Stacey Campbell | From Control to Compassion: How Love Transforms Power
Bruce’s guest today is Stacey Campbell. Stacey serves as the President & CEO of Prison Fellowship Canada, a national ministry organization that prepares and mobilizes the Church community in response to the issue of crime and the restoration of offenders. Stacey and HNS ED Bruce Adema discuss Henri Nouwen’s letter that talks about power. How do spiritual power and worldly power manifest themselves? How do they get corrupted, and how can they be restored? It’s easy to become cynical, but we are called to a better way.
Resources
Prison Fellowship Canada
https://prisonfellowship.ca/
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Transcript
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Bruce Adema: Hello, and welcome to this episode of the Love Henri podcast, produced by the Henri Now Society. My name is Bruce Adema, and I'm the executive director of the Henri Nouwen Society, part of a great team that encourages spiritual transformation through the writings and legacy of the spiritual guide Henri Nouwen. If you've appreciated Henri for a long time, or if you've just been introduced to him and his writings, I encourage you to sign up for the daily meditations on our website, henrinouwen.org, and be reminded every day that you are a beloved child of God. Our guest today is Stacey Campbell. Stacey serves as president and CEO of Prison Fellowship Canada, a national ministry that prepares and mobilizes the church community in response to the issue of crime and the restoration of offenders. Stacey is currently writing her thesis and is a candidate for a doctor of ministry degree in restorative justice through Acadia University.
Bruce Adema: Stacey believes in a response to crime that veers away from both punitive and moralistic programming. She preaches and teaches on subjects that she's passionate about, including confession, repentance, forgiveness, the Canadian prison system, trauma, resilience, and justice. Wow. What a great guest we have today! Stacy, thank you very much for being with us. I've introduced you in kind of a basic thumbnail sort of way. Do you wanna fill in the picture of who you are a little bit more?
Stacey Campbell: Sure. Well, thanks Bruce, and it's great to be with you here, and I’m so excited to be talking about Henri's work. Just a little bit about me. I'm from the area of course, and with our prison ministry. We work across Canada. I have two adult children.
Bruce Adema: How long you've been with prison fellowship?
Stacey Campbell: So a little bit more about me, working at prison Fellowship. We work across the country, in 164 jails and prisons across the country. And so that's the scope of our work. I've been with the organization since 2009 and continue to find a lot of fulfillment in God's calling to be there.
Bruce Adema: Oh, well, it's wonderful that you are serving in this way, and it is a really powerful and beautiful ministry that you and your colleagues share together. Can you tell us, Stacy, about how you got to know or became familiar with Henri Nouwen?
Stacey Campbell: Absolutely. Henri was brand new to me when I started seminary at Tyndale University and Seminary, and he was introduced in a leadership course, using the book in the name of Jesus that he wrote. We then went on through pastoral care, where some of Henri's work was used as textbooks, the wounded healer, and a number of others. And, bit by bit on my own over time, I, just began to collect and read Henri's books until I had the entire collection!
Bruce Adema: That's wonderful.. This podcast we're calling Love Henri, because Henri was a prolific letter writer. He wrote 40 books, which were very popular. He was a retreat speaker, he was a professor, a lecturer, and because he became well known, people would write to him, and ask questions, and share their problems. And invariably Henri wrote back to them. Well, he had a lovely habit of keeping every letter that he received. He also made a carbon copy of every letter that he sent, and all of those letters are in the archive at the University of Toronto. We have over 16,000 letters of Henri's.
Stacey Campbell: It's a full-time job right there.
Bruce Adema: Oh, it is. And our archivists are just amazing people. We really appreciate them. Well, some of those letters, not all 16,000 of them have been put together in a book called Love Henri. And, it's a great book. I'd encourage you to get a hold of it yourself, and discover the wisdom. So, our concept of this podcast is we take one of the letters out of the Love Henri book, meet with a guest who has insight, some expertise on the subject within that letter, and, have a conversation that you listen into. Today's letter was written on June 23rd, 1989, and it was in response to a letter he received about one of his books, which talked about power and love and, secular power, spiritual power, all that kind of stuff.
