I'm not too good with technology, but I hope this will work. Coming back from Mexico Beach, I am just not myself yet...or I am more myself...one never really knows. All that love for an entire week...and that encounter with family kind of turns my head on end. I could get used to kissing little children goodnight again. I could get used to too many monkeys jumping on my bed. I could get used to walking out to the beach at dawn and being still, and just feeling God all over me and through me and beside me and...for me.
I could get used to fresh air and salt breezes, fishermen and boats, being too hot and then too cold and having my jean shorts literally stand up in the corner from so much salt water. I could get used to walls without pictures, climbing stairs, going to Starbucks only once a week and listening to a live band down the street every Saturday night. I could get used to seeing the stars as clearly and as cleanly as they were when I was a little child. I could get used to the special kind of hope that stems from a special kind of belonging.
But I will never get used to the letting go. To the saying goodbye. To having to come down from the mountain.
Loving God is always risky, but loving people is even riskier. We have so many ways now to create the illusion of being close, when what we are doing is wandering farther and farther apart. Perhaps we think we deserve it. Perhaps we think that we aren't wanted. Perhaps we think we don't want to impose, to interfere, to engage...when people are so very busy.
Here's a big secret revealed: people are not as busy as they lead you to believe they are. Someone like me, who has so much work to do, always finds an hour...or two...for Facebook, or the computer, or Angry Birds, or solitaire....but we don't have time to sit with a friend, make the phone call, or write a real honest-to-goodness hand written letter.
I always get so introspective when I have a week of hospital visits. The great beauty of just walking into these people's lives is that I am bringing them Commmunion. And that pleases them so much. But for just a moment, I get to enter into their lives...and some of them seem surprised..."oh, you want to talk to me?" and that is...interesting. Some are glad, some look at me with distrust, some just want to be left alone...but I always wait...like the really good priests during confession. They are comfortable with silence. They can wait. Then they might ask, "Is that all?" They are saying: I have time for you. You matter. I care. I am present for you and only you in this moment of time.
Hell of a risk. Me, I'm not about confession...but I'm about hearing and listening. What do you want to tell me? What joy? What sorrow? What adventure? People just seem to know that about me. They tell me their story. A story...and I am blessed in the hearing. Even more blessed in the remembering.
And I don't ever want to lose this gift...I don't ever want to take it for granted. I don't ever want to lose the feeling of wanting to genuinely love others all the time.
But it can be tiring, long weeks like this, I feel tired...and then I have to ask myself why. Usually I am tired because I have felt too much or too little. Engaging with my children and grandchildren for a week in Florida, I have engaged without thinking too much about it. When I got back, it took me time to re-pressurize my heart to my ordinary work. I think I may have felt too much last week, cared too much, reached out too much...and it made me tired. I have to balance it all again. It takes work.
Take the story of a boy I met last week. He had a hard life for his young years. He did not see it as hard though. We started a conversation when he told me how excited he was to have his mother move closer to him now. He explained that when he was younger, it was decided that his mother could not provide for him, so he lived with his aunt and uncle. But now he was so happy he would get to see his mother again. Further stories, he told me how is mom had lost her arm when she was just six years old, how they made food stamps work, how his mother made their lives together special. Inside, I was crying. I just smiled...and gently listened about how grateful he was for his life. He told me about how his mother used to make jokes about her missing arm...and how she played tricks on people with it. We laughed.
I can't recall how it happened, but he explained to me why he never would feel sorry for himself or how he had to live with his aunt and uncle. He went on a mission trip in high school, he told me, to a poor part of Mexico. On the last day, a little girl about five years old came up to him.(The children of the village were exchanging gifts with the missionaries who were working on the homes in the community.) She handed him a puppy. He kind of laughed and looked around. "You want me to take your puppy?" he asked. "Yes," she said."later, if my family gets really hungry, they will want to eat him. If you take him to America, he will have a good life." The young man's eyes teared up. "How can a child so small know something like this?" He shook his head and said, "I have a very good life."
So stories like that come to me eat week. Everyone has something to tell. Everyone has something they want to tell. Everyone wants to be heard, to be recognized as part of the family of this human race.
If you start to feel unappreciated, the appreciate someone else. If you feel unheard, then listen. If you feel lonely, reach out. If you feel unloved...then love. It's the whole point of the beattitudes. Well, it's the natural conclusion...the St Francis Prayer:
Try to get the feeling again.
Love, Cindy
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