Who Cares?

Each night I call, waiting while the phone rings to hear her slightly breathless voice begin while she finds a way to hold the phone with her one good hand: "Hello?"

"It's Marjie, mom. How are you?"

"It's been a pretty good day," she says, and we begin to talk. Our words flow back and forth from coast to coast, sometimes for an hour or more. Love wells up as I hear the perspective in her voice. She broke her arm three months ago, and, after my sisters and I took turns caring for her in the retirement complex where she's lived for 13 years, she had to move into "assisted living". Now she eats with silent table-mates who hear very little and remember even less. It's a lonely place to be.

What hope is there for her? Not that her body will grow young again or that she will drive again. She does expect to type again, to finish the autobiography she has been writing and exchange news with her grandchildren by email, but she has also turned her attention toward the mysteries ahead. When asked what pictures she wanted for her walls, she chose two black-and-white photos: one of the steeple and cross of her childhood church against a boiling sky; the other of the carved wood Celtic cross against native stone of the Presbyterian church where she spent her adult years. No family pictures or colorful paintings. Just these prayer icons to guide her thoughts beyond today.

My mother is claiming her authority in a new way. When a young friend came to visit, bearing news of his broken marriage, she spoke with a kind of strength I had never heard from her before. "When you come to a dead-end," she said, "...as you have and I am now, you have to change direction...find a new path. I know you'll be able to do it." Her caring was clear and strong. They hugged and then he left, received and blessed!

"Love one another," Jesus said, as he prepared his disciples for his death, "By this all people will know you are my followers." That means learning how to care, how to meet the soul-needs of one-another. The ardent individualism of our culture tends to separate, isolate and encourage competition. We buy privacy with our money -- and then feel lonely or afraid. Our faith points in a different direction, toward our common humanity and relatedness. We care, by the power of the Holy Spirit.

I thought of Madeleine L'Engle's little book, A Wind in the Door, where Spirit comes through caring hearts to combat evil bent on un-naming and isolation. The web of life is torn. The heroine must guess what the trials are as well as how to meet them in order to reverse an evil power that is X-ing all forms of life out of existence. I've used Wind in the Door to teach the essence of conscious community, to encourage relational small groups that function like intentional family. And now I am seeing that Wind of care and consciousness in my mother's life. She has become a channel of hope for me!

In this issue, Nancy Boyle's relational Bible study features the courage and caring of Jairus, a temple leader who brushed aside political correctness in order to ask Jesus to save his daughter (Mark 5:21ff). The crowd is distracting and discouraging, but Jairus is clear about his love, his faith and his hope. As I respond to the new level of my mother's need for care and companionship, I too am learning how care and hope abide together as a gift of God.

As the Apostle, Paul, wrote to the little church in Rome, May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit (Rom 15:13). May hope abound for you this Advent Season,

Marjory Bankson is president of Faith at Work and is a Steward of The Seekers Church, a faith community of Church of the Saviour in Washington DC.