“You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you
odd.” – Flannery O’Connor

    Hurricane Sandy
brought horror to the east coast. His winds also stirred the hearts of ordinary
angels.

   Love can make for "odd" behavior.

   New York newspapers ran the story of a nurse who evacuated a premature baby from the darkened New York Hospital. She descended nine stories of wet stairs cradling both the baby and his oxygen tank.  "Odd" heroism by an ordinary angel.

   
Disasters always
bring stories of compassion alongside reports of looting and mayhem.

   My sister Martha (left) who urged me to write about the New York nurse, happens to be an angel herself.
Over her thirty years as a receptionist at a large hospital she typically did
atypical things to help others.

   For example, sometimes she left her seat behind the reception desk to help a struggling patient or a
confused visitor. She lived the kind of compassion we want from caregivers.

   But, it was too
much for one of her supervisors. “You’re overdoing it, Martha!” she complained. “Leaving
your desk is outside your job description.”

    “I thought we were
here to help,” Martha responded.

    “The truth is you
are making the other employees look bad,” the supervisor confessed.

    The real truth is
that Martha's exceptional loving care made her behavior look “odd.”

    Mother Theresa was
ridiculed by some for her efforts to save “the poorest of the poor.” Why bother
with the dying?  Why touch
“untouchables?”

    Compassion is not a
requirement for a medical license. Radical Loving Care is not necessary for
nursing certification.

    At a recent medical
conference I urged doctors to ask fellow caregivers how they give loving care.
“It’s a chance to learn from each other about the core of healing.”

    Afterwards, one
physician said to me, “I think it’s a odd to talk about love with nurses,” he
said. “It sounds too sexual.”

    Unfortunately, I
have heard this complaint before (always from men.) I always wonder how a
discussion of loving care could be interpreted as “sexual.” 

    These same worriers
may be the ones who demean love, confuse art with pornography and think that a
fig leaf should cover the penis on Michelangelo’s David. Perhaps, these cynics
also think the Good Samaritan was a fool for helping the wounded stranger.

    Love embarrasses those
who either don’t understand it or just don’t want to practice it.

    Love is truth and
truth Love. Both are rare.

    Perhaps, that’s why
practicing Radical Loving Care can make us look “odd” – and why supervisors
sometimes punish the compassionate actions of our ordinary saints.

-Erie Chapman