Kairos is Greek for “God’s Special Time.”
Kairos began with a three-day course in Christianity that was held inside Unition Institution at Raiford, Florida in the fall of 1976. It was originally called Cursillo in Prison. By 1978, six states had adopted the Cursillo in Prison course.
The national Cursillo office created a central authority to supervise Cursillo in Prison ministries and tapped the original nine volunteers, who are today affectionately referred to as the “Nine Old Men,” to redesign the program so that it was more closely aligned with inmate needs. They created the new format and renamed it Kairos.
In 1979, the first Kairos Prison Ministry weekend was presented. Kairos Inside was such a stunning success within prison walls for the participating men that in 1989 the Chaplain at San Quentin State Correctional Facility in California requested that Kairos create a program to minister to the female family members of the incarcerated.
By 1990, the life-saving, agape love that came with Kairos Inside had spread outside the prison walls with Kairos Outside, which catered to the women standing strong with currently incarcerated men.
Giving God that special time was paying such blessed dividends to the men, women, and the system that by 1997 Kairos Torch was developed to address young people’s unique needs at a youth facility in Oklahoma.
Kairos Inside, Kairos Outside, and Kairos Torch are now supported by a staff of over a dozen and they have more than 30,000 volunteers who donate over three million hours of service each year. Kairos is conducted in over 400 correctional institutions and more than 86 communities in 37 states and nine countries.
… And over two tumultuous decades of incarceration, I was no part of it!
I am guilty.
Does it surprise you to hear a man with a capital life sentence say that? It surprised me to write it. To write it for the world to see, I never have before. For over 28 years, I have been incarcerated for capital murder under the discriminative law of parties and draconian mandatory minimum sentencing policy in Texas. I did not receive the semblance of a fair trial. My lawyer, unbeknownst to me, had never tried a capital offense or even a murder. She was not even board certified. The little experience she had was with divorces and juveniles. She was appointed on the eve of my trial and given less than seven days to prepare with a part-time detective. (He lounged for hours.)
She contacted none of the State’s witnesses. Neither did she prepare me nor my witnesses to take the stand. To top it off, she repeatedly allowed the Confrontational Clause and my constitutional rights to be violated without objection or limiting instruction. She hands down won the award for the most incompetent and incoherent counsel of the year.
My guilt does not eliminate my constitutional right to a fair trial.
I’ve never killed anyone in my life. A psychotic drug dealer threatened my best friend’s life; literally had a gun in his face.
Brace yourself for more truth. He was the target. We went to his apartment to eliminate a very real threat. He wasn’t there. His roommate, who we didn’t even know he had, was there. To prove something, my best friend took that young man’s life. Given a chance, I would have stopped him.
I would have saved all of our lives.
Judge us harshly if, you too, were raised in a warzone where it is kill or be killed. Where you were breast- fed on poverty and violence. Where miseducation compensates for a lack of education. Where you’re not only expected to be dead or in prison before you 25th birthday, but you are almost herded there, to the grave or a cage, by unseen forces, situations and circumstances that it seems impossible to escape.
I was 20 years young when I was incarcerated. I had never been to prison. I didn’t think I was going to prison. In my ignorance, I thought you actually had to kill someone to be labelled a killer. I was held hostage in county for 23 months, as family and friends forgot how much they loved me, betrayed me, and said and did whatever necessary to save themselves.
I saw most of them a final time in December of 1996, as they took the stand and then went on with life without me. Can you handle another hard truth? Most just told me the truth; at least as much of the truth as they could tell me without taking that long bus ride with me.
In all honesty, the supportive son, loving father, protective big brother, and good friend died that day; 773394 was born. I became the picture they painted of me. A blue devil. I had to survive. I was dropped in a concrete jungle of savages to suffer and die. Suffer I did, but I refused to die.
The violence was nothing new to me. I’d been clutched by my neck like a dog and shoved toward another child of seven to learn to punch and take a punch for no other reason than the ‘hood demanded it of even its babies.
The interracial traumatization of growing up in a home of domestic violence had numbed me; prepared me for the interracial traumatization that permeates prison life. How much easier is it to watch when it’s not your mother being brutalized? How much easier is it to participate when it is the boogeyman taking the blows?
Back then, I had no guilt. Only rage. Rage against my perceived Judases. Rage against the criminal (in)justice system, the prison industrial complex. Rage against a promise land that had always, from where I walked, been hostile to a Black man. And, as always, with me, that undefinable rage at the biggest culprit of all: ME.
I’d been provided opportunities most in WILK-A-LAND, the projects I grew up in, had never known. I had squandered them all, blinded by misplaced love and loyalty. Driven by the pains of being forsaken by my father and emotionally damaged by a stepfather who had me with blood in my eyes and malice in my heart before my 10th birthday.
