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The best thing I do every month is spend a Saturday evening with the inmates at the New Hampshire Prison for Men in Concord, N.H.  They are a gift to me and this year I’ve needed them more than ever.

2011 is not a year I’d like to repeat, and I hoped that on this past New Year’s Eve I’d say the magic words and 2012 would resolve into a universe in which 2011 never existed.

But like most resolutions this one fell on deaf ears and a stubborn heart.  My own.

In 2011 I experienced a recurrence of cancer, the grief of stepping down as pastor of a church I love, and additionally personal heartbreak of a depth I have never known.

In 2012 I am still dealing with cancer, my separation-grief from the church has not subsided, and I fractured the patella tendon in my right knee.  For each of these there is a prescribed course of treatment that experts assure will bring healing. 

My broken heart is a different story.  My pain is as acute as ever and there is no reassurance this fracture will ever mend.  Neither Humpty Dumpty nor anyone else knows how to put my heart back together.

Cancer, transitions, bones have their own unique pain, but nothing compares to the pain of a broken heart. Nothing. Were my heart to heal I might not consider anything associated with the others as deserving of the word pain.

My other problems I comprehend, but not my heart.  

I am searching for something to help me live with this fracture, and I believe I found it at the N.H. State Prison for Men.

Why do I seek to wax eloquently about the life of a prison inmate?  Because they embody what I seek.

You will not find me romanticizing prison life, nor explain why the lives of the men I worship with on Saturday night are exceptional.  

I believe any of them would trade places with me if given the chance, and I have no desire to make that trade.

The prison complex houses more than twice as many men than designed.  Except for solitary, there is no privacy.  Everyone knows everyone else’s stuff.  In excruciating detail. The past, the present, and much of the future.  

The food is what it is. The medical care is good, if they can persuade the system to provide it.

Virtually all the inmates have to depend on lawyers who work for free, all the while contending with a legal system designed by politicians to be increasingly harsh and vindictive.

There are many good administrators and guards, but given budget issues prison programming resembles bricks without straw. 

The men lack the comfort of the voice, the ear, and the touch of woman.

Every day is much like ever other as will tomorrow and every subsequent day they are in. Many men speak of the heartache of what is happening to their wives and children.  Others whisper the despair of what it is to know nothing of friends and family.  Each month a couple of new men tell me of what it is to be divorced without even a conversation or a forwarding address.

There are still others that have not received a letter or a phone call in years … or decades … from anyone.  Their families and friends are dead to them.

For most when it comes to those they love, they have no contact, no recourse, no appeal, and when it comes to blame, they only have themselves.

Contrary to popular stereotypes, I’ve never had an inmate tell me they were innocent of their charges.  Every inmate with whom I have spoken understands why no one would wait for them or associate with them.  Those whose loved ones stay connected have no explanation as to why.  

They are men who live as having no merit.

That demon called “Regret” speaks into them every waking moment. There is a reason they are in prison.  They made choices that have consequences, and as painful as incarceration is, that pain cannot be measured against the pain of the hearts they have broken, including their own.  

The penitentiary is a wall-to-wall city of broken hearts.  No exceptions.  Eye contact, or what passes for it, confirms it.

That’s why it is so good for me to be with them.  They teach me what it means to live with a broken heart.

How?

On Saturday night they come to chapel.  Cynics might say it is because they have nothing better to do or because they are under the false impression a volunteer will assist them in an illicit manner. 

But the cynics leave the room as soon as the singing starts. This is neither the awkward congregational singing so often associated with the high-church, nor the praise-band sing-along of the low-church.  This is primarily white and Hispanic men, learning to sing with the soul of our black brothers.  

There is no lyric that is not simultaneously painful and hopeful.  There is no stanza that promises the prison will be anything better when they leave for the evening.  But every note is sung through the lining of a broken-heart and in hope of the day when our hearts will be remade.

Saturday night is the fellowship of the broken-hearted, and it is my spiritual family.

When I sit in the room I see men who’ve committed capital offenses, violent crime, and all that is related to alcohol, drugs, and sex.  They come with broken-hearts that are open for others to see, and sometimes they smile.  Sometimes they tell you about a wood carving they’ve done.  Some nights they show you a birthday card from someone they’ve never known. The older ones look after the younger ones.  The younger ones look after the older ones.  They speak of the past, the present, and a future.  They speak of hope for the next life, if not also for this one.  

They live even as their heart dies.  

Those who have reconciled themselves to this, are finding what I haven’t – an increasing measure of peace and contentment.  

They are finding in the vortex of penance, what I cannot find outside of the walls.

I’ve spent the last several months, and most of the last 53 years trying to heal a broken heart.  So far I’ve failed and I’ve undoubtedly shortened my life span in the attempt.

My fellow inmates have helped me to understand this heart of mine will never again be innocent, and I will never be rid of the pain.

But this band of brothers has also taught me I can have what they have.

I too can smile, find joy along the way, and never have to walk alone.

Being with them is the best thing I do every month.  

What’s the best part?  The singing.

Other things happen over the course of two hours, but once we start singing I never stop.

Paul McCartney must have visited them a few years back as he sings of it so eloquently:

When you were young and your heart was an open book

You used to say live and let live

(You know you did, you know you did, you know you did)

But in this ever changing world in which we live

Makes you give in and cry.

Live and let die.

Rev. Dale S. Kuehne, Ph.D. is the author of “Sex and the iWorld. Rethinking relationship beyond the age of Individualism.” He is the Richard L. Bready Chair of Ethics, Economics, and the Common Good and founding director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College. He is a regular ShareWIK.com columnist.  

Read other columns by Rev. Dale Kuehne