Here's Looking at You.

I look down the table at the homeless shelter, at the faces of these people with whom I share Tuesday evenings, and find myself, ironically, at home.  They have allowed me to put them in the tomb with Lazarus (Sartre’s Stare, God’s Gaze from a few days ago) and they have shared with me what fears would keep them from coming out, of coming to life, to a new life, another chance to be alive.  But these women and men are so wounded.  Some suffer a major wound, one so large that healing is slow, and hope for recovery is thin.  Other are so covered with small wounds, each minor by itself but the very accumulation of them saps their energy, weakens them like a fever that keeps us in our beds when we want so badly to get up, get going.

They were trusting, forthcoming, and candid

about those fears that would tempt them not to come out, to just stay dead.  But now as I asked them what they would hope for that would somehow overpower all of these fears that they would dare to accept life, their voices seemed to retreat, their faces gone blank as their eyes turned within.  I had that fear that sometimes comes when I am going with the flow of a group, when things are moving, when I think things are succeeding, going easily, won’t fail.  It is like lighting a fire in the wood stove on these cool mornings.  I gently coax the first flame from paper, and little kindling from my workshop slowly, reluctantly warms and accepts that flame, and in the brightness of its igniting, I start adding the bigger pieces of wood, and find that I have added them too quickly, and they threaten the thin, fragile flame, and I sit hoping that the kindling hangs on, hangs on, hangs on, long enough to warm the bigger pieces, that once heated by that little kindling flame will catch fire and burn long enough to make a difference.

I am watching their faces, wondering whether this final question was too big, that the fragile little flame of their answers to the first two questions – fears from inside themselves and fears of things in the world – are not enough to ignite hope.  But like the little glow in my stove these dark autumn mornings, I begin to see light come into their eyes, and I seem to sense warmth in their faces.  One of them makes eye contact, his face placid, like an evening pond.  I ask him if he can share what he has found.  His speaks a single word, one that is not a picture, but an opening, like a narrow cave that opens to a magnificent interior space, one that winds around and calls us to look, agape in wonder.  Acceptance.  I thank him and ask him if he can say more.  He hesitates, like the flame on that kindling, bright but small, not wanting to be overwhelmed. 

Maybe he is simply realizing that he is at the mouth of that interior cavern, and his word, acceptance, is merely an unconscious elaboration of the eloquent non-word, Oh!  His face says more than his words as he struggles to say what we all already know, to describe how good it feels when someone simply looks at us and says we are fine with them just as we are, warts, wounds, scars, mistakes, and all.  His sharing warms the one next to him at the table, who recognizes the feeling, and says, “You know, like someone who looks at me and accepts me for who I am and not how I fall short of their expectations.”  The flame spreads, and now they are nodding in affirmation, seeing the flicker of understanding in each other’s eyes.  They are pushing open the door of the tomb, blinking in the too-bright light of . . . hope.

I am grateful that the fire has caught, and as I am warming in it, I remember a simple, powerful phrase that a Lucia Dubois used with Kathy and me when she would invite us to enter into the presence of God.

 “Imagine yourself looking at God looking at you right where you are, delighting in you just as you are, and smiling.”

Go ahead.  Imagine it.  Be enkindled.