So, I’m sitting in a room in Brisbane Australia, nearly thirty years ago taking twelve step calls from people who are, you know, on the serious end of the booze hound spectrum. Now you don’t get to be answering calls like that unless you’ve been a repeat-offender serious booze hound yourself.
In comes this call from for a lady seeking someone to spend a little time with an old man housed in an age care facility who was approaching the end of his days. She explained that though his early years had been decidedly colourful. He had, with the help of others, with equally misspent pasts, eventually straightened out his life.
In fact, Ron went on to help many other people like himself before eventually succumbing to a stroke, which left him mostly paralysed and unable to speak. I was to learn that he had survived in that circumstance for over two decades without saying a single word, and unable to walk or care for himself.
I vividly recall my first encounter with Ron. There was something truly startling about his eyes. They were piercingly blue, discerning, and intelligent. As I have often said, the most beautiful blue eyes I’d ever seen on a man…
I knew in an instant—let’s call it intuitive knowledge—that whatever else his stroke had taken from him (and it had certainly taken much!), he still had complete clarity of thought. But more than that, he had something inexplicable in his eyes, a precious rarity that one occasionally encounters among people who have walked the long mile. Ron had a discernible wisdom and an almost audible peace.
Well, that was it; I was hooked, and we became like the perfect couple: Me, a fella with a truckload of demons to share who couldn’t stop talking—especially about himself—and him, the quintessential perfect listener who hadn’t spoken a word for decades. But he had those beautiful mystic eyes that seemed to know all, accept all, and strangely, even forgive all. God’s eyes, that spoke in the language of the heart.
I spent many an hour with this mysterious God-eyed man during the months that followed. Just being with him seemed to lighten my own heavy load. Of course, this happy union could not continue forever—and the day arrived all too soon—when I was told that Ron’s time on this earth was all but done.
The news of his impending demise tied knots in my usually fluent tongue. So, as I sat with him that fateful day, I twisted verbally this way and that, trying to find some words of reassurance. Ultimately, after several stumbling, bumbling attempts of verbose inelegance, I said something like, “Although someone like me could not know for sure, perhaps whatever happens next might not be too bad. Maybe, just maybe, there might not be too much to fear.”
He held me in his gentle gaze throughout this awkward and seemingly endless ramble. Then, as easily as the most practiced baritone, his muted tongue, which had not uttered a word for years, spoke. And he said, “I know…”
To say that every inch of me both then and now believes that I was witness to the miraculous is really all I can offer. Struck dumb myself, but curiously comforted; I left him for the last time, at least for a while. Within an hour, I received the news that he had gone wherever indeed we go.
I wept from the heart that day over the loss of this God-infused man. For surely, I thought, I had those past few months been sitting in the company of a son of God, an embodied spirit, or as a friend of mine likes to say, “God with skin on.” Yet our happy liaisons had little or nothing to do with our shared holiness. Rather, they had everything to do with our shared brokenness, both past and present.
Today, I am more convinced than ever that it was the God from below, the inside-out, upside-down, last-is-first God that I encountered during those months with Ron. The God who manifests in brokenness, not grandeur, in losing, not winning. The life-giving God who spoke to me in the language of the heart through the beautiful blue intuitive eyes of a crippled mute man.
– Cormac Stagg, author of The Quest for a Humble Heart
I was deeply touched and convinced, as you wrote, about this divine intervention, this blessing that was given to you…and Ron. You were his witness as much as he was yours. This is one of life’s mysteries and comforts. That you were “awake” to it is a reminder to all of us that these precious moments are all around us if we just pay attention and stay present to what’s really happening.
Thank you so much Harriette. Blessings to You!