{"id":11847,"date":"2024-07-02T11:34:36","date_gmt":"2024-07-02T17:34:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jeffhood\/?p=11847"},"modified":"2024-07-02T11:34:36","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T17:34:36","slug":"the-death-row-spiritual-advisor-a-primer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jeffhood\/the-death-row-spiritual-advisor-a-primer\/","title":{"rendered":"The Death Row Spiritual Advisor: A Primer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
JH \/ Original Image: Mark Shelton UNsplash<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>
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THE DEATH ROW SPIRITUAL ADVISOR: A PRIMER<\/p>\n
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Beginnings are important.\u00a0 We speak to someone where we find them.\u00a0 We cannot begin beyond where we are.\u00a0 Perhaps one can go back, but the beginning is always the beginning.\u00a0 We do not begin in endings.\u00a0 The spiritual advisor must meet all that they meet where they are, not where they were.<\/p>\n
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Spirituality is complicated.\u00a0 No two people are the same.\u00a0 We are all trying to find the God that is beyond God.\u00a0 That is the entity that is beyond all comprehension that gives all life meaning.\u00a0 Those who claim to know the totality of God are fools.\u00a0 Such people should never be trusted.\u00a0 The indescribability of God is the very constitution of God.\u00a0 Then again, it\u2019s possible that the indescribability of God is the only attribute of God.\u00a0 Too often, there is a cultural phenomenon that demands religious certainty for anything to be considered real spirituality.\u00a0 Such demands will never be met.\u00a0 The primary attribute of the human condition is uncertainty.\u00a0 We can only know what we know.\u00a0 But we can\u2019t even really know that because to know anything is to trust the flawed and partial processes by which something is known. \u00a0We are not perfect.\u00a0 We are searching.\u00a0 We are human.\u00a0 The spiritual journey is about faith not answers.<\/p>\n
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Spiritual direction most often comes from the location that our spiritual attempts come from.\u00a0 There are few more unique locations than death row.\u00a0 The location begins in a lack of humanity and ends in the destruction of humanity.\u00a0 Most often, the prisoner has shown a lack of humanity in the crimes that they\u2019ve committed.\u00a0 Society has been right to judge their actions as being something less than human.\u00a0 The problem is that society is unable to see how they contributed to the dehumanization or even how the lack of humanity seen in the other is a lack of humanity in the self.\u00a0 Dehumanization is the only possible way that any society can have a death penalty.\u00a0 One must believe that there is something completely unhuman about someone before they can be comfortable destroying someone.\u00a0 The job of any lover of God is to step into the spaces of a lack of humanity and dehumanization and create humanity.\u00a0 Indeed, the job of the spiritual advisor is to resurrect humanity in both the judge and the object of judgement.<\/p>\n
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Dehumanization becomes complete when transformation is declared to be impossible.\u00a0 Such a tragedy takes place in a variety of ways.\u00a0 Sometimes the person who is a victim chooses to believe that the transformation of the instigator of their pain is impossible.\u00a0 Something dies in the person.\u00a0 In fact, a suicide of compassion has been perpetuated in their soul. \u00a0Sometimes the person who is the perpetrator chooses to believe that they can only be defined by the crime that they have committed.\u00a0 Deep in their soul, they choose to believe all that is said about them. \u00a0While monsterization or complete dehumanization becomes complete, the perpetrator is left with no other choice but continued destruction.\u00a0 Societies that make decisions to perpetuate the dehumanization of people perpetuate their own demise.\u00a0 The dehumanization in me is the dehumanization in you.\u00a0 The spiritual advisor is a prophet of transformation through miraculous expressions of humanization.\u00a0 The person who is a victim somehow finds the ability to believe that the perpetrator of their pain is human and can be transformed.\u00a0 The offender is brought out of darkness and into the light of revived humanity and transformation from evil to wholeness.\u00a0 Society decides to believe that all the world is bigger than injustice and pain.\u00a0 We can bring about humanity in the darkest places of dehumanization.\u00a0 We can transform our world into a place in which humanity is transformed to a place of right.\u00a0 Prophetic humanizations are the epicenter of the work of the spiritual advisor.<\/p>\n
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Where are we going?\u00a0 We can never completely know the path that life will take us.\u00a0 Relationships are complicated.\u00a0 Roles become mixed.\u00a0 On a basic level though, the spiritual advisor exists to be there when death is announced, death is fought and when death arrives.<\/p>\n
