The ability to not judge others is a rare, but admirable, trait.
And Oscar-winning actor Jeremy Irons describes his Canadian friend and mentor Sister Elaine MacInnes - an 83-year-old Catholic nun and Zen master - as one of the most non-judgmental persons he has ever had the fortune to meet.
For the past 27 years, the Moncton-born nun has taught the age-old spiritual practices of yoga and Zen meditation in prisons around the world in a bid to understand inmates' pain and torment - and hopefully alleviate some of it.
Her techniques, initially scoffed at by some, have proven to infuse a rare serenity in hardcore criminals and into institutions that are not remotely sane.
Tonight, Mr. Irons and Canadian singer-songwriter Kate McGarrigle will co-host an evening of music, stories and readings at Toronto's Jane Mallett Theatre as a tribute to Sister MacInnes and to help raise money for her organization, called Freeing the Human Spirit, whose aim is to bring "restorative justice" to those in Canada's correctional facilities.
Mr. Irons met Sister MacInnes in the mid-nineties in London, where for 10 years she ran the Prison Phoenix Trust, of which the actor was a patron and student in one of her Zen classes. They struck up an immediate friendship. "She's an extraordinary woman," Mr. Irons says. "Sadly, she's now 80-something, although you wouldn't know it.
"I wish she was 30-something because she has so much to give to life. I've only met four or five amazing people in my life, and she is one."
In an interview at her convent in a quiet residential neighbourhood in midtown Toronto, Sister MacInnes - who is also a Juilliard School-trained violinist and former member of the Edmonton Symphony - says while she is flattered by Mr. Irons's words, "I don't know why he'd say that."
The humility is no act. Her work in prisons in the Philippines, England and now Canada she sees simply as her calling. "Criminals are not made, they're born that way," she says, sitting on a floral settee in a sitting room that is decorated in an eclectic mix of Roman Catholic crucifixes, leather meditation floor cushions, and paintings from her 30-plus years in Japan and the Philippines.
"If you went into the bedroom, on the back of the door is a pair of handcuffs," she adds. "I'm very conscious of prisoners. They're the forgotten people in our society.
"My old [Zen] teacher in Japan used to say everybody is born to be a mystic. Prisons are not quiet places. They're not positive places. Prisons are terrible places. And to be in a room - in a silence that the prisoners have created themselves - is just magical."
While she was working in an area just north of Manila in the early 1980s, Sister MacInnes was asked to visit a political prisoner who had been tortured under Ferdinand Marcos's regime and was incarcerated in the Bago Bantay prison.
Already a Zen roshi (or master), the prisoner Horacio (Boy) Morales had heard about Sister MacInnes and sought her help through the underground.
She visited him and his 11 fellow inmates for four years. When she first met Mr. Morales, his body trembled violently every five minutes because he'd received shock treatments for 10 straight days. At the end of her time, she says she felt blessed because, through meditation, she had taught them to find some peace. His shaking was gone.
Sister MacInnes grew up in Moncton, one of four children immersed in music. Her mother had two music degrees from Mount Allison University. Sister MacInnes followed in her footsteps and studied violin at the conservatory in nearby Sackville. Then she switched to Juilliard in New York for a few years before moving to Calgary to teach music.
She almost got married, "but there was just something not settled in me yet. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, but I wanted to look around.
"I was 30 and for a Catholic person to choose a life work that is meaningful, it meant entering religious life, and working in service for the rest of your life."
She entered Our Lady's Missionaries convent in Alexandria, about 100 kilometres east of Ottawa, on Dec. 7, 1953. She took her final vows on June 12, 1961, and celebrated when nuns were allowed to shed the habit in 1965.
"I couldn't wait to get out of it," she says with a chuckle, sipping breakfast tea. "I'm not a habit girl. All that heavy clothes. It's a wall between you and everybody else. It's supposed to be something that uplifts people. Well, I think it just downsizes them."
Her first mission was to Japan, a place she always wanted to go. While climbing the peaks of Mount Hiei she met a monk named Horisawa Somon, who asked her how she prayed.
"I said, 'What do you mean how do I pray?' And he said, 'Well, do you do it with your body?' I told him in Christianity that's not important. He said, 'But it is. It's very important.' "
Sister MacInnes studied Zen meditation for close to 10 years. She finds criminals - and she has seen all types, from petty thieves to murderers and sexual offenders - to be a "very receptive audience.
"Most of them have tried everything else [to ease their pain] and it hasn't worked. So they usually go along with me."
She came back to Canada in 2003 because she was "burned out" in England.
"The trust was growing and growing, but it was too much for me. I came home for a complete change - and guess what - I'm into exactly the same work."
Freeing the Human Spirit is currently in 20 prisons in and around Toronto. She has recruited about 100 trained Zen teachers, but only 50 of them are placed right now. Gaining government support has been a tough haul. "All my teachers in England were paid. All of them. However, we're not having that success here.
"These poor devils inside are forgotten by the rest of humanity. Every time I speak somewhere I ask, 'Have you ever been in a prison?' Ninety-nine times out of 100 the answer is no."
