“For one human being to love
another, that is perhaps the most difficult of all of our tasks; the ultimate,
the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.”
-Rainer Maria Rilke
The streets are covered in
snow. The markings of foot and tire remain etched into its whiteness, tall
corporations stand in stark comparison to the blue in the sky and outside the
doors of The Mustard Seed, a crowd of people are waiting to be let in for lunch.
One year ago I would have not
known a single face in this crowd. I had just returned to Calgary and was
far removed from the world that exists on Centre Street and 11 Avenue.
All of this changed when I was hired on as an Employment Coach.
I was admitted into this world,
into this vortex of pain and loss, healing and resurrection. This street,
where the lives of the people who access The Mustard Seed services are lived
out, was suddenly my own. Since then I have walked up and down this
street, standing with those upon it. I have run from the 102 building to
the 106 building, crossing Centre Street multiple times a day. I entered
the premises of these lives, that once seemed so separate and unlike my own.
There are moments I look from
the window at those faces below, faces that emerge from the black and blue
collars of the oversized coats that are worn. Faces full of lines that share
where they have been, and I wonder if my place here is relevant. Does my
part in their world make a bit of difference? Is it possible that despite
my reservations and fears I can find within myself the strength to love them;
the love that not only brightens their lives but also my own?
I come face to face with the
answer every now and then, it occurs at the pivotal moments when I forget where
I stand in relation to them. When I do not view them from the window but
when I engage in relationship with them on that street below.
The pivotal moments I speak of
orbit around our meagre attempts to love, and at times transform the moments
themselves, ergo, the lives that exist within them.
The Moments: Dropping a
guest off at an interview and experiencing the nervousness of waiting to hear
all about it. Listening with pride as an employer talks about how well the
guest is doing in a job they had just acquired. Sitting with a guest and
listening to their story. The moments that bring me closer to our guests
are those moments that pull me into their world, seamlessly, without
effort. This is love in action.
And this I know, for one human
being to love another is the most difficult of tasks, and also one of the most
rewarding. I have found that to love is to render oneself to equal bouts
of hope and fear; to rise and fall with our guests in the mutual experience of
their hopes and fears.
So now, as I watch the streets
that surround The Mustard Seed, I do not see strangers that exist there in a
world that is not my own. I see a man who recently lost his daughter, a
woman who just left an abusive relationship, a brother who just lost his job, and
a sister who is looking for a second chance, in a world that we share. Through
these shared experiences we learn to love.
When we learn to love we become transformed.
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