Category Archives: Chaplain

September 7, 2023 · 11:52 am

Interreligious Panel – Chaplains for Prisoners

I was honored to present and moderate “The Same and Different: Supporting Muslim and Jewish Inmates,” an interreligious panel, on, 3 September 2023, hosted by St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church (Saratoga, California – San Francisco Bay Area). This was an in-person event that was also live-streamed and recorded. Here is the link for the recording, https://vimeo.com/event/3655244 (2 hours), plus the one page handout about the panel. This event was generously supported by a grant from the Walter & Elise Haas Fund, through the GTU Madrasa-Midrasha Program. Here is the GTU announcement.

I was touched and thankful for the positive feedback about this event, notably this comment by the Correctional Institutions Chaplaincy‘s Chaplain Ra Amen, “The absolute best interreligious training on the topic. The synergism between the panelists and moderator was seamless. The questions and answers allow for a broad range of insights and experiences to be covered. Whether a novice or as one with years of experience, there was much to be gained from the discussion that will serve me well in future interreligious situation in jail or the general society. It was a model that could be use national in jail and prison ministry. I commend everyone involved in putting on this training.” Another comment from volunteer Chaplain Barbara Harriman was heartwarming, “The seminar today was amazing! Your panel was filled with compassionate scholars, including you! It was very impressive and informative. Thank you so much. I’m so glad you made the video accessible. I will share it with others.” I am grateful for the support.

Grateful thanks to the inspiring and excellent panel speakers:

Thank you as well to the friends, family, and colleagues who helped me put on this event. Especially Karen LeBlanc, Jessica Dickinson Goodman, and John Plocher.

Images Copyright (c) 2023 Katy Dickinson. Thanks to photographers, Karen LeBlanc, Joel Martinez, John Plocher, and Barbara Merrill. If you want to receive Katysblog posts by email, please sign up using the Sign Me Up! button (upper right on Katysblog home).

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September 7, 2023 · 11:28 am

Maintaining Weight – 1 Year Later

Katy Dickinson, WP668 - Sep 2023
Katy Dickinson and WP668 backyard caboose in San Jose, California – Sep 2023

In July 2023, I quietly celebrated a year of weight loss maintenance – Hooray! I still use the Fooducate nutrition and weight tracker to record what I eat and weigh each each day, as a reminder. Several people have asked how I did this: please read my 22 September 2022 update for what worked for me. (This only represents my experience – your mileage may vary. Use a program that works for your health and way of doing things and you will be more likely to stick with it.)

I enjoy shopping for clothes to fit my new form (usually used, by way of ThredUp and other thrifty online sources), and am still working out what style, design, and fit is best for me in each season. I have some unusual constraints on this. As a Chaplain in the county jail, for work I cannot wear clothes that are predominantly red, blue, or other gang colors. Also, as a new Grandma, I need to consider how to manage a very active 9 month old who likes to grab, pull, and chew on me. For my birthday later this month, my husband John treated me to a shopping trip at the Sézane shop in San Francisco with my friend Laura Biché. John hates to shop, so buying my own gift is a present to him. Last weekend, I wore one of the Sézane dresses I bought on our date night, seeing “Shakespeare in Love” by Silicon Valley Shakespeare.

If you want to receive Katysblog posts by email, please sign up using the Sign Me Up! button (upper right on Katysblog home). Images Copyright 2023 by Katy Dickinson.

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July 30, 2023 · 1:55 pm

Panel: The Same and Different, Supporting Muslim and Jewish Inmates

Interreligious chaplaincy books, July 2023
Interreligious chaplaincy books, July 2023

Please join us for “The Same and Different: Supporting Muslim and Jewish Inmates,” an Interreligious Panel, 1:30 to 3:30 pm on Sunday, 3 September 2023, hosted by St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church (13601 Saratoga Avenue, Saratoga, California – San Francisco Bay Area). This is an in-person event that will also be live-streamed. Here is the live streaming link, https://vimeo.com/event/3655244. Here us the one page handout about the panel.

