HOPE-HOWSE

by Debbie Ellison

Chris Berger's death was a reincarnation of sorts. At the moment the electric chair drained the very life from his body, a death also occurred within Jane Davis, who witnessed his execution. Her uncontrollable urge to scream for his salvation was stifled by the knowledge that screams would fall on deaf ears. At that moment, when his eyes locked onto hers, emotions tugged violently at everything she believed and choked the very core of her existence. Feelings died within her, but hope emerged. The unbearable pain and inhumane horror of that one life-changing event bore a hole through her heart and a vision into her soul. This vision, fused with the desire to teach unconditional love and forgiveness, was the birth of HOPE-HOWSE. And so, too, began Jane's 7-year struggle with the pain of that execution, her recovery from past abuse and addiction, and her quest to transform that struggle into an action of love.

HOPE-HOWSE is an acronym for Help Other People Evolve Through Honest, Open, Willing Self-Evaluation. This grass-roots, [501c3] non-profit organization, dedicated to fostering human dignity, peace, and respect in the world, has slowly grown from one individual into a support community of many worldwide. HOPE-HOWSE is a non-denominational approach to living a spiritual life, to becoming free and empowered to love and respect each creature and human being who crosses your path with unconditional love and a non-judgmental attitude.

In December 1993, in her capacity as a contributing writer to Prison Life Magazine, Jane was asked to be a media witness to Chris Berger's execution. “I witnessed a young man,” she says, “literally being fried in front of my eyes, my heart, and my soul. And that act in and of itself was the most evil thing I have ever been part of in my life. It was not about the death penalty; it was not about a political issue; it was not about what the Bible says. It was about a human being killed in a justified, by some, act.”

The scream that she silenced seven years ago has echoed in the depths of her soul, bouncing off the cosmos with a painful cry for the suffering in the world and a call to help put an end to it. She has been screaming through her social actions ever since - in prisons, in schools, to gang kids, to anyone who wishes to listen. Her cry pierces the hearts of those she touches like the wail of the mother she hears on death row at the moment of her young son's execution.

“In that moment [of Chris' death], I really felt, viscerally felt, with every fiber of my being, the connected oneness of all of us. And what that means is that I'm so aware of my own fallibilities, my inclination to hurt other people and my inclinations to be good. We all as human beings share that, each to different degrees. Part of me died with Chris as I watched him being killed, because I didn't feel different. I didn't feel apart from him. I felt one with him, one in our humanness.”

She says she felt that what was happening to Chris was also happening simultaneously to her. That human connection and oneness of spirit is what HOPE-HOWSE is all about, the philosophy that we are all “one heart.”

Jane has a Masters Degree in Social Work and has worked in the juvenile court system with kids-at-risk and the Scared Straight program. A large part of Jane's work is merely being present for others, including death row inmates and gang kids. She visits death rows and prisons around the country. She has traveled extensively throughout Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East speaking about spiritual peace and human rights. In 1997, she traveled solo 13,000 miles in six months around the U.S. speaking about and doing the work of HOPE-HOWSE. In 1998, she was one of several people asked to speak throughout the Philippines about alternatives to the death penalty, sponsored in part by Amnesty International.