Today Sr. Wantabee visited with Mr. J. He suffers from a major stroke that left half his body paralyzed and he is wondering if life is worth living. As we have talked he shared that he was in a foster home at age five and got baptized twice, once in a gym and once in a church. Next he shared that it was good that he was taken from that home or he might have killed his “foster mother” for she held his hand over the stove until it blistered at age five and would send him to bed with his underwear over his head with the accident in his nose. He could never love a god who allowed that.
Sr. Wantabee agreed that “love” is a word we toss around too easily. “If you love me, you’ll sleep with me,” was her experience. It is hard for her to use the word “love” also. How does the word “trust” work? If the god-being is not Santa Clause, perhaps he, she or it understands that “love” is hard for us to say and accepts “trust.” We trust that he walks with us as broken people living in a broken world and is working to make thing right, even when we can’t see or understand. Since we do not do a very good job of it with wars and cruelty, the Christ figure had to come to start setting things straight. He thought it sounded like what his spiritual advisor had told him.
Today I asked him about his spiritual advisor, Jiyo? No, said he. It was Dino. Oh, Gino, said she. No, Dino, said he. Dino, like the piano player, said she. Yes, he works at the City Bar. Sigh, I had thought I was agreeing with the local pastor who visited the Gospel Mission he came from. Some days are humbling.
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On the Way to Wonder 