COMPARATIVE RELIGION
Kindest Regards, all!
Recently, I had an experience that shook me, and I am having trouble dealing with it. I am hoping that by writing this out, I can come to grips with it.
To begin, there was a lady who volunteered until recently down the hall from where I work in the hospital, at the chemo clinic of the cancer ward. She gave of her time, freely and with no pay, for several hours a day throughout the week.
Now, she was not what one would call pretty. In fact, she disguised her looks under what I consider to be way too much makeup, an attempt I believe to cover many years of hard life. She seldom smiled, I think now because people rarely smiled at her, if they even glanced her way. Most people ignored her presence.
I treated her as I would any other person, I greeted her as she came by, and we would exchange brief smiles. I did not go out of my way for her, and she asked nothing of me. Had she done so, I would have assisted in whatever way I could as a part of my job. My point being, I treated her as I would anybody else, nothing special and nothing rude. This, I was taught growing up, is called “common human decency,” which is properly extended to anybody.
I heard that her house recently burned, and she lost nearly everything she owned. And while I heard this story being told, included with it were rumors that she fell asleep with a cigarette, some even implying that it must have been a marijuana cigarette. These people did not know, they were speculating, but with the gossipy reassurance that it must be true, that this woman somehow deserved to lose her house and belongings. And I must admit, for a brief moment until I regained my senses, I believed them.
She returned the other day to say goodbye, the only conversation we ever had. She made a point of coming up to me personally, smiled and told me briefly about what had happened, and that she was leaving, I presume to stay with family somewhere out of state. And then she hugged me and kissed my neck. She didn’t do this to anybody else there where I was at. She turned and left, and I suppose I will never see her again.
We part company with people we know all the time. Partings can be hard, and even sad. What makes this one difficult for me is that I didn’t know this woman, I don’t even know her name, and yet I made such an impression on her she felt the need to search me out to say goodbye. And all I ever did was grant her the common human decency we all deserve. If that little can mean so much, how little she must have had!
When we have, whether money or position or material possessions, we lose track of how significant the little things can be. When we are in want, the little things can make such a difference! And what tears me up the most, is that this woman who had nothing, and yet was so giving, and still she received so little from anybody else, only rumors and gossip. I am still struggling with this gross lack of “Christian charity” from others. That otherwise “good” people, at least in our everyday estimation, could be so cruel towards such a giving person. Why? Because she was so difficult to look at, so un-beautiful? She certainly did nothing to cause anybody harm, indeed, she was there to help in whatever way she could.
I am not sure what it is I am trying to say. I don’t even know if writing this will even make a difference in how I feel, but I sense a deep hurt that I cannot reach or describe, and that had I only known, perhaps I could have made a difference. If I had only made a little more effort, had taken a little more time to get to know her, that somehow things might have been a bit different, that life might have been a bit more pleasant for her, at least in the time she spent so selflessly giving of herself to others. So many of whom ignored her very presence.
I suppose it serves to show that true beauty lies far beyond what the naked eye can see. What we see as beautiful can in reality be ugly, and what we see as ugly may hold hidden beauty. And that it is well worth our effort to try to see beyond what our eyes and hearts imagine as truth.
(Discussion in ‘Christianity‘ started by juantoo3, Feb 20, 2005)
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