I am meeting Mr. Christopher William today. Sitting in the conversation with me was Mr.Walker, and about two-thirds of the way into our conversation, Mr.Berry walked in and sat listening to us, and sharing his thoughts from time to time. At one point, when Mr.William was talking, Mr.Berry gestures towards my pen and notepad, takes them and writes on it: "Could you provide a (copy) of our discussion." I nodded, trying to convey to him that of course I would!

Mr.William was released from prison less than a month ago on August 1st, and he said that he was "trying to change his life around and move forward and move past." He was "touching real emotional about what's going on" around him, with the house, and with this organization. He was born in New York, but when he was three, he was taken away from his mother, and moved all over the country from one foster home to another. At the age of sixteen he came down to Baltimore, began going to school and got into "a lot of stuff, a lot of negative stuff as well".

As he moved from one foster home to another, he felt like he never belonged anywhere. He would stay out for many days, with nothing in his pocket and nowhere to stay. "It was," he said, "something inside of me, telling me you don't belong, you don't belong here. So the streets were just calling me at the time, so I went out there and pursued it. Tried to get money the best way I can".

He got his money by robbing, stealing, hurting people, taking stuff that didn't belong to him. Anything that got him a little money, a little change in his pocket. He didn't sell drugs or stand all day at a corner. He would take up little jobs like stealing cars, robbing houses. He had to look out for his little brother and sister, who were dependent on him, so he would just look for the first dollar that was coming his way. After high school, he wanted to go to Morgan state and play basketball, but he took another job that was "unnecessary" and got locked up. He said he was now trying to recapture all that and see what's going on and seeing a lot of stuff that's unacceptable towards his people.

He was sentenced to ten years but his sentence was later reduced to seven. He said he could have gotten home quicker, but he took the same mentality he had on the streets, doing little jobs in prison, getting involved with gangs. He was always doing something to get him further and further away from getting out. I asked him if he knew that he was doing that or was it in retrospect. He said he knew - he didn't have any family outside, so he would think why not? He was just doing what he had to do to survive - that was the mentality that he took before he became Muslim inside prison. Until one brother introduced him to a whole another way of living, the history, culture, struggles of his people. The whole background. This brother helped Mr.William understand what happened in ancient times, and connected them to what was happening around him today. Mr.William began living day by day like that, he began knowing what to do with his life, and found it was easier to understand things. He began getting into it "real real heavy", and began feeling an emotional fullness about it. The first person he was introduced to was Nat Turner. He was a revolutionary, and fought for the liberation of his people. He had the tough man mentality, but in a different form from what today's youth and men possess. Nat Turner played with guns and all, but he "did it all for the right cause". He wanted his people to awaken from the mindsets of slavery. Mr.William felt that he felt a duty towards Nat Turner and all the ancient ancestors, to carry on the history and struggle of our people. To fight for liberation and peace amongst the whole world.

"This stuff is true, you know", he explained to me, "The same thing that is going on now, it went on back in slavery time, but in different form and fashion." "In what manner?", I asked. "As far as the drugs in the community, crime rates, police batteries, we talking about the whole mindset, everything that's trying to hold our people down from succeeding.", he replied. The anguish and concern in his voice was powerful. "It's so much! The crime rate, it's getting worse by the generation. A lot of the young ones, they doing what the earlier generation does, and it's a cycle. It didn't just start, it started in 7 BC, you had the vikings, you had slavery. [...] we are mentally enslaved, and a lot of people need to look at it in that perspective."

