Mrs. Della Scott of the Lofton County Seed Saving Society came through to the Church in the Midst of Life and brought farm fresh produce in conjunction with her partners at Fruitland Memorial Park – winter apples, pears, and nuts for all the men meeting from the re-entry and the Edge of Safety program.
Grown men got teary-eyed when they could see what they had to choose from, presented by women the ages of their mothers and sisters who had warm spirits and no fear … just love … or at least, they had been well-trained to stay calm and not trigger those they were serving.
“If you stay calm and smile and keep doing what you are doing, no one will know you are afraid,” Mrs. Scott said. “They are men, and men shaped by rough experiences, and they are men who will do harm to get what they want, but not in this setting, for we are going to treat them with the utmost kindness and respect, and put agency back into their lives by bringing items for them to choose from – so they might use their judgment and enjoy the consequence of using their judgment in a good way.”
“Does the church have proper security to control them?” one woman asked.
“Yes, of course,” Mrs. Scott said, “and with that, we are going to create security by honoring the manhood in these men in a way that encourages righteous behavior, and thus remove what makes them a threat to us and others.”
The women believed in Mrs. Scott, and then saw for themselves. These hard and angry men calmed right down, remembered manners, remembered kindness – some were more awkward than others, but peer pressure is a real thing – and began to smile and relax a little. Some maybe a little too much, but...
“Look, man, this ain't the time,” one said to another. “We gotta get ourselves together before getting women – that's how half of us ended up here, chasing women.”
The ladies kept smiling and did their work, and the whole atmosphere was changed before the guest speaker came up to speak.