No sob story, no excuses; just more truth, if you can handle it?
I don’t remember when I first heard of Kairos. I know that I rejected it outright. I didn’t care about the fabulous feast that they were rumored to have. I had only contempt for a God who would allow all the horrors and hatred I’d been exposed to at an early age. I had no desire to sit among and conversate with a bunch of hypocrites who’d just come to eat.
“San, I’m telling you that you should try to go,” Baki was serious. “Bro, Allah was in that room. Love was in the house! I broke down in tears, man.” Baki told me in 2015.
I could see the emotions welling up in his eyes. His passionate testimony got my attention, because Baki was a member of the Nation of Islam, a man of respect, not prone to emotionalism.
Still, I shook my head dismissively and the subject was not broached again with me until 2019.
I will never forget that fateful year. I had been incarcerated for nearly a quarter century. I’d seen and done too much.
I’d been lain, cuffed and shirtless, in a large, red ant pile during a riot, suffering hundreds of bites on my stomach, chest and torso as I stared pure hatred, in silence, at the officers surrounding me with horses and guns.
“You didn’t say a word,” one of the officers said in awe, as the nurse in the infirmary actually had a picture taken and made a fuss over me.
“The physical pain pales in comparison…” I poured into his eyes. I never told him in comparison to what and he never asked.
I’d spent over eight and a half years in administrative segregation (seg). They say, now, that 45 days will leave you mentally impaired. By 2019, I’d lost family, friends, and all but the will to live. Rabbit, one of two people on the planet I considered a friend, had a solution for all my pains and problems: Kairos.
“Never!” I dismissed his requests for me to sign up to go to Kairos with him.
“Forget about the others. Just go and get what you can get. What have you got to lose?”
“Never.” I stuck to that one word as the deadline wound down.
The day before the deadline, another Christian brother named Sledge, pulled up on me. “Kairos,” he said and I shook my head. “It don’t cost you nothing but an I-60 request form,” he handed me two and strolled away.
I had made my peace with God in seg. I believed in a Higher Power. I, if anything, had lost faith in people. I had no patience for fakes and pretenders. I was judgmental, critical and impatient. Those characteristics had upset and alienated most of my family members.
I can’t say why to this day, but I woke up after midnight and filled out the I-60, requesting to be chosen for Kairos Walk 48.
I went back to sleep and didn’t wake back up until almost 10AM. Mail had been picked up at 7:45AM. “Oh well, it was a longshot anyway.” I had waited until the last minute and it usually took years to be selected as one of the 48 men chosen out of the thousands on your unit.
I wasn’t deflated or disappointed. I didn’t care.
But, Rabbit did. “I saw the I-60 on your desk and dropped it in the mail for you.”
I hadn’t even noticed that it was gone. “It’s a one in a million chance,” I shrugged but smiled.
“At least you got that one!” Rabbit laughed. I did too. Rabbit and I were both selected for Kairos Walk 48 and placed in the same group. My life changed forever!
Kairos was by far the most powerful experience of my life. It was everything Baki tried to explain and so much more. Allah, God, the Higher Power, Love, truly did reign supreme in that room.
Every morning, we were welcomed with fresh fruit and vegetable platters, spreads of assorted cookies, tea, juice, and coffee. Brisket, big hamburgers with all the works, fried chicken, spaghetti and garlic bread, taco salads, marble cake, pies, banana pudding, ice cream, and much more was served over the three and a half days of praise and worship.
The food wasn’t the best I ever ate in prison, it was the best I ever ate in my life. Feasts that were fit for kings. But, as great as the food was, it was the true love, joy, and spirit of serving that the Kairos family brought with them that had gangsters, Muslims, Christians, and everyone in between, breaking down, confessing their sins and truly committing to changing their lives.
The band was awesome, and to see 60-year-old men, volunteers and prisoners, come alive, dancing in fellowship gave me goosebumps from head to toe and had me smiling until it hurt. Regardless to why some came, no one doubted that God had showed up and showed out!
It didn’t matter what your race or religion was. It didn’t matter what your crime was. We were all His children, in His House battling our demons and winning with Him.
Good people from all over the state of Texas, from churches to other prisons, had written dozens of letters and personal cards that filled up brown sacks that had our names on them. Prior participants of Kairos had created posters and pictures that linked us all as family.
The most powerful offering and demonstration was a seemingly mile-long chain of linked, multi-colored paper shackles; each signed by a believer who loved us and was praying for us. The first shackle started in the back, weaving its way to the front, hand by hand, man by man, row by row; never ceasing in its connecting of us as children of God. The Spirit of God went with it.
