A LESSON IN TRUTH: ALL LIFE BREATHES TOGETHER
NOTE BY NANCY: Recently Caroline Myss wrote the following article about her experience with an Afghani man. Although the story was written as an illustration for a more extensive article, I am publishing the story alone to allow you to see the inner beauty of an Afghan man.
*A LESSON IN TRUTH: ALL LIFE BREATHES TOGETHER *
*by Caroline Myss*
http://www.myss.com/library/dailymessage/
The other day I flew to Newark, New Jersey, to give a benefit lecture on
behalf of the Trenton Soup Kitchen. I have been involved with the TSK for
five years now and I consider the work this charity does to be absolutely
magnificent. Anyway, I arrived midday and was met by a lovely, middle-aged
driver. Within minutes we were in his immaculate car heading to our
destination, which, according to his GPS, was an hour away. My first
reaction was, “Ugh, that’s half the flight time from Chicago.” My second
reaction was, “I hope this guy isn’t a chatterbox because I need to make
notes for my talk.”
Heading out of the airport, the driver and I both settled into our normal
routines. He got his GPS going and I pulled out my notebook. Then he asked,
“Is the temperature okay for you?” All he wanted to know was if the air in
the car was warm enough, right? That required a yes or a no and a thanks
for asking. But instead, something in me found his accent very curious.
Why? I grew up in a home in which half my relatives had foreign accents, as
did half the people in the neighborhood. People with accents are so common
in my life that I hardly notice them, but I noticed his. Then I noticed
that I needed to know where he came from – I mean I absolutely needed to
know. Why? I don’t know why.
So I asked him, “Where are you from? I am intrigued with your accent.”
He smiled and said, “Where do you think?” I looked at his face through the
driver’s mirror and the deep lines around his dark brown eyes blending in
with his warm smile told me that this was a good man, a very good man.
I said, “Persia.”
His eyes sparkled, “Very good, but not quite. Close. What’s next to Persia?”
I froze for a moment. My mind went blank. I needed to bring up the globe in
my mind’s eye. I said, “Okay, just a minute. You’re not Turkish. You must
be from Afghanistan.”
“Yes, I am Afghani. I came here when the Russians invaded my country. I had
just completed my degree at the university in Kabul. You can’t imagine how
beautiful Afghanistan was before all these wars. Now I have two sons and a
daughter here.”
I put my notebook down and we began to discuss his life, his journey, his
world. He told me how the turmoil of decades of war in Afghanistan has
affected his family and the lives of so many people he knows. And then he
told me that he lost his job when the company he was working for let go of
many of their employees. As a result, he was losing his home. That struck
him as among the more overwhelming events of his life, as he did not think
such a thing could happen in America. I told him about how many people I
knew in that same situation.
Lest you think his man was complaining about the events that had unfolded
in his life or drowning in his sorrows, that was not at all the case.
Rather, he presented these chapters of his life with a type of “matter of
fact” voice that was devoid of self-pity or anger. I was the one pressing
for more details, asking him to expand on how and why events happened as
they did in his life. I was the one picking at his wounds. If anything, he
should have dropped me off at a bus station and told me to catch the next
bus to Trenton.
Then he said, “I should be quiet now. I notice you have work to do.”
He didn’t ask me why I had come to Trenton and as I realized that, I hoped
with all my might that he would not. And then I had this overwhelming gut
feeling, that unmistakable rupture I get when I know I am right, “This man
and his wife come to the Trenton Soup Kitchen for a meal or maybe even a
few meals each week.” I knew it.
I was desperate to change the subject now. I could talk about anything –
weather, sports, Hurricane Sandy – just don’t ask me why I have come to
Trenton. Then my phone rang. It was a family member calling about another
family member who was in a very serious crisis. We were circling the
wagons, as they say. He could hear me, not because I was speaking loudly
but because I was sitting directly behind him. For fifteen minutes, I
discussed possible treatment and outcome for a beloved family member. My
voice had gotten tight. I was shutting down, withdrawing into the silence
of grief and tears. I hung up the phone, staring out the window.
This lovely Afghan man said, “You know, when my daughter was five, she was
diagnosed with this rare illness. Her female organs matured faster than her
physical body and she started to menstruate at that age. We were terrified.
We took her to a doctor and he told us that she needed to take this certain
shot once a month. It cost $1,000.00. Insurance covered that while I had my
other job but then I lost that job. I did not know what to do. I needed to
provide for my family, for my home, for their health. I was never so
frightened. I told my wife that I needed to go away for one reason. I
needed to go and be with God. I needed to be alone to take my life, my
problems directly to God. And so I went away to pray for two weeks. I had
to be alone, to do nothing but pray.
When I returned, we took my daughter to a different doctor and he said,
‘Why do you want to have her on this medication? She is perfectly healthy?’
And she is perfectly healthy. She is healed. I know that God is with me,
even through these difficult times. Yes, I am losing my home. I can replace
that. I could never replace my daughter, or my sons. And so we will grieve
the loss our own home, but for how long? Perhaps three days. But how long
would we grieve the loss of my daughter? We would grieve until the day of
our own death. And so God blessed me by showing me that he is truly with
me, with my family, and that he hears our prayers.”
By the time this wonderful man finished sharing his story, I could not stop
the tears from pouring out of my eyes.
“Do you have any water?” he asked me.
“Are you thirsty? Here, I have a bottle of water,” I said as I gave him my
water.
“No,” he said, “I am not thirsty. I am going to pray for your family member
and I am going to put those prayers into this water and you will take this
water to her. It will carry the grace and light of God’s response.”
I asked him if I could pray for his family, for his journey through
hardship and his return to right livelihood. And so, pulling up to my
friend’s house, my driver held the bottle of water in his hands and sang
prayers from the Koran. He rocked slowly back and forth in the front seat
of the car, falling deeper and deeper into an inner dialogue with God. I
closed my eyes and quietly entered into my own interior castle, holding
images of this man’s face and soul in my heart.
In the midst of this sacred ritual, I heard the sound of my friend darting
out of his home to greet me. I quickly came out of my prayer space and
signaled to him by holding up my hand, “Stay where you are. Don’t come near
this car.”
Still this dear man continued in his prayerful request that healing grace
be given to my family member. Tears now flowed from his closed eyes as his
body movements revealed that his heart beat closely with heaven’s pulse.
Finally, he opened his eyes and handed me what anyone else would take for
an ordinary bottle of Evian water. We held each other’s hands for several
seconds, thanking each other with nods of our heads and the tight grips of
our hands. Still appearing to be an ordinary Evian bottle from the outside,
I looked through the ordinary and into the extraordinary. I stared at this
bottle of water and for me it became the substance of miracles, the story
of a man’s life journey, and on the day I was picked up to do a benefit for
the homeless by a man losing his home whose very prayers I suspect may well
have contributed most to the healing of my family member. It became “holy
water.”
[All life breathes together.]
