Last week I had the privilege of being able to sit in on Safe Berks camp for junior high students. The leadership was great, and the kids were very engaged; they learned a lot. One of the topics we talked about was disability, and what that means. The scope of disability is wide and varied, and we often can’t see when a person is struggling with something deeply challenging and personal. From needing a wheelchair to managing mental illness, there are people all around us who have obvious and not-so-obvious difficulties. The conversation brought me back to 1992 when I lived in Cincinnati. It made me think about my friend Jim.
We hired Jim as our organist and choir director for this tiny urban church I served. It sat on a busy corner (it’s now, sadly, a hole in the ground) adjacent to the University of Cincinnati, and we had a number of very talented college students who attended. Some of them were doing graduate work at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, and for a tiny church, we had amazing worship. Jim had a BA in voice (his bass made us tremble), an MA in piano, and was working on a doctorate in conducting. Choir practice was like taking a graduate class in choral music, and we all benefited from his all too brief, one-year stay with us. Jim was a devout Christian, and Jim was gay. He also contracted AIDS.
We watched Jim, who was already incredibly thin, waste away from the disease. He kept working and taking classes, but the fatigue began to limit his ability to keep up. He came to church one day, exhausted and weeping, and told me of an incident he had that morning. Jim was on a lot of medications and most of them were given intravenously. He had been given a handicap sticker for his car because his walking was limited, and he had trouble breathing. A woman, seeing this seemingly healthy young man using a handicapped parking spot, berated him loudly. Jim told me he ripped his shirt open, Superman-style, to show the woman his scars and PICC lines, shouting at her to mind her own business. He felt guilty later, knowing that she was actually doing a good thing, standing up for people who needed those spots. She had made a judgment based on limited information, and she her judgment hurt Jim deeply.
Jim left us at the end of the school year and went home to die, cared for by his family. We didn’t just lose an amazing musician; we lost an amazing person. I am reminded of him every time I think about jumping to a conclusion about somebody or something that I have incomplete information about. We don’t know anyone else’s inner struggles just like they don’t know ours. I think that this is at the core of Jesus’ teachings about forgiveness and judgment; we will be forgiven and judged at the same level we do to others, so we need to be careful. Giving each other a little grace would go a long way toward curing our present madness.
Prayer – For all the people like Jim, Holy God, we give thanks and seek Your patience. Help us to take a moment before we jump to conclusions. Amen.
Today’s art is “Peace of Mind” by Bird Storm.