A shift in perspective

I was getting frustrated, watching his attention zip away from the homework sheet in front of him.  "Yah, yah?!" he said, imitating some stupid character from some stupid movie I didn't have time to watch because I was in medical school, dammit, and barely had time to study and eat and sleep and survive as it was.  I had been spending months with this teenager, wrestling through homework assignments and essays and test prep and re-living high school drudgery through him.  He was close to failing school, and now I could see why: it was because he had the attention span of an insect.  A very annoying, bothersome insect.

I couldn't handle it.  "What's the matter with you?"  I yelled.  He stopped briefly.  "One of my patients has cancer!" I blurted out.  I didn't know why I said it, but I kept going.  "He's just a teenager, like you.  He's a good kid, a really nice guy, and he has cancer and he's going to die, and here you are wasting your time like this!"  I paused, waiting to let the moral lesson sink in.

He fell apart, but not in the way I expected.  "I wish I were him!" he started bawling.  "I wish I had cancer!  Then everyone would feel bad for me.  Everyone would pity me.  People would at least think that I'm a good person, and feel sorry for me.  But look at me now.  I'm just a loser.  I'm failing at school, I have no friends, nobody likes me at church, my parents think I'm stupid, and you're the only person I can talk to.  Who cares about me at all?"

And so it struck me that, perhaps, it is more tragic to live in anonymity, ridicule, and rejection than it is to die.  It is tragic that we expend so much energy lamenting that which is often unchangeable and inescapable when there are those who are starving for just a fraction of affection, a single moment of grace.  And it is tragic that even our mercy is spent on those we feel are most deserving rather than on those who could benefit the most.

That moment changed me, though I still have trouble describing why.

I didn't think about that

People wonder why I have such an

unhealthy obsession with

human suffering and frailty,

as if there were some other mystery,

some other unfathomable principle in the universe

more puzzling, infuriating, and crucial

to the human experience.

"Tell me," I ask,

with some trace of smugness,

"What drives the human spirit more,

reaches out to the heart of the divine

and the depths of hell,

what creates a more genuine sentiment

than the paradox of pain?"

And how can one word be more disarming,

more flabbergasting to all the carefully

worded philosophical rhetoric of my life

than this:

"Joy."

?

Somehow, I never imagined that the pursuit

of one could lead to the other in such

a profound,

mystical,

and

deliciously

perfect

way.

"Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing." - James 1

Haunting

Roasting Pan

In the middle of Target is not the sort of place

I would expect to receive bad news.

The extra twenty dollars I saved by finding

my coveted piece of cookware there instead of

at Macy's thirty minutes ago seemed somewhat

trite by comparison, and I did what I could to

smile and talk about the weekend weather instead.

It wasn't as if I hadn't lost patients before,

hadn't watched a soul depart or told a family,

"I'm sorry," in that hesitant, sonorous tone.

So I wasn't sure why hearing about this one

felt so different and filled me with such disbelief,

as if someone had used my new roasting pan

to beat me in the face and then catch the

dripping blood from my nose while telling me it

wasn't actually anodized aluminum,

wasn't even worth the forty-two dollars

and eighty-nine cents I paid for it

with the money I earned while thinking I saved

a certain patient's life.

Born Again

Jesus answered, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, 'You must be born again.' The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." - John 3:5-8

It is easily forgotten that these words are the precursors for understanding the most powerful and well known words of Christ: "For God so loved the world..."  Why?  What is the significance of such a cryptic preamble?

Its significance again finds itself in the hidden: that the truth of God, no matter how plainly stated, can only be truly understood by those rejuvenated and reborn and recast in the spirit.  This is why the world, in all of tis carnal and utilitarian and indulgent, hedonistic forms will never understand the glory and devastating attraction of God.  It is born of a different nature and into an altogether foreign tongue.  Its biology is incompatible, its logic folly, and wisdom foolishness.

This is why redemption demands rebirth and re-creation: to start from a nascent germinal concept - the glory and sovereignty and humility and love of God - and arrive at the most profound of all mysteries:

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God. - John 3:16-21