Thanks to the panel speakers:

This is a two hour training event (with a panel of experts) for jail chaplains – and those interested in learning about jail chaplaincy – on best practices in supporting inmates, especially those who are Muslim or Jewish.

There are about three thousand inmates in Santa Clara County jail. Eight staff CIC Chaplains and hundreds of volunteers interact routinely with prisoners of all faiths, including discussions about non-medical special diets (Kosher, Halal, or Vegetarian), leading educational and spiritual programs, offering individual pastoral care visits, and distributing religious items (such as scriptures and religious prayer or study materials, hijab, or kippah or kufi head coverings, prayer rugs, and rosaries). For the last several years, many jail prisoners have had access to county-provided electronic tablets offering educational programs, entertainment, and religious and spiritual scriptures and other documents from a wide range of religious and spiritual contexts. Discussions with inmates who are interested in exploring or converting to Islam or Judaism seem to have increased since the tablets became available.

“The Same and Different: Supporting Muslim and Jewish Inmates” attendees can gain a greater understanding of Islam and Judaism and learn best practices for supporting inmates from those religions. There will be small group discussions after the panel. Some attendees will also be able to take home an excellent book to support their ministry with Muslim or Jewish inmates:

  • Dayle A. Friedman, ed., Jewish Pastoral Care: A Practical Handbook from Traditional & Contemporary Sources (Nashville, TN: Jewish Lights Publishing, 2015).
  • Muhammad A. Ali, Omer Bajwa, Sondos Kholaki, and Jaye Starr, eds., Mantle of Mercy: Islamic Chaplaincy in North America (West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Press, 2022).

Book quantities are very limited: first come, first served. Rabbi Amy Eilberg, Sheikh Rami Nsour, and Katy Dickinson are all speakers for the Islamic Networks Group (ING), a peace-building organization providing face-to-face education and engagement opportunities that foster understanding of Muslims and other misunderstood groups to promote harmony among all people.

This event is generously supported by a grant from the Walter & Elise Haas Fund, through the GTU Madrasa-Midrasha Program. Here is the GTU announcement.

Interreligious Panel name buttons, 25 Aug 2023
Interreligious Panel name buttons, 25 Aug 2023

Image Copyright (c) 2023 Katy Dickinson. If you want to receive Katysblog posts by email, please sign up using the Sign Me Up! button (upper right on Katysblog home).

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May 18, 2023 · 11:45 pm

Sin and Satan in the Qurʾān and Bible

Satan with Angels and Adam, Bal'ami, Annals of al-Tabari manuscript, 1413-1416, Topkapı Saray Museum, Istanbul, Turkey,
Satan with Angels and Adam, Bal’ami, Annals of al-Tabari manuscript, 1413-1416, Topkapı Saray Museum, Istanbul, Turkey, This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published (or registered with the U.S. Copyright Office) before January 1, 1928.

My term paper is titled “Sin and Satan in the Qurʾān and Bible” for “SARS-1000: The Qur’an: Origin, Application, Interpretations.” This Spring 2022 class was lead by Professor Mahjabeen Dhala, at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. The paper begins:

In this paper, I consider sin and Satan, with a focus on the stories of Joseph and Job, both in the Qurʾān and in the Bible. I chose this topic because, as a jail Chaplain, I find prisoners are very aware of sin and Satan, and I wanted to learn more. The anthropomorphic personification of Satan is a huge topic, so I have concentrated on a limited set of scriptural verses to keep to term paper length, rather than allowing this to grow into a dissertation. There is much more to be said based on the thousands of scholarly and religious works (many with conflicting opinions) written on these topics over many centuries. I assert that ideas of embodied sin and the personification of Satan evolved over at least a thousand years (between 500 BCE and 610 CE), through Biblical and Qurʾānic stories and exegetical understandings that are sometimes not substantiated by sacred texts. Historical evolution presupposes a starting point, and this paper considers alternatives for the first Biblical mention of sin. 

Read the entire paper here. I also prepared a presentation to go with the paper, with illustrations inspired by both Biblical and Qurʾānic sources. See that presentation here.