Bruce Adema: So what I would like to do is read that letter to you, and then, Stacy and I will have a conversation about it. This letter was to a man named Ed Wojcicki.
June 23 1989
Dear Ed,
Thanks so much for your very kind response to In the Name of Jesus. I really appreciate what you say about power and love, and I agree that I need to do a lot more work on it to avoid falling into over-simplification.
I continue to be impressed with how Jesus continues to stay away from Power. Even when it is offered to him constantly, he radically says ‘No’ to the Satan who offers him different forms of power. During His ministry, he stays away from accepting any form of political power, but, indeed, His love for people was so powerful that the dead came to life and the sick were healed. But the power of love is obviously a power that comes from Jesus’ deep rootedness in His Father; whereas the power he keeps declining is the power that is found in the identity that people give us. Maybe it all boils down to that power that comes from our deep connectedness with God is life giving and healing; whereas the power that comes from our need for affirmation and success in the human community leads easily to manipulative and destructive behavior. I, personally, have no difficulties with people having political, economic or social power as long as their identity remains rooted in the relations with God. Very concretely, that often means a willingness to let go of power when holding on to power asks for a moral or spiritual compromise. In the political world, I have often seen how concerns for re-election were so dominant that you could hardly see how a senator or representative could truly speak from his [or her] center.
Well, these are just some quick responses to your good letter. I am excited about your plan to write a book about cynicism and desire for hope. Cynicism is truly a very important subject to deal with at this moment.
My health is better but not totally restored yet. Next week I am going to Vancouver for a week of rest, and I hope to get another few weeks in the summer. Keep me in your prayers and stay in touch.
Yours,
Henri
Stacey Campbell: Beautiful.
Bruce Adema: Yeah. What was your reaction to Henri's letter, Stacy?
Stacey Campbell: It's such an important topic and Henri's so gentle and, and so safe to have a conversation with about this. Those are the things that I thought of when I read the letter, and then in response, how he positions love and power, and just how, how ageless, how timeless that conversation is, and how, how important it is, how indicative it is of our spiritual life, how we can find where we are on that continuum. Really good stuff.
Bruce Adema: Yeah. Power is such a, a timely topic as you just said. What are some instances where you've seen power used really well?
Stacey Campbell: When I think of power, this isn't definitive, and I'm certainly no expert on power or love, although I've been a profound witness of both <laugh>. But where I have seen power, I think of influence. So when, and where have I seen it? Used well, when we're really, dialed in to our best selves, when we're most connected to God, and, and we're emptied of our own will and wanting to pursue his, and we use our influence or power from that place, that's the best use of power.
Bruce Adema: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Henri makes a distinction between secular power, and worldly power. I wasn't quite sure what word to use there, contrasted with spiritual power. How have you seen the interplay of those two types of power demonstrated?
Stacey Campbell: Yeah. I think we can all come to a place where we're pursuing our own selfish will, and that's where our own political can be our individual political power or where we see it lived out on a community level. But when we're pursuing the things that we selfishly want that are connected to our fear, to our pain, I think that's where we experience that, versus being connected to understanding our belovedness, our belonging, that Henri talks about and, and working out of that paradigm.
Bruce Adema: It was interesting to me, in Henri's letter, he references the scripture, the story of Jesus being tempted by by the devil. And the devil offers him power. Political power. Each time Jesus rejects that power . Does that mean that we need to reject that power?
Stacey Campbell: I think so. Bruce, one of my favorite pieces in Henri's work is where he talks about the power to be relevant. Or rather, the temptation to be relevant, the temptation to be powerful, the temptation to be spectacular.. And I think particularly as leaders, those things visit us on a very frequent basis. And so constantly looking at our motivation, if I'm working on a project and I don't want to take the time to be patient with people that are on my team, and I just had this great idea and I wanna run with it myself, is that the power to be spectacular? It's a great section that he talks about in there. Does it mean we can't use our influence politically? No, I don't think so. I don't think that's what Henri's saying either. I think it comes down to that motivation of the heart: whose will am I advancing when I use my power?
