The other day I was running around for work. A guy in the back seat was chatting with my front seat passenger. “Hey”, the guy behind me said in mid-conversation. I glanced up in my mirror.
“I bet nobody has ever given you this, man, I can sure see you need it”.
I reached my hand over my shoulder and took it. I held at it and ran it through my fingers. It was tan, amber, gold-with-black tint, and it was about a 20″ long string of beads. The beads joined at a pewter vertical rectangle of a face (VERY COOL) and below it, oh, six inches down solid brown beads….
….was THE strongest cross, complete with the crucified Christ, that I’ve ever held.
“Damn! This is beautiful! Thanks, Darnell! You didn’t have to do that, amigo”
“Aw hell, Phil, you need it, man”
I actually took it with me to a meeting yesterday; I meet with prison administrators and parole officers regarding work programs for released felons. I have to inform them regularly of how things are going on the outside, just to make sure they’re getting back on their feet and keeping the right feet forward. The beads were in front of me, and I/it were surrounded by uniforms of authority and, in this case, hostility.
The hostility had nothing to do with the beads, though. There’s just a lot of in-fighting between the guys that want the prisoner out verses the guys who don’t want him out.
(The prisoner, through years of practice and “teaching”, keeps his mouth shut throughout these ordeals and (I’ve seen this once or twice): his eyes clamp shut and his lips move silently as if to urge forward movement after so much stillness…)
In many ways, these fellas behavejust like anybody would act after being caged in fear, contrition and longing.
These men, their first day out of the ‘halfway’ house (the intermediary between incarceration and freedom=work) are fun to drive around with; most times they’re marveling at how the neighborhood looks compared to the years when they last rode by a street or building.
Without exception, and I’ve been running them around for a few miles, now, they’re a generous people…
..and one of them just gave me my very first Rosary.
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