A SONG OF HOPE

Hope is the belief that what little contributions and differences I make in my life have enduring and cumulative consequences. A friend of mine, Jaime Potter-Miller, told me a story once that took place when she served as a chaplain at a retirement community in Western Pennsylvania. She found herself making pastoral calls one afternoon on some of the there-but-not-there residents. How does one provide pastoral care to a woman in the later stages of Alzheimer’s or to a non compos mentis man, she wondered?

Jaime determined that one way of caring for these people was to bring her guitar and sing. There was a patient in particular, however, for whom even singing seemed like a waste of time. A brain stem stroke had left this woman virtually comatose, with not even a twitch of response to any stimuli in years. Her family had tried everything they could to reach her, but nothing evoked even a semblance of recognition.

Unable to bypass this woman’s bed, Jaime bent down with her guitar as close to the woman’s face as she could get, and began signing. Jaime asked herself, “I wonder what she sang when she went to Sunday school?” She sang her answers, one of which was “Great Is Thy Faithfulness.” During this song, Jaime thought she heard a groaning sound. Then she watched in amazement as this stroke victim began to make guttural noises. Jaime stopped singing, afraid the woman was having another stroke, and called the nurse.

The nurse examined the woman and found her no different than usual. “You had to be imagining it,” she said to Jaime. “This woman hasn’t had any bodily response to anything or anyone in years.” But Jaime wouldn’t let her go.

“Listen to this,” Jaime insisted. Once again she sang “Great Is Thy Faithfulness.” And once again the woman began making those sighs and sounds “too deep for words.”

The nurse bolted out of the room, collected every other medical staff person she could find, and brought them in to witness a miracle. A simple song [of faith] had reached into this woman’s soul and touched her where nothing else could. Jaime later said to me, “Len, I had no idea how deep the roots of faith go down.”

-- Leonard Sweet in “A cup of Coffee at the Soul Café”

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FRAMED BY LARGE PERSPECTIVES

“The Lord is near to the brokenhearted, and saves the crushed in spirit.”  (Psalm 34:18)

“Religion is for old people,” my buddy declared as we drove through the countryside. I found his comment a little insulting: I was a church goer, age nineteen. Was that so wrong? I lost touch with him; now it’s been twenty-five years since we’ve spoken. But he was on to something. At twenty, the road looks clear all the way. We arrogantly waste time, try a hundred new jobs or relationships or ideologies, believe any fool thing. The heart is not yet broken, not in the way it is when time crashes down on it -- soured dreams, career missteps, divorce, illness, the death of loved ones, the passing of so much we love. By old age the ghostly procession of the once-was can be unbearable.

My heroes include any elderly persons who keep the flame lit, who still feel inspiration aand outrage at ideas, current events, history, movies, books, national tragedies, spring flowers, the passing parade. Somehow they take it all in. Life enlarges their spirit, becomes fuel for the remaining journey, seasoned with humor, not bitterness. They age with dignity. Part of the dignity is keeping the inevitable heartbreak framed by large perspectives and by going deeper into the grief, not denying it.

-- Ray Waddle in “A Turbulent Peace”


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