Bruce Adema: Some people do have power. Yes, absolutely. Political power. As the executive director of prison fellowship, a hundred percent, you have power. I'm the executive director of the Henri Nouwen Society. That gives me a certain kind of power. Absolutely. Jesus said no to power, even when people were trying to give it to him. And, you know, Satan offered it to him, but the crowds at different points of ministry said, we wanna make you our king. You know, we want you to be what we want you to be. And then when I see, I know where, where I live, we're going through a bi-election. For our provincial government. And these people are vying for power. That’s appropriate, isn't it?
Stacey Campbell: I think it can be. I don't ascribe one side or another, either good or evil to that. It's neutral. It's how it's used, right? Because what they're looking for, they're trying to get power, which is influence. They're trying to get influence because the more people that vote for them, then the more influence they have. But what's the motivation to do what? And I think that's what determines. It's goodness, or it's not for good.
Bruce Adema: Yeah. Years ago, I lived, in a country on another continent . And it was said there that Christians could not be in politics. They could not run for any kind of government position. Because the only way to get elected was to be corrupt. You had to buy votes. You had to do immoral things in order to get elected. Thankfully, I think that that is much less true where we are living. But the question that comes out of this is when you have to choose, people that have power in a secular world, hopefully they also know God>. And tap into that spiritual power. But when the two conflict, that's the hard point. Yeah.
Stacey Campbell: That's, and maybe why Jesus eschewed political power. It does bring you into conflict. It'd be interesting, Bruce, wouldn't it, to know when, when people wrote those rules that you couldn't, you couldn't be in politics. What was their motivation for that? Yeah. I don't know the answer, but it'd be interesting.
Bruce Adema: One of the things I think people at times have assumed, like my experience overseas . That political politics is a dirty business. And that kind of power, it just cannot be ours. We now live in a place where we can have that power and, and good Christian folk are serving in, in different kinds of offices, but if the choice comes between who they serve and what they need to do, they have to make a decision.
Stacey Campbell: Yeah. Difficult decisions.
Bruce Adema: In your work is in the prison ministry. And imagine many of the people that you connect with have had difficult experiences with power.
Stacey Campbell: That's right. It's a system rife with power for sure. It's built on the premise of power. I'm not sure if every institution has political or power wrangling, whatever you wanna call it. But, yes, in the Canadian prison system, for sure. And I think I wanna preface this by saying that there's tremendously good work that is done by people in corrections. But overall, if our goal is to rehabilitate and we look at the fruit of what has happened, power has been an absolute failure.
Bruce Adema: One of your interests, I know that you're doing your dissertation on this, on restorative justice . Which has been something I've been very intrigued by. The idea that instead of just punishing, that you say, we're going to restore the relationship, which involves - well, you can tell me what, what it involves. But it seems very appropriate, to Jesus, when he was offered these things by, by the devil. His response was, no love. Right. I have to love the Lord. You love the Lord of God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. Trust in the Father rather than trusting in your own power.
Stacey Campbell: Absolutely. We tend to maybe ascribe sentimentalism to when we start talking about love and we turn it into sentimental things, and there's lots of things to help us with making it sentimental, but truthfully, there is no greater power, than the power of love. Right. And that is the point, certainly in restorative justice. There's no, there's no silver bullet, there's no magic to it. But really when it comes to a place where there's no judgment, a safe place with no judgment, where people can come to terms with themselves, what they've done and carry that conversation on, in a safe place where they can move toward repair, repairing the harm they've caused, looking at themselves, their own motivations in a space of love, that's where we see appeals get dropped.
