SOMETHING EXTRAORDINARY
IN ALL THAT IS ORDINARY
A Widow Bit – Oct. 19, 2008

By Mary Koch

            It was the luck of the draw. Ten of us sitting around a tight circle in a dimly lighted corner of a massive cathedral. We were attending a church convention and had been arbitrarily assigned to Bible study groups. We were about to reveal some of our most intimate beliefs and spiritual experiences to relative strangers.

            “How do you see God in others?” we were asked. One young man had a quick answer. He talked of the good deeds he saw others doing, most notably, his own father – a physician. It was easy for him to see God in the noble works of certain humans.

            “I don’t look for God in others,” protested one of the three priests in our group. Directed by God’s love to help those in need, what he looked for in his fellow humans was their pain, sorrow, confusion, suffering and loneliness.

            His view was echoed by a nurse who cares for elderly, sometimes difficult, patients suffering from dementia and Alzheimer’s. She too relies upon her faith and resulting compassion to tend to these troubled individuals.

            Another priest recalled an experience when she was serving as a chaplain in a woman’s prison. She was caught in a lock-down while visiting a prisoner one day and became panicky when guards would not release her from the prisoner’s cell. The prisoner recognized her discomfort. “Let’s have our Bible study,” the prisoner suggested and calmly led the priest through a scriptural discussion.

            Is it not God we are seeing, I pondered, disguised in the needs of our fellow humans?

            The next morning, after a splendid worship service, I walked from the cathedral with purposeful slowness, lingering to revel in the carillon music that pealed from the cathedral tower. It was the farewell concert of a superb carilonneur, who has accepted a similar post with a cathedral in Toronto. I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the day, the masterful playing of the bells, and my sorrow that I could not share it all with John. My eyes were watery when I ran into the third priest from the Bible study circle. He was in the parking lot, patiently waiting for his ride.

            Ordinarily, we would have exchanged a greeting and gone our separate ways. For some reason, we stopped to tell each other the story that was most alive in us at that moment. Tears flowed as I told of my longing to share the sunshine, autumn colors and music of the bells with my beloved, who is gone. The priest told me of a loss in his life, a young woman he had pulled from the grip of drugs and prostitution, but who – after 10 years of sobriety – ultimately returned to the streets and was murdered.

            Our stories told, we parted, each a little richer from those few shared moments. As I drove away, I rolled down my car windows to hear the concert finale: “O Canada.” The carilonneur, too, ending this chapter of her story.