerful is an opening. Yeah, Yeah, it's an active opening, and it's it's a sudden opening like laughter or or or or crying at beauty. Like Paul the Apostle. Paul says something in the beginning of Romans when he's just kind of chapter one, he's kind of chewing out all these religious people.

They're all you know, judging each other, and he writes this letter and he's just stop judging each other. You guys are hyppogrides. You guys are knuckle heads to your all knuckle heads. Don't you realize that it's the kindness of God that he's just a repentance. And I think if I would want to throw so many other words in kindness, like I would want to say, don't you realize that it's it's seeing the beauty of it transformed

heart to lead just to repentance. I mean, I used to argue with people back home about criminal justice policy, and I guess I still argue about it, um about capital punishment, and it was just hardened the debate. But when I just stopped arguing about it and pouring my life into the jail. And some of these guys I love, and many of the guys who were in the book, especially my good friend and now coworker and then meaners. Um, some people love Meaners. They're just I just went back

to southern California last week. Only did go to Homeboy Industries, but um, forty five minutes east in the kind of uplands in southern California where I grew up and my friend meeting him and this guy with tattoos on the stage and the neck in his arms and they've heard, oh yeah, this kind of Chris is working this game banger guy is changing at the Washington But they see him and just sort of delight and how fun and

how cool this guy is. So many people like there's a breaking of hearts and so many of my friends. I could just see it, seeing the beauty you have a transformed lively just to repentance. I think that's the God's calling for Its not like, okay, I saw kind going to change my ways, but it's when you see something that's so much more beautiful than the cage interesting, right, And I think it's it's easy to see the poetry in um such dramatic transformations as the ones that you

are you're talking about, and I think they are. They're they're beautiful and they're inspiring, and I think that they can be away for us to see that in ourselves, even if the circumstances aren't quite so dramatic, that that ability to change and to open and to be somebody who's very very different than the person we've been. I think we put ourselves into a limited range of the ability for me to change, Like, well, I'm kind of this person, and maybe I've got a couple of degrees

of latitude one way or the other. But you see some of these things that you're describing, and you realize, like, that's a story we're probably telling ourselves. Yeah, I mean, did to to to something you said just a couple of minutes or maybe just the beginning of that. Um, it's it's easier to see kind of a larger shift or contrast or narrative arc of transformation. And some of these guys in the jail who if lives have had extreme pain, neglect, violence, then in our own lives, I

think that's completely true. Um, I say it in one of the chapters. How for me, I feel like the jails, I feel warped existential mirror, like a fun house mirror at the carnival. That it's it's such a political cartoon. It's an exaggeration of what's going in my own heart and life. Um and so, and I can see a life change in a big way like a magnified glass.

I can tune into the more subtle experience of change in mercy in my own life and maybe didn't have such extreme darks um, but I I can see that shift in myself, and so I've wondered sometimes if part of my part of my work with men in the jail is is doing my own work of repentance and receiving love vicariously through these gentlemen. The chapter is titled Hearts like Radios. I guess I'll just do some more reading.

And the reason I'm reading so much of it is that it's just I think that the writing is so beautiful, and I feel like the conversation is going to miss a lot of that if I don't just read some of it. So I'm doing more of that than normal for listeners who are wondering. But that's just because I think it's it's the best way to get to some of this stuff. Well, I'll just I'll just go into it. For some time, I've imagined all of us having a fragile nerve inside of us, like a spiritual intenda deep

within our core. Some people, I've thought simply have an abnormally large antenna inside. Poets profits psychopaths, you're slightly crazy aunt who's drawn to the paranormal, who some days is more compassionate than anyone you know, and other days is aggressive and convinced everyone, including the government, is conspiring against her. In my work, both behind jail bars and the years i continued with homeless youth on the streets of downtown Seattle,

I've met a number of young people with schizophrenia. I've wondered, when talking with them about some of the abuse and trauma they have survived, whether the internal antenna nerves of some people are damaged. Maybe they could be exposed jutting out like a bone from a broken arm, picking up way too much of the otherwise faint spiritual frequencies coursing through the world from beyond as well as the person

across the room. I've wondered whether some of these people slam heroin or meth or any street medicine they can find as a way of jamming cotton into their spiritual ears. It's not a real theory, just how I've pictured that part inside of us all. I thought that was a very interesting description of a you know, schizophrenia, but mental illness in general, and just a way of thinking about um.

