Stories of the Season (#2)

“… believing something to be true has nothing to do with whether it is true.” Marcus Borg (Convictions:How I Learned What matters Most)

The story for today is a true story. Although if you remember this quote from Marcus Borg that I used last week, that really doesn’t matter…

The scene is in an ER waiting room in the downtown hospital in a large Canadian hospital. It is just after midnight and the night is clear, but frosty and cold. A couple sat there through the night, waiting for their friends to reemerge from behind the sliding doors that they had gone into some time before. Here is their story as they told it to me.

* * * * * *

"As we sat there watching we could see the story playing out in front of us. We chatted for most of the evening with a woman who was well known to the staff, Her take on downtown life in the big city and her interactions with various hospitals was fascinating to us, the story of a unknown culture. She eventually got into a taxi to go the her shelter. In fact, a number of folks had taxis orderer for them to get where they needed to go! One fellow had been dozing in the far corner for most of the evening. At about 3 am one of the staff people brought a heated flannelette sheet to cover him. Some of the folks there were in various stages of intoxication or highs. The staff took it in their stride, keeping their cool in the face of verbal tirades. And throughout all of this, the staff didn’t forget to offer water to us as they passed though the waiting room looking after the needs of the others who had gathered."

* * * * * *

This adventure made a profound expression on my friend, opening to her a reality she hadn’t known existed. There is what she said to me in an email (quoted with her permission) “For me, that evening in the ER waiting room was my ‘church’ for the week …. We saw compassionate care in action both to these people as well as to those who were there for major medical reasons.”

For me this story illustrates the importance, as well as the challenges of letting ourselves “see” what is happening in front of us. Too often we go through the holiday season so wrapped up in our own lives that we ignore what is actually happening around us. Church is not the only place where one can experience the awe and wonder of a mystical happening. They are here all around us. We only need to have the eyes to see and the ears to hear them. So my wish for you this holiday season is that you slow down and actually see when ‘god’ is at work in the part of the world that is around us.

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