Every once in a while I come across a passage in a book that hits me with the force of revelation. Here’s one: “A person’s way of being human is the most authentic expression of their belief or unbelief. A person’s life speaks more about their faith than what they think or say about God.”

That passage is from Tomas Halik’s book “The Afternoon of Christianity.” Halik is a Czech sociologist, priest and philosopher. When the Czech Republic was communist, he served in the underground church; after 1989, he was a close friend and adviser to Vaclav Havel and an admirer of Pope Francis. I like the passage because Halik is cutting through the categories we commonly use to define people.

That is a rarity. These days a pollster or a social scientist might call you up and ask some superficial questions and put you in a box like “believer” or a “none” (a person without belief). And somehow people are content to accept and live within these crude categories of separation.

Once you put people into categorical boxes, you are inviting them to see history as a zero-sum conflict between this group and that one. And sure enough, today we live in a political, cultural and religious war between two impoverished armies.

On the one side are the Christian nationalists, who practice a debauched form of their faith. Christian nationalism is particular rather than universal. It is about protecting “us” against “them” — the native versus the immigrant. It is about power more than love. It is about threat more than hope. It is rigid and pharisaical rather than personal and merciful.

On the other side are the exhausted remains of secular humanism. That humanism started out trying to liberate people from dogma, but it has produced societies in which people feel alienated, naked and alone. It has failed to formulate a shared moral order that might help people find meaning and solidarity in their lives. It is so enfeebled that it is being replaced by the religion of the phone — by shallow, technological modes of living.

A way out

When I read Halik’s passage I immediately glimpsed a way out of this stale and life-deforming culture war. That passage reminds us, first, that the categories in our heads are inadequate for the great diversity of human questing we see around us.

In my experience most believers have their periods of unbelief. Two people who call themselves evangelical Christians can think and behave in very different ways. Crude labels like “believer” or even “evangelical Christian” do not accurately summarize most real-life humans.

Meanwhile, the category “none” is itself an idiocy. How does this negation capture the lives of people who conduct their own spiritual adventures outside of a faith tradition? Most important, human beings have a lot in common that those categories don’t see.

Halik’s passage reminds us, second, of what matters most. To get a little preachy, it’s not the propositions that come out of our mouths but the care that flows from our hearts. It’s how we each try to fulfill the task of being human.

The passions of the heart

If there is one thing I have learned in my adult life it is that the passions of the heart precede and are greater than the machinery of reason. The theologian says that deep down each person possesses a yearning soul. The cognitive scientist says that deep down each person possesses unconscious layers from which desires flow, where 99.9% of our thinking gets done. Whether your language is spiritual or scientific, the bottom line is that the energy that animates the world emerges from the human depths, from the mysterious regions where passions form.

When you look at people only at the shallow level of their stated beliefs, you see ideologies that are likely to clash. But when you look down into the depths, you see struggling people in all camps, wrestling with impulsions they can barely control or understand.

Some of these impulsions are dark and destructive — hatred, resentment, the lust for power. But human beings are also oriented toward the good. All human beings seem to possess desires for greater understanding, belonging, meaning, beauty and love.

Theologians naturally describe these longings in religious terms. “Humans were created by God in God’s image and the desire for God was implanted in the structure of our humanity,” Halik writes. In his own book “Passions of the Soul,” the former archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, writes, “If we are growing in spiritual maturity and discernment, what we desire is always to go on growing and to go on desiring.”

Nonbelievers may use different language, but I believe most will recognize these spiritual longings. I have lived through decades of nonbelief and now more than a decade of belief. In both phases I ached, like most people, for a transformation of the heart — to gradually be a better person deep inside, to gradually be a better presence in the world. Coming to faith didn’t sate these longings; if anything, it has inflamed them.

Seen in this light, we’re not warriors clashing, we’re sojourners exploring. Each of us start with our own foundational truths — Christian, Jewish, rationalist, whatever. Each of us is swept along by the currents of our own traditions. But each of us longs to grow, to become better versions of ourselves. In the day-to-day realities of pluralist life, each of us stumbles and falls, and hopefully we help one another along our parallel and intertwining pilgrimages toward a horizon that we will never reach — at least in this world.

Pilgrimage metaphors instead

Which brings me to the third point inspired by that Halik passage. Today, we’ve been trained to think in battleground metaphors — believer versus nonbeliever, MAGA versus the wokesters. But if we’re going to get out of this nasty age of ours, we’re going to have to see the world through pilgrimage metaphors instead.

In the Book of Exodus, Moses asks to see God’s face, but God shows him only his back. Perhaps that’s because you don’t see the face of one you are following. The early church father Gregory of Nyssa argued that Christians are meant to attend Christ in exactly this way — to follow, to move in the direction of Jesus’ movement. Christian faith, Halik argues, is a journey toward and with Jesus, who said, “I am the way.”

You can choose to live your life in the trenches, going nowhere, and good luck with that. Culture warriors are static, and their certainties are terrifying. Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert once observed that human beings are works in progress who think they are finished. But people who see themselves as pilgrims know they are unfinished; they know they are still on a journey that will change them. They embrace the dynamic, forward flowing nature of life. If they are clawing at anything, it’s not one another but the brambles that block their common path.

I got to meet Halik this past week at a conference sponsored by the Faith Angle Forum, which brings theologians together with journalists. I attended because I’m looking for a form of Christianity that is more attractive and compelling than Christian nationalism and which we can use to pry people away from that nationalism.

A better way to be faithful

Led by these wise people like Halik and Williams, I now see glimmers of a better way to be faithful in the world. St. Augustine advised us to follow what seems delightful, and in this pilgrim’s way of living I see the delight of pluralism. The world is too complicated to have all its truth encompassed by any single tradition — by Christianity, Judaism, Islam or Enlightenment. You can plant yourself in one and learn from them all.

I see the delight of self-forgetting. As so many sages have told us, if you dive down to the deepest realms of yourself, you find there a desire for self-transcendence that leads you to a highway straight out of self — toward loved ones and friends, toward God. You’re no longer trapped in your small, insecure, self-absorbed self; you’re outward facing, maybe not thinking about yourself much at all.

Related Articles

Bret Stephens: Meet the new antisemites, same as the old antisemites

Linda Hansen: Rebuilding civic trust in the age of algorithmic division

Allison Schrager: Cash is no longer king. It’s cringe

Parmy Olson: Mark Zuckerberg is picking groupthink over an AI godfather

Thomas Friedman: The post-Cold-War age is over. What is this new one?

I see delight in humility. I love Williams’ definition of humility as a “capacity to be a place where others find rest.” Williams adds that the people Jesus calls blessed “are those who live in welcoming stillness yet are at the same time on fire with longing for the well-being of the neighbor and the healing of the world’s hurts.”

I see, finally, a glimpse of the America I thought I knew. For centuries we have been a hopeful people, a people on the move, defined more by our future than our pasts. Sometimes this relentless passion for growth has led toward gaudy materialism and even exploitation. But American history has been at its best when the passion for spiritual and moral growth has been just as strong. When people have said: I want my heart constantly enlarged, my nation constantly moving toward fairness.

Somehow MAGA has swept in and made us a frightened nation, stagnant, callous and backward. I don’t think this alien cultural implant can last forever. Eventually Americans, restless as any people on Earth, will want to replace threat with hope and resume our national pilgrimage. When that cultural and spiritual shift occurs, a lot will change in our religious and political life.

David Brooks writes a column for the New York Times.

Two public artists are launching projects in Stillwater this week through a new “micro-residency” program at the Art and Water Space, an environmental arts studio run by the nonprofit A House Unbuilt.

During the rest of November, artist and storyteller Michael Venske plans to record conversations with residents to create a “sonic tapestry” exploring people’s connections to Stillwater and the St. Croix River Valley. Also starting this month, artist Olivia Morawiecki will begin “Wrap Me in a Blanket,” a multimedia installation in Lowell Park exploring grief, memory and community.

Based on the corner of Main and Nelson streets in Stillwater, A House Unbuilt aims to support artists and art-making focused on relationships between communities of people and the natural worlds they live in, said founder Victoria Bradford Styrbicki.

Venske and Morawiecki are the organization’s first resident artists, and Styrbicki hopes the program will bring new cohorts of artists to Stillwater several times a year.

A performing artist and choreographer, Styrbicki initially founded the organization in 2012 as a dance company in Chicago, and it has since morphed into a broader visual arts nonprofit. But in a way, she said, the organization’s current work is conceptually similar to a sort of choreography.

“How can we move community into action or into agency?” she said. “I think of the work that I do…in the model of beginning people together, coming to work through a system or methodology together, but not necessarily all having the same outcomes or trajectories. Supporting each other as we go down different paths.”

Tree chimes

During Morawiecki’s residency, she plans to wrap an entire tree, from its trunk to each limb, in wool, then hang chimes from the branches. Visitors are invited to dedicate a chime in a way that honors their grief, whether in relation to a lost loved one, a life phase or other intangible sense of mourning, she said.

“One of the purest things we can do for each other is show up and be present with people who are struggling or going through grief,” Morawiecki said. “The idea of having a public space which exists to say, ‘There is grief and I can sit with that for myself and for others’ — that really resonates with me.”

The chimes, and the sound they make, are also important to the symbolism of the project. Just as people do, chimes respond to touch and to the presence of one another, she said. And whereas we commonly think of grieving as a private process, Morawiecki wants to explore grief as more collective and communal.

Visitors can find information about dedicating a chime on Morawiecki’s website, citizenparlor.com.

But whether or not someone chooses to engage with the project in that way, she said, she hopes the work “gives them some element of comfort or a connectedness to know that somebody else is making time and space for what they’re holding,” she said.

‘Sonic tapestry’

Meanwhile, Venske plans to set up times to visit places like senior centers and schools, plus to spend time at Main Street businesses and in the Art and Water Space studio. People will also be able to participate in the project by recording their own voice memo and sending it to Venske on his website, michaelvenske.com.

After he stitches these interviews together into the final ‘sonic tapestry,’ Venske and A House Unbuilt plan to host a listening event sometime next year.

“The ability to just ask a general open-ended question and see where it runs is really appealing to me,” he said. “People have their lived experiences, their feelings, connections, roots, history in this place. For an outsider to come in and say, let’s talk about this place, what can you share — and let’s just talk about what comes up.”

Although it’s not the subject of his residency work, Venske, like Morawiecki, is also known for a focus on grief: He hosts the show “Your Funeral Music” on WFNU Frogtown Community Radio, in which he and a guest listen to and discuss the music the guest would want played at their funeral.

But whether the topic of conversation is a person’s own legacy or perhaps their memories in downtown Stillwater, Venske said he’s particularly drawn to audio as a way to capture stories.

“How we say things and the way we (hear) things when we’re not watching — when we have to listen — forces our brain to hear things in different ways and pick up the nuance in someone’s voice, the way they approach a difficult topic,” he said. “You can connect with someone on such an emotionally deep level when you can just hear them, hear their voice, hear how they’re reacting to what they’re describing or a memory they have.”

“I really want people to feel like they’ve been heard,” he said.

More information on A House Unbuilt and the Art and Water Space micro-residency program is online at ahouseunbuilt.com.

Related Articles

Tattoo artists trained in Stillwater prison find work, community at White Bear Lake studio

Stillwater: Len’s Meat & Grocery to become Grundhofer’s fourth location

Parents threaten to sue Stillwater school district after employee accused of producing AI child porn

Stillwater City Council denies cannabis shop permit near rec center

Stillwater: Construction mishap causes power outage near Lakeview Hospital construction site

Something for everybody today — a magical novel, Japanese resettlement, Bob Dylan and Harmon Killebrew, and two kinds of poetry.

