So What About February

Every Monday we start board meeting with a something from the chaplain. Bob read this last week, and I liked it. I don't usually resonate with much of what he chooses to read. Partially because of the point of view of what he chooses, and partly because of the manner in which he reads it. Offhand. We're all business in meetings, but at the same time, everyone's just come in from the field, from living rooms and bedrooms. From the intimacy of fear. And the intimacy of the body, the sick body. From sacred spaces. And I don't think its just the hospice thing. I think everyone is always about one heartbeat away from a sacred space. Every single person eating burritos in the restaurant around you, every single other parent watching their kids with a mix of pleasure and boredom at the playground. No one has to feel it or know it, but there it is. You just have to be willing to point your finger at it, and say, There.

Bob had Bell's palsy last month and he's better, though his speech is still slurred. It warmed me to him. The way he had his eye taped shut and his slurring and drooping face, and the way he bore it without drama, or comment, or anything. He read this is his slurry speech and something about his quiet uncomplaining dignity over the past month and the sentiment of the reading said to me, There. And I was glad for that.



I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength. I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.

Then someone at my side says: "There, she is gone!"

"Gone where?"

Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side and she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port.

Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at the moment when someone at my side says: "There, she is gone!" there are other eyes watching her coming and other voices ready to take up the glad shout: "Here she comes!"

And that is dying.