sensipeter
a message from Caroline Myss
Tuesday, 27 November, 2012Â (posted 29 November, 2012)
The other day I flew to Newark, New Jersey, to give a benefit lecture on behalf of the Trenton Soup Kitchen. I have been involved with the TSK for five years now and I consider the work this charity does to be absolutely magnificent. Anyway, I arrived midday and was met by a lovely, middle-aged driver. Within minutes we were in his immaculate car heading to our destination, which, according to his GPS, was an hour away. My first reaction was, “Ugh, that’s half the flight time from Chicago.†My second reaction was, “I hope this guy isn’t a chatterbox because I need to make notes for my talk.â€
Heading out of the airport, the driver and I both settled into our normal routines. He got his GPS going and I pulled out my notebook. Then he asked, “Is the temperature okay for you?†All he wanted to know was if the air in the car was warm enough, right? That required a yes or a no and a thanks for asking. But instead, something in me found his accent very curious. Why? I grew up in a home in which half my relatives had foreign accents, as did half the people in the neighborhood. People with accents are so common in my life that I hardly notice them, but I noticed his. Then I noticed that I needed to know where he came from – I mean I absolutely needed to know. Why? I don’t know why.
So I asked him, “Where are you from? I am intrigued with your accent.â€
He smiled and said, “Where do you think?†I looked at his face through the driver’s mirror and the deep lines around his dark brown eyes blending in with his warm smile told me that this was a good man, a very good man.
I said, “Persia.â€
His eyes sparkled, “Very good, but not quite. Close. What’s next to Persia?â€
I froze for a moment. My mind went blank. I needed to bring up the globe in my mind’s eye. I said, “Okay, just a minute. You’re not Turkish. You must be from Afghanistan.â€
“Yes, I am Afghani. I came here when the Russians invaded my country. I had just completed my degree at the university in Kabul. You can’t imagine how beautiful Afghanistan was before all these wars. Now I have two sons and a daughter here.â€
I put my notebook down and we began to discuss his life, his journey, his world. He told me how the turmoil of decades of war in Afghanistan has affected his family and the lives of so many people he knows. And then he told me that he lost his job when the company he was working for let go of many of their employees. As a result, he was losing his home. That struck him as among the more overwhelming events of his life, as he did not think such a thing could happen in America. I told him about how many people I knew in that same situation.
Lest you think his man was complaining about the events that had unfolded in his life or drowning in his sorrows, that was not at all the case. Rather, he presented these chapters of his life with a type of “matter of fact†voice that was devoid of self-pity or anger. I was the one pressing for more details, asking him to expand on how and why events happened as they did in his life. I was the one picking at his wounds. If anything, he should have dropped me off at a bus station and told me to catch the next bus to Trenton.
Then he said, “I should be quiet now. I notice you have work to do.â€
He didn’t ask me why I had come to Trenton and as I realized that, I hoped with all my might that he would not. And then I had this overwhelming gut feeling, that unmistakable rupture I get when I know I am right, “This man and his wife come to the Trenton Soup Kitchen for a meal or maybe even a few meals each week.†I knew it.
I was desperate to change the subject now. I could talk about anything – weather, sports, Hurricane Sandy – just don’t ask me why I have come to Trenton. Then my phone rang. It was a family member calling about another family member who was in a very serious crisis. We were circling the wagons, as they say. He could hear me, not because I was speaking loudly but because I was sitting directly behind him. For fifteen minutes, I discussed possible treatment and outcome for a beloved family member. My voice had gotten tight. I was shutting down, withdrawing into the silence of grief and tears. I hung up the phone, staring out the window.
This lovely Afghan man said, “You know, when my daughter was five, she was diagnosed with this rare illness. Her female organs matured faster than her physical body and she started to menstruate at that age. We were terrified. We took her to a doctor and he told us that she needed to take this certain shot once a month. It cost $1,000.00. Insurance covered that while I had my other job but then I lost that job. I did not know what to do. I needed to provide for my family, for my home, for their health. I was never so frightened. I told my wife that I needed to go away for one reason. I needed to go and be with God. I needed to be alone to take my life, my problems directly to God. And so I went away to pray for two weeks. I had to be alone, to do nothing but pray.
When I returned, we took my daughter to a different doctor and he said, ‘Why do you want to have her on this medication? She is perfectly healthy?’ And she is perfectly healthy. She is healed. I know that God is with me, even through these difficult times. Yes, I am losing my home. I can replace that. I could never replace my daughter, or my sons. And so we will grieve the loss our own home, but for how long? Perhaps three days. But how long would we grieve the loss of my daughter? We would grieve until the day of our own death. And so God blessed me by showing me that he is truly with me, with my family, and that he hears our prayers.â€
By the time this wonderful man finished sharing his story, I could not stop the tears from pouring out of my eyes.
“Do you have any water?†he asked me.
“Are you thirsty? Here, I have a bottle of water,†I said as I gave him my water.
“No,†he said, “I am not thirsty. I am going to pray for your family member and I am going to put those prayers into this water and you will take this water to her. It will carry the grace and light of God’s response.â€
I asked him if I could pray for his family, for his journey through hardship and his return to right livelihood. And so, pulling up to my friend’s house, my driver held the bottle of water in his hands and sang prayers from the Koran. He rocked slowly back and forth in the front seat of the car, falling deeper and deeper into an inner dialogue with God. I closed my eyes and quietly entered into my own interior castle, holding images of this man’s face and soul in my heart.
In the midst of this sacred ritual, I heard the sound of my friend darting out of his home to greet me. I quickly came out of my prayer space and signaled to him by holding up my hand, “Stay where you are. Don’t come near this car.â€
Still this dear man continued in his prayerful request that healing grace be given to my family member. Tears now flowed from his closed eyes as his body movements revealed that his heart beat closely with heaven’s pulse. Finally, he opened his eyes and handed me what anyone else would take for an ordinary bottle of Evian water. We held each other’s hands for several seconds, thanking each other with nods of our heads and the tight grips of our hands. Still appearing to be an ordinary Evian bottle from the outside, I looked through the ordinary and into the extraordinary. I stared at this bottle of water and for me it became the substance of miracles, the story of a man’s life journey, and on the day I was picked up to do a benefit for the homeless by a man losing his home whose very prayers I suspect may well have contributed most to the healing of my family member. It became “holy water.â€
We Breathe Together