“Down Here”: by Sherry Roberts (Osmyrrah Publishing, $20)

(Osmyrrah Publishing)

In 2023 Sherry Roberts introduced readers to Ariel in her novel “Up There.” Ariel has the gift of levitating and riding the wind. After an accident she turns her back on her powers until she returns to her Minnesota hometown of Cosette. “Down Here” is  a sequel as magical as the first book. Ariel has stayed in Cosette, married nice, caring Ruddy and has a daughter who carries the same gift of wind riding as her mother. Ariel remembers how she was considered a freak in school because she wore weighted shoes that kept her grounded. Now, she is trying to keep her daughter Meri from the same problem while also training the 5-year-old to ride the winds that Ariel, sometimes, can summon. Ruddy hates it when his wife and daughter step into the sky, but he can only be their steady rock when they come down.

Meri is good at following her parents’ rules about not going Up There alone, but she can’t resist the lure of her mother’s impulsive cousin Trouble, who has certainly earned her name. Trouble is obsessed with finding the farm home where matriarchs of Ariel’s maternal Hamilton family lived. Roberts takes us deep into the Hamiltons’ background, including which women had the gift, which chose to use or not use it, and how difficult is was for Up There to be understood by the men in their lives.

There are lyrical passages taking us with Ariel and Meri as they drift on breezes at night. And when a terrible storm hits, it’s up to Ariel to make a big decision.

Roberts writes contemporary fiction and cozies. “Up There” won the Minnesota Indie Author Project.

Teaser quote: “Standing with Ruddy on the edge of the meadow, she buzzed with excitement, energized by the swirling air. Here she felt the ultimate connection with Up There — her name for the wind and sky that swept her out of this world and into another. In Up There, Ariel could be strong and fearless, the complete opposite of how she felt on land.”

Enmity and Empathy: Japanese Americans  in World War II”: by Ka F. Fong (Minnesota Historical Society Press, $34.95)

This is an in-depth history of Japanese-Americans and their allies fighting discrimination in wartime Minnesota and the lesser-known narrative of resettlement that followed the internment camps, highlighting how diverse groups stood together amid turmoil. Resettlement efforts included college education and military service, leading Japanese-Americans from western states to the Upper Midwest, markedly increasing their numbers in Minnesota. The author is professor of Asian Studies at St. Olaf College in Northfield. He is producer, director and writer of the film “Beyond the Barbed Wire: Japanese Americans in Minnesota.”

“Bob Dylan: Things Have Changed: A Kind of Biography”: by Ron Rosenbaum (Melville House, $32)

Rosenbaum, a longtime journalist and columnist for national publications, draws on his history with musician Bob Dylan to discuss a side of the Minnesota native that is often ignored — his various religious conversions. What did Dylan’s Jewishness, his mysticism, and his visits with psychics have to do with it all? The author also offers a key to reading Dylan’s late-career lyrics, which some have called unintelligible. Rosenbaum was a young journalist in the 1960s when he encountered Dylan and his music. He was one of the few to interview Dylan in those years, doing a long interview in 1978 for Playboy magazine. This is a dense book, probably best appreciated by Dylan fans who want to go into the man’s psyche as it relates to his music.

“Remembering Harmon: A Tribute to Harmon Killebrew”: by Jim Bark (Outskirts Press, $14.95)

(Outskirts Press)

The author, who’s written books about the Minnesota Twins and Roberto Clemente and Henry Aaron, gives us statistics and anecdotes about the player Bark calls “one of the greatest home run hitters of all time.” Killebrew, who died in 2011, played for the Minnesota Twins from 1961 to ’74. This slim paperback pays tribute to his talents with chapters about his career statistics and comments about him from other MLB players. For instance, Dave LaRoche, a Killebrew teammate in 1972: “(Harmon) was a total gentleman and soft spoken. He had a short quick swing with a big follow through… Solid player, teammate, and family man.”

