Encounters --- by Ray Hart

Jeff's Story: "Forgiveness Is The Key To Happiness" (A Course In Miracles)

How can forgiveness be the key to happiness? Isn't life filled with sunshine and rainbows and well lived happiness? I really don't know what some people consider happiness. But I do know where I am and what kind of work I do isn't happiness. For example, there was Jeff.

Jeff spent most of his life in prison. He went to prison at eighteen and he left this earthly plane at fifty-four. His life behind the cold gray walls was unextraordinary for the most part. He got up each day and went through a daily routine after breakfast. His routine consisted of keeping the cell block clean and mopped every day, seven days a week. He went about his duties without complaining, even when his body was giving out with the dampness and the cold.

There was another part of Jeff's routine that he did seven days a week. That was to thank God each night for the day past, and in the morning asking God to help him get through the day to come. Nothing extraordinary about that. Jeff simply felt at peace with himself. It wasn't always like that.

The first few years Jeff was in prison he resented every moment of it. He hated the guards, he despised the other cons, and he did every thing he could to make his feelings clear. Usually he was in solitary confinement because of the fights he got into frequently. His stays in solitary were compounded by the frequency. At first it was three days on bread and water. It progressed to a week shortly thereafter. Eventually he only saw the light of day every couple of months only to return to solitary a few days later for beating up another con.

Jeff turned twenty in solitary. For his birthday he was visited by a mouse. The mouse came right up to Jeff and sat in front of him, like a puppy begging for a piece of Jeff's bread. He gave him a precious crumb and the shabby looking mouse gobbled it up and sat back to look up at Jeff again. He gave him another crumb. Not a good idea.

The mouse came around every day precisely at the time Jeff began eating his bread. Every three days Jeff got a meal according to the rules at the time. He shared a little of his meal with Mickey, the name he had given the shabby little mouse, and talked to it like it was an old buddy. It got to the point where Jeff would talk for long periods of time while the mouse sat in front of him. Jeff swore that the mouse was sending him messages silently.

The day before Jeff was to leave solitary he was on such a friendly basis with Mickey that he wrapped him up in a dirty tee-shirt and took him out with him to his new cell. Mickey hung around the cell and became a constant companion to Jeff. And in his conversations with Mickey he somehow got that he wasn't to go back to solitary to abandon the shabby little critter.

Jeff changed Mickey's name to Minnie when he discovered a couple of tiny critters following his pal around. And that is probably what made Jeff decide finally to accept the fact that he would be in prison for the rest of his life. Having made that choice he decided to make it as good as it could be. What he discovered in the process was that he had to forgive himself for the past. He did that by forgiving the guards he hated, and all of the cons he despised. And when he left his earthly plane in his cell was found a tiny bed in a nest in a corner. The bed was made out of cigarette wrappers. On the wall of Jeff's cell hung only one picture. It was a pencil drawing of a little tattered mouse smiling, and underneath was written: "It's all here right now."

--- © by Ray Hart

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