PSYCHIATRIST AND PRIEST

Her story was pockmarked with tears and fears,
pauses and becauses – lots of becauses,
some making me nervous. I never know what
to say. Listening is much easier.
Without knowing it, my fingernails
were scraping the accumulated dark sweat dirt
of the underneath of the wooden armrest
of the chair I was sitting on –
a chair that so many others have also sat in.
Once a month, as I listened to her story
on these Friday afternoons,
we slowly discovered the bottom of the why
she had come to see me in the first place.
She was a book and by the 10th chapter,
the 10th time I listened to her,
I got glimpses of my own story
and so many other’s stories in her story.
But there was one story, one chapter, missing.
This was the empty moment –
the coming to the edge of the cliff moment –
the “Okay, what’s next?” moment.
I am not a psychiatrist. I am a priest,
so Easter is the message of all this sitting
in this tiny talking room.
If she wanted to hear Good News,
she had to realize she couldn’t stop at Friday,
at the cross. None of 4 gospels end
at Calvary - the place of the skull.
There’s always the Easter Sunday Morning Moment
when she had to walk to the place of the cave,
the tomb, and meet the Gardener. (Cf. John 21)
She rose in awe, now having a glimpse
of what she had to do, whom she had to meet,
– and it was only then
that I felt the underneath of the armrest.
I had accidentally scraped a cross there
as I sat with her all these Friday afternoons.
I too needed to experience Easter.
I too needed an Upper Room experience.
Healing only happens when Christ
comes through the thick walls
of our fears, of our thick skull,
our upper room, and says,
“Shalom! Peace be with you!”

© Andy Costello, Reflections, 2007