August 2025

Retreat in less than 8 weeks!

Sept 24 - 30

Our 3rd annual Centering Prayer Intensive retreat specifically for those who have experienced incarceration is coming right up. We remain beyond grateful to the donors who help make this dream a reality, and for the fruits these retreats bear in the lives of those who attend.

• Three wonderful retreat staff supported nine of us gathered at Snowmass in January of 2023 (four who had lived inside the walls and five additional volunteers from Contemplative Outreach Ltd.'s Prison Outreach Service Team - aka COPOST - the co-sponsoring organization).
• Then in the fall of 2024, on the heels of COL's International Conference, two of us from COPOST (Rita Weick and me) joined a veteran retreat leader (Jennie Curtis) and a gifted, contemplatively-inclined bodyworker (Jessie Owens) to welcome seven retreatants: one committed volunteer and six who had experienced incarceration.

This year, we're grateful to have Rita and Jennie returning as retreat leaders, as well as Patricia Hutchinson joining as a mentee. Jessie and I will again support the core staff as well as helping hold the silence. So far, we have seven committed retreatants who have lived inside, and there are still several spaces available -- do you know anyone who might want to join us? We need to hear from them very soon!

Additionally, while the focus of these retreats remains those who have lived inside, we have seen benefits from including a couple of prison outreach volunteers who feel called to join with and walk alongside the core retreatants. To explore that possibility, please reach out to chandra@praestolari.org.

The most important support you can provide is to pray along with us as we prepare for and journey through the special days of this 3rd annual retreat. Of course, if anyone is moved to help cover the costs, that's always welcome... we hope to be able to continue to offer these retreats for many years to come.

With great gratitude,

Meet Phil Darghty (aka “Frenchy”)

Phil is not only our longest-serving Data Analyst, but also a founding member of both the first known inside-the-walls Centering Prayer group (the "Contemplative Fellowship" at Folsom Prison) and the initial “Outside the Walls” (OTW) weekly Zoom-based Centering Prayer convened by Contemplative Outreach’s Prison Outreach Service Team (COPOST) in the fall of 2021. He has attended both the 2023 and 2024 retreats, helped host the OTW hour for United in Prayer Day, and contributed to video resources, as well as speaking on the panel at COL's Conference last year. For the past two years, he has served as OTW's liaison on COPOST, and for the past three decades he has been quietly serving contemplative practitioners inside and outside the walls in various capacities, including being the primary author of the original "Locked Up and Free" pamphlet.

Since the Spring of 2022 when the unwieldy spreadsheets Chandra was using to try to keep up COPOST's newsletter mailing list began to be replaced by a collective effort, Phil has been faithfully tracking down resident locations to help ensure successful newsletter delivery to as many living inside as possible. First, the effort was toward getting Contemplative Outreach's newsletter delivered twice a year; now we've added PCF’s Centering Inside in as well.

Phil knows well the value of mail for those inside the walls and takes great pleasure in being able to "pay forward" the gift of supporting people's contemplative practices by doing all in his power to help those who want this mail have a chance of actually receiving it. He (and all of us) remain astounded at how complex a task that can be.

Phil credits Centering Prayer with having changed "the monster who needed to go to prison" into someone he can now respect -- and whom the rest of us at PCF know and trust as an incredibly gentle, warm, charming, generous friend and colleague.

Deep gratitude to you, Phil, and may you continue your beautiful consent to being transformed!

(Please keep Phil in your prayers; he's been having health challenges recently.)

$5 Fridays!

Every Friday, we’re inviting you to help build something sacred.

With just a $5 donation, you can support the sending of our Centering Inside newsletter to someone living in a locked facility for a whole year.

That’s a full year of connection and reminders that they are not forgotten.

Every newsletter grows the circle—bringing more people into a community rooted in dignity, healing, and presence. Let’s build this fellowship, one Friday at a time.

Meeting with Ray Leonardini

Last month, several of us were blessed to meet by Zoom with Ray, who is very much enjoying a more relaxed pace of life, having very gracefully entrusted Prison Contemplative Fellowship (i.e. “his baby”) to the next generation of staff. Ray's very large shoes cannot be filled by one person; daily we find ourselves in awe of all that he managed to accomplish – as well as grateful beyond measure for the ongoing legacy we have in his books. Stay tuned this fall to hear more about what we learned from Ray about PCF’s history as an organization.

Our Mission

Journeying together as people affected by incarceration, we share Centering Prayer meditation and foster connections to support healing and transformation, both personal and communal.

Our programs include: 

• Making resources widely available (see below)
• Building the capacity for effective communication across the walls
• Continually improving the welcome and accompaniment offered to contemplative practitioners post-incarceration
• Co-sponsoring annual retreats with COPOST



Support our Mission

The most important form of support is connection!

Thank you for reading this eBulletin, for engaging contemplative practices, for staying in touch. We place great value on all actions and intentions that align with our mission and help to expand Prison Contemplative Fellowship's community.

Please share this email with your networks.

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Resources

Our goal is to share resources as broadly as possible:

• Our books and films are available for downloading and viewing via the links below.
• We regularly ship books and DVDs to volunteers and chaplains facilitating/supporting Centering Prayer groups inside locked facilities.
• Through our association with the Human Kindness Foundation, we send books and materials about Centering Prayer to residents of locked facilities.
• Our materials are also accessed in prisons and jails all over the country via Edovo, an app that is increasingly included on facility-issued tablets to provide spiritual, rehabilitative, educational, and vocational content without cost to the residents.
• Our Centering Inside newsletter which gets sent to our vast network of people living in locked facilities throughout the United States twice per year.

If you wish to receive books or DVDs, do not hesitate to reach out at hello@uspcf.org; please let us know if you are currently sharing Centering Prayer with those inside -- or how we might help you get started.

Watch the 22-minute Holding Still documentary here

Watch the Companion Films here

PCF Books available for download

All issues of our Centering Inside newsletter can be found here

Ray Leonardini (founder of PCF, producer of the Holding Still documentary, and author of several very helpful books, including Finding God Within) on the common fear on the part of prison volunteers that they’re not qualified enough or sufficiently prepared:

“The reality is, we’re all a mess… Life can be hard for all of us, and really hard for incarcerated folk and their families. And a little bit of appreciation and respect for a person who has been incarcerated, for a short time or a long time, goes a long way. It’s the authenticity that really works, and the Spirit.... [what we need to do as volunteers is simply to] stand there with these men and women, and be vulnerable.” - Ray Leonardini