People who are more attuned to the to the sensitivity and you go on to talk about how if you look at people, you know, certainly some of the Biblical figures that that are looked up to the profits they from the outside, and certainly if you put them in today's world, they would look crazy. Absolutely, we'd lock them up, right,

we lock them up? Click quick, Yeah. I mean I think that's where the jail, along with Bob's very very Protestant bent to really stick close to scripture and hold scripture tightly, um, which I was not inclined to do after growing up in church. But the jail gave me a new place to like getting a closure to scripture.

Like wait, let's kind of like throw off the kind of pastel I'm kind of a Sunday School version we've seenk we know the scripture, let's really look at that stuff and let's read it with some people that um,

I can read it for what it is. It didn't have that church upbringing maybe and seeing that this these characters and Bible are equally is is raw, not more off the hook than than my reading partners in their jail scrubs, and and so he has seeing how raw that the prophets are, um, and how they get they get beat and locked up and thrown in a hole,

especially Jeremiah. My friend Naners, who features largely in a final chapter called Fire in the Hole about his time in solitary confinement and somewhat mystical experiences in the solitary confinement. He started really identifying with Jeremiah, this guy who who was just weeping and weeping and weeping, and it was was miserable and the words that he had were silent, that he was he was thrown in a pit. You know, time's called the whole and there these are extreme experiences.

And so as I tell him the chapter at the same time that I was coming across some of these folks in jail, but some of these really lovable types that a company I don't know le even crawl through my my bedroom window some nights and just broke in his way into my life over and over and totally nonviolent and loving way. But it's so tormented, like he

was hearing stuff all the time I was. I was forced to really not just right off there, oh well, do hear voice, that's crazy, um, but really canna be curious about the content of what he was hearing when at the same time our ministry was in a season we were getting into more contemplative prayer, and even some of the charismatics who are like, um, you can hear God speak today. Just quite yourself down, focus on God,

get a pen out. Trust kind of intuitively. I don't think they used that word, since the Orthodox should say, you know, trust your kind of intuitive spiritual antenna. Ask a question and right down what comes to mind. It won't sound often say in the jail, and oftentimes won't sound like the role. It was just kind of flow through like a thought, but better than your normal thoughts. Um, write it down, because it's so easy to write off just it's easy so quickly to write off schizophrenics, that

easy to write off God speaking to us. It just sounds sleeping and crazy. Um, write it down. And while I was trying to like tune in and really silence my mind and tune in and pick up on this possibility of the faint message of God's heart whispering through my mind, and then like kind of the later after go upstairs and take care of this guy Cecil from schizophrenia's swinging a golf club through the room. Uh I could calm him down, not by telling him those voices

aren't real, you know, pussing out through the windows. They're like, all right, she's got this big antenna. Um, let's just use it. Let's just dial into a different frequency. All right, let's just let's just pray right now, which it seems I guess practical kind of like de escalation doesn't seem the right thing to do, but it seems a kind of more honoring to him. A right, okay, you are hearing ship. Let's just turn to a different dottle bro and tuning into God. And that it seemed to hear

her were immediate and they were beautiful. I'm like, oh my gosh, this guy is hearing everything that everyone downstairs in the listening prayer class. He's trying so hard to hear I don't hear God's voice, okay, hearing it. And he's also hearing you know voice is saying like a piece of ship, fuck you. Yeah, yeah, you're gonna beat this out right. We don't necessarily have to, but we can if you want. Oh no, no, I don't care to make sure. No, we don't care soiling your show.

Our show has been plenty soiled by this point, so not by you. But bye bye bye, Bye Bye, sixty episodes of me talking. So no, You're fine, carry on, Okay. So these guys just hearing these voices just you know, just just means just ship talking voices in their head, but they hear it, and so um it just that just forced me to kind of think that the world of mental health and hallucination and the world of spiritual listening maybe we're not so different, and there might be

some there's obvious differences. So I have a lot of people that have family members that really suffer with mental illness, and they can sometimes take issue with what I'm saying if they feel I'm just romanticizing mental illness. Um, but I think if they really hear me out and hear the stories of the people I work with, like no, I have no illusion about the absolute insanity and meaninglessness and torment and psychic turmoil these people can go through.