“As you were once connected by chains of bondage, you are now forever connected by this chain of love!” Sarge roared, ushering in a fresh flood of tears.
In a world where prisoners are often forgotten or forsaken, it was impossible not to be touched, if not overwhelmed, by the outpouring of care, compassion, and agape love that permeated the chapel. Broken up into groups of seven and eight, we had the most intimate and cleansing conversations. We bonded on a righteous plateau high above all of the boxes society seeks to keep us divided in.
It was the experience of a lifetime. We all had a real graduation together. The volunteers’ beautiful wives, who had poured all of their love into those delicious viddles, came to cheer us on. We all got certificates, group pictures and Kairos crosses.
“Everyone will notice the prayer box in the center of your table,” Sarge, the volunteer who was overseeing Walk 48, commented as he handed out sheets of white paper. “Anything you want to ask God, you can put on this paper, put it in the prayer box, and believers will pray over it for you.”
I hadn’t had a visit in over five years. I asked God for a lot. I am totally in awe and in love that all my prayers, and then some, were answered. I received five visits over the next four months after Kairos. I reconciled with every family member, receiving two of the visits from my younger brother who’d never visited.
In short, I left Kairos Walk 48 freer than I have ever been. Actually smiling with real joy, real peace. I forgave everyone and everything, and then forgave myself. I came out with a pure heart of love, ready to serve, and the more I gave, the more God gave to me.
Little did I know, the best was yet to come.
I graduated from the Kairos program having conquered my lower self and immediately signed up to go to the Faith-based dorm. The Faith-based dorm is another Christian-based program that is open to all offenders of all faiths, who voluntarily sign up to go to the designated dorm for several months, taking rehabilitative classes like Quest for Authentic Manhood, God’s Finances, Conflict Resolution, Boundaries, and Anger Management.
Inspirational and spiritual videos and booklets are completed. Volunteers and guest speakers, including some ex-prisoners, come in weekly to share their experiences. I went from walking in the light to walking on water! I found myself, more and more, ministering to not just my brothers in white, but to volunteers.
There is no privacy in prison, no faking it. God had given me life more abundantly and I shared it graciously. I graduated from the Faith-based dorm and returned as a mentor. I had been mentoring for a couple of years, when in 2023, one of the volunteers who always came to my table approached me.
“I been praying and God has guided me to you,” Melvin started. “Have you ever been to Kairos?”
I beamed. “It totally changed my life.”
“I’d like for you to speak at the next graduation?”
I nodded with a smile. “I’d be honored.”
I get a bit emotional in reflection, because I had been discussing my birthday of April 30 with my sister Tonya. The fact that I didn’t remember ever having a birthday party in my life. I half-joked that no one loved me enough for all that.
I’d thought that the Kairos graduation would be on April 5, 2023. I would go in at the end, say my peace, and leave. It turned out to be on April 30, 2023. My 49th birthday! And, I finally found someone who did care enough.
I’d long ago stopped celebrating my birthday. Refused to even say when it was. In prison, any attempts had led to disappointment, so it had become safer emotionally to dismiss it as just another day. But God knows what we really desire in our hearts.
From the moment I stepped into the Kairos gathering, I once again felt God’s presence, felt that love. I felt His pleasure in me. My lay-in had been for 10:30AM, hours later than the others, so I expected to step in, speak, and leave.
I was surprised to find the other brothers, who’d volunteered to be servers for the graduating class, hard at work making plates of fried chicken, fluffy dinner rolls, and all kinds of sides. I honestly smiled big, and went over to help them, praying that I could maybe get a plate.
“No, no, no!” Terry Hall, one of the Field Ministers, intercepted me. “You are a guest of honor! I got special instructions to seat you with the band and take care of you.”
I could not believe it. I was smiling in shock as he led me to the table of the freeworld band that had rocked my own Kairos Walk 48. Then Patterson, another Kairos brother there to serve, brought me a heaping plate with two smaller paper plates of ice cream and cake.
As God would have it, those were the desserts being served that day.
I dropped my head in prayer, in praise, in disbelief. The band brothers had made me feel totally at ease from the moment I sat down. I’d applauded them as musicians and testified to how they had electrified my own Kairos Walk 48. All eyes were on me when I raised my head. I couldn’t speak for a moment, so I took out my ID. “Today is my birthday.” They were the first words I told. And then I could not shut up. My testimony was long and passionate, as electrifying as their music. It all came straight from the heart and soul, and it moved everyone else to talk, testify, and tell their stories.
