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| The view from the door. |
“When I joined this community, the superiors showed me the door, and I remained 40 years." Brother André Bessette CSC
Last night I slept at our parish's shelter for the homeless, something I've been doing pretty regularly for a while. I sleep on a mattress near the door, easily available in case anyone needs anything in the night. I am the night portress.
At the end of my shift this morning I went, along with the overnight host (who sleeps in an actual room with a door!), to 6:30 am Mass, arriving 2 minutes late, something that's hard to miss in our small chapel. The presider noted with puzzlement the appearance of several regulars from the 8 am crowd, but went on to preach about St. André Bessette and the job of the porter in a community.
It was an apt reflection after my night at the door. The door is such a liminal space to inhabit, the hallway so public, so spare. In the summer there is no air conditioning there, in the winter, the drafts are noticeable. There are no shades to draw, no way to block out the light from the streetlamp, or from the headlamps of the cars that use the parking lot as a short cut. And when the little ones stir in the night, their mothers are not the only ones awakened.
To sleep here is a privilege. It is a privilege to hold, at least for one night and however symbolically, the difficulties of the outside world at bay, and let those within sleep safe. It is a privilege to ease the passing back out into the world of those who have taken refuge for the night, to make a thermos of coffee at 4:30 am for a mother who must get up, get her small children ready to leave, and out the door by 5:15 to get to her job on time. To carry the makeshift bag another has scrambled to assemble for daycare. To bounce the baby and amuse the toddler long enough to let their mother use the bathroom.
This is my own little theophany, no camels, no frankincense. There is a babe and a mother. And the only gift I have is a thermos of coffee.
Epiphany. It's more than a feast. It's a call to be shown the door.
Heart. Breaking. That must be part of the feast as well.
ReplyDeleteI wonder what the Magi talked about that night....
DeleteMichelle, I had no idea that you did that. How powerful, how beautiful. Now if only we did not have to have a need for such places, but a home and dignity for all.
ReplyDeleteFran, I've been doing it since I came back from the Exercises, five years now, and have resisted writing about it. Pope Francis' insistence that the practice and the theory must be interlaced, that to grasp God, you must literally (I really mean literally) grasp God, prompted me to wonder if by not writing about it, I was inadvertently leaving something off the table.
DeleteLovely post
ReplyDeleteMichelle, to be there as the portress is to be in a holy space. I feel that way when I'm on retreat with women touched by the justice system or when I am present at a Dismas function. It is a sacred place to be. Thank you for sharing this with us.
ReplyDeleteThere are many doors in and out, Lynda...and it's good to know that there are portresses of all sorts standing at them.
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