I asked him who was this person who told him about history. This guy was serving life, Mr.Williams replied, and he had this organization inside the prison. It's in many prisons now. It had it's foundation in Islam. He dealt with a lot of young men coming into prison, many of whom had the "tough guy mentality, who didn't care whatsoever about anybody". He would begin by giving them something they liked. "The first key was communication," Mr.William said, "he was constantly communicating with the men, to find out what's going on in their mind. He'd been doing this for twenty years, and he's been seeing pain in the eyes of the young men, and it's pain running all through our people, you know. But it's a certain pain that each individual is dealing with inside their self. They are fighting a war between the inner self and the outer self. The inner self is telling them all the right things to do, but the outer self is telling them the negativity stuff and it's the government's plan of bringing you down and down. It's leaving you with the mentality of you just don't care. Once he introduced me to that, I slowed down a whole lot. I started thinking before I would act. A lot of brothers knew me for doing a lot of things, cracking somebody on the head, and they were coming with more and more offers, and I began turning them down. Slowly but surely I got it together. I want to say it's wonderful, but it's hurting me at the same time, because I see a lot of stuff. Now that I'm out, I sit back and I observe, everything that I learnt in prison, I'm seeing now, you know? I sit back and see the same old thing, it's the same thing."

Mr.Walker adds in, "I can identify with this. [...] Me being at MCTC - the Maryland Correctional Training Center. That's one of the places when one can really decide to change their life for the better or for the worse. It's good that one chooses the process of right thinking, life changing and begin to convert over to positivity and no longer live the lifestyle of negative behavior. But as we actually look through the lenses of the incarceration system, it's a struggle at different levels - it's a struggle of understanding the change that comes as a result of coming out. The difficulty of changing the lifestyle was - the way society was set up - it was lacking the leaders, it was lacking the Martin Luther Kings, lacking the Malcolm Xs. In their younger days these men were more radical before they got more mature and really put things in perspective, do things in a decent way, so that we as a people began to understand freedom, from many perspectives. It's a beautiful thing to see someone glow - to see the change in the life, the mindset, listening to the experiences of the men, looking at their past, living in the present and watching them move into their future. It's one of the most magnificient things a man can see."
 
I was intrigued by what Mr.William said about slowing down. I asked him about it - what it felt like. He replied that slowing down meant grabbing control of his thinking process. "As I see it, the mind is the most powerful part of the body in the inside and outside. Because it dictates what you do what you say, how you act. It means thinking before I act, thinking before I speak. I used to have a real hot temper, if someone did something to me in a way that I thought was disrespectful, to me as a person, I dealt with it in a manner that wasn't really acceptable. But now that I stop and think - I look over all that. Before I'd get into an actual fist fight or try to take someone's life or threaten someone's life, I think about whether it's worth it, whether I would want someone to take my life for something like that . I come to the conclusion that nah, it's not acceptable. So I gotta think before I act, before I make my next move. I find that it helps a lot, it helps me control my environment, myself. And I see a lot of things a whole lot differently. I understand now that if a person says something out of the way like that, it's only because he's only doing what he's been doing all the time, he don't understand, he don't know, he not looking at things the way I look at it. So I try to change that by either sitting down and communicating with him or else step back and let it go. It's part of being a man, a real man, is humbling yourself, finding peace within yourself and I learnt to grab control of myself and first and foremost of my mind and my thinking"

"Do things go better now?" I asked. "Oh most definitely," he replied, "most definitely go better, because I ain't gotta watch over my shoulder now. If you would have caught me a couple of years ago, I'd be walking down the street, I can't leave a house without a fire on or something. I can't leave the house sometimes because I don't know what's going to happen. There's some areas I can't go. But now I'm not out here trying to make no enemies. I'd rather bring peace before I bring war, you know? That's what I mean by slowing down, calming myself down"

I asked him if he had read a lot of history before getting out of prison. He said he was always interested in history, but he was always skimming over stuff, but when the brother showed him about history, he got real serious about it. He said he now had a hunger for knowledge, for peace, for everybody in the world. He said that if the world was supposed to be equal, then someday we were going to have to fight harder and harder for it.  "But first and foremost," he said, "You must get yourself together before you can correct anybody else's faults. Slowly but surely it was going to happen. Even though a lot of people say that stopping all the violence through what we are doing can't happen, it surely will happen."

