I’m reading Finding
Freedom, by Jarvis Masters, who has been on death row in San Quentin for more
than 16 years awaiting execution for a crime he didn’t commit. One of the
stories from his memoir is called Scars. He’s out on the maximum custody
exercise yard with other inmates, shirts off playing handball, basketball,
lifting weights, and for the first time really notices the whip-like scars on
everyone’s back, the back of their legs, ribs, and face. America’s lost
children he calls them, with family histories so similar it’s as if they’d had
the same parents. But despite his own maltreatment Jarvis still loves the
mother who’d abandoned him as a child and wishes he’d been at her side when she
died… A lesson in metta, a Buddhist term for loving kindness Read more about
Jarvis: