I have begun to see how Christ is at the center of every relationship. The setup for my next encounter with Christ began with a moving recount of a story from Gregory Boyle’s book, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion during one of Father Patrick’s homilies. Inspired, I ordered the book.
Two weeks of insane and exhausting travel setup a combination punch guaranteed to take me down for the count. It was the weekend before Ash Wednesday. A dear friend of the family and companion of my father had passed away. The family had asked me to sing at the funeral. By Friday I had little voice. Rehearsal was shaky at best and everyone including myself wondered how I would sing. We had a backup plan in place but somehow I knew I would sing. By Saturday morning my condition had deteriorated. I was coughing incessantly and I felt very weak. Through the grace of God when I opened my mouth to sing the need to cough disappeared and my voice was clear and strong. When I wasn’t singing I was coughing.
I ran from the funeral to a kickoff meeting for the DOM Pastoral Council followed by a run to the San Francisco airport to pick-up my family. On Sunday I was running a fever of 103° F and in a lot of discomfort. I had to travel Monday for a job in Dallas. I could not afford to be unfit to travel. I spent the day convalescing. The book, Tattoos on the Heart was my companion. I ate up the collection of stories like a hungry wolf.
Travel on Monday began with cancelled flights. I was switched to a new airline. Although I can be a chatty guy in person, I tend to be a quiet traveler, preferring the solitude of a book, work, or reflection to conversation. Being sick I was even less likely to want to engage in any conversation. In LA I boarded my flight for Dallas. It was a huge plane; two seats on the left, five in the middle and two on the right. I made my way to 25A and took my seat next to a heavy set Pan Aminian woman in her early forties.
She was sitting on the aisle. It appeared a number of people were doing a fine job of exhibiting the kind of agitation that often accompanies travel. They were brusque. She didn’t get annoyed but these lapses of civility were stinging her more than one would expect. I offered a few kind words and pleasantries. She made some passing remarks of not liking to fly. I stopped my rhythm of drawing into my proverbial travel shell and I began to reach out to her with questions. It just felt like the right thing to do.
Questions turned into a flood of revelations. Felecia was traveling back to North Carolina after burying her second sister who had died of complications from diabetes. She had buried her first sister the year before who had been a victim of domestic violence. The two and half hour flight turned into mosaic of tears, laughter, and poignancy. Felecia’s story is amazing. Her father was a life-long gang member. She had been estranged from her father most of her life but in the last two years she has reconnected. Felecia was a gang member. Now she was working a correctional officer for a high security women’s prison.
She recounted stories of her sister. The stories were flowing. A normally reserved officer who knows how to keep her feelings in check given the work she does, was pouring her heart out to me. The thing is – I wasn’t there. I was sitting on the side. Christ came to sit right between us. He was holding her hands the whole time.
Felicia was angry at God. She had developed a faith but as far as she was concerned the death of her sister Theresa, was a hard nut to swallow. Even as she was pushing God away she was responding to his knock. She showed me a tattoo on her foot with the names of her grandchildren. She described the miracle of watching one of her grandsons in her words being saved by God. She had seen at his birth the umbilical cord wrapped several times around his neck. Felecia saw her grandson turn blue and then grey. The doctors were convinced they had lost the child. Right when they had just about given up on the child, he was revived.
Like me, Felicia was not supposed to be on this flight. That’s when she realized that God had arranged for us to encounter each other. I gave Felecia my copy of Tattoos on the Heart. She was so touched and moved and we had another good cry. I kept assuring her that Christ understood her pain and anger. He was going to be patient and keep knocking on her door.
I stepped off the flight and back into the real world. I was so gratefully for our encounter of Christ. Truly he had delighted in using my ears, my heart, my hands, and my voice. I had disappeared and Christ had worked one of His infinite instances of love. It was another experience of being overwhelmed and humbled by the reality and depth of Christ’s presence in our lives.
Books are amazing agencies of God’s grace to us. Can you share with us a time when a book touched and changed you in a profound way? Or what about a time when you shared a book with someone else and it made a profound difference for them?