In kindergarten, I learned to make a paper turkey with my hand.

Spreading my fingers wide, I traced each one, drawing round the bottom of my palm for its stomach, adding lines for legs and feet and a gobbler under my thumb. Who looked at a turkey and decided a hand would make a great pattern? Was it the same person who designed the heart shape made into cookies and drawings for Valentine’s Day?

The beauty is in the simplicity making every child a success. Every turkey is shaped the same. But then the freedom comes — decorating each finger shape as a feather, adding an artery and vein extending up, wild hues and stripes transforming the drawings into exquisite creatures as varied as the fingerprints making them, reminding me of a Sunday when Father Pius Wekesa shared a lesson about compassion.

“Our fingerprints never fade from the lives we touch — it is our legacy,” he said. “Never look down at someone unless you are picking them up.” And while Father Pius has this down, I struggle with the simple instructions in the Corporal Works of Mercy: feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, clothe the naked, visit the sick and imprisoned, bury the dead and give alms to the poor.

I seldom go out of my way to help folks. But I had the opportunity to visit my cousin in prison several times for the charge of cold-blooded murder. This man was one of my favorite boys growing up — a little older, always playing around and thinking of unique ideas — placing spoonfuls of frozen juice concentrate in his mouth, taking a drink and jumping up and down to mix it all; allowing us to make doughnuts in the snow with his car (prelicense); and sharing tales of suspense much more shocking and important than our tender ears were accustomed.

I learned he had lost his way and started using drugs, crushing my heart and jamming my mind with a new inconceivable worry. The discovery of his imprisonment wounded me to the core. This boy that I love was in a cold cell subject to ANYTHING. When he was arrested they called him Jesus because of his long hair and beard that framed his interesting, angular face.

Bringing him cartons of Pall Mall, I enjoyed our conversations against a graphic mural painted on the wall by other inmates, while others visited their loved ones. He taught me even in the dark there are flowers as his prison sentence helped his father overcome the racism he had learned and taught in his life. Some of my cousin’s newfound friends were of other races and cultures and were kind to him.

During one visit I remember looking at his hands, the same hands of the boy racing out in play, lighting sparklers on the Fourth of July and grabbing mine as I ran in fear of the fire. He showed me a few inches up where his arm no longer straightens at the elbow. The crank he injected eventually became straight ether, causing the permanent curve.

Out of the list of the Corporal Works of Mercy, visiting prison seems the most unlikely, but if you get the opportunity, I promise you will find it worthwhile.

“Do not be too moral,” said Henry David Thoreau. “You may cheat yourself out of much life, so aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.”

Working on it; and that is all.

Published in The Herald.