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May 9, 2023 · 10:44 am

Women of Faith in Jail

GTU Women and Religion Conference, 28 April 2023
Katy Dickinson, Zeinab Vessel, Dr. Mahjabeen Dhala, Lisa Calvez at the GTU Women and Religion Conference, 28 April 2023

I was honored to present on “Women of Faith in Jail” at the GTU Graduate Student Conference: Women and Religion conference held on 28 April 2023 at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. Here are the slides I presented. More about my submission is on my 3 April 2023 blog post. About seventy people attended this inspiring all-day event hosted by Women’s Studies in Religion.

GTU Women and Religion Conference, 28 April 2023
GTU Women and Religion Conference, 28 April 2023
Dr. Valerie Miles-Tribble, GTU Women and Religion Conference, 28 April 2023
Dr. Valerie Miles-Tribble, GTU Women and Religion Conference, 28 April 2023
Katy Dickinson, Dr. Valerie Miles-Tribble, GTU Women and Religion Conference, 28 April 2023
Katy Dickinson, GTU Women and Religion Conference, 28 April 2023
Dr. Mahjabeen Dhala, GTU Women and Religion Conference, 28 April 2023
Dr. Mahjabeen Dhala, GTU Women and Religion Conference, 28 April 2023

Images Copyright (c) 2023 Katy Dickinson. If you want to receive Katysblog posts by email, please sign up using the Sign Me Up! button (upper right on Katysblog home).

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April 3, 2023 · 8:19 pm

GTU Conference: Women and Religion

I am honored that my submission on “Women of Faith in Jail” was accepted by the GTU Graduate Student Conference: Women and Religion! The conference will be held at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, on 28 April 2023. To attend the one day conference, Register Here. This is the abstract for my talk:

Katy Dickinson
Women of Faith in Jail
This presents a jail chaplain’s view on how women prisoners’s experience, especially their faith experience, is different from that of men in the American justice system. In many ways, the lives of American women and men prisoners are similarly marginalized; however, the systemic social and economic disadvantages of women in our society are reflected in the lives of female inmates. For example, women are usually the primary caretakers for children from whom incarceration separates them, women often enter the carceral system having had more traumatic experiences, and all-too-often women undergo more trauma in jail and prison. As a result, working with women inmates as a chaplain or officer can be more complex and emotionally intense compared to working with male prisoners. While some avoid working with women, others find special satisfaction in supporting female prisoners. A groundbreaking report has just been published about women prisoners and their unique challenges and patterns.

Here is a link to the whole submission, if you want more text (and references). The event will be recorded but not available online in real time.

Images Copyright (c) 2023 Katy Dickinson. If you want to receive Katysblog posts by email, please sign up using the Sign Me Up! button (upper right on Katysblog home).

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March 7, 2023 · 5:02 pm

Joseph – Yusuf Presentation

Yusuf in Zuleikha's party. Painting in Takyeh Moaven-ol-Molk, Kermanshah, Iran
Yusuf in Zuleikha’s party. Painting in Takyeh Moaven-ol-Molk, Kermanshah, Iran, By Coffeetalkh at Persian Wikipedia – Transferred from fa.wikipedia to Commons., GFDL, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31803000

This semester at the Graduate Theological Union‘s Berkeley School of Theology, I am taking three classes as part of my Doctor of Ministry studies. They are: “The Qur’an: Origin, Application, Interpretations” (Dr. Majabeen Dhala, Center for Islamic Studies), “Introduction to Prison Ministry” (Father George Williams, Jesuit School of Theology), and “Examining the Case for Reparations for African Americans” (Dr. Ronald Burris & Dr. Aidsand Wright-Riggins, BST).

I just gave my first presentation in Dr. Dhala’s class, called “Joseph – Yusuf.” In this presentation, I considered the story of the patriarch / prophet Joseph – Yusuf as presented in the Torah / Hebrew Bible and in the Qur’an, in the context of my ministry as a jail chaplain. The class and I had a good discussion!

You can see the whole presentation here. See the last pages of my presentation for where I found the images and other sources.

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