Stacey Campbell: True confessions come out in the criminal justice system. We talk about needing to get a confession, but really what we get is an interrogation. Okay. Not a confession, but when there's a truly safe space without a clipboard where everybody's being, you know, monitored and punished and, and that type of thing where they can feel loved, come to believe that they are beloved, and yet something very bad has gone on, and they are responsible, then it's the power of love that carries that conversation through to reconciliation.
Bruce Adema: The easy thing to do is lock 'em up and throw away the key. That's right. The hard thing to do is to facilitate repentance and reconciliation. I hope that we can come to a point where we're willing to do that hard work. For the good, not only of the offender that he or she can confess, and own the damage that they've done, but also for the victim. Or the one who has been harmed by what has happened . But they also can find healing, through all the trauma.
Stacey Campbell: Absolutely. And I mean, that's the point of restorative justice: that the victim has an opportunity to share their story and, in an unedited way, often in victim impact statements and in courts, the victim is being edited as well, and so in the restorative justice space, they can come face to face with with love as well.
Bruce Adema: Yeah. Power is such an important topic, especially for people that are in a leadership position . What are the dimensions of that that are important for you?
Stacey Campbell: I think for me, it's the safeguards that get put around the power or the influence that I have, and that that I report to a board, I'm sure you report to a board, but that together we work out a way that puts safeguards in how we make our decisions, and that we're not making decisions based on our opinion or our preference, but actually the love for others and the love for our mission and the stewardship of missions that we have. So having other people, sharing power, sharing influence, that is a personal discipline, that I believe in and that I, and that I exercise because I know without it, I'm left with the same temptations that Jesus was left with.
Bruce Adema: In the books about Narnia by CS Lewis, one of the concepts that I always thought was interesting was the four children became kings and queens of Narnia. But they were always under the High King. Even in the British empire, King Charles is the head of the Church of England, which means that he is under the High King as well. And in, in our society, power is often held by people who think they are the ultimate, whereas the Christian should always understand that whatever power we have is secondary to the power of God.
Stacey Campbell: That's right. And that we're held to a higher standard that we will answer for how we've used power. That power is not just our actions and our behaviors, but how we have stewarded the power we've been given.
Bruce Adema: That's right. It is, it's a temptation though. In the prisons. Going, going back to that, you know, that there are power dynamics . Within the prison. How are you and, and the people of Prison Fellowship Canada, trying to create healthy power dynamics in that context.
Stacey Campbell: That's a great question, Bruce, because when we're in the prison, we're not the leaders, we're the guests, of the prison. And so we, we look at, how do you lead from the second seat rather than the first seat? And how do you identify power dynamics that are eroding the dignity of people? And how do you subvert that while still being a proper guest of the institution? So, one example, this is an interesting example, but there's not a lot of color in a prison. The walls are the same color as the floor, the furniture, everything's kind of muted and blah. And so, one of the things we've seen with individuals who've spent a long time in incarceration is a visual deprivation that when they come out, they actually need a visual rehabilitation, to color, because they can't, they can't take it in. It's overwhelming to take in the amount of color we have in a society. So one of the things that we do in our Bible studies and our life skill programs that we take in, we print them on colored paper.
Bruce Adema: Interesting.
Stacey Campbell: And that's a way of subverting a very intentional, punitive direction. Without doing anything wrong, we're not doing something that we're not allowed to do. The system has been created to take away the dignity of an individual. And so we use our power for good.
Bruce Adema: It's also subtle.
Stacey Campbell: It's very subtle, and there's a number of examples like that that give you an idea.
Bruce Adema: I know people that serve as correctional officers. And that is an important role. But it also can be a corrosive job. Is there any way that prison Fellowship is also trying to minister not only to the inmate, but to the correctional officers?
