beyond the loneliness

Reflections from Europe

While spending an evening in a Parisian hospital when my friend, Steph, was ill I met an elderly woman who had fallen and was receiving treatment in the hospital. I later wrote this account in my journal which I have included in my sermon for this Sunday, and now I also share it with you.

“How will I remember things? Snapshots of Big Ben and the Eiffel tower, of Picassos and DaVincis? Or will I remember the soft empty gaze of an elderly French woman in the hospital? I had to force myself to look beyond the bruises and the blood, the bandages and the scrapes, but there I saw it. I saw a beautiful woman who, like us all, did not want to be alone. Did not want to walk out into the dangerous loneliness of the night. Instead she preferred the riff-raff companions – the addicts, the homeless, the impatient medical staff. Perhaps for her, they became what we all long for… a place beyond loneliness”
(May 16, 2006).