We had a wonderful visit with our friend today.  As always, I am amazed at how the frustrations of visiting, the barbed wire on the fences, the guards, the other inmates...all of it fades away as we enjoy each other's company.

I'm not so naive as to believe that the same is true for our friend.  When we leave him, we go home to our comfortable mattresses, to eating the foods we want (because we can buy them at the grocery store), to the freedoms of seeing others when we like, making phone calls when we need to talk, even watching the television programs we want.

He goes back to his dorm, his bunk, the track on which he runs his laps.  He goes back to the petty cruelties of guards, the constant vigilence of being surrounded by inmates, the lack of choices and dignity that make up the bulk of his days and nights.

There may be moments where, in the company of us four...shared so many times and places over the past twenty years...where he can relax, just a bit.  Where he may forget, in a moment of shared laughter, what the end of the visit holds for him. 

And even so, his spirits are good.  He produces meaning in the severe constraints of his life.  He reads, works out, counsels others and keeps his own counsel as well.

9 more months, Lord willing.

Lord.  Please be willing.

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