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This is a text-only version of an article first published on Monday, 15 October 2018. Information shown on this page may no longer be current.
For prisoners, Christmas can be a lonely time, isolated from family and friends.
The Door reports on how Christians are helping, over the festive period and beyond.
For an ex-Rover apprentice who gave up an engineering career to become a priest, starting work in the Chaplaincy at Woodhill Prison in Milton Keynes felt like returning to the shop floor. The Revd Alan Hodgetts has now been at Woodhill nine years, looking after the needs of prisoners.
His story begins when he was baptised as a child, but his parents were not churchgoers. He had no church experience until his wife Sue decided she wanted to be confirmed so they would not be hypocritical when they got married in church.
"She was confirmed on St Valentine's Day and we were married the Saturday after," says Alan, who had a conversion experience over that period of time.
"It was a Damascus Road experience. I was confirmed the same year and began to have a sense of vocation around that time. It was a mystical experience. It was an odd image in a church with a Gothic arch, I can still see it now.
"I was in a darkened building and light was shining through the doors. I knelt in front of this amazing light. I then began to try and work out what that could possibly mean. I shared with the rector of the parish that God might be calling me to ordained ministry."
That calling was confirmed and Alan, who by then had a young family, studied at St Stephen's House in Oxford.
"My parents thought I was giving everything up in industry. I had an engineering degree and I was going off to study theology at St Stephen's," says Alan, who completed two curacies, one in Birmingham and one in Hereford, before becoming the incumbent at Effingham with Little Bookham in Guildford and later St John's, Merrow.
There he trained other ministers, including Lay Readers and two curates. But he eventually got what he describes as itchy feet spiritually.
"I went through a process of discernment, this time nothing to do with visions and mystical gothic arches. I trained as a spiritual director and that was a ministry I really enjoyed. I was trained in the Ignatian tradition," says Alan, who remembers a spirituality training day on praying not to be deaf to the 'call of the king'.
"That was my prayer," says Alan, who was pushing various doors to see which would open. "I had these successful incumbencies but also a sense of where else God might be calling me," he says. Alan's first experience with offenders was when prisoners from HM Prison Send were doing day-release work in his churchyard.
The rehabilitation officer from Send, which had later become a women's prison, invited him in, looking for work experience opportunities for prisoners.
Around that time, shortly before the Feast of Christ the King, Alan was inspired by the Gospel of the Day: 'I was in prison and you came to see me. 'This was closely followed by picking up the Church Times and spotting an advert for a prison chaplain while on a parish retreat.
He knew he must apply and when he was accepted, he was eventually placed at HMP Woodhill. He's been there since 2006.
"As you work in the prison it changes around you. Symbolically the chapel is in the centre of the campus and the changes feel as though they are taking place around you," says Alan, who is also a Benedictine oblate, a calling which involves vows of stability, obedience and conversion of life.
". . . his cell nurtured his relationship with God. . . . "
"Although Ignatian spirituality is very important to me those three promises of stability are key to what makes me tick and why I am still at Woodhill.
The prison changes, the population changes but prisons need a place of stability and the chaplaincy can offer that. "And how does a small chaplaincy even begin to meet the needs of over 800 prisoners, some of them convicted of offences related to extreme violence.
"Our role as a prison is to protect the public. The inmates normally progress through the categories towards release. Some of the men in here are the most dangerous prisoners. A white van with a police escort usually indicates the presence of someone who presents the most danger to the public," he says.
"It's about discerning what ought to be done and what ought not to be done," says Alan. "It's about encouraging independent living. I met with an ex-offender last week. He'd served an 18 year sentence and what he said echoed what one of the early desert fathers said, that his cell taught him everything. This offender said that his cell nurtured his relationship with God and it was a sustaining relationship that gave him purpose and life.
"The biggest challenge is to encourage people to be more dependent on God than on his servants. I don't have a chaplain. If I want help with something I turn to God."
Alan quotes James 1:2-4 as a verse that is central to the work of a prison chaplain:
"My brothers, you will always have your trials but, when they come, try to treat them as a happy privilege; you understand that your faith is only put to the test to make you patient, but patience too is to have its practical results so that you will become fully-developed, complete, with nothing missing."
He also cites the Parable of the Talents which was the Gospel for Prisons Sunday. It is a story in which Jesus encourages listeners to do the best with the gifts they have been given. "The guys here don't appreciate the potential they have for good. Helping them to realise that potential is what I'm about," he says.
Alan's work includes liaising with organisations that help inmates to strengthen bonds with their families (50 per cent of male offenders have a dependant under 18) and the New Leaf mentoring scheme, that helps newly released exoffenders rebuild their lives on the outside.
