The Honey Locust Tree: A Year of Insights with My Wife, the Quakers, and a Prison

A Story of Discovery, Insight, and Acceptance

When James English first hears about Quaker meetings inside Rhode Island's prison system in 1994, he is not looking for a ministry. He is searching for something harder to name.

Drawn by the Quaker belief in the inner light-the idea that goodness lives in every person-Jim joins a small group that holds meetings inside the Adult Correctional Institutions. In prison chapels and converted classrooms, he sits quietly with inmates and wrestles with a q...