When he was released from prison, he formed a four point program. He already had things mapped out. The first and foremost thing was shelter, and he chose Rose street and took a real liking to the organization. He was always eager to jump into something like a family. He liked the idea of fighting for freedom, and he wanted to be a part of this place. He certainly was loving it and that it was a beautiful thing. He took part in all the activities - they talked to the kids, they go out and clean up. He also described the one-dollar litigation as "strange" in the sense that it was extra-ordinary that someone had the heart to show the government what is right. Not a lot of people had the heart to do something like that, he said. "For a government that was supposed to be so rich, you look around, and you see so many abandoned homes and people sleeping on the sidewalk, and a lot of kids, 7-8-9-10 year old kids, doing things not normal for the kids for a 10-11 year old kids... we're trying to change a lot of things. We're trying to waken a lot of people, trying to make them see the crime rate. Killing another man for what? For something that's not really valuable - they're already killing over names of streets"

"Names of streets?!" I exclaimed. Mr.Walker and Mr.William nodded. People were killing each other over a block.
"What right does another man have to take another man's life just because he comes around in the area you live in? But you can't look at it as if it's their fault, it's because of the mindset. As I said," Mr.William explained, "This thing has already started, has been going on. We're now trying to make people feel our pain. You got people live in these suburban houses, thinking they got it good, they're rushing to get out of here like it's some ghetto! It's not -  it's just a place where poor people stay at, people that need help and resources. In order to get them those things, we need the help of the government, we need to reach the school system, we need to reach so many people, man..slowly but surely we're going to get it."

I asked him why the wasn't government listening to them. "Just stop and take a look around you," Mr.William replied, "If the government's supposed have power and authority over the way people live, why are we living in these conditions, we are all equal, I mean, why are we living in these conditions - abandoned houses, nowhere to go, nowhere to keep your head, you know? I'm not speaking in general - I've experienced this stuff myself. I don't have no family since I was three years old. I watched my mother die in a mental institution home, my father died a year later on the streets trying to get us off the foster care system. I've seen a whole lot of stuff and I've done a whole lot of stuff man, and I look back on it now and still shed tears some nights. It's hard! It's hard trying to find shelter and find food without breaking the law. So just put yourself in that position, you know? What if you ain't had nowhere to go? What if you ain't had no money or no way of getting money? That's limited resources, that's something that the government can change, by opening a lot of different warehouses and lot of different - throwing money and resources instead of drugs, it would be a whole lot better, you know? If you show people a different way of living other than the money they make out at the corner, by doing things legal, like getting a job that gives them 13-14 dollars an hour every week or every two weeks - they can take a liking to that. If they don't know about these resources, how can a man get something he don't know about? [...] I'm only going to speak about what I know about - I've been through a lot and have seen a lot. I'm not going to live like that. I feel a real hunger for liberating my people. I always feel like a man can't be free alone. And why sit back and watch and see somebody else suffer? Especially when I got the opportunity to help."

Mr.Walker adds: "If you actually look at the Baltimore school system, and look at it from the perspective of healing in the community. If you see how one reacts and responds to our school system, we got Baltimore city government that is stealing money from our children. The response that is given is that no one wants to take responsibility. If we the ex-felons can stand up and say that this is not right, who's actually taking responsibility besides us? If you're not a part of the solution you're part of the problem. And anything that you can see and understand and you don't do anything about it, you have just chose to be a part of. [...] These people know the problems and understand them but they choose not to do anything about it. They can bring back the money into our schools, and not put people in debt. We also have the city commissioner, but he says let's label the drug dealers, which is 90% of the ex-felons - let's label them as urban terrorists. So instead of helping the problem you're adding more concepts and ideas into the heart of the problem, creating more problems. And now you come up with the solution of incarceration. It's the mindset that needs to be addressesd. I'm speaking from those who need help as well as those who claim to provide help. It's a painful process! It's painful process to see a situation such as a father who is incarcerated but the mother is addicted to drugs. So the child is on the street and is left in the house to raise themselves, to follow whatever light they believe is the true light to follow, which is the crime life, the drug life. By the time they actually reach the age of 18, 21, the limitation of not knowing what direction to go in, one has to be taught all over again. It's difficult to be like that and learn social things about life! It's a process but these things are so real in our community , and has to be addressed in a proper way. For those that see what's going on in our community still refuse to bring freedom to those minds through education, by sharing equal opportunity. Equality has a powerful aspect of freedom to it but when one actually holds equality to a certain group of people or don't share equality in an equal way to a group or race or culture of people, you're actually being stingy and selfish with freedom that doesn't even belong to you, but you've taken it and trapped it in your own arena, and you refuse to allow it to be implemented in the minds of those who need it."