“Phoenixbirds”: by Jane Dickerson (Calumet Editions, $19)

(Calumet Editions)

In her second poetry collection, St. Paulite Dickerson writes of climate change, birds, and the heartache of losing her daughter (“I’m supposed to die before her, my forty-year-old deaf daughter who/hopes to join the dogs & other pets in heaven…”) and salutes avians as in the poem “Robin’s Egg Blue”: “It’s a luxury to write/about a bird, any bird, when the world is full of anguish,/especially this bird, so fearless or feckless that it will build a nest/anywhere, even in plain sight…”

Dickerson’s previous collection, “The Orange Tree,” was a finalist for the Midwest Independent Publishing Association award. She is a mentor for the Minnesota Prison Writers workshop and a freelance editor.

“Humor, the Wonder Drug”: by Ken Mogren, illustrated by Joella Goyette (MSI Press, $16.95)

(MSI Press)

Ken Mogren, who is retired from a business career, offers humorous poetry such as “Joint Custody” (about who gets the dog), “Grumpy Grandpa’s New Tattoo,” and “Small Town Cafe in the Morning” (“A guy who always has a joke to tell/Gets full attention when he has the floor./Alas, he can’t remember very well/And might tell the one he told the week before.”)

Mogren, who lives in Winona, got the idea for the book after a reader of his previous Spunky Grandmas humorous collections told him she sometimes ran out of conversation while visiting her mother in a nursing home. Reading funny stories filled the gap, brightening her mother’s day. Goyette’s cartoonish illustrations are big and bold.

Related Articles

Readers and writers: Enjoy these ghosts brought to you by Minnesota novelists

Literary pick for week of Nov. 9

Literary calendar for week of Nov. 9

Salman Rushdie’s new book is his first fiction since a brutal attack. He tells us why

In ‘Queen Esther,’ John Irving travels back to ‘The Cider House Rules’

Travis “Leo” Leonard recently spent 30 hours tattooing an elaborate Japanese-inspired artwork on a customer at No Joke Tattoo Studios in White Bear Lake.

The large tattoo, done mostly in black, fills most of his customer’s back. It features two skulls, a spiked mace and the Japanese characters for “balance” written in red.

Travis Leonard shows a cellphone photo of a tattoo he is working on. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Leonard, 28, said the process took almost two days. “We took one four-hour nap, and that was it,” he said. “It was impressive for me, but, honestly, it was more impressive for him because that’s very painful. It’s spine, ribs, lower back. He’s a skinny guy, too. I couldn’t sit for a 30-hour back piece, that’s for sure. This guy is tough.”

Leonard became a licensed tattoo artist while serving time at the Minnesota Correctional Facility-Stillwater in Bayport. He and fellow inmate Corey Schuck, 41, were part of a Minnesota Department of Corrections tattoo pilot program designed to reduce the spread of bloodborne diseases and to provide inmates with work experience.

Both men are now out of prison and working at No Joke Tattoo Studios.

“It shows change is possible for guys like us,” said Schuck, who got out two months ago. “Us getting into art is changing our whole world, our whole life. We can do what we love to do.”

Talents honed in prison

Corey Schuck, an artist at No Joke Tattoo Studios in White Bear Lake, talks about the opportunity he’s been given from owner Chris Calvillo on Friday, Nov. 7, 2025. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Each of the men has his own station, and their artwork hangs on the walls of the shop.

Schuck’s station includes drawings he’s made of a lion, a bald eagle, a loon, a cheetah, the Grim Reaper and a Shrek-like character, which he calls “Schruck.” Like Schuck, it’s missing a front tooth.

“I’m really comfortable here,” Schuck said. “I’m all set. I’ve got a lot of supplies, good lighting. It’s a really great space.”

Leonard’s station, just across the room, is filled with his artwork, a talent he discovered and honed while at Stillwater.

“I was writing letters to my wife and daughter, and I started drawing in them and writing poems,” Leonard said. “I just started really enjoying drawing. It’s cool to create something out of nothing, especially in an environment where your creativity is kind of constrained — or at least your body is constrained. I kept drawing every single day, and I kept seeing progress, and then I started getting really addicted to that progress.”

