Reflections on A Spiritual Friendship

by Katya Sabaroff Taylor

Look into the eyes of wisdom
Look into the eyes of love
Whatever you are looking for
You can find behind these two doors

Is this a quote from the Sufi mystic poet Rumi? No, it is the beginning of a longer poem by my death row pen pal Donald Dillbeck, who was executed in February of 2023, a blow to all who knew and loved him.

I first met Donald in the early 90’s, shortly after my family moved to Tallahassee. There was a small photo of him in a newspaper article about his arrest for killing a woman in a parking lot as he was trying to escape a prison work detail.

I gazed at that photo, I looked into his eyes, you could say, and I saw something beyond the face of a murderer. I found out about Kindred Spirits Charitable Trust, who links up death row inmates to pen pals, and I asked to write to him.

We wrote for three decades. His letters, poems and artwork appear in my book Prison Wisdom.

“I am the diver who seeks the soundless/I am the motion of a twirling dance/I am the laughter of the child/and the wind both in the calm and the hurricane/I am most of all the morning and night/the earth, the sky, low and high/I am the infant’s first breath and the sigh of the elder’s last breath/I am all, I am One.”

How does a person brutalized in childhood, arrested and given a death sentence, become a spiritually wise being? Do we all have that seed within us? Is there a spark of the divine, or of pure innocence, in each baby born in this world? How did Donald become his true self while locked in a small cell for 30 plus years?

Having taught inmates in prisons around Florida for more than 25 years, I have seen the beauty, strength, courage, and vulnerability in every student, regardless of the reason they were shut away out of sight. And each student has touched me with their honesty, longings, regrets, and dreams. I see their suffering, and my own sorrows, lessen as we share our stories, our poems, our heart’s knowing.

In one of my letters, I asked Donald what he would choose to be for Halloween? This is his answer:

“OK, you ask, can I dress up in my mind in some fantastic costume? Now that you ask I will. I shall dress up as the wind, moving here and there, being the movement of trees lifting higher, and embracing the clouds, then re-entering close to land, moving in and out of every human being, every animal and plant. Letting birds soar inside me while I experience their experience, then I experience everything that every being is expressing, good, bad, indifferent, and finally the earth herself.

After all of this, I will tire of pretending to be the wind and I will look and see a man who is writing someone very dear to him a letter. I will then pretend to be him. He lives in two prisons, maybe even more than he is not aware of. One of cement, barb wire, and iron bars. And another of flesh and blood that is caught up in time and space. Now I find pretending to be him very humorous, because I forget that I am only pretending, and as I forget so does he. If you will, laugh at the poor fool for believing that he is confined, when all the while he is free, only playing the role of prisoner!”

So Donald Dillbeck is dead. There will be no more letters or poems or phone calls, no more watercolor flower paintings on the envelopes, no more sharing of wisdom and love. I like to think his spirit flies free now, like the wind, reaching into all corners of the universe. I like to think he will whisper to me in my dreams what he knows now that he is no longer in his body, but free, free to fly.

***

I wrote the above essay shortly after Donald’s execution when I was filled with emotion, with crushing sadness, and yet, I was also filled with the comfort of the three-decade connection I had with my soul friend, a man who mentored many with his uplifting, wise writings laced with humor, who kept his spirit strong all through his incarceration, reminding me that I too can keep my spirit strong, I too can light a lamp, the way he did, to help others, to help them shine through the ups and downs of human life.

Re-reading this essay now, in July of 2024, I feel ready to send it out into the world, and would like to close with some of Donald’s last words.

“Here is the truth. They may take my body, but they can’t touch me. Why? Because we are and will always be eternal. This means we’re timeless. I know this not only in my bones but deep in my heart.”

And so, in some realm where consciousness meets consciousness, Donald and I continue our friendship, dance like the spirits we are, grateful to feel our eternal connection.

Katya Sabaroff Taylor, author of Prison Wisdom, learned early on that her inmate students were also her teachers. We are all equal under “the law of the pen.” She lives in Tallahassee, Florida, at Haiku Garden homestead.