"I see God in every human being. When I wash the leper's wounds, I feel I am nursing the Lord himself. Is it not a beautiful experience?" -Mother Teresa
If you’re looking for God, ride the public transit. You might meet him or see him in stained glass windows at church but to really get to know the guy, you’ve got to ride the city bus. Every Thursday I’ll be on my way home from working at the hospital and I’ll see what others may consider the scum of society, the rejected and just scraping by. These are the people stuck on routes. They are stuck going from somewhere to nowhere. I’ll only encounter them on Purple Route 9 but that 45-minute bus ride is enough to see the face of Christ himself. Mainly because when you first look at them all you can think is “Jesus Christ, what’s this guy been drinking?”
City buses and subways display the collection of people in a city; people of various experiences or socioeconomic statuses going to various places. Public transits bring people together, a mini-community. When people are together, there lies the opportunity to see the nature of mankind. You are exposed to many different people and the opportunity to hear their life story (since you'll probably be in a conversation with the person sitting beside you).
This particular route stopped conveniently at the hospital's main building and served as a vessel to those traveling to the building's revolving front doors. These were future patients returning for care, exiting the bus limping, holding their hips in a bent position, in casts or stitches. They talked about surgeries, how their ulcers came back after their wife left them, and how "this darn hip of mine just keeps aching." Maybe their hands are shaking, and you can see some cataracts developing. Whatever their symptoms are, health declination is evident.
You encounter others from individual lives of their owns, riding the bus or subway for different reasons. Different reasons to leave a place, different reasons to end up somewhere else. I would chat with a single mom of six children, working three jobs, and taking the bus an hour early just to make her shifts on time.
Some of these people are aching, like a bothersome hip. Some may have suffered. Some may be traveling to their families or their dream job. But nonetheless, the city bus offers a strange menagerie of people. They are interesting. They are friendly and talkative or maybe a bit reserved.
As I would watch the patients, ill and meek, riding on the bus a few hours early just to make their treatment on time, the nurse in me felt compassion. Not pity, but understanding and empathy for this person's suffering. Because I have been there too. I have suffered. I have ached like an old hip.
This feeling is what unites us as humans, this shared understanding of emotional or physical illness and discomfort.
And when we encounter people that share their suffering visibly in a way for us to connect with them, we see God. Maybe not your God or another's. Maybe not as in the big guy upstairs. But we do encounter love, compassion, and humility. And these are all godly traits.
With such tragedies as the recent shootings in Orlando, there have been many witnesses to deep suffering. But even in the face of great sacrifices, there is the face of great love. All it takes is to understand the uniting feature of human nature, to be able to shed compassion on the suffering of another. It takes the bravery to make connections and relationships with people walking this earth miraculously at the same time