One of my favorite books in the world is a daily reading book by Frederich Buechner entitled Listening to Your Life. I have given away dozens of copies to friends and family, and my own copy is dog-eared with sheets of paper sticking out here and there. Buechner speaks the same religious language I do.
Today the reading was this (from a fiction book Buechner wrote entitled Brendan):
Cripples All of Us
Pushing down hard with his fists on the table-top he heaved himself up to where he was standing. For the first time we saw he wanted one leg. It was gone from the knee joint down. He was hopping sideways to reach for his stick in the corner when he lost his balance. He would have fallen in a heap if Brendan hadn't leapt forward and caught him.
"I'm as crippled as the dark world," Gildas said.
"If it comes to that, which one of us isn't, my dear?" Brendan said.
Gildas with but one leg. Brendan sure he'd misspent his whole life entirely. Me that had left my wife to follow him and buried our only boy. The truth of what Brendan said stopped all our mouths. We was cripples all of us. For a moment or two there was no sound but the bees.
"To lend each other a hand when we're falling," Brendan said. "Perhaps that's the only work that matters in the end."
No comments:
Post a Comment