Stacey Campbell: For sure. Very much. In turn, we very much consider our relational ministry to everybody in the in the institution. You've touched on a great point. Power corrupts and love absorbs, and so taking into consideration every individual that you encounter as you come in, and how do you subvert what's happening. You can't work in an institution and not be corroded. To use your word.It's a very dark place. So just in the way that we interact with individuals at Christmas time, sometimes we go in and sing hymns, or sing songs, or sing Christmas carols. And so bringing a chocolate bar to a correctional officer is a way of letting them know that they're remembered. We see them. You just look for opportunities to remember this is a person too . And how do you see their belovedness and reflect that to them?
Bruce Adema: Thank you. Yeah. Well, the path back to wholeness. Often those institutions are called penitentiaries. Right. Where people are supposed to be penitent. You know, come to a point of restoration. It is built into the word. Even if it's not built into the practice, always. When we have abused power, what are the pathways back to restoration from that kind of abuse?
Stacey Campbell: I think it starts with affirming and acknowledging that the abuse did take place. We use the term in our society now of being gaslit. So, when somebody is gaslit or told what happened to them didn't really happen, or there's a denial, or a neglect of that, then it's very hard to start the process of going back to reconciliation and wholeness. One of the things we do when we're doing restorative justice programming, is to first let offenders talk about what happened to them. And that could sound very scandalous and very, very selfish, but we also recognize we as humans aren't very good at looking at what we've done to somebody else. The things that have happened to us have also been looked at. And so I think that's where the path to wholeness begins, and acknowledging the harm that's been done to an individual, and then certainly holding them accountable for the harm that they've done. That's gonna be the bigger part of the exercise in restorative justice.
Bruce Adema: I'm just always just struck by how strong you have to be to engage in a healing process or restorative process where, as we said before, it's easy to throw away the key. It's hard to work towards that kind of reconciliation. The irony is, people think that to engage in that kind of restorative process is a weakness. Right.
Stacey Campbell: It’s the hardest work you could ever imagine.
Bruce Adema: Yeah. For someone who has offended, to make that step to go through that, saying, I will own what I have done, and to make amends in any way I can. Is so hard . And for a person that has been harmed to be able to to look the offender in the eye and listen to them to receive the words of contrition, to accept the attempt to, address things that can't be repaired. But, somehow, acknowledge or offer forgiveness - that's really, really tough.
Stacey Campbell: It is. And, and so often we think of forgiveness as a methodology that says, you do this, and then you do this, and then you do this, and then you say that, and then, you know, if everybody's being their best self, there's forgiveness. And it's not been my experience or my witness, that rather, forgiveness is a mysterious thing that God does. We can position ourselves for it, we can posture ourselves for it. We can do the hard work that we need to do, but ultimately, that repair is a mysterious work that God does.
Bruce Adema: Yeah. Power is all over. And there's all different shapes of power, different variations Most people have power, parents have power over their children. In a classroom, the strong have power over the weaker or smaller. In business, if you're a supervisor, you have power over those that are under you. This is where you maintaining spiritual perspective on power. You know, that your spiritual power can help you exercise your secular power more.
Stacey Campbell: Really, the question, when we say we have power, that we could ask ourselves is, I have power, I power to do what?
Stacey Campbell: Power to do what? I think that allows us to look at our motivations. It's a good, reflective question. Um, it could be as simple in the secular space as I have buying power, I have the choice whether I'm gonna go to this store or this store. That's my power. Well, perhaps knowing a little bit about the practices of this corporation versus the practices of that corporation is a way that I exercise power for good. That's a more subtle way of looking at power. Power to do what I have power over my child, I have power to do what over my child . That sorts it out pretty quickly.
Bruce Adema: That's right. And, that power can be used correctly. Kindly, effectively. And that power can be distorted. The gifts of God are tremendously varied. Every gift of God can be used appropriately, which brings wholeness, which builds community, all the beautiful things to life. And every gift can be mangled to the point where it becomes a destructive thing. You know, we have power over our children. There are stories of people that have done terrible things to their children because they have power or toxic workplaces where the supervisor uses their power in such a way that it damages. That's why I think it's really important, Henri's point in this, that if your secular power is distorting you, then you need to listen to the spiritual power. And, give up the one for the other.
