Aspiration
The
day starts out quietly and then gathers momentum:
a visit with A.T., who after stroke is needing to learn to swallow all over
again, and us needing to learn to help him avoid aspirating his food (in
the back of my mind - me, eight years old, hearing Sister Assunta, ”Joseph,
when you are tempted to speak, say a silent aspiration.”) A quick talk
with José Luis about the week at Bethesda Christian Street house.
On my way to Domenic House I meet Tom, limping
toward the state store eight blocks away. He is so hurting he can’t walk
the distance, and he tells me that only the whiskey will damp the pain.
I drive him to the state store (years with alcoholics; I know less what to
do, not to do, than 20 years ago.)
In office, I see at her desk, Marsia trying to
pull together the loose ends of the grant from HUD, at same time her ear
to phone receiving worries of a man with no place else to turn. Later:
homecomings, arrivals and a departure; so we have a coming-and-going
party at lunch time with everyone going and coming back to work, telephones,
meeting, talks. Lilin is off to a new job - Alumni missioners Randy
and Jennifer are down from Boston,visiting us and the guys - Mark is back
from Oregon for another winter working the shelter with us. He joins
missioners José Carlos who has come from Costa Rica, Simone from Germany,
Domenic also from Germany, Lori from California. They have given up
their homes, friends and families to spend this year here - with the homeless,
with the alone.
As a young man, for a while, I lived on a farm
up against the Atlantic coast of Donegal Ireland. My Uncle Hughie told me
that long ago, longer past than his own brother’s and sister’s necessity
of leaving, there were men who took a vow of exile, and shoved off from this
beach in small boats. Most never returned. My devout Aunt Bridget
told me they did it to give credence to the belief that ‘none of us have
a real home, here.’ I have it from a friend that ‘we live in
a time
of diminishing hope and rising expectations’ - the opposite, I suppose, for
those swept away old Irish monks.
It is so hard for me to grasp or to speak it, but
I know that what Mark, Lilin, Lori, Domenic, Simone, Jose have given up,
much more than what I or we ask them to do while they are here, is at the
heart of some important matter. They have given up their homes to make
a home with the homeless. I write that sentence down, not because I
understand it, or am trying to explain something to you, reader. It
is the simplest way I can state the mysterious fact of the matter.
The day rushes on. We get word of Norman’s discharge
from hospital: great; but Roberto’s re hospitalization:
damn. Marsia locks her office door to get some paperwork done, threatens
us all with cookies if we interrupt. In the back of my mind, at the
edge of the swirl, the image of alleyway and Tom’s grasp for numb. And the
notion, “...hope he’s okay....” the only aspiration.
Ah well, I’ll live with it all awhile. I
have been wisely told that all uncertainties are not mysteries, and every
time I’m confused, it’s not the ‘dark night of the soul.’ And on my own way
home today, at end of swirling day, note no great accomplishments, happy
with the good in all the comings and goings, and accept the promise in little
aspirations.
Joe Ferry
Bethesda 1996
