Removing Sandals

It doesn’t take long at a children’s hospital to know that you are not going to get anywhere with most patients if you are not somewhat familiar with their animated friends. Most of my floor visits seem to require as much knowledge about Despicable Me minions as they do about theology. I’ve been thinking about how these animated films are so real to young children, as every hospital aquarium becomes a search for Nemo, and every stuffed Olaf is a true friend who stays bedside with patients all the time in a way that I cannot.  

In terms of real application to life, there’s another animated movie I’ve had on my mind recently. Every day for the chaplain interns and for many other employees here begins with a 20 minute ride in on the hospital shuttle, and ends with a similar ride back to the parking lot. Particularly in the morning, these rides are an exercise in thumb mechanics, as almost everyone has their head down, smart phone out, and imaginary walls up. We become private cells flowing in and out of a massive complex, an ironic reality for a building that cares for the highly connected tissues of the human body. Pixar’s Wall-E tells a similar story of humanity, where humans have adapted to only see the screens in front of them and completely forget about the life near them in their human neighbor. Life becomes a bland mix of entertainment and food indulgence, where the flavorings of community and romance and friendship and contagious laughter and compassion and accompaniment have ceased. Only one robot with his selfless determination to merely hold someone’s hand works to break this cycle. 

The OT story of Moses and the burning bush comes to mind as I consider this challenge of breaking from the passive normal.  This is a story about presence on holy ground, as Moses is invited into a space of reverence, a space of power, a space of recognition where divine and human collide. It is a space of flesh and spirit and grounding earth, as sandals are removed along with any other duties to the outside world. 

Life as a chaplain is leading me to believe that this type of encounter does not require some burning bush in a pasture. It does not require angel messengers, or pillars of fire, or prophetic speeches, or an incarnate son. I think it simply requires multiple people. I’m reminded of these bold words of Walt Whitman:

“I believe in the flesh and the appetites.

Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle

Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touch’d from

The scent of these armpits aroma finer than prayer,

This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds”

Whitman isn’t exactly a strict theologian. He is a poet of the body and of the divineness already present there. We are created in the endlessly diverse image of God, and therefore all people we meet offer this same opportunity for holy ground that Moses experienced. Whitman reminds us that we need to look no further than each other’s physical presence to experience the divine. The unemployed, the CEO tax collectors, those gay and straight, our friends and enemies……ALL reflect divine. This is the honor we get to experience in “holy ground” spaces around our cities, in our families, in our travels.

There’s another story of divine/human encounter that I’d like to share. This appeals more toward my present medical setting, and it comes from the writing of a surgeon, Dr. Richard Selzer and his book, Mortal Lessons. This was a gift to me in my brief medical school days, but I find this story amazing for anyone to hear. He writes this from the bedside of one of his patients:

“I stand by the bed where a young woman lies, her face postoperative, her mouth twisted in palsy, clownish. A tiny twig of the facial nerve, the one to the muscles of her mouth, has been severed. She will be thus from now on. The surgeon had followed with religious fervor the curve of her flesh; I promise you that. Nevertheless, to remove the tumor in her cheek, I had to cut the little nerve.

Her young husband is in the room. He stand on the opposite side of the bed and together they seem to dwell in the evening lamplight, isolated from me, private. Who are they, I ask myself, he and this wry mouth I have made, who gaze at and touch each other so generously, greedily?

The young woman speaks, "Will my mouth always be like this?" she asks. "Yes," I say, "it will. It is because the nerve was cut."

She nods and is silent. But the young man smiles. "I like it," he says, "It is kind of cute."

All at once I know who he is. I understand and I lower my gaze. One is not bold in an encounter with a god. Unmindful, he bends to kiss her crooked mouth and I am so close I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate to hers, to show her that their kiss still works. I remember that the gods appeared in ancient Greece as mortals, and I hold my breath and let the wonder in.”

To Selzer, and to us who get to witness this tale because of his writing, we experience a holy ground moment of encounter between human and human. All the ingredients are there—connection, relationship, sadness, compassion, listening, fear, spirituality, love, awe. Indeed, love can bloom in the stoniest of places.

Let us walk with eyes to see a world of God-images, both within and among us. In that mindset, suddenly holy ground does not seem so unreachable at all in our small world of mobile living lights of the human spirit.  God meets humans in creation, and we are witnesses to small burning bushes moving around us.

And so, I too remove my shoes and with bare feet come upon new faces in these hospital rooms, ready for the magic where divine and human meet.