River water

Thanks to those who have been sending emails or leaving comments offering condolences. It's been truly appreciative. Not many of my friends ever got to meet Jeff, but he was a great man and a very good husband to my sister. For a few more weeks, you can view his obituary and guestbook online here (then click on "View & Sign guestbooks," and look for Jeffrey Ronald Finch). I always thought online funeral guestbooks were tacky. I was wrong. Over nine pages of people have signed this book, and it's meant a great deal to Jeff's friends and family. And my sister.

It's raining so hard in Boston, I thought I saw an old man with an ark on the Charles River this morning. I cannot wait to see the video highlights of the Boston Marathon today. It's going to be like running in soup.

Speaking of the Charles, I heard another disparaging slang term for Harvard. "The Kremlin on the Charles." I kind of like that one.

And for my last non-sequitor, I've been reading Joan Chittister's "New Designs: An Anthology of Spiritual Vision," which I stole from the Pax Christi USA office while I was staying there last week (former coworkers: I will return this once I am done!). Chapter 3, which is on prophecy, is largely about one of my favorite individuals, Thomas Merton. Joan uses a Sufi story to emphasize Thomas Merton's call for us to repair the world. (I will excerpt, and make it gender inclusive.)

The Sufi tell a story of a holy woman who was walking along the flooding banks of a raging river when suddenly she saw a scorpion clinging to a tree branch only inches above the swollen stream. "Poor thing," she said. "Scorpions can't swim. If the water reaches that hanging branch, the scorpion will surely drown."

And then the woman dropped to the ground and began to crawl along the branch toward the scorpion. But everytime the woman touched the scorpion, it stung the hand that reached to rescue it. A passerby said firmly, "Don't you realize that if you try to handle that scorpion, it will sting you?"

"Of course," the woman said, "but simply because it is the scorpion's nature to sting, does not mean that I should abandon my human nature to save."

I think it might be automatic to think about healing or saving the broken (at least for me), in the wake of tragedy. I prefer not to think of this story as supporting the saving or healing that comes with a Billy Graham (or Billy Graham Jr.) telecast. Rather, I like to think of this as the type of healing that comes from accompaniment in times of fear or struggle.

And perhaps also the type of healing that occurs when we expose a bit of our brokenness, in hopes that others expose a bit of theirs, too.