Early on, I struggled to reconcile what I knew about their crimes with what I saw and heard in that classroom. Now I try to hold before me the truths of their offenses, alongside the truths of the brotherhood, honesty and generosity I see them call forth. The forces that bring us to our present lives are tangled and complex. Each of our stories contains both wrongdoing and grace, and it is not my job to unravel the skein of their guilt, to judge or absolve. I am here as a witness. I am here in the name of story and its power to transform.

When we are done with the telling and the listening, with the Lone Ranger and bicycles tearing free, with all the things that grow us up and heal and haunt us, we go around the circle to check out, each person stating, according to the group’s custom, a feeling and a blessing.

Today I feel good, one says. You got me to remembering some things. You made me laugh, Helen. You made me think. Another says, softly, I’m grateful you took this time to come, when you could be out in the summer sunshine. I hope you get those papers corrected. I hope your moms feels better soon. I hope you get home safe.

We say goodbye until next time, and soon I am standing at the razor-wire fence, ready to go back through the trap, while they return to their cells and work at resuming their hard postures and concealing what we have just urged out into the light. What is home for them, I wonder, and what kind of safe return is possible?

I have finished writing the novels about prison that first inspired me to volunteer. But I still go. The men compel me. Something large happens as we write and talk together in that room, separated from the rest of the world. These men bring forth their best selves, and I, too, am the awake, compassionate me. Far too often I half-listen, already on to the next errand, the next place I need to be. Too busy to extend myself. Too pressed to pay attention. I fail to see the woman who has dry-cleaned my clothes or sold me my coffee, the man who pumps my gas. I fail to wonder at the past life of the woman making her way slowly across the street on her walker, or to imagine the private yearnings of the man-child with the snapback hat and sagging pants who slouches by the door of the subway train. With all the disconnection, discourtesy and relentless motion of the free world, it can be hard to recognize, let alone love, your fellow human beings.

A feeling and a blessing. I hope you know the power of your words and stories, I would like to tell the men who have revealed their youthful toys and games, and relived their crossings into manhood. Your humanity has been visible to me, I am saying to you here, on this page, and I see that you are more than your worst things. I hope you get home safe.

And with that, I’m in.