"But why aren't they doing anything about it?" I persisted.
"Because one reason is that they choose not to, because it will bring about equality to everybody. Another reason is because it's for the economy as well. What I mean is that you can make money off of a culture of people through the drugs that can freely flow in a community such as us. You have crime and drugs which is the market in America!"

"On one hand we're talking about pulling funds from public schools, but on the other hand we're spending so much on war - what do you guys think about this?" I asked.
"Fighting wars, trying to claim more and more land, trying to claim more and more property rights," Mr.Williams said, "It's all a hunger strike. Where's the funds to throw inside these communities - you got money to kill off people, but you don't have money to save people's lives! That's why me personally I've never been one to say I want to go to the army, because it's not a war not worth for me to fight for. If you going to fight for something, fight for the liberation and the freedom of the people, you know - if you're willing to die for something, die for something that's going to be beneficial, that's going to leave a strong impact amongst the people. What more impact can you leave than fighting for their lives? What man or woman can't appreciate that?"

Mr.Walker: You've got one of the most prestigious hospitals in the world here, and it's amazing even how after all the things that are taking place in the community, the doctor who is speaking about fighting the epidemic of violence who might be fighting on one level from the surgery table standpoint, but doesn't want to bring it up to the attention of the CDC."

"Did you guys find the doctor? I remembered Mr.Guyton saying that you would go meet the doctor in the hospital. " I asked.
Mr.Walker replied: "Oh yeah we went up there. We're still working on it right now. But see how the hospital sits right in the heart of our community but doesn't contribute anything. Our school system has $50 million taken away from our schools, and Johns Hopkins which is doing some research but stops it abruptly. You take donations for everything else - for kidneys, you create foundations to save lives. But not two blocks from you, you're not saying or doing anything about the close to 300 lives that are being lost! But you got a doctor there who says that it's an epidemic -- but how could you do that? You let me know where your mind really is. I see your mind when it comes to healing and saving lives and animals and research and all that, but when it comes to us african americans, black-on-black crime in the heart of the city Baltimore, nothing is being done, resources is not being poured in, and only thing you're really doing is stitching up wounds from gunshots, and saying look this is my job and I'm doing my part. That's not enough! You see bodies coming to the tables. You're one of the richest hospitals int he world!You give away money for research in the city, for HIV tests, for hepatitis, for disease. But you're curing other diseases but why can't you come up with a cure for homicides, and let CDC know and with your leadership let them know that the homicides in the city of Baltimore are an epidemic."

Mr.Walker: "Let's use some of the doctors animals they have inside their homes. Their dog starts itching and they want to know what's going on. They love their animals, you get your animals the proper treatment, you walk them in the morning, you feed them. You see them on TV, saying please find my dog, I love them I miss them. You can't have the same compassion for a human being, but you can have the same compassion for your dog, your cat or your bird. And then you sit back and you see what's going on in the heart of our community and you don't even grieve over the lives that are being lost on a yearly or daily basis. You look at that and you put freedom in the balance with that. Why isn't it being given? It shows you so many different mindsets. When it comes to being a contributer of healing and helping us, the african american population as well as the youth population, or the ex-felon population, but I'm speaking about from a cultural stanpoint, african americans no one wants to take responsibility. At first our mayor did, he said hold on, I'm going to take responsibility, I'm going to reduce the homicides to 175. Man, what a strange way to take responsibility, because now your 175 is your zero! So now I'm trying to figure out how is mathematics from your perspective intermingled with your vision to save lives. So it's alright if 175 people die in your mind! If I got to address this mind in a proper way, if this is your way to bring about healing, then the only way I can address that mind is through prayer. Hopefully that one has a relationship with god, that can change their way of thinking. There's a mindset in our community that needs to be addressed in a proper way, and need to be addressed in a way that will bring about healing and solution, not a way that's going to bring about incarceration or create concepts and ideas of urban terrorism, and create stronger law enforcement to put our people in prison.  No, that's no the answer - the answer is jobs, the answer is education, the answer is home ownership, the answer is creating ways and means. We don't have all the answers, so we actually need some more people that have the desire, more leaders, more city officials, more government officials, we need more of their answers, but not in an improper way, not in a way that's going to bring about subtraction instead of addition. "

