Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where others see nothing. – Pissarro
The priest walked past the prostitutes every day. He had no choice. They were stationed along the narrow road across from his seminary in Italy.
The priest confessed he never spoke with the women, studiously avoided eye contact and did his best to never acknowledge their existence. But one day, while following his usual protocol of denial, an older prostitute dropped something as he walked past. It bounced to a stop at his foot.
Without thinking, the priest’s instinct toward kindness compelled him to pick up the thin wooden object, forcing the encounter he had so dutifully avoided for the past several months. “It was a knitting needle,” he said, still sounding surprised. “And out of curiosity, I asked her what she was making.” The woman responded, “I’m knitting a tapestry for the altar at my church. It is a gift for God.”
Tears welled up in the priest’s eyes as he recalled her response. “In my desire to avoid her, I had never noticed the cloth in her hands. I never bothered to look. Never thought to ask her story. And here this woman was knitting a gift for God.”
Many of the holiest moments in life are not found in churches or synagogues or in the cloistered study of sacred literature. No, the sacred moments that sustain and bind us together are the sharing of our common humanity through simple encounter – the telling and hearing of our stories, the sharing of our experiences, both epic and passing. I imagine our souls being woven out of memories and stories – the threads of our lives.
Everyone has a story and deserves to tell it. And the simple acts of inquiry and listening are among the greatest gifts we can offer during this holiday season or any season. Telling and hearing our stories is a rare instance of a gift given and received in two directions – at once an act of solidarity and reciprocity. It knits together our separate lives into a common tapestry.
The priest stepped off the path of indifference and onto the path of encounter. He stopped seeing a prostitute to be ignored and saw the face of a person to be engaged.
Listening to someone’s story is a way of showing respect, a way of conveying dignity. At a time of year when many of us will be rushing around – shopping, volunteering, gathering, celebrating – we should step further along the path, strive toward a deeper connection and ask to hear a bit, or a bit more, of someone’s story.
This time every year we retell stories of our people. We call them miracles: a baby being born in a manger, or a small group of believers overcoming the odds to survive. The miracle of light in the darkness. When we tell and listen to our stories, we knit together the fabrics of our separate journeys onto the tapestry of humanity. And in that way, we not only offer a gift to each other, we offer a gift to God, who the tradition says, created people because of a love of stories.
By Will Berkovitz
Will Berkovitz is CEO of JFS. He and his wife Dr. Lelach Rave, live with their three children in North Seattle. Will is a long-distance runner, avid hiker and backpacker. He particularly enjoys volunteering in the Polack Food Bank and helping with refugee resettlement.
Feature photo by Ashi Fachler.
