Redemption

and RESURRECTION

     One who believes in Christ has to believe that there is a hope, a joy and a resurrection to a life that far surpasses the human weakness, misery, failures and pain here on earth. To believe otherwise is to 'sin against hope.'

    Some people's circumstances tempt them harder than others to 'sin against hope' which is another word for 'despair of life.'  It is important to not tempt people in that regard.

Denis Sobin is a person trying his hardest to teach people a firm belief in Resurrection- and he is doing it through the ARTS.

In my 25 year legal career there are few more wildly interesting people that I have represented than Denis Sobin, Director of the Safe Streets Arts Foundation. click here for a video of the Safe Streets Art Kennedy Center production (I made a second long cameo introduction in a red dress)- The guitar accompaniment is Mr. Sobin playing in the background.  He taught himself guitar in prison and plays classical, contemporary and jazz. He also now teaches a class of  geriatric guitar players in a 'guitar orchestra' - lessons begin at the rec room of his Senior Center living place near the Kennedy Center.

   He would be considered by the higher browed crowd as a scum of the earth sort of character who has been lampooned by the Washington City Paper repeatedly, called a notorious Pimp like demon and every foul name on the planet. He did a long time for what he considers wrongful convictions pertaining to taking artsy sort of nude photos/film of his own kids in a nudist colony. His son now can't stand him- a cross he bears with great sadness.  He champions things I don't at all condone sometimes- like what the French have in the form of legalized prostitution. I don't however judge him or concern myself with any of that- I concern myself with all the souls he tried to and has successfully redeemed from lives that landed them at one time or another in prison, either wrongfully convicted or not, either addicted to drugs or deviantly selling them, really bad actors or guys pretending too hard to be really bad actors. Souls that have great creative capacity- souls that love.

  Denis Sobin runs a Foundation now in Washington, DC that gets national arts grants and local Washington DC grants, hosts an annual Kennedy Center event in which a Police Jazz Band is featured and play writes whose work in prison inspired them, including an award winning actor from Baltimore's 'The Wire" show. He has graced many church basement homeless ministries with Christmas guitar music. He has loaned a buck or two to people who fresh out needed a suit. This is a guy who was humbled so low, he decided at one point to make his life count for good- and it has had remarkable impact.  He has run for DC Mayor twice in his life- in sort of civil liberties protest runs. He championed early on the cause of civil liberty violations of routine incarceration of gay men caught in gay bars in earlier years. He has been married several times and his current paramour is a gracefully aged Brazilian beauty who visited him dutifully while in prison and has stayed by his side ever since.  She appears with him on one of the videos on the website.

    The art work done by prisoners is astoundingly good in some cases. Amazing talent and time to cultivate it. One of the videos on the site broadcast by Voice of America shows how one inmate made a brush out of his own cut hair wrapped with dental floss and stuck in a hollowed pen.  Some of the work is featured at the gallery in the Watergate (Watergate gallery), some at the DC Museum of Crime and Punishment started by that guy who runs the TV program America's Most Wanted- a friend of his.

    Denis is one of those folks some people in his life will be shocked to find in heaven. I won't be-
You will be lucky if you ever get to meet him. And you will never look at people in prison the same way again.  Click HERE to purchase from the on line gallery.

But when were you......in prison.....asked the disciples. In as much as you do to the least of these my brothers, you do it to me, said Jesus.