Grace Behind Bars

"[This book] shares the true ... account of how Bo Mitchell, businessman and chaplain for the Denver Nuggets, inexplicably ended up in federal prison only to find God's true freedom behind bars"--Amazon.com.

Grace Behind Bars shares the true and dramatic account of how Bo Mitchell, businessman and chaplain for the Denver Nuggets, inexplicably ended up in federal prison only to find God’s true freedom behind bars. Ironically, it’s in a six-by-nine-foot cell that God begins to free this driven Christian leader from his prison of performance and success. In the end, Bo realizes that God’s love is a gift, not something he must earn. But there’s more to the story: Just before Bo enters prison, his wife, Gari, becomes incapacitated by a brain illness and enters her own prison of clinical depression. Readers will see how the couple struggled together as their world fell apart, yet ultimately grew closer to each other and God behind the bars of their trials. This story will not only inspire and encourage readers, it will show them how they, too, can find spiritual freedom in life’s “prisons” if they choose to see God’s hand in their lives.

The command that the Lord left for all Christians is to make disciples of all people. For many, that means talking about church to a neighbor, a golf buddy, a co-worker or perhaps a family member. For Rick, the great commission was a call to bring spiritual freedom to those who had lost their societal freedom- inmates. America's ever-increasing prison population- lost to the message of salvation. In a world full of focus on victims and victim's rights, Rick saw the opportunity to bring the message of salvation to the offenders. Though many of the men and women to whom Rick ministers will never be free from the bars that surround them because of their crime against another person or society, they can be free from the condemnation that has souls as its focus. This is a book that describes a ministry. It describes a ministry to men and women who from hardened circumstances find the softness of salvation through personal forgiveness and an understanding that Christ's arms are long enough to reach around even the vilest sinner to bring them to Him. Read with your heart. Read with the knowledge that Christ still stands at the door and knocks and He will join anyone who with a repentant heart will open. Mike Berry, Motivational Speaker Lessons learned from our relationship quietly emerge with focused challenges. Rick's life lessons, connections with those in need and the lost, and of course, answering God's call guide him and I to this healing place, Georgetown County Detention Center. Ongoing encouragement to all who read this book. Prevention, intervention, and aftercare will always be needed for the least of these. Chaplain C. Williams

Behind Bars is the indispensable reference book for composers, arrangers, teachers and students of composition, editors, and music processors. In the most thorough and painstakingly researched book to be published since the 1980s, specialist music editor Elaine Gould provides a comprehensive grounding in notational principles. This full eBook version is in fixed-layout format to ensure layout and image quality is consistent with the original hardback edition. Behind Bars covers everything from basic rules, conventions and themes to complex instrumental techniques, empowering the reader to prepare music with total clarity and precision. With the advent of computer technology, it has never been more important for musicians to have ready access to principles of best practice in this dynamic field, and this book will support the endeavours of software users and devotees of hand-copying alike. The author's understanding of, and passion for, her subject has resulted in a book that is not only practical but also compellingly readable. This seminal and all-encompassing guide encourages new standards of excellence and accuracy and, at 704 pages, it is supported by 1,500 music examples of published scores from Bach to Xenakis. This is the full eBook version of the original hardback edition.

Letters for the Ages Behind Bars is a history of imprisonment told through the letters of people incarcerated over many centuries, for crimes committed or sometimes even for no reason at all. It is a story that runs from St Paul right up to the present day. The act of depriving someone of their liberty is one of humankind's most enduring responses to 'crime' through history. What society has sought to achieve over the years by doing so has shifted across the centuries and there is now a variety of purposes: to express disapproval; for the purpose of straight-up punishment through the removal of freedom; to protect the general public; to rehabilitate, perhaps even to forget about those with whom we simply cannot cope. The letters assembled here come from all parts of the world, and from time immemorial: Thomas Cromwell, Mary Queen of Scots, Eamon De Valera, Al Capone, Martin Luther King and many more. These letters not only reveal what it is like to be behind bars, but raise issues that are still of pressing interest for us today - such as the death penalty, miscarriages of justice, redemption and social change. They shed light on a system which is primarily one of contradictions – there are letters which inspire, horrify, letters which awe and condemn – even letters which make you laugh or cry.

“Venkatraman has never met a heavy theme she did not like....Borrowing elements of fable, it's told with a recurring sense of awe by a boy whom the world, for most of his life, has existed only in stories.”—New York Times Book Review The author of the award-winning The Bridge Home brings readers another gripping novel set in Chennai, India, featuring a boy who's unexpectedly released into the world after spending his whole life in jail with his mom. Kabir has been in jail since the day he was born, because his mom is serving time for a crime she didn't commit. He's never met his dad, so the only family he's got are their cellmates, and the only place he feels the least bit free is in the classroom, where his kind teacher regales him with stories of the wonders of the outside world. Then one day a new warden arrives and announces Kabir is too old to stay. He gets handed over to a long-lost "uncle" who unfortunately turns out to be a fraud, and intends to sell Kabir. So Kabir does the only thing he can--run away as fast as his legs will take him. How does a boy with nowhere to go and no connections make his way? Fortunately, he befriends Rani, another street kid, and she takes him under her wing. But plotting their next move is hard--and fraught with danger--in a world that cares little for homeless, low caste children. This is not the world Kabir dreamed of--but he's discovered he's not the type to give up. Kabir is ready to show the world that he--and his mother--deserve a place in it.

ÒI hole up in my own cozy cubicle and write, considering ways to make the approaching Thanksgiving holiday not just another day in this place. In prison, hope faces east; time is measured in wake-ups.Ó Time of Grace is a remarkable book, written with great eloquence by a former science teacher who was incarcerated for twelve years for his sexual liaison with a teenage student. Far more than a Òprison memoir,Ó it is an intimate and revealing look at relationshipsÑwith fellow humans and with the surprising wildlife of the Sonoran Desert, both inside and beyond prison walls. Throughout, Ken Lamberton reflects on human relations as they mimic and defy those of the natural world, whose rhythms calibrate LambertonÕs days and years behind bars. He writes with candor about his life, while observing desert flora and fauna with the insight and enthusiasm of a professional naturalist. While he studies a tarantula digging her way out of the packed earth and observes Mexican freetail bats sailing into the evening sky, Lamberton ruminates on his crime and on the wrenching effects it has had on his wife and three daughters. He writes of his connections with his fellow inmatesÑsome of whom he teaches in prison classesÑand with the guards who control them, sometimes with inexplicable cruelty. And he unflinchingly describes a prison system that has gone horribly wrongÑa system entrapped in a self-created web of secrecy, fear, and lies. This is the final book of LambertonÕs trilogy about the twelve years he spent in prison. Readers of his earlier books will savor this last volume. Those who are only now discovering LambertonÕs distinctive voiceÑpart poet, part scientist, part teacher, and always deeply, achingly humanÑwill feel as if they are making a new friend. Gripping, sobering, and beautifully written, LambertonÕs memoir is an unforgettable exploration of crime, punishment, and the power of the human spirit.

When Charles Colson was released after seven months of prison time following the Watergate scandal, the last thing on earth he wanted to do was go back into those dark, frightening prisons, but God called him to do just that. Thus was born a life-long ministry, and here, for the first time, if the amazing success story of Prison Fellowship's thirty years of work in the darkest places on earth.