Healing Words

by Sunshine Branner

It is at Christ House In Washington, DC, where I found my calling --- a two-pronged one: being in relationship with the poor and the unaccepted, and bridging the gap between the races. The majority of patients there are African American; I am a white suburbanite. My love of poetry is the vehicle I use to establish rapport.

Christ House, a full-care recovery center, began as a mission of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour, and continues to be a refuge for the sick and homeless. More than 4,000 men and women have received wholistic treatment in the years since the first patient was admitted on Christmas Eve 1985. Patients stay until they become well and/or complete recovery programs. The average stay is six weeks.

Each week as few as two or as many as eight, gather in a corner of the dining room. Patients hobble or wheel themselves in, stash their crutches, and someone plugs in my magnifier light. Macular degeneration (loss of central vision) is the disease that hobbles me. Then the readings begin. The poems may be didactic, funny or somber, but the power of metaphor rings a bell.

Alice Walker's poem, "Women", sparks a battery of strong grandmother stories; "Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden stirs emotions about fathers, kind but silent and misunderstood. Any one of James Weldon Johnson's sermon-poems from God's Trombones evokes a rousing "AMEN"! Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" triggers a litany of poor or wise choices made.

Patients catch the thread of deliverance running through the message. They are eager to state aloud their thanksgiving. The names of God and Jesus roll easily off their tongues.

While health problems generally go unmentioned, one new patient who had clerked in a convenience store, lifted his shirt to reveal stab wounds received during a robbery. Trauma has need of many ears to register shock.

After a poem about animals, one modern-day Elijah related that he was fed, not by ravens, but by a squirrel. His home was a bench in Lafayette Park when he was penniless. The squirrel shuttled back and forth from the White House lawn amassing a pile of hickory nuts at his feet.

The special joy of a patient's original poem is celebrated with cups of coffee, and the sound of our voices rises a few decibels. Tanya, the nutritionist, comes with a plate of cookies to share the cheer.

Poetry invites the ancient questions: "What is my purpose here?", and "how will I use the rest of my life?" Very often the depth of sharing would make any poet's heart leap up.

For an hour and a half weekly we transcend the common denominator of handicaps that make us one.