And yet some of them maybe part of their mental illness is um they're really picking up on stuff. And then through the chapter I try to explore like, well, what's the implications of that for the Western modern mind? Are there really spiritual currencies out there and they're not just projections of their own wounded consciousness bouncing around in their head, but maybe they're picking up on stuff that, you know, the next generations of physics and sixty years

will finally tune into. You talk about how if there are those frequencies that maybe these folks, as you described earlier, it's it's like the antenna is is damaged. It's overly sensitive, so it's it's picking up all the good and bad. And you do describe with with some of the folks that when you ask them more about the voices, there

is another voice there that is kinder, more loving, generous voice. Yeah, yeah, it's I think there's maybe they've they've they've been tuned into that channel and many times in their life, but they had more people telling them they were nuts than they had people saying, oh that's gotten He adore you

stay on that channel later. You describe quote from the Jewish theologian Abraham Joshua Herschel where he says or Heschel describes the prophets not so much as official spokesman with verbatim divine pronouncements, but as humans with a severe sensitivity to evil. To the prophets, he writes, even a minor injustice assumes cosmic proportions, and the prophet's ear is attuned to a cry imperceptible to others. They are so sense it if to what we overlook or have ceased to feel,

they appear insane. Heschel says that the prophet is primarily burdened with the pathos of God, an infinite vulnerability, and I shouldgree that every morning, not my own writing, but Heschel, um, uh, yeah, that it was. It was neat to be thinking about this stuff that we've just been talking about, and then to go back to anyone listening to the show, like buy that book, Abraham Joshua Heschel the Prophet, it's amazing, um, And that's from me. At his first chapter, he just defined,

like what what is the prophet? And he kind of tears down these kind of Western ideas and he's trying to get back to it kind of the weirdness of the Hebrew imagination. He's carrying down all these Western Greek philosophies of you know, people that kind of hear these DeLine pronouncements like they're just microphones, and it's just like no, no, no, the prophet the someone like us, now my language, who's

antenna is so swollen, and it's so large. They're taking up on everything their heart, the heart of their radio. It's so big, and it's so sensitive. It's a big in a sensitive as God and and and the injustices that we can see on TMN and turn the channel, or the just the inequities of society. We've just grown umpto. What if you couldn't grown unto it? It would break your heart. It would constantly be heartbroken, and you would constantly in love your your eyes would ever be dry.

That this is the heart of God and the prophets. So the one's burdened with the heart that big. Yeah, that's a beautiful way of of thinking about it. So intentional, He's are so cool, he's he kind of goes to the root of a lot of our Western suppositions and he says, like kind of the stoic philosophical tradition that we're still in. He says, is that you know, wisdom or godliness is like this impassability, being unmoved um um.

I don't know enough about Buddhism to comment on that, but I do sense there's a certain detachment, there's a there's a loving detachment, but know and all of us. We don't want to suffer, and so to the opposite direction, it's like the cross, it's running headlong and suffering, where some of our philosophies are about avoiding suffering and dee serene and a piece. But yeah, there's this opposite direction of the humor imagination of love means embracing the suffering.

To love is to suffering, and to avoid suffering is too slowly the less of the loving person. Yeah, Buddhism is interesting because that is certainly one interpretation of it is that it is a you know, if you are detached, if you have no preference in anything, then you suffer less.

And then there's another group of people in Buddhism that talk about finding that soft spot underneath everything, finding that sort of words you use, that infinite tenderness that m learning to be okay with the essential insecurity that comes with life, like embracing it and not trying to pretend it's not there. So it's I rest it with those questions too. I'm a I'm a I aligned a lot with Buddhist thought, and I that is one of those questions that I sort of wrestle with a lot, which

is around that. Well, is detachment really the ideal state? Is that? What is that? What spirituality is that? I think that's a I don't think that that's what's really being taught, but I think sometimes it's hard for us to hear or it's not being presented well in a way of what's really there. Yeah, right, but that is a you know, I do I do think that question

of suffering. And you know, I was talking recently on one of the episodes about working with what you can change and what you can't change and how um you know, is this idea of you know, Stephen Covey had this idea of a circle of um concern, which is like the broad world, everything you sort of concerned about, and then a circle of influence, which is what you can actually act upon or do something with or be involved with.