One of the brothers pulled me aside. “Don’t ever say that you’re not a public speaker again. You got a gift. Don’t limit what God can do, what He is calling you to do.”
I felt him and his advice. I immediately crossed that line of apology from the top of my speech. I was on fire and ready to go when I was called to the stage as the keynote speaker; another surprise that Melvin had failed to mention. I got right to it.
“It Starts Today! Peace and Blessings, My Brothers.
My spiritual name is Righteous and I am a humble servant of this Righteous Nation, where success is defined not by what you got, but by what you do; namely helping and healing others – just what Jesus did!
How many of ya’ll know that God is great? How many of ya’ll realize that God is alive? I am here to tell you with a certainty, if you don’t know: God is most definitely great, alive, and working on the Robertson Unit!
God is alive and working through Warden Cozby, who choose to not only see the best in us, but provide opportunities for us to display it.
And, I want you to know that God is alive in each and every one of you brothers who chose to come to and go through this Kairos Walk 52!
See, I came today, not only to testify, but to tell you that the devil is a lie! I don’t care what you did yesterday, last year, or a decade ago. Today! You’re not a killer or a dealer, you’re not a user or an abuser, you’re not a con, nor a bum.
You are a child of God! Made in His image! God is great and so are you! You just have to realize it, accept it, embrace it, and you can begin unearthing and manifesting it! And, I’m here to tell you from experience that once you do, you’ll never regret it.
You’ve tried everything else, why not give God a chance?”
I took the energy and my voice down several notches.
“I was given a capital life sentence when I was twenty years young. I raged against the machine until I was dropped in the hole, administrative segregation, indefinitely. It was only by the mercy and grace of God that I was released from seg after eight and a half years.
When I came to Kairos 48, I was tired, bone tired and weary. My family was tired of me. I hadn’t had a visit in over five years. My mother was the only one who had her phone registered, and she was ducking my calls, because it was always some trouble, a complaint, or a request.
I can see today that I was sick. How many of ya’ll know that God is in the healing business? Right here, that blessed day, in April of 2019, I gave all the pain, all my problems, my
sicknesses, my dreams, and my desires to God. I put it all in that box on the table.”
I inched the energy and volume up as I took it on home.
“My brothers, ya’ll been here with me, some of ya’ll know: God showed up and showed out for me!
See, when I became a man of God, put childish games behind me, started walking in the light of the Christ, asking others how I can help them-I got five visits after not having one in five years.
Today, I have 17 people on my phone list who look forward to my calls; after not having more than five in the last ten years!
After running with the devil for over 30 years, trying to get it, and only digging myself deeper and deeper into a dungeon of depression and despair; in only twelve months of walking in the light of the Christ, God the Father has given me more joy, peace, and prosperity than I’ve ever known!
And, it all started, right here at Kairos Walk 48. Today, April 30, 2023, it can and it should start for you! You now have a community who cares, a Kairos family that loves you! You now have a Heavenly Father who will give you life more abundantly too! I strongly encourage you brothers to take full advantage of it!
Not tomorrow. Not when you get granted parole. Not when you get out. Today! Start being the best man of God! The best husband! The best father! The best son! The best sibling! The best friend! The best citizen that you can be! That’s what God wants for you; that’s what I want for you, and that’s what you should want for yourself!
I leave you brothers as I came, with Peace and Blessings!”
There had been applauding throughout my speech, but I was given a standing ovation as I left the stage. All of the wide smiles, nodding heads and thumbs up told me that I had done a good job. I was more than satisfied, but still my God, my great and fabulous God had more for me.
“Everyone, please remain standing for a moment. Santonio Murff,” Melvin called my full name and got some laughs, “please, come back to the stage.”
I headed back smiling and gave him a hug. He stood beside me and put a hand on my shoulder.
“I just found out that today is this man’s birthday! Could everyone help me out, please?”
I cried inside. Stood there, smiling like the Joker, as over 100 men and women sung “Happy Birthday” to me!
And then, as if that wasn’t enough, Terry Oconnel, the head of the Kairos volunteers, took me to the back; took me to the chicken, the rolls, the ice cream, the cake, and my Kairos family! I’ll just say, I tried to make up for all those missed birthday celebrations.
Imagine that, not just the best birthday, but arguably the best day of my life… in prison! That is the power of God, the power of Love, the power of Kairos! I will never in life forget that day and the great people who made it all possible.
Special love, respect, and appreciation to Kairos, Warden Cozby, Melvin, and Terry for bringing me full circle with a celebration that I will never in life forget; a celebration that was about so much more than me. Nevertheless, God’s Special Time became mine.
The seen and the unseen, the named and the unnamed, I thank you, one and all.
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