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Throughout the judicial process, death is constantly announced.\u00a0 From the moment a sentence is handed down until that sentence is carried out, death is constant.\u00a0 How do you comfort someone when death is so imminent?\u00a0 The spiritual advisor declares that death does not exist.\u00a0 That which is being threatened is but an empty threat.\u00a0 One cannot be sentenced to nonexistence when there is never a moment when one will not exist.\u00a0 One is created to be and such being can never be lost.\u00a0 The very essence of being is the be in the being.\u00a0 Comfort is found in constantly lifting up life.\u00a0 Death has no power if we choose to believe.\u00a0 The job of the spiritual advisor is to be an evangelist for life.\u00a0 That is the epicenter of comfort.<\/p>\n
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The very definition of injustice is anything that tries to create death amidst life.\u00a0 The spiritual advisor exists to push back against a society obsessed with death.\u00a0 By seeking to stop every execution, we are pushing back against injustice so that the condemned will not face the injustice of an execution.\u00a0 Whether one is talking metaphorically or quite viscerally, it is the primary responsibility to try to save the life of the condemned.\u00a0 In the battle for a specific life, the responsibility of the spiritual advisor extends to the collective life of society.\u00a0 The spiritual advisor is a conduit of societal change.\u00a0 By standing with the condemned, the spiritual advisor is standing firmly on the living side of the life of the world, namely justice.\u00a0 It is wrong to kill another.\u00a0 In every direction, the spiritual advisor makes the horrors of death clear, so that life can bring about life.\u00a0 Hope comes from the battle against death.\u00a0 We are not alone in such efforts.\u00a0 Love is always close.\u00a0 The spiritual advisor\u2019s greatest tool is the spread of life.<\/p>\n
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Executions are the final battle.\u00a0 In the execution chamber, the life that is carried by the spiritual advisor and the condemned push back against death.\u00a0 The purveyors of death want one to think that they are in control.\u00a0 They are not.\u00a0 Life is in control.\u00a0 The spiritual advisor and the condemned are a testament that life matters and that no matter what the outcome of the moment life continues.\u00a0 The outcome of the battle is always to those who decide that the battle for life is always worth the fight.\u00a0 The condemned can never be executed.\u00a0 Life lives on.\u00a0 The spiritual advisor walks out of the execution chamber as a witness that death cannot win\u2026and that hope still breathes.<\/p>\n
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Life is about giving life.\u00a0 Death is about taking life.\u00a0 The spiritual advisor always leaves a part of who they are in spaces of death.\u00a0 However, death and life go together.\u00a0 Meaning death brings about resurrection.\u00a0 Life is multiplied.\u00a0 The spiritual advisor is the mathematician that has figured out the ultimate problem of life, how to live to die and die to live.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 THE DEATH ROW SPIRITUAL ADVISOR: A PRIMER \u00a0 Beginnings are important.\u00a0 We speak to someone where we find them.\u00a0 We cannot begin beyond where we are.\u00a0 Perhaps one can go back, but the beginning is always the beginning.\u00a0 We do not begin in endings.\u00a0 The spiritual advisor must meet all that they meet where […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2509,"featured_media":11850,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,10],"tags":[829,7119,1132,7016,6475],"class_list":["post-11847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-freshwritings","category-thoughts","tag-death-penalty","tag-death-row-spiritual-advisor","tag-execution","tag-lethal-injection","tag-spiritual-advisor"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Death Row Spiritual Advisor: A Primer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\" THE DEATH ROW SPIRITUAL ADVISOR: A 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Dr. Jeff Hood is a Catholic priest (Old Catholic), theologian, and nationally recognized activist based in North Little Rock, Arkansas. A spiritual advisor to death row inmates across the country, Dr. Hood has accompanied more people to their executions than any other advisor in the U.S., including the first-ever nitrogen hypoxia execution in 2024. His work sits at the intersection of justice, radical compassion, and public theology. Dr. Hood holds advanced degrees from Auburn, Emory, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, University of Alabama, Creighton, and Brite Divinity School, among others. He also earned a PhD in metaphysical theology and founded The New Theology School, where he serves as Dean and Professor of Prophetic Theology. Author of over 100 books\u2014including the award-winning The Courage to Be Queer\u2014Dr. Hood\u2019s writings and activism have been featured in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, NPR, CNN, and more. 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