Leonard, released in June, heard about the job at No Joke from Schuck, he said.

“It’s nice being able to work with my brother again because we worked well together in the program,” he said. “It kind of just feels like home, working with him again. ”

First graduates of program

Tattoo instructor Justin Jimenez, center, gives guidance to inmates Corey Schuck, left, and Travis Leonard during a class in the Stillwater prison tattoo shop on May 7, 2024. Schuck and Leonard earned their tattoo licenses in prison, were released and now work at a studio in White Bear Lake. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Leonard and Schuck were among the first four tattoo artists in the state to receive a license while incarcerated. The men were picked to participate in the program based on their artistic talent and temperament.

Two other inmates, who remain incarcerated, also have received their licenses, said Shannon Loehrke, the DOC’s director of communications.

Because Leonard and Schuck have both been released, applications are being accepted for new apprentices, she said.

DOC officials worked for about two years to get the program, which launched in 2024, up and running. It was one of the first prison tattoo programs in the country.

More than 300 inmates have been tattooed at the prison’s tattoo shop, which is located in a back room in the prison’s laundry area. Each tattoo session costs $25 and inmates must pay for their own tattoos — and have a record of good behavior for six months prior.

The program was developed to reduce health risks associated with unregulated tattooing, particularly the transmission of hepatitis C, which has long been an issue in prisons, said DOC Commissioner Paul Schnell, who noted that the Stillwater prison has reported a significant decline in infections since the program started.

In 2024, there were 138 cases of hepatitis C treated at the prison. There have been just 66 cases reported so far this year.

“Knowing that we had a long and historic problem with unregulated tattooing and unhealthy and unsafe tattooing, this just made a ton of sense to try to reduce those numbers,” he said. “Hepatitis is a real issue that we have, and the state has an obligation to treat it, and for people who have it in prison, it’s very costly. When you piece all this together, it makes good business sense.”

Related Articles

Man arrested in fatal hit-and-run crash of St. Paul pedestrian

St. Paul PD’s first AI policy: How is it being used and what’s next?

2 plead guilty to Roseville Lululemon thefts in multi-state crime spree that allegedly netted $1M

Blaine: Rachel Marie Doe, baby, identified 42 years later from DNA analysis

St. Paul police investigating death after assault call

The initiative also provides participants with marketable job skills that can be used to help inmates find lawful employment upon their release, he said.

“Just look at the popularity of tattoos today,” said Schnell, who said he is considering getting his first tattoo — on the bottom of his right forearm — at the prison shop. “One of the things that struck me when I came in early on (at the DOC) was the incredible and immense artistic talent of many of the people who are in prison. This helps these folks succeed when they get back out into the community, and I have no doubt that based on the talent of these folks, that they’re going to do well when they go out and work in these shops.”

In order to become licensed tattoo artists, Leonard and Schuck had to work with a mentor who’s been licensed for at least two years and to complete 200 hours of actual procedure time.

Once the 200 hours were completed, the men received their licensure through the Minnesota Department of Health. They can now work anywhere within the state of Minnesota.

‘Benefits everybody’

Plans call for the program to remain at Stillwater until the prison closes in 2029. Eventually, it will move to another facility, Schnell said, and the program may be expanded to other prisons as well.

Chris Calvillo, owner of No Joke Tattoo Studios in White Bear Lake, talks about his mission on Friday, Nov. 7, 2025. Calvillo takes pride in mentoring tattoo artists and providing them a safe and supporting place to grow. Several artists working for him are former inmates. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

No Joke owner Chris Calvillo, who served time at Stillwater in the early 2000s, said he was thrilled to learn the DOC had launched an in-prison tattoo shop and apprenticeship program there.

“The first time I read about it, I didn’t believe it,” Calvillo said. “I was like, ‘This should have happened a long time ago.’ I wish it was in place when I was going through the DOC. It benefits everybody on every level.”

“It gives (inmates) something to work hard for and to stay out of trouble for — both in prison and when they get out of prison,” he said. “Tattooing really helped keep me on the right path. The guys are thanking me every day for doing this, and I’m like, ‘You know, it works both ways.’ I really, really love being a part of this.”