Mr.Walker: "The only thing we can do is the best that we can do. What's the resources that we have, what relationship with god we have, what we learn from each others experiences. See it, understand it, share that information so that can bring about freedom, We try to be as creative as we can. We just try to keep fighting for the finish. Because we know without a shadow of a doubt that change has already come somewhat and it hasn't stopped yet because change is still coming. "

Mr.William: "Have you ever stopped and ask yourself personally, right, why do so many women prostitute, why do so many mothers live the way they live, why is there so many single households, why are they struggling the way they struggle, why so many guns in the neighborhood, why they're so many drug dealers in the neighborhood, why do they sell to people more unfortunate to them, you ask yourself all these questions, why do people go around taking things that don't belong to them, why do people go around being so heartless, being so cold, you know, you ask yourself them questions, man, you ask yourself why is all this? Why? It's limited resources, limited love, limited understanding, meaning towards the people. If the people understand who they really are, where they come from, that'll help them to guide them to where they could be in the future, that'll help them turn around a lot of the negative things that are going on in the community. We can't do it by ourself, you know - we can only put our foot in the door, you know? The one in the house gotta let us in. When I speak I speak about the government you know? Just look at every year, they raise the tax rate every year, that's a hunger for money. You raising taxes every year. I heard about teachers going on strike, and they're talking about pulling money out of their paychecks. I was really upset about it because they're average people, they need to pay mortgage, they are going through the basic struggle. You'd be surprised how many people stay in these kinds of environments, because they understand the struggles of our people. That's leading them to leave the field of teaching. The government is just saying we're going to take your education, you know. They've looked at the young ones in the streets and said we're going to take your education. "

Mr.Walker: "How can a child be expected to learn decently in a class of 40 children and one teacher. They don't understand, respect the fact that our children are our future. "

Mr.Berry: "They have all these houses that are lead-based, the water and everything, and you have all these kids with learning disability problems, they are disruptive, they're being suspended, they're being turned on the street. They going to turn to peers or other people on the street, who are going to dangle a carrot in their face and tell them look, you sell these drugs right here for a couple of hours, you can do this, you can do that, this that and the others. That was one of the problems - they never said that I couldn't do the work. Every time I'm in a classroom with more than 10 people, I become disruptive. I just thought I was just being me. And they wonder why the statistics for incarceration is as high as it is. As i said last week, everybody in prison, they physically want to come home, they physically want to get out but everybody is not ready. If you don't have any agenda, you don't have a plan, you can have the liberty to come home, sure you can do that -- but trust me, you will go back. It's how things are designed. It's not that the system is designed for us to fail but as in south africa apartheid has been so long as is our psychologically enslaved minds that when someone say do, we don't question the motive, the reason as to why I must do this.
        I used to do two things in prison: I started in about '92 - one of them was - if you ask the average - whatever average means to you - person - since I'm black I can ask only those I'm most familiar with -- to name ten countries in the continent of africa. They cannot do that. I used to make bets, I used to walk around with cigarettes, ask those who think they know, who wanna be in the know, they just can't for whatever reason. I started asking the average adult and or kid to give a basic sentence. We know that a sentence must have a subject and it must be doing an act. He ran fast, or he played with the ball. If you ask what is a noun, what is an adjective, adverb, participle. Not even participle, you don't have to go down that far, you can just go noun, pronoun, verbs, adjective. It took me a while to understand that whole process. Now I developed a passion for the english language. I wanna know why is it that we speak the way we speak, and now I know that in communication there is an etiquette that is applied, to be able to speak to convey whatever dreams you may have, aspirations, you have to know the structures of things, a basic structure. They don't know, they don't have a desire to know.
        These kids don't have a desire to know because why should they know? They don't go to school but out of 365 days they might do like 110 days of school, and then they have the videos, MTV, ESPN, they have these little X-boxes preoccupying their mind, so the passion that they should have to be in the know of various things, they don't even have the motivation no more, because they're so distracted! And then you have these girls, 15, 16 sixteen year old girls wearing next to nothing, and ladies and women - that's an added distraction. Then you have the drugs, the marijuana, alcohol, heroin -- at any given time anybody can sit back and take it. And people will gravitate towards it real quick because they are looking for a feel good, be it a drug or anything that can overwhelm them or have them in the awe about whatever they are doing. So there are a lot of factors as to why things are the way they are. Do we have all the answers? Certainly not. I just know on a spiritual level - that in Islam, we are taught that all of us must endure struggle. Whatever the struggle is, we must endure. Everything that is created has been created two ways - you have always a choice - left right, up down, male female, everything is in twos, with regards to our choices. The system is designed for us to make more wrong choices, with no solutions as to why it is we make those choices. There are a lot of things that are going on.
        As for the overall issue on terrorism, it's always about money, it's always about control. America has had people to fear them since their existence on this earth, and it's still continuing. It's not going to stop! I'm not even so concerned about the economic aspect, I'm more concerned with the innocents of the people who are not involved. Your mother, father, grandmother - trying to make a living - they didn't ask to be in their place. They just happened to be in this country, and co-exist in a world they do not control. Even if they try to make the entire world a democracy, as long as this country is in control, things will never be right. So we have to understand that we have to gain our own control, and if you don't understand, the system is designed for those that don't want to. You have to struggle nonetheless. "

