Two "More Comfortable" Nights

The lesson for Sunday is about Jesus hesitating to respond in love to a Canaanite woman because of  his tribe's ethnic prejudice. He hears her speak with the voice of his own divine unconscious which brings them both healing. I was reminded of a time when I was trying to get a hotel room when I was 19 as I was passing through a town and was told I would "be more comfortable" at another hotel by the railroad tracks. The events in the last couple weeks remind me of the times I was told so many years ago that those people not like me would be more comfortable in their own schools, their own neighborhoods, their own churches as a way for us to no longer care about the racial and class hatred on which our society depends to enforce divisions so that  we might continue to be fuel for the engines of repression.

The question is the question for All Saints Parishioners to reflect upon before the service begins. I will not be there since Pat and I are going to watch the totality of the full eclipse on the 21st.

Question: “When was it hard for you to care?”

Two “More Comfortable” Nights

Walking into the hotel, bearded, jeaned and tired

The desk attendant sneering; “May I help you?”

I ask for a room. He really wanted me to shoo,

said I’d be “more comfortable” at place less desired.

The form was all on surface very polite but distain

was the menu that night for it was not my comfort

which called him to care, but his own discomfort

of having to place himself as a servant to deign.

Wrapped in tattered dignity I walk over to tracks

where the “more comfortable” place was found

spending the night with bitter thoughts abound

how I should’ve responded with a couple smacks.

Years later as a Chaplain, given a comatose thug

in the process of dying. He was rotten to the core,

his family could not stand to be on the same floor

but that night he’s one that Christ calls me to hug

as my brother. I clumsily welcome him with prayer

and bid him be “more comfortable” in my care.