We’d just sat down in the medium security chapel when Ralph Maloney, an inmate who never missed a Quaker Meeting, took two envelopes out of his pocket. He looked at the six inmates sitting in the circle of chairs. “Chaplain Medina’s mother died recently. Can you guys add a few words to these sympathy cards?” His khaki uniform rose halfway up his shins, exposing a filigree of blue veins.
My body stiffened in surprise. Who was taking care of whom here? I assumed inmates only thought of themselves and yet, here was Ralph, asking us to join him in connecting with another person’s humanity. This wasn’t how I imagined a prison worked. Inmates weren’t supposed to be interested in prison employees, much less make a gesture of kindness toward one of them.
An inmate wearing unlaced basketball sneakers said he didn’t know Chaplain Medina and wondered what to write, so Ralph suggested that he thank him for making prison ministry possible. He sat quietly while the two cards passed around the room. Except for the sound of a ballpoint pen inking paper, the chapel was silent.
When the two cards reached me, the handwritten expressions of condolence filled both sides of the cards: “My thoughts are with you,” “Deepest sympathies,” and “We’re holding you in the light.” Some inmates printed. Others used cursive. One man’s “sincerely” started in block letters, liquefied into a flowing cursive, and ended with a boxy flourish.
The cards made me think of a quote by the British author George Eliot: “…an ardent outset may be followed by declension; latent powers may find their long-awaited opportunity; a past error may urge a grand retrieval.”
Were the inmates waiting to be released so they could find their grand retrieval? Would they discover their long-awaited opportunity or would their past error dog them for life? I didn’t know their crimes, but for a few minutes in that prison chapel, I tried to see the light Ralph saw in his prison mates.
He collected the cards. “Thanks, you guys. The chaplain will appreciate your words.” He placed the envelopes and pen under his chair and we had our silence.