Mr.William turns to me and says, "I want to ask you a question, if you were to see a young girl or boy walking across the street, and was going to be hit by a car, would you give your life for that young one? Would you try to avoid that?"
"Yes I would try to prevent that from happening." I replied.
"If you ask people on the street, selling drugs on the corner, the common answer will be no. But if you sit back and observe, they are ready to give their life for a place or a thing. A street corner, a mound of drugs. They won't give their life for another individual. A street or block can be torn down. A lot of people are dying for that kind of stuff, for that apartment area, or their complex. "

Mr.Berry: "Look at the word : project. It was never to be forever. They did it giving us the solace that it is our home. It's not - you are co-existing, you are part of a project. It depends on how well you are able to blend in and are able to conform to the system. It's just unfortunate that most of us of race tend to get the short end of the stick. Any project is the same. Their projects are not lead based, rat infested, all those are key factors to the lack of motivation, of individual. My mind has fully been troubled - I've always had the awareness, now I'm more into the awareness that I had."

Mr.Berry: "Could I have gone to prison for a few months and been able to be productive and had an agenda? No! I had the time to be involved with the media, the newspapers, to sit back and think. Now i was on the inside and looking out. I didn't have distractions. I even stopped using drugs! I just opted not using it. And those that saw me stop doing this, they respected my decision. Once they see that it's not a phase, everybody respected it, understood it and gave me my space. My judgement wasn't impaired by the heady use of drugs, I wasn't distracted. Now, I've had the time in the last 7 years to do things from a different perspective. Now I see where it's getting me."