And that he said that if you spend all your time in your circle of concern, that circle of influence actually starts to shrink, Whereas if you spend your time in that circle of influence and you you keep working at it, then that grows. And that makes a lot

of very intuitive sense to me. And then I also go, but is that sticking your head in the sand, and I think the challenges like you describe the work you do in the jails and the I mean, there's stories in your book that are just heartbreaking and the and the prison system, and we could we could flip around and find ten other major areas of the world poverty or sex trafficking, or that are equally painful and heartbreaking.

And what's the right response to that in a way that allows us to be useful and compassionate but not completely just overwhelmed by grief. That's a great question, I mean, just the way you're framing it. I like that. What did you say, Stephen Kobe, Yes, Stephen Covey, he wrote the guy wrote seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Yeah, I missed that one heard of that title. I should

have read that. I like that because I think that helps explain something I touched on really quickly in the chapter that tells kind of how I came appeared in the Northwest and to do what I do in a jail.

But in college I went to UC Berkeley, and man talked about a circle of of concern, like just every class and walking through a sprawl plause and hearing about injustice is happening everywhere in the world, and so many of my peers just getting like Rhodes scholarships and summer internships, and they're all changing the world that I'm You're aware of too many problems in the world, a huge circle of concern, and I had zero circle of influence. It was just me and I was dying of loneliness and

uselessness in the world. And that's when I was most suicidal. UM. And so I needed to come up to this tiny jail in a in a tiny um, you know, leaving the Bay Area into little scatchup pal Washington I'd never heard of, and the small confined room this is confined jail. And then within this confined jail and this tiny cell the size of a closet at one table with one person, and then to start to see the power of mercy, kind of prayer, end of being together truthfully with someone

and that started to UM. I started to come alive in that space. And I don't know, I'm just rethinking through the story with those category categories you just gave me. And I think now my ten years later, as we grow our coffee roasting business, Underground Coffee, and where we're fundraising stands for guys like Meaners and others on guys who have left that that life to become kind of

fellow outreach workers with me and our staff grows. My my circle of consciousness is growing, and we're going Humble Industries and speaking in Nashville and in North Carolina in a couple of weeks. It's growing now because, like you're saying, the circle of influences finally glute somewhere and something I really care about. It's connected to my heart right and it's been yeah, and your circle, you know that your

circle of influence has definitely grown. I mean, I'm I'm reading your book and and uh, you know, talking to two lots of people about it, and I think there's

you know, there's a lot of it. I just I always find that concept fascinating and to try and figure out what is the appropriate response to suffering because it is everywhere, and there's a there's a degree of compassion that I feel like you know, we have, but it it can be it can become um crippling and and and despair is a you know, as you talked about your you know, early on for you, it was a

pretty overwhelming thing I do have a question. A couple of times through the book you talk about out that even while doing this work, you enter into despair because you've got Certainly there are there are success stories, and there are people who make dramatic transformations in their life, and yet there's a lot of people that that is not what happens for a variety of reasons, whether that be the prison system they're in, the gang life that they were in that won't leave them alone, demons from

before that they can't quite shake. How how do you you talk about wrestling with it in the book a couple of times, where are you at with that? Right now?

I'm still learning how to love um. I mean, that's that's the same problem that I had with the men are working with, is they loved at one point and then they got hurt, They got rejected, they got betrayed, maybe by their girlfriend, by their family, by their best friend, by their homie who rated them out, or they got assaulted in prison that their kids said, you know, screw you at all of the anymore. And so we protect ourselves because that hurts so bad, so we we forget

how to love. Um. It's the same for me. You I would have thought, as I am a pastoring now for ten years, that I would just be growing in love. But I find it's it's harder and harder for me. There's some I've loved and loved and so many people

have not been able to reciprocate. Um. And it's it's sad enough as they die in prison, if they get shot down by federal marshals, um, when they can't bear their own pain, and they get just so addicted to a chemical cozy blanket and shove heroin in their veins and delly up, that's bad enough. But maybe this is selfish. But what hurts worse is someone that I've really seen, I've gone fly fishing with, and I've done their budgeting with, and I've bounced their kids around and laughed with and