Stacey Campbell: Right. Yeah. It's beautiful, isn't it? . It's a hard discipline because you have to stop and ask yourself a hundred questions a day. Because there's so many things that we do, but, bringing that into a discipline in your life. It has the ability to really bear fruit.
Bruce Adema: Sometimes people say, oh, to be a Christian, it requires your attention one hour a week, you know, on Sunday morning when you're sitting in church. if you go.
Stacey Campbell: I must be a slow, it takes me a lot more time than not.
Bruce Adema: Yeah. But know,, to walk the Christian way or to live the life of faith, impacts every single part of your life. We have been given power or responsibility, duties and whatever way, and each one of those is impacted by our faith. And how we do these things, how we drive our cars, is a manifestation of our relationship with God. it prevents me from honking my horn as much as I want to. When somebody cuts me off, I'm not gonna say what I'm thinking, I'm gonna ask forgiveness from God for the thing that's in my mind. It's always there.
Stacey Campbell: In that way, we're looking at power source, right? What's our power source? Because I think if we're not tuned in to God, our power source can be fear, it can be pain, frustration, any number of things, but when the source, when our source is God. And we can operate in all of our relationships, from that place. It's a different outcome.
Bruce Adema: Okay. The one of the questions I like to ask my guests is, how have you been able to maintain your spiritual posture? What is it that gives you the strength to carry on in the life and work that God has given you?
Stacey Campbell: I am very blessed with a tremendous spiritual community. Certainly I have my own church and leaders in the church that build into me. Spiritual direction has been a tremendous, source for me. Keeping God and keeping the metaphors of scripture and where I am in life spiritually. Keeping that in the forefront of my mind. I have an individual who who calls me every week just for prayer. And then I have friendships and the sole purpose of the friendships is spiritual friendships. We don't go shopping. We don't go to restaurants. We don't do anything else. That is the purpose. And then, of course, I go to work and it's a spiritual community. And so the actual work that we're doing is interacting with the text and thinking through, where do we find the prisoner and, and what are the cries of the prisoner and, praying and asking the Holy Spirit to lead us like a laser beam into where he wants us to be next.
Stacey Campbell: And so, I, I have this incredible blessing, Bruce, of being saturated in a community that reminds me all the time, and maybe God asked me there, because he knows I need that . So, it doesn't mean that I don't interact with secular people. I have friends who are not people of faith. And I interact with lots of people that are not, not people of faith, but I have found both my belonging in him and my beacon in him. I've been blessed with that.
Bruce Adema: Well, thanks. Oh, in the show notes that accompany this podcast, we're gonna put links to Prison Fellowship, and some of the books that we've talked about. So if any of you wanna look that up, you can find that there. So, Stacy, just wanna say thank you for coming in, for being my guest, for having this important conversation. I thank you for the work that you and your colleagues at Prison Fellowship Canada are doing. And, I wish you God's blessing as you continue to do Jesus said. Where were you when when I was in prison? And we're called to remember those that are incarcerated. So thank you for leading us in that.
Stacey Campbell: Thank you. It's been a delight to be here.
Bruce Adema: Okay. And I wanna say thank you to you, our listener. If you've been listening to this as an audio version, that's wonderful. Just so you know, there also is a video version, on YouTube, which you can access through the Henri Nouwen Society website, henrinouwen.org. And, while you're at the website, poke around. look, there's a lot of interesting programs and resources that are there. And, I hope that you find exactly what you're looking for and that you find a blessing in it. As I mentioned before, you can sign up for free daily meditations that have short insights from the works of Henri Nouwen, to give you encouragement and to remind you that you are indeed a beloved child of God. If you've enjoyed this podcast, and I bet you did, give us a comment, that's helpful, give us a big thumbs up, and you could even tell your family or your friends that there is this podcast where engaging conversations are held and important topics are discussed. Again, thank you. And always remember that you are a beloved child of God.
