53 Blog Post, Friday, November 1, 2024 “Samaritans and Homecomings”
I woke up this morning at 3:48 and, with my eyes still closed, asked the question I have asked every night for two months: “Where am I and how do I get to the bathroom safely?” In other words, the first thing I’ve had to do for two months is remember the country/city I was in, orient myself to the room I was in, and do a visual walk-through so that I didn’t trip over something and fall. Alistair said that we have slept in over 20 different rooms since we started our journey. And this morning the answer was “Home. You’re home. You know this place with your eyes closed.”
I couldn’t fall back to sleep, and writing this blog post has been on my mind and in my heart, so I decided to just get up and do it. My body also thinks that it’s actually 10 am and not 5 am! I came downstairs and remembered that I had heard rain falling in the night, so I walked out the front door and stood on the porch. In that early morning darkness, I felt ‘familiar’ wrap around me. I know this view. I know these sounds. I breathed in deeply because every country or city we visited, one of the first things I noticed was the smell: baking bread, truffle oil, musky perfume, the sea. When I stood on the porch of the rectory and breathed in the smell of wet, slightly decomposing leaves, the remnants of autumn rain still in the air, it was the most familiar, welcoming, quiet feeling I have experienced in long time. Without realizing it I was smiling as I stood there, smiling even though no one was there to see it. I turned and walked into the house, ready to make my first cup of coffee, to sit in the Nook and to write. We’re home.
But it was a long journey to get here. On Wednesday morning, we were packed and ready to go, among the last guests to leave before they close until the Spring. The Big Suitcases stood ready and we ate our last breakfast and stood on the terrace for a while, trying to absorb the view. In the Romantic period of literature in the late 1700’s-early 1800’s, there was a re-connection to nature—think Thoreau and Emerson—that has always resonated for me. Emerson, in fact, wrote about becoming a ‘transparent eyeball’ in his essay “Nature” that allows us to absorb what we see so that it becomes a part of us, and we become a part of it. I stood on that terrace, hundreds of feet above the Aegean Sea and watched a single sailboat wind its way around the nearby island. I wanted to absorb the warmth of the sun, the shadows on the cliffs, the curling wake of a small powerboat that zoomed from the port below, the look of the wide sea stretching out farther than I could ever imagine with more shades of blue than I can name.
Then the strong men arrived and picked up the BS (let’s just abbreviate it, shall we? And yes, I know what I’m saying!), put them on their shoulders and proceeded to walk up the incredibly steep steps that I found challenging enough on their own. We couldn’t keep up with them as we followed, but we knew the way to the parking lot above the cliff, on the edge of the Old City of Oia. Broadly smiling, and with his reflective sunglasses in place, was our driver, Donnie, the same man who had picked us up the first day, a day I barely remembered because my eyes were closed the whole time and I was doing long meditation breathing (1-2—in, 3-4 out) just to survive the ride because I was so sick.
Donnie is a 60-something man, originally from Albania, and he has worked for this hotel for the past three decades, and loves it. He is talkative (we managed to sort of understand each other), cheerful and proud of the work he does taking care of guests. Wednesday was a day he took care of us, yet again. I had to go on a long medical journey before getting to the airport because my illness had come back, not as severe, but I knew how quickly it had progressed and I was worried about getting on a plane for several hours. Good instincts!! We had to go from the hotel to the microbiologist lab, to the hospital, to the pharmacy, all with limited time to get to the airport. We asked Donnie to drop us off at our first stop and figured we would get taxis or walk to the others.
Donnie refused. “I wait here,” he said. What a gift! We would never have made our flight without his help. At each place he said, “I wait here,” and when we came out, he jumped out of the van and ran around to open the door for us. All I could think about was the Good Samaritan. Alistair and I are tourists, like the thousands of other tourists who come to this island. We would have been easy to ignore or overlook, especially since I was ill. Donnie had seen the worst of that as I arrived, and I thought he would have wanted to get rid of me as fast as possible. What if I was contagious? I’m not, but he couldn’t know that. Instead, he stayed with us, helping us find the right places we needed to get to, supporting us and treating us like special guests.
From the gospel of Luke: “And who is my neighbor?” the man asked Jesus… Jesus answered: “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” 37 The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.” Clearly much more can be said about mercy, but Donnie was merciful to us when there was no benefit for him in doing so. As I heal, it is partly because he showed compassion and cared for the stranger: me.
Turns out I have a Super Bug (simplified version) and I am, hopefully, on the correct medication to heal completely. Without that medication, I could not have made the long plane trips needed to get home. I’m trying to find the right words to express my gratitude and appreciation, and I am coming up short. Each of the medical places we went, from the microbiologist who discovered the Bug, to the very sharp doctors at the hospital who checked over everything again, to the compassionate pharmacist who wrote info on the med boxes that I might need but was likely to forget, are vivid to me still because they offered me a lifeline while I was far from home. Even the receptionist at the ER on that last day made a point to connect with me by trying, unsuccessfully, to pronounce my name, leading to laughter and allowing me to tell her my name, which she repeated with a smile.
We seem to live in a culture where we have become suspicious of people who are not like us. The Stranger. The Other. The Alien. The Tourist. I can use politically charged language here as well, but I’ll let you fill in those blanks. Language barriers and cultural barriers can make these gaps harder to bridge, I believe, and we can become intractable and judgmental of those who are different. With the exception of one young woman who snapped at me for attempting to speak Italian, and a snarky souvenir seller who was annoyed I wouldn’t buy his stuff, we have been treated with respect, compassion and humanity. (Getting weepy about this as I write and remember.) We have had mangled conversations, been very vulnerable when we needed help, and laughed our heads off. We have been given gifts over and over again, but not always physical gifts. Most of the time, we’ve established brief relationships that are now part of our story of the last two months.
As we drove home yesterday on the Mass Turnpike, I told Alistair that I now feel more like a citizen of the world rather than just the US. People around the world, whatever their circumstances, connect to us with their humanity, their vulnerability and their strengths. We can’t live without each other, so why wouldn’t we reach out for deeper understanding rather than establishing deep fissures of separation? From the book of Leviticus 19:34: “The foreigner who resides with you must be to you like a native citizen among you; so you must love the person as yourself, because you were foreigners in the land of Egypt.” This is not the only reference to this kind of hospitality, but it is a succinct way to present it here. God is clear about our responsibility to become part of a world family and not just a local family, and we don’t have to travel anywhere to do that.
As part of my trip, I have been able to read two excellent books on my iPad: one a work of beautifully written fiction, and the other, that I am still reading is a non-fiction book about a therapist’s journey through her own therapy. She writes about the profound loneliness people experience that often bring them to a therapist’s office, that bring people to her office. I’m no therapist, but the portraits of people who come to her for counseling are brittle and familiar to me. She notes that all too often, our standards and judgments make it difficult for us to connect with each other. We ‘jail’ ourselves rather than releasing ourselves to the unfamiliar. It’s a great read and insightful for me as a minister, and as a global citizen.
Ok, I’m done now. Suffice it to say that I will be unraveling the experiences we’ve had for the rest of my life, and I am going to work harder to reach out, to welcome, to bless, to help, and by doing this, to nourish the people whose paths cross mine. Let’s not forget that love nourishes our souls, our bodies and our minds.
Can I say one last thing that I just heard the other day for the first time, and it created a giant “Ah Ha!” for me? The words ‘hospital’ and ‘hospitality’ are alike for a reason, both of these words are rooted in the idea of welcoming others as guests, no matter their situation. Without realizing the importance of that, I experienced the intersection of hospital and hospitality numerous times on this trip, and I am grateful for the many ways this hospitality was offered to me and to Alistair.
I end with a line from Emerson’s “Nature” because this morning I was able to remember, to re-gather and to recall how this place, upstate NY, is part of my breath, my heart, my life: “In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life; [there is] no disgrace, no calamity… which nature cannot repair.”
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While I have an additional month of sabbatical to go, I’m not sure about blogging. I am happy to continue to narrate my travels, blessings and blunders as I complete the sabbatical, but I don’t know if it is useful for all of you. What’s left? Traveling to California, a conference in Connecticut, visits with friends and family in a variety of place, worshiping in different churches for the next three Sundays…adventures and misadventures galore!! Comment below to let me know your thoughts.
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Blessings, grace and nourishment always,
ML+
