Life After Death: The Shocking True Story of a Innocent Man on Death Row

how it was, I told him that I’d found my place. When he asked how I knew, I said because it felt like home. He didn’t say another word, and dropped me off again a week later.
    This time I waited around afterward until everyone had trailed out into the parking lot. I approached the priest, Greg Hart, who was a small, balding man with wire-framed glasses. I introduced myself and with no preamble asked, “How do I become a Catholic?” We sat and talked for a while, and he explained how I would have to attend conversion classes, as there was a lot to learn. He himself would teach the classes every Monday night. After getting all the information I needed, I walked outside where Jack was waiting in the truck to take me home.
    I attended every single class, never missing one. Father Hart arranged a ride back and forth for me with a woman who would also be attending the classes. There were fewer than ten of us in all. We learned everything, from the teachings of the church on different points of dogma to how to pray the rosary. I enjoyed the classes almost as much as Mass itself. For my confirmation, I chose to name myself after Saint Damien.
    When the day finally arrived that I was to receive the sacraments of baptism and first communion, a deacon who’d sponsored my conversion, Ben, gave me two gifts. One was the rosary his wife had used up until the day she died. The other was a suit to wear for the occasion. I was very touched by both. Unfortunately, I lost contact with these kind and supportive people in my life relatively soon afterward.
    The only time my mother or Jack ever stepped inside the church was on the night of my baptism and first communion. I was fifteen or sixteen at the time. They sat in the very back row, looking uneasy and out of place throughout the ceremony. When it was over they stood and clapped along with everyone else. I was happy that they came, because I felt a sense of accomplishment and wanted someone to witness it.
    I didn’t stop attending Mass until my life went straight to hell a couple of years later. I’ve long since outgrown any belief in mainstream Christian theology, and I even have some degree of animosity toward Christianity in general because of what has been done to me by people declaring themselves Christian. But I still love the ritual and ceremony of the Catholic Church. A little old priest comes here once a month, and I watch as he gives the sacraments to the Catholic convicts on Death Row. It comforts me just to watch it, and I often find myself remembering the pleasure I used to take in it.
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    T oday, on Good Friday, I began performing the Holy Guardian Angel ritual as described in
The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage
. It’s a prayer that asks a higher self or outside intelligence for guidance, protection, and for forgiveness of all my weaknesses and sins. Expert practitioners wear white robes and burn candles and frankincense, and use other esoteric paraphernalia. I obviously don’t have all the materials he suggests, but I don’t believe they’re needed. I was reading through the scriptures that would be read during Mass for today and was suddenly overcome with the feeling that I need to begin
now
. I felt a sense of power and peace that I wanted to be closer to. I showered and put on clean white clothes, and then knelt to pray. If Aleister Crowley could do the ritual on horseback, then I could do it in a prison cell.
    I prayed that I be forgiven all my transgressions, that I be protected and watched over, that I be granted the strength I would need, and that I be granted the knowledge and conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. I haven’t prayed like that since I was a child. Afterward I just wanted to sit and bask in the sense of peace that I felt. I know I will have to be on guard so as not to be completely swept up into devotion, or I won’t be able to remain objective. Aleister Crowley stressed the importance of neither believing nor disbelieving; I have the tendency to become a zealot.
    The ritual was very informal and spur-of-the-moment, but I wanted to do it, if only for symbolic reasons, it being Good Friday. Tomorrow I’ll begin in a more formal manner, by setting up an altar and scrubbing this cell from top to bottom.
    *  *  *
    T oday at 8:15 a.m., I prayed for the knowledge and conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. I repeated the prayer at 9:55 a.m. almost as a compulsion. I love how clean and focused I feel