It was near the end of the E.R. resident’s second straight week of 14-hour night shifts. She was nauseated and cold from fatigue.
At 5 A.M. she was called to the examining room to see an 86-year-old man. Looking at the triage report, she had him categorized immediately: He’s going to be demented. He won’t be able to give me any history. Taking a deep breath, she began.
“I’m sorry to wake you, sir”, she said, trying not to overreact, reminding herself that this happens countless times. “Here’s some water”, offering him a glass.
As he sipped, she started firing questions at him about his symptoms and medical history. His speech was painfully slow, his answers inconclusive. She tossed the chart aside. On to the physical examination.
“My hands are cold”, she warned.
“Do what you have to do, Doctor”.
The doctor placed her frigid palm on his chest as she listened through her stethoscope. He didn’t flinch.
When she finished, he grasped her hand. Then the old man, who moved so slowly and painfully, began to rub her hand rapidly between his. The doctor stared at him with a combination of disbelief and annoyance.
“To warm you up, Doctor. My wife also gets cold when she’s tired. This helps her. You should be taking care of yourself; not old men like me”.
When he finished rubbing one hand, he took her other one. It felt incredibly good; the doctor continued to watch, but now in amazement.
He was the sick one, not her. And yet this man, the object of her impatience, was concerned about her well-being.
The doctor’s haste dissipated. At that moment, it was the patient, not the doctor, who had the healing touch.
The “voice” of Christ speaks to all of us – but to hear his voice demands that we come out of the soundproof isolation of our own interests and needs and hear Christ speaking in the plight of the poor, the needs of the helpless, the cry of the persecuted. Easter faith calls us to put aside our own crosses when we hear the voice of Jesus pleading in the struggle of those being crushed under the weight of their crosses; to rise above our own pain when we hear the voice of Jesus crying out in the pain of others; to give from our treasure when we hear the voice of Jesus begging in the poverty of others.
A Lesson in Bedside Manner 5-8-2022
May 4th, 2022In Praise of Compost 5-1-2022
April 29th, 2022As spring warms the earth, the work of the garden begins. And, as every serious gardener knows, compost is not a pile of garbage but life itself.
Gardeners have long realized the secret of the compost pile for nourishing and maintaining a garden of beauty and bounty. In a compost pile, nature transforms our unused, unwanted scraps into nutrient-rich soil. Like the garden itself, the compost heap rests during the cold winter months under the snow, slowly changing in form from a pile of dead leaves and rotting food into humus, nature’s own rich fertilizer.
Yes, it stinks, it generates heat, it’s an ugly pile. But it is one of nature’s most amazing metamorphoses. The brown of dead leaves provides the carbon; the green of fruits and vegetables, as well as the eggshells and coffee grounds, are rich in nitrogen. Bacteria and fungi, earthworms and insects break the material down. Rain, air, time and temperature transform the worthless and unwanted into the richest of soil for the most bountiful of harvests.
In this Easter springtime, composting can be more than a gardening miracle but a living parable of the transformation we can affect in our own lives. In God’s time, with God’s grace, we can transform the “scraps”, the hurts, the disappointments of our lives into a rich “humus” in which the life and love of God can take root and flourish. The Easter Jesus shows us that change is always possible, that we can always begin again and again and again. Like good composting, such transformation demands the hard work of surrendering our brokenness, our insensitivity, our stubbornness, our self-absorption, and placing it all in the “pile”, then trusting God to work his miracle of transformation. The compost pile teaches us to embrace life, to reject nothing, to be open to mystery, to become what God desires of us all: to be humus, to be human.
God’s Mercy 4-24-2022
April 22nd, 2022A few years Pope Francis called a wonderful jubilee of mercy. I was so excited when he did this and I really wanted to make it a special year for myself and the people of the parish. What I had to do first, I had to get a better understanding of what is mercy, exactly. To some people’s modern ears it sounds like weak surrender or cheap forgiveness or even worse, the self-satisfied flinging of a coin to a homeless person. I did not want to let Pope Francis down so I began my search to understand mercy better.
As I was looking I came across a definition of mercy by a Jesuit priest name Fr. James F. Keenan. “Mercy” he says is the willingness to enter into the chaos of another. This definition unlocked my imagination, and I was immediately flooded with images and stories.
Mercy is the Holy Child Jesus Church community in Queens. When a desperate mother left her newborn son in the church’s manger scene in late November, multiple parish families stepped forward to adopt him. “I think it’s beautiful,” Fr. Christopher Heanue, the church administrator, said. “A church is a home for those in need, and she felt, in this stable – a place where Jesus will find his home – a home for her child.” Parishioners have two name suggestions for the baby: John, because he came before Jesus to prepare the way; and Emanuel, which means “God is with us.”
Mercy is the Intergenerational Learning Center at Providence Mount St. Vincent in Seattle – a preschool inside a nursing home. Through planned and spontaneous activities, the kids and the seniors interact throughout the day, sharing in art projects, exercise, story time, and more. Both the youngsters and the residents have a lot to offer one another and a lot to receive.
Mercy is a mother who sleeps on the floor of her three year-old son’s room at 2:00am because he thinks there are monsters in there.
Mercy is Oakland Athletics pitcher Sean Doolittle and his girlfriend Eireann Dolan, who partnered with Chicago city government officials to organize Thanksgiving dinner for the city’s 17 families of Syrian refugees. And mercy is the nonprofit organizations – many of them Catholic – that have proclaimed “Refugees welcome” in states were elected officials have threatened to close their doors.
Mercy is when a person returns to the Sacrament of Reconciliation after decades, nervous as can be and embarrassed to have forgotten the act of contrition, and the confessor responds with warmth, gentleness, and bit of good humor.
Mercy is the hashtag #PorteOuverte, or “Open Door,” that scores of Parisians used on the night of the terror attacks there to signal that they would open their homes to anyone who needed shelter.
Mercy is Rosa’s Fresh Pizza in Philadelphia, where you can spend an extra dollar to have a post-it put up on the wall. Homeless members of the community are then welcome to come in to the shop and trade in a post-it for a slice.
Mercy is the Gospel stories of the prodigal son, the woman caught in adultery, Matthew the unscrupulous tax collector, and Peter the denier. The forgiveness they receive does not condone them in their selfishness. They are not condoned, but redeemed.
These images of mercy share some things in common. Each example features the element of “willingness” that Keenan emphasizes. Instead of avoiding or dismissing the chaos of another, these practitioners of mercy move toward the chaos with creativity and boldness. They make me wonder, “If we Catholics were 10 times bolder and more creative in our practice of mercy than we are right now, how might things be different?” Well, we’d probably have preschools in all our nursing homes and refugees at all our family parties, for starters.
I close, Mercy the willingness to enter the chaos of another human being. Thank you God for the mercy you show all of us.
