Waiting Room

In wheelchair he sits and reads the list

Of medications he takes;

Should Prednisone be listed because he only

Took it four days?

His wife, caregiver, or both sits beside

Him trying to pronounce each prescription.

She sits taut and ridged like the

Words she speaks;

Germanic or Swedish some

Language that’s hardly romantic.

Her son, definitely her son, sits beside her

Affirming roadblocks for each new drug.

A young woman sits there by the window holding

Her phone and talking;

She’s alone except for the voice on the phone

And the company of a cough.

She doesn’t seem to fit with the others though

She shares a sense of the same despair.

I sit and watch them all as they wait for the nurse

To call their name;

Wondering if this waiting is better because

It’s a first world waiting.

Bound to the others by common infirmity still

I bounce and dance out into the rain.

The Antidote Is Community

Curled up; sorry for self. He lay in his bed. He’d blown through a red light in the company car.  Hit another car; wounded passengers. Put a teenage boy in the hospital. His fault, his mistake. Giving up. Then the phone call came. Somebody needed to talk; somebody else was hurting.  So, he got out of bed. Community gives purpose. Community motivates. Community heals.

Despite the evidence our proclivity is to hide. Like Adam we run from God, we hide from Eve, we hole up. We have so many options to run to. Writing on America’s opiate epidemic, Sam Quinones makes this point; “the drug…makes being alone not just all right, but preferable. I believe more strongly than ever that the antidote to heroin is community.” Studies of mortality consistently show that individuals with the lowest level of involvement in social relationships are more likely to die than those with greater involvement.  One study cites ‘compelling evidence’ linking a low quantity of social ties to physical healing. We must learn to step out when we want to stay in.

We walk into a messy humanity. In church, the local art class, or wherever you go. Community isn’t just rubbing elbows with others it’s going arm-in-arm. But we’re broken. Others more than us, others less. That’s where the beautiful mystery is revealed. When we come alongside each other in that hard season. I’ve had friends walk with me through addiction, through divorce and through parent’s sickness. Friends are there to share my baby’s birth, newfound love and quiet seasons where nothing changes. This is where the healing begins.

It’s been said that we should have as many close friendships as we will need pall bearers at our funeral. And “I’m being placed in an urn,” isn’t a valid argument against community. So that the funeral will come later, so that the wounds will heal faster, so that life will be richer---step into community.