Under the Skin

I'm not heavily into getting inside someone else's body ... it's too much like that ultra-modern crime that's been around for decades - if not centuries - 'inappropriate touching'!  But let's start with a quotation:

"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view ... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it." - Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

These words came to me this week in a missionary magazine.  The context in which they were quoted was the twin concepts of Jesus being born a baby to share what a human life is like, and radio staff getting out into the communities to which they are broadcasting, in order to make their programmes truly relevant to their listeners.  As I read them, however, two strands in my own life in recent weeks came quickly to mind and I decided that they should form the substance of this week's blog.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about a close friend who was hospitalised, looking after her baby son who was ill.  That blog was based solely on what I had learned from text messages sent from the bedside.  The details were essentially factual, what treatment he was receiving, how he had responded, and so on.  Although there was other information too, a mere text message conversation, perhaps 500 words spread over the day, couldn't convey the atmosphere, the feelings, the frustrations, the minute-by-minute life there.

The day after I'd written that post, I was able to visit them for a couple of hours.  The conversation and the experience of being there conveyed so much more to me than a month of text messages ever could.  There is so much more to conversation, for example, than the spoken word, so much more to 'regular observations' than mere figures written on a chart.  I realised, too, how difficult it is to summarise the daily food intake of a sick little boy, who had had a bite of this and a small chunk of that, some of which had been spat out again.  I was also able to appreciate some of the privations of being his full-time carer on the ward!

The images I gained that afternoon shaped my thoughts and prayers for the next few days, until they came home during the following week ... and since then, too, as my concern continues that he will stay healthy now life has returned to something like normal.

The other real-life parallel concerns another recent post here, when I reported having found two great-great-uncles on the 1861 census, apparently homeless.  This discovery coincided with my decision to get involved in a project to help some of the homeless or otherwise vulnerable people of our town.  Last week saw my second visit to an 'active' session of the campaign.  It has begun, as was planned, in a very low-key manner, so that it can grow organically as word of it gets around and as the specific needs of those attending become known.

At a personal level (as I have mentioned here) I was apprehensive of getting involved, but at the same time convinced that it is something that I need to support.  The experience of my two visits so far has been of dispelling my lack of confidence.  For the most part it has involved being of help to, and having conversations with, my fellow-volunteers.  Last week, after packing up, we shared an informal chat with one of the Salvationist leaders.  She could speak as one with experience of this kind of work, and explained that the success of the enterprise was not in what we might say, but in the fact of our being there, willing to listen to what these unfortunate people had to say to us.

It's not until we have understood something of the detail of these people's lives over and above the bald statement 'we have no home', that we shall be able to help them.  And how true that is of all segments of life in a community.  The secret is in putting ourselves out so that we can truly get to know other people, whether that is simply by listening, or by sharing in the life they are living, for however short a while.