Six of the nine artists who work at the shop are former inmates, he said.

“We are in the process of everybody changing their life due to art,” he said.

Calvillo opened the shop six years ago, “starting it from zero,” he said. “It’s been my passion ever since I was in prison. I just kept striving for it.”

‘Been there’

From left: Artist Corey Schuck, owner and artist Chris Calvillo, artists Travis “Leo” Leonard, Bryan Penrose and Justin Lonnquist pose for a photo at No Joke Tattoo Studios in White Bear Lake. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

His first hire, Bryan Penrose, also served time at Stillwater. “I met him and I loved his story on what he was doing because it reflected on my own,” Calvillo said. “He’s a single father, and he wanted to change, and this was the way to do it. I gave him a chance here, and he’s excelled. He’s got his own space here. It just shows how much the guy wants it.”

Penrose, the father of a 4-year-old son, drives each day from Lakeville to White Bear Lake via Belle Plaine, where his son’s child care provider lives. “Unfortunately, we lost his mother to a fentanyl overdose almost three years ago, so it’s just been me and him chucking away,” he said.

Penrose said he plans to continue working at No Joke even after he and his son move to Cokato. “That’s how much I love this place,” he said. “It means that much to me. It’s a good environment. Supportive. It’s like we all have a similar past, and we’re all going the same direction. We all feed off each other and build each other up.”

Back when Justin Lonnquist, 33, was serving time at Stillwater, he and other inmates used guitar string, Green Magic hair grease, a Norelco shaver motor and a Bic pen to tattoo one another, he said.

“We would take the soot and make ink out of it,” he said. “Back then, we all tattooed in the cells, and you’d get in trouble for that stuff, but that was the start of the journey.”

Lonnquist, who got out on Nov. 11, 2011, said he wishes the program had been in existence when he was in prison.

Schuck had the “opportunity to do it the right way and learn from a real professional,” he said. “He came out and was able to get into a shop like this where we get to help each other and learn from each other. It took me years and years and years to get to a good shop with the skills that I have now, whereas he was able to utilize his time, do it the right way and get out with a skill and then not have to go through all of the re-entry problems that I went through. I had to learn the hard way, and I had a bunch of bad habits.”

Recidivism rates will fall as a result of the program, and “that’s good for the community,” Lonnquist said. “Guys will get to rebuild their life in a positive manner. Everybody wins. You get these guys that get out, and they get to have a purpose in life now.”

Calvillo provides art supplies and easels for Lonnquist and the other tattoo artists to continue to hone their art skills. In their free time, they work on portraits of people who have died by suicide to give to grieving families, he said.

Calvillo credits local artist Michael Bellotti, who also served time in prison, for inspiring him. Bellotti uses his artwork to honor people who have died of cancer, he said.

Related Articles

Stillwater: Johnson to headline St. Croix Valley Syttende Mai Society’s fall event

2 plead guilty to Roseville Lululemon thefts in multi-state crime spree that allegedly netted $1M

Stillwater: Len’s Meat & Grocery to become Grundhofer’s fourth location

Marine on St. Croix finally getting a cellular tower

Stillwater schools consider boundary changes

“Michael has set the path for me,” Calvillo said. “I just mimicked what he was doing, and it just worked out. It got me this far.”

Schuck said he hopes to help other inmates in the future — just as he’s been helped.

“I’m very grateful for everything and everyone around me,” he said. “We understand each other’s struggles and the things we’ve been through. A lot of it was self-inflicted. Live and learn, you know? But we’re helping each other grow, and maybe one day I can help (someone) learn from my mistakes, and he can teach the next man and pass it on.”

Calvillo shakes his head with wonder as he listens to Schuck talk about his plan for paying it forward.

“These guys that are here, coming out, we’re all here for each other, and it works so well,” he said. “People say, ‘You’re blessed. You’re blessed.’ I just want to help, you know, because I’ve been there.”