God's Voice Heard among Us

The Boston Herald

"Human beings are God's language," Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote in his book "When Bad Things Happen to Good People." He borrowed this thought from Menachem Mendel, a 19th-century rabbi from Poland. My friend, Father Coen, said it a different way. He said that we are all God's arms and legs.

I know that Sister Beatrice is God's arms and legs. She's a Little Sister of the Poor who runs around begging for food and money to care for the elderly who live in the Jeanne Jugan Residence in Somerville. It's easy to see God in her. And it's easy to see God in Sister Eustace, who serves the poor in the South End, and in Jim and Terry Orcutt, whose mission is My Brother's Keeper.

But what about people who are bankers and teachers and mothers and sales clerks?

My daughter Julie came home for Thanksgiving with a blanket crocheted for an infant but big enough to cover a 6-year-old. "My friend Nicole's mother made it for Lucy. She said she prays for her every day.” Nicole's mother is a stranger to Lucy. She lives in New Jersey. And yet she spent hours praying for my granddaughter and more hours creating something beautiful and permanent for her.

Human beings are God's language. Though the words may be different or hard to understand, inevitably they console and strengthen and inspire.

There are women at my church, old, smart women, who've seen it all, whose prayerful presence is God sitting there. No need for words or talk with this group. With them it's all body language.

Aazadeen makes pumpkin spice coffee and says, "Here. Take the whole thing." And gives us a container to take to the hospital. Rose makes lunch. Jill brings dinner. Al feeds the dog. Doug drives up from New Jersey. "What can I do for you?" "Take these coupons." "Take the day off." "We're praying.” 

God, who sometimes seems to be nowhere, is really everywhere.

God ambushed Kerry Renzi two weeks ago. He must have. Kerry, 32, is a nurse, a friend, and was at work in the middle of her own shift at another hospital when she told her supervisor, "I have to go to Children's Hospital, and I have to go now." She didn't know why she had to go right then. She didn't even know how to get to Children’s.

But there she was suddenly in the room with us and with Lucy screaming. The doctors had said that there might be something wrong with Lucy's intestines. So they had her on an IV. 

"Can I look at her?" Kerry said. And what she saw was that Lucy's thumb was blue and that it wasn't pain in her belly that was making her wail but pain in her arm. Her IV line had dislodged and leaked fluid into her skin and her arm had swollen to three times its size. 

We pray for the Hollywood miracle or the Vatican one that can be documented and prove sainthood.But sometimes God simply whispers and says, "Go now.” 

The world says "Go now" too. "On your mark, get set, go," it shouts on the day after Thanksgiving. Hurry to the malls and the sales, and buy, buy, buy. Then eat, drink and be merry because this is the holiday season.

But it is, first, a holy season. The voices on TV, on the radio, on the PAs at all the malls - the incessant sounds that fill our heads - make us tired, cranky and crazy.

They also drown out the voices of God, but they don't have to.

Call Sister Beatrice and ask her what she needs. Lend a hand. Send a card. Human beings are God's language and in the cacophony that is the Christmas season, God's voice can be hard to hear.