I asked him, "Do you also see that if you had a shorter time in prison you wouldn't have learnt what you did now?"
Mr.William: "I think every individual looks at reality in their own way, and everything happens for a reason."
"Is that something you always believed in?"
"No, I believe it now, it's the lord's work that you do what you do. It doesn't matter how long I had to be in, I was one of the chosen ones to step up and fight for this cause, and I take it very seriously, and it's an assignment that I take very seriously. I owe it back to the community, my ancestors, my people. My claiming to be a conscious man, to help somebody else. Everything happens for a reason."
"Isn't that difficult to accept?", I asked.
"It's not difficult at all. If you just sit back and observe everything that goes on, you just know that things happen for a reason. What those reasons are we may not know, but every man is obligated to hold a certain amount of weight."
Mr.Berry adds "One of my best friends just got off of death row, and he lost his mother and his father a few days. I thought I would be broken if my mother passed away. It thought that I would go and kill someone. So I prepared myself -- everything begins with preparation in life. I asked my friend who lost his father how he was able to cope with it -- he said death is inevitable. We all going toget it. We don't want to leave the trees, the snow, the smell of rain, but we know we are going to lose it. But if you can't control it, why should you let things bear you down. I can't control it, so I just deal with it as best as I can, on this earth so that my good deeds outweigh my bad deeds. When I recommend a family for a trash can, if I hold the door for someone, if I say something that are true, and my love is unconditional, those are all good deeds. For all the things that I have done on this planet, I need some good deeds because I have a whole lot of bad ones. So I try to envision, this is god and this is me, and I'm the only one there. What can I possibly tell the all-knower as to why I did the things I had done. Justifiably I have done wrong things. So I have no problem in telling a kid to tie his laces, because even that's a good deed. I'm not going to generalize and say this is the belief, no, this is my belief. This is just my belief and it gives me a sense of comfort. Because I know It may not be pretty on the day of judgement."

I remembered a question that a friend of mine asked when I spoke about this project. She asked me how can one bring about forgiveness for the person who committed an act like stabbing someone?
Mr.Berry replied, "There are some things I won't be able to forgive, because I haven't reached that apex of understanding to forgive. I could probably forgive a person for an act or acts, but I may not forget it. I'm not going to hold someone else responsible for what someone did. Everybody has their own understanding of how these things must be done. In this organization they teach you to have the understanding the love for people, the community, and for people abroad. I was just in one particular mindset."

Mr.Walker adds: "Forgiving and forgetting, it's serious. Because one time, I wanted to forgive but i wanted to remember. I wrote two poems in reference to that. It's in reference to choices, and change of choices. The first poem is called Choices.

                    Choices
Some say that our choices, our ways would never change,
our past can never be erased, no matter what life brings.
But I am here to testify that god does specialize
in mending minds and heartfelt cries
Our choices change inside
As we can see a glimpse of God
mending and moulding our past
but what we can't see is God changing our choices
We can step in our futures and laugh
Oh how can he do such wonderful things
with his grace and his love and his gifts
He teaches submission with a surrendered decision.
Our choices do prove that he lives.
Amen.

"It shows how freedom is introduced in our minds. The other poem is actually called Forgive and forget, because it was so hard for me at one point in time to forgive myself, forgive me for what I'd done. I could forgive everybody else but forgiving me was one of the hardest things to do because of the shame and guilt that locked me into a dungeon and had me to believe that the key doesn't even exist anymore. And this last poem is called Forgive and forget:

                Forgive and forget
It is easy to forgive but it's harder to forget
the histories and memories are sometimes full o'regret
Though life has meaning and things do change
but joy and love is stays the same
I would like to forgive and love to forgive
the hurt the pain, that I once lived.
Forgive isn't that hard, forgiving is no problem
Not with my comfort and my savior has already solved 'em
It's a learning experience and a very special lesson
To know that forgiving and forgetting can also be a special blessing.
From me to you from my heart which I feel
Forgiving and forgetting is most definitely real
I want you to see so clearly the feelings that I feel
Forgiving, forgetting, forgetting, forgiving is something that we should build
As I'm sitting here saying this poem, from my heart to you I give
is the message of love from me to you
It's alright to forgive and forget.
Amen."

In the middle of this last poem, my compactflash card ran out, and I began hastily scribbling on my notepad. By this time Mr.Berry had left. I asked Mr.Walker and Mr.William whether they had any message they wanted to convey to the students at Hopkins.

Mr.William said this: Think of people overseas, in countries like Africa. Many of them live in misery and there's nothing they can do about it. There's alwasy someone who is worse off than you. At that time I thought it was a joke. But now I think I had it good. I had it good. All those people, they had no opportunity!  But I have it good. That's what gets me by.

Mr.Walker said this: There's going to be times when your colleagues say do this, do that. But if you would just understand struggle - the time is coming when you're going to make choices, when you have to choose between hurting and helping somebody - then you should do the right thing.

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