"The biggest challenge is to encourage people to be more dependent on God than on his servants. "
"We try and help the community see that ex-offenders don't have horns and forked tails. They are guys who suffer, whose partners get cancer, have miscarriages and who send presents to their own children while they are in here," says Alan, who adds that many sons of offenders often go on to commit crimes themselves.
"If people can see offenders as human beings, as someone's son, brother, or father that might start to change their perceptions. It's a case of 'there but by the grace of God go I' and in some of their lives God's grace has an awful lot to do to change them," says Alan.
"Chaplaincy is about creating order out of chaos. "Alan is married to Sue and has three children who all have partners, and three (soon to be four) grandchildren.
Alan and Sue are looking forward to their Ruby wedding anniversary and celebrating it with their now growing family in 2016 - which is also the Ruby Anniversary of his and Sue's commitment to Christ.
Snowy Owls and a 14th-century font
The font in position at HMP Woodhill
Huge snowy owls are not exactly what you expect to meet as you clear security and walk into the garden area, behind the high fences and below the security wires at HMP Woodhill near Milton Keynes. But an idyllic garden area with separate areas representing different faith groups has been developed and the owls look out of huge enclosures, keeping an eye on staff and prisoners as they go about their daily routine.
Muslim, pagan and Christian areas, as well as sheds and the spacious birds-of-prey enclosures were built by prisoners under the watchful eye of the staff gardeners and chaplaincy team. The Revd Alan Hodgetts heads up the multi-faith chaplaincy team that sees around 50 men at both the Catholic Mass and the Anglican Eucharist every Sunday in the modern chapel.
The building, at the heart of the prison, also has ample space provided in an adjacent hall for Friday prayers for Muslims, and the other minority faith chaplains ensure there is plenty of spiritual provision for prisoners of all faiths and none. I visited Woodhill with a group from All Saints, Milton Keynes, a 14th Century Grade 1 listed church at the start of the winter.
The congregation has donated a font from the church, which has now been installed in the garden. Alan says: "The font from the old Milton Keynes Village is a symbol of bridging the gap between the inside and outside.
A good example of what is already taking place is the New Leaf mentoring scheme in the area, who mentor men serving 12 months or less in their days following release.
They often have chaotic lives and might not know what's out there and mentors help them pick up the reins and regain independence. "
Angel tree: sending gifts home to the kids
Prison Fellowship runs a programme called Angel Tree in which presents are sent to the children of offenders on behalf of their parent in prison.
This year the Oxford Prison Fellowship group has bought, wrapped and sent over 100 presents to the children of offenders at Bullingdon prison, near Bicester. Several churches have given generous donations and Toys R Us has been very helpful.
These presents provide a link between the offenders and their children; and can even strengthen vital family bonds that contribute to a reduction in reoffending behaviour. Angel Tree also supports offenders during Mother's Day by enabling them to send their mothers or female guardian a personally written card and gift voucher on Mothering Sunday. Here's just one story of its impact: A prisoner said his Mum had written to him asking if she could visit.
He had not heard from her in 2 years. He said "I think it's because of that card. " Overall all the lads found it hard to believe strangers could care that much for them to arrange this. " To support Angel Tree (each mother's day gift card costs £8, including postage) donate by post to ATMA15, Prison Fellowship, PO Box 68226, London SW1P 9WR; or at the link below and don't forget to include the reference: ATMD15: justgiving.com/PFAT.
If you are interested in volunteering see www.prisonfellowship.org.uk or call 0207 7992 500.
Christmas Visit to Bullingdon
by Colin Fletcher
The Acting Bishop of Oxford, Rt Revd Colin Fletcher[/caption]When I arrived here as the Bishop of Dorchester 14 years ago I found that my predecessor had established a pattern for Christmas Day Morning - and it's one that I haven't changed since. So, later in the morning I will be at Katharine House Hospice for a Communion Service.
Usually there will be very few of us there but I always remind myself of Jesus's promise that where two or three are gathered in his name, there he is in the midst of us, and that's what I discover time and again. Many more than that come to the earlier service in Bullingdon Prison, near Bicester in Oxfordshire.
I get there about an hour before the service starts (though the exact timings are usually a bit flexible) and the Chaplain, Andrew Foran, and I go and visit the Health Centre.
The service itself is held in the Chapel and we usually have a good crowd there.
No doubt some come just to get off their wings but for many Christmas Day is special, and they want to mark it as such. Emotions can also be pretty raw for those separated from their families and, perhaps, their children, for the first time.
The staff too do what they can to make it special but, at the end of the day, a prison is a prison and no lapses in security can be allowed.
So it's always a strange feeling when I walk out after a couple of hours, free to go where I want, leaving the locked doors behind me, and knowing that my family is busily preparing our lunch together - far away from the constraints of prison life in Bullingdon.
The Rt Revd Colin Fletcher is the Bishop of Dorchester and the Acting Bishop of Oxford.