Today I confessed to my hair stylist. As one does. Two years ago on Ash Wednesday I asked another barber to ‘reach for the three-eighths’ and mow my hair down to that length. (Pictures not available.) The next day everything shut down. Covid hair. A year later I got re-civilized.
Minor inconvenience. Since then and before then I’ve been on call one night a week at a local hospital, to provide spiritual care on request. And usually it is not about a haircut. Or lack of one. It is about lack of breath or the hope of a longer life. Often though it is not about a lack of faith.
Sometimes a whole family gathers around a bedside. Flying across the country to say farewell and thanks to a family member. Sometimes the patient is alone. And sometimes they have traveled a long way to get here. Walking, even, from Central America. Not without hope. Or faith.
Sometimes our hopes are let down. Sometimes our family lets us down. Or the prognosis is not good. And sometimes we have to go back home, desolate, mourning what was lost, a child or a chance.
From one extreme to the other. Trivial, profound. Whatever was in my mind before the hospital calls, disappears. Nothing else matters at that moment.
So it is also when the call is from a family member or friend if one of us, one of our friends or family, is in the hospital. Or did not make it there. All else drops away.
And we feel our own mortality on occasion, when death-defying surgery or ballistic luck preserves our lives from injury or disease, or stupidity on the road.
Life is suddenly precious. It goes on, if it can. For a moment, the senses are more vivid. The feelings deepen. The sorrows lengthen. But so eventually may grow the joys. Of remembrance. Of new life. Hope and faith. And, finally, love.
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