called them my friend. And when and they don't call me back, and when I don't know what I did wrong or if I can analyze their own shame or why they're hiding from a But when I've lost a friend and I've turned away from me, it makes me very careful and wanting to call someone else my friend again, and wanting to share life, wanting to share life with them. It makes me want to go find more white bearded

hipsterre Um. Uh, you know, craft deer loving dudes with need with need glasses and Billingham like me, who who won't break my heart? Um, like some of the guys that I shared these years with. Um, it's really hard. Yeah, that is a difficult path. I mean I've you know, I talk off in the show I'm in recovery, and unfortunately, you know, I've got a lot of friends who have made it and and a fair number of people who didn't. And that is that is hard. And I don't know

that what you're dealing with is exactly the same. But in in recovery, we have the concept of of it being um, you know, of of it being a disease, the the the the alcoholism, of the drug addiction, and that that that just tends to become more powerful. Then UM, I guess it's it's it. It gives it a way to not take it, to try not to take it as personal, because, um, it's not that that person doesn't

doesn't love or care. It's just that they're overwhelmed by something that they simply can't I can't deal with it, But it doesn't change the fact that it's still you know, breaks your heart. When we got to the end of the book. Um, you know, at the end of the book, you are this guy Nianers that is you know, he's throughout the book in a lot of different places, he's close to finally getting out. And I finished the book and I was like, oh, no, did he I mean

like it was like a cliffhanger. I was like, I'm hoping to god this guy got out after you know, all the other heartbreak you've described, and so I was very happy to hear that that he had and things were going well. Yeah, I Um, I thought about that, like, yeah, I guess in any non fictional work, like the story keeps living, but where does where does the work of

our where does the book end? Um? And Honestly, when I was writing that that chapter still, you know, finishing the book, it was still four or five months off for his release date. And we've been We've had two or three release dates, and then last minute something happened and he's losing a year good time. Um, and who knows if within this year losing the time that Phil survived and after one main character, the other main characters

in the book seems Richard or little jokes. Um. He literally brought it to death in the first world prison here in Washington State at age six, preventable flashing disease. UM. And a lot of guys get stanted that they're taking off mainline or shot down by snipers. Um. They don't make the news, so we don't know how often this happens. UM. Because and so I had i'd hope that he was going to get out, but I realized I needed to I needed to leave the book with that question mark.

Even if I could kind of like type in a final paragraph for the publisher after Naters got out and everything has been going well, I think it was better for readers to sit with that emotion with me althe it's not needers. What about you know, in the X millions of them out there, like are they going to

make it out? And do we care? Yeah? It was really powerful and I've I've actually had a very specific experience with a very good friend of mine who was in jail, and you know, it was just the same thing.

It was like he was about to be out and then he would you know, something would happen and and you know he wouldn't get out and then ultimately he sealed his own fate by um, you know, he was on his way back from work release and he decided to get off the bus on the way back to jail and and and smoke crack for a couple of days, which is, you know, clearly insanity anyway you describe it. But so I I really resonated with it personally also so but I'm glad he's doing well. Oh yeah, it's

my buddy. I mean, if you go on my website or um, it's really easy to see pictures Keaners and and hear about what we're doing now on my Facebook. So we were just down at othern California and uh that Homeboy Industries and one of my health and friends. It's just like, what are you guys doing tomorrow? Well, we're gonna wrap up and it's like I'm gonna take you guy to Disneyland. So to just go back to where I was as a kid, you know, the happiest

place on earth. Threatened like how they he bought us like those classic Mickey ears with with their names embroidered on the back, and it's it's it's really turning into a happy ending. And yet we get home and there's five problems waiting for us. But he would have every reason just want to be like, I'm done, you know, I'm out. I've got to just handle with just the pain of family life and stretchers and debt m and so it's it's a constant roller poster. But we're um.

I think that might be the next Bookie writing just about our relationship called Thicker Than Blood, about rediscovering that there there's something you know, you know the phrase, you know, blood is thicker than water, but that I've witnessed there was something to them blood. Yeah, I think there is. I actually think there is. We're near the end of time,

so just a couple. One of the really fun parts of the book was describing how you got connected with David James Duncan, who wrote one of my favorite books ever, The Brothers k Um. That book just blows me away. And uh, but he's very into fly fishing, and so you guys got connected and you started taking these guys um. You know, it was one of the things that you

did a lot with him, was fly fishing. And there's just there's there's a there's a happiness that leaks through your writing about those moments where you're you know where those guys are and you are out there doing that. So, um, any anything you want to add to that. That was just a fun part of the story. I wish I

did it more. I mean, it's probably the problem of most fathers in America though, which they love fishing, but they it's it's so you did to get wrapped up in your work and not take the time to like take the kids fishing. Um, not that I'm these guys father, but it feels similar. You just got to do it. Almost every guy I've taken just loves it. I keep thinking, there's shoulna be like, man, this is stupid, but they

love it. I bumped into a new generational gang members on the streets now that haven't even been in jails, are all just teaching school and breaking out windows and for feeding up school property. And so I I'm meeting I'm at a gang leader and he's got, like any of these youngsters that follow him. I'm like, you guys want to get out of here? Yeah, we always wanted to go camping, Like, well, I'll go up sleeping bag,

but let's go. Let's go get into this archery because I, you know, I got into it because of the hundry games is cool. And so we got into this forest with all these like hay bales with burn lap sacks hanging over them in the stencil of like a deer or a bear, and we start pulling back these arrows and they're flying and sticking in you bales, and you guys just love it. Man. I wish I could do this full time and just go straight from the jail to fishing with guys and doing archery wor them. Um,

And so I gotta do it more. But it's nice to just taste nature. I mean, that's like a one chapter in the book, the fly fishing chapter where trying to paint a bigger picture of redemptions just about are inside our hearts or fixing our legal cases, but there's also a reconciliation for creation that really round out our whole mess. Yeah, so finding ways to get out there. And one of the things that your group has done is you've created um an organization called Underground Coffee. Can

you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, well, um, I was inspired by Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles several years ago when I was getting into unwittingly into gang ministry, and I thought, well, who else is doing this? So

I can learn from them? And one of the gang members in jail said one of his favorite books was a book called G Dog and the Homeboys, And so I was reading The Dog in the Homeboys once summer once the Demon a migrant camp cabin when I was also reaching out to migranpharm workers and G Dog and the Homeboys down at Homeboy industries. What they've done is started to create jobs that that hired exclusively, like guys

with salons and with tattoos, and we're hirable that. Down at Homebo industry they have um silk screen and bakery in the cafe, And so I thought, what could be our industry? And right around then Bob our founder here at Cheering Away About and West Washington, said, hey, O, our basic community down in Honduras where we started years ago, they're growing some some pretty high grade coffee now, saying, our our friend Zach had been coming around. We has

had like seventeen years as a intravenous needle drug addict. UM. We started scheming and thinking of wait, what have we bought the coffee from Honduras, and our industry will be will be coffee roasters and zactly as experienced UH cooking us in the past, and so using that, honoring that as a transferable skill. And so we started roasting coffee and we came up the name Underground Coffee. And now

we have a brand, we have a website. Our coffee is purchased right now exclusive which got exclusive almost exclusively at churches, um giving these guys a job and roasting and packaging and speaking these churches. But now our neighbors at another coffee roasting company in our valley, Donal Bay Coffee Roasters, they've kind of taken us under their wing and seeing our coffee will be on the shelves of some of their distribution channels and grocery stores throughout Seattle.

And the listeners want to check it out with the website Underground Coffee Project dot com. You know, it's really simple website. It's run together. But we can get a subscription and too, especially roasted bags with our story will be in your mailbox and you can through your coffee

for your morning brew be connected to Underground Change. There's your kitch yep and so you can buy either the subscription, or you could just buy a single bag of coffee there also, right, oh yeah, things like that are great. It's a it's a great story and a great product. So I'll definitely have links to um Tearing a Wava, the Underground Coffee all that on the show notes. Well, thank you so much Chris for taking the time to join.

I really enjoyed this conversation. I could probably uh read parts of your book out loud for the next two hours, but I'll spare everyone. But I highly recommend checking out the book. It's a great read. And thanks for all the great work you're doing. Eric. This is this has been a pleasure. This my favorite interview I've done. But I thanks so much and I look forward to listening to morrow your show. All right, thanks Chris, take care,

we'll talk again soon. He's there, all right by. You can learn more about Chris Hoke and this podcast at one new feed dot net slash Hope