A Brief Moment of Joy

A Brief Moment of Joy

It was like a family portrait of a brief moment of joy.  I slowed my vehicle down behind an old fire engine that was making its way rather deliberately through a small neighborhood on the outskirts of a city.  If you stretched out the viewfinder of your mind on this particular street for about ten miles you would have:  undeveloped country, old farmhouses that have seen better days sitting next to very suburban-looking colonial homes, one of those horse-and-buggy warning signs, an old country bridge with owls on it that crested up and then eased you down into the poorer neighborhood I was traveling through before you reached the cleaned-up city.  It was everything about human life in Central NY all jammed into one area.  (And if you are wondering about the owls on the bridge:  they are to scare away the avian poop factories known as “pigeons”.  Pigeons are like the energizer bunny:  they keep going, and going, and going …. only in a different way that doesn’t involve batteries.)

As this relic of a fire truck in front of me slowed for an intersection, I glanced to my left and saw four happy children waving and smiling at the firemen.  Then I observed a bit more – the children were sitting on steps of a dilapidated front porch and three out of four of them were holding very young kittens.  A fourth kitten was investigating a bicycle tire that was part of the ensemble leaning against the front porch step.  All things considered, this was the most joyful thing I’ve seen in God knows how long.  It was a picture-perfect Sunday morning.  And yet it was just a moment in time.

Within the hour, the sermon I was listening to also brought tears to my eyes.  The priest was telling of Archbishop D’Souza who had observed Mother Teresa of Calcutta one morning.  A small orphan boy was being cleaned-up by one of the sisters and giving her an incredibly hard time.  The child was struggling with the sister and finally was hitting her.  Mother Teresa from across the room had been eyeing the development of the event.  She went over and scooped the child into her arms and wordlessly held him in her embrace.  Finally, after almost a half-hour of wordless holding, the child began to cry in her arms.  Then he settled himself down in the safety and security of the love of a true mother. 

I sat there wondering what it is that makes a child that angry.  Was it orphaned?  Was it injured by someone?  Or was it just willful like the adorable little girl in the bench in front of me in church who was mad-as-heck that her mother wouldn’t let her use her “outside voice” while the prayers were going on in church?  But really, why should any child, anywhere in the world feel the kind of angst that young Indian boy was revealing?  And yet doesn’t the world we live in have just as much brokenness as it does beauty?  And perhaps we are better able to see beauty against the backdrop of pain and struggle.  Does suffering make us bitter people, or better people ~ the choice is ours. 

Just last night I was reading about William Donohue’s debate with one of Mother Teresa’s most (and among the arguable few) vehement detractors:  Christopher Hitchens.  So it was ironic that the story of her gentle love would cross my path this morning.  I wonder if she had hugged Hitchens like that, if he would have broken down sobbing.  Sometimes the heart that hates is the heart that hurts the most.  When we are on the receiving end of that, it is natural for us to want to push away the ones that bring their anger to the fore.  But it is supernatural to greet that disguised pain with love and win a soul.

Later that day, I drove the opposite way on the street to see the house one more time.  This time, there were adults there.  A man sitting against the porch wall pouring the contents of a silver beverage can down his throat.  No kittens in sight.  Children scattered around and one adorable girl about 9 years old sitting on the sidewalk wailing her curly-haired head off.  She was only hours after smiling and waving to the fire truck drivers and her little world had a completely different look to it.  In India, I could have held her.  In America, I’d probably get arrested.  I have no answers for this.  And I hate that.

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