Matthew Hahn

Career opportunity! The apprenticeship application window for inside wiremen (general electrician) in San Mateo County’s IBEW 617 opens on June 1st. First year apprentices start at $30.10/hr & scale up to journeyman wage ($88/hr) over the course of the 5-year apprenticeship.

I started sharing my story with high school students less than two months after coming home from prison. It was terrifying for me. I had yet to work through my prison-trauma and the intense fear of vulnerability with people. This chair was my friend.

For years, it stood beside me when I wanted to run, when I’d forgotten to breathe, when I needed to sit down and become less visible. I no longer need the chair but it warms my heart to see it still here.

SFO STRIKE UPDATE: IBEW 617 Airtrain workers are returning to work on Friday, March 13 with a temporary contract extension in place (through March 31). Conditions of current agreement: - all economic increases from a new agreement will be retroactive to March 1st - cont’d …

I was mentored by men who had murdered. Let me tell you about one of them. A thread in honor of Herb Blake.

"Our actions are driven by relevance. We all want to feel we matter in some way. Relevance is what makes one kid go to college while another kid joins a gang. Each does what he or she thinks is necessary to be acknowledged. In search of relevance men and women become saints or sinners." - Herb Blake

I was mentored by men who had murdered. Let me tell you about one of them. A thread in honor of Herb Blake.

Then, a few years ago, I re-read a short book he'd written called "The Last Place I Looked". Somehow, I had missed an important part of the book, likely because it was nestled at the very end, like an appendix. It was the letter he'd written.

I was mentored by men who had murdered. Let me tell you about one of them. A thread in honor of Herb Blake.

Herb Blake passed away just a few years after leaving prison. He spent twenty three years incarcerated and, perhaps, his greatest mark was left in the hearts of the men he mentored there. My heart is marked by him, and I feel like it is my responsibility to mark hearts in the same way that he did.

I was mentored by men who had murdered. Let me tell you about one of them. A thread in honor of Herb Blake.

Blake was finally granted parole in December of 2008, the same month that I was to be leaving Folsom State Prison for a lower security facility. He was not going to be able to attend the Contemplative Fellowship before leaving, so he gave me a letter he’d written to the group.

I was mentored by men who had murdered. Let me tell you about one of them. A thread in honor of Herb Blake.

I’ll never forget the day Blake had his parole date rescinded by the Governor, though the parole board had found him suitable for release. I would’ve expected him to be dejected and melancholic.

I was mentored by men who had murdered. Let me tell you about one of them. A thread in honor of Herb Blake.

e was gentle in his handling of discord and gracious in the way he met disagreement. He often led the group in meditation, famous for likening thoughts during meditation to the letters arriving during mail call.

I was mentored by men who had murdered. Let me tell you about one of them. A thread in honor of Herb Blake.

By the time I met Blake (his preferred way of being called in prison) in 2007, the man who had murdered had long since left prison and had been replaced with a selfless human being who mentored others in the art of awakening.

I was mentored by men who had murdered. Let me tell you about one of them. A thread in honor of Herb Blake.

I met men in prison who could only be referred to as spiritual giants. Rarely have I met people in the free world as genuinely awakened as some of these men I had the pleasure to do my time with. One of these men was a man named Herb Blake.

I was mentored by men who had murdered. Let me tell you about one of them. A thread in honor of Herb Blake.

A number of men would venture to the back of the chapel where, beneath a painting of the last supper with convicts as Christ’s disciples, we’d exchange shoulder rubs or chiropractic back-cracks.

I was mentored by men who had murdered. Let me tell you about one of them. A thread in honor of Herb Blake.

Sometimes, this bit of wisdom was a simple reading from a spiritual text and sometimes this bit of wisdom was a prepared talk about a subject relevant to our path. Ours was a path of transformation and of love.

I was mentored by men who had murdered. Let me tell you about one of them. A thread in honor of Herb Blake.

Despite our different likes and preferences, we all met in loving fellowship for a couple of hours every week. We entered the chapel and exchanged hugs and handshakes.

I was mentored by men who had murdered. Let me tell you about one of them. A thread in honor of Herb Blake.

The man who’d invited me to attend the meeting was certainly Christian, but he was a Christian who knew that I was mostly atheist and Buddhist-leaning. I didn’t get the sense he was trying to convert me to anything.

I was mentored by men who had murdered. Let me tell you about one of them. A thread in honor of Herb Blake.

Technically, our weekly event was sponsored by the Catholic chaplain and was intended as a space to practice Centering Prayer, the Christian variant of meditation made popular by the late Father Thomas Keating.

I was mentored by men who had murdered. Let me tell you about one of them. A thread in honor of Herb Blake.