"When Nancy knocked at the door, an older woman dressed in shades of brown, her hair coiled in a long gray braid on top of her head, opened the door. A small boy clung to the hem of her housecoat. Dorothy did not smile. She did not even greet her young visitor. Instead, she looked the girl over, as if assessing her usefulness, and without diverting her gaze from Nancy's face, spoke to the child beside her.
"'This nice young lady will take you home, and buy you milk and bread on the way.' With a kiss on top of his head, Dorothy ushered the child onto the stoop, stepped back inside, and closed the door behind her.
"' There was no doubt in my mind that this is exactly what would happen,' Nancy says. The child took her hand and guided her to the corner market where Nancy purchased the groceries, and then she followed the boy to a rundown tenement on the corner. When they entered, the apartment was filled with children speaking Spanish. A middle-aged man, who was later identified as the little boy's father, sat in a chair by the window. Both his arms were bandaged from the arm to the elbow, and he had them propped up on the windowsill.
"Nancy learned that the man had suffered from an industrial accident and had been out of work for months. Not only had the factory where he worked failed to offer compensation, but they had fired him. He was responsible for the care of several families who lived with him, and Dorothy Day and her team had been helping out during this difficult time. Nancy was welcomed as part of the extended family, and she spent a couple of hours visiting with the members of the little boy's household.
"When she made her way back to the Catholic Worker house,....Dorothy was sternly lecturing a young priest. 'Words are not enough,' she said. 'You have to do something!' In that moment, Nancy took this message as if it were meant for her, and dedicated her own life to defending human rights and uplifting the human spirit."
We can't truly find our True Self, the Self which is united to God, unless and until we lose ourselves in others' stories and become transformed for service. Nancy had a receptive heart; she was open to the story of this little boy, a stranger, and later spent hours listening to the stories of his large extended family. Unafraid, she ventured into an unknown neighborhood and among people who spoke a different language, sat down, and waited for them to pour out their hearts.
What did she discover? We are all alike under the skin; we all carry the Divine Flame in our hearts so that each one of us is a holy temple. When we discover this truth we find our True Self which is interconnected to all in Christ. Each person is another part of who we are, a Temple of the Divine, and thus, someone for us to reverence and serve.
Yet our t.v. news stories, newspapers, and Facebook are filled with stories of people's outcries in which they are excluding others: take care of veterans instead of refugees; cut back on Welfare because most of those folks could work but they don't; climate change Democrats are idiots; Tea Party Republicans are fools. The tragedy is that people who make and/or "buy" these statements are cutting themselves off from individuals who are spiritual parts of themselves - because they haven't sat and lost themselves in listening to others' stories. A veteran's story. A refugee's story. A Welfare recipient's story. A Democrat's story. A Republican's story. Stories of life experiences, of fears and frustrations, of dreams and hopes.
Fr. Richard Rohr observes "Your task is to find the good, the true, and the beautiful in everything, even and most especially in the problematic....If you read the Gospel texts carefully, you will see that the only people Jesus seems to exclude are those who are excluding others. Exclusion might be described as the core sin. Don't waste any time rejecting, excluding, eliminating, or punishing anyone or anything else. Everything belongs, including you."
Mirabai Starr describes how in an ordinary day, we can look for the good, the true, and the beautiful - and find the Face of God - in the most problematic of persons: the people who can drive us crazy most easily:
"Besides, the Holy One has a tendency to hide behind preposterous disguises: he is the homeless man lumbering through the park talking to himself in a loud voice, a pint of Cuervo Gold tucked into the back pocket of his jeans; she is the teenager texting her boy friend and applying mascara at the stop light after it has turned green; he is the young father gambling away his children's dinner at the Indian Casino on his way home from another day at the sewage treatment plant...she is the elderly lady slowly counting out change at the convenience store...."
If we could hear these peoples' stories, wouldn't they break open our hearts so that they could find entrance? Wouldn't each one of their tears and fears, joys and frustrations, resonate with our own? Isn't this why Jesus took the time to eat with prostitutes and tax collectors, - so he could lose himself in listening to their stories and find them to also be children of his Father, weeping and laughing, their souls waiting to be healed?
Starr concludes:
"You understand that this is why all the sacred teachings remind us to be vigilant: God could pop up anywhere, anytime, and drop His mask. When He does, we must be sure we have treated Him like God, no matter how he was behaving."
Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi captures the spirit of a listening welcome in this lovely poem:
Come, come, whoever
you are.
Wanderer,
worshipper, lover of leaving - it doesn't
matter,
Ours is not a caravan
of despair.
Come, even if you
have broken your vow
a hundred times,
Come, come again,
come.
When we invite others into our hearts, to carry and heal them, we find that we mirror the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which is heavy and rich with carrying the souls of countless centuries, including our own:
"Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." (Matthew 11:28-30.)