“Do [I] you try to make [my] your home a place of friendliness, refreshment and peace, where God becomes more real to all who live there and to those who visit it”? 1.

I find myself compelled by the light within to share the gift I received these past two days – the opportunity to visit, sit and listen to the heartache of dealing with the incarceration of a lover.  It would seem that the effect of any level of incarceration in our correctional facilities, is immeasurable.  Especially when set against the level of anguish, pain, loneliness and loss of spirit, caused by our desires to incarcerate. 

So, very late into the night in the stillness of darkness I came to realize, that the temptation to offer up words of analogous comfort is not necessary.  All I have is love and a space that is safe in which to listen. Where ‘you’ can just be; an open door,  an open-heart, no stipulations, and no judgments – a soothing balm offered in kinship. 

A beginning letter of apology to my dearest friend

We live in country, which is a world leader in incarceration- and in doing so we have destroyed your world, taken away your liberty.  And then we expect you to still rise each day, put on your make-up, turn up for work - pay dearly for this incarceration misery.  And yet all the while remain silenced by our gift to you of shamefulness….. 

1.Queries, 1964.  Quaker faith & practice. The book of Christian discipline of the Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Britain