Dr. Torres had never seen teeth as bad as those he saw at La Mesa. "This stuff wasn't in any of my books." He noticed that the worst problems often belonged to the toughest men and women in the prison, and even the hardest cases cried when he showed them their new teeth in the mirror.
Some of the inmates he worked on still stay in touch with him. "They call me all the time and tell me, 'Hey, I'm working over here, I'm working over there,'" he says. "The jobs are no big deal, but they're working, which they couldn't do before, because people didn't accept them. Nobody except Mother Antonia cared for them."
~ from PRISON ANGEL by Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan
The world without tears is a heartless world. The soul that sheds no tears is a soul without love. O God, save us from turning into statues of tearlessness! This must be our prayer. Tears are signs of life; they bring life back to the world. Tears well out of the heart of love; they restore to the human community the ability to love. Tears take form in cries and struggles for justice; they revive the soul of our century for a promise and a future. And it is in the people capable of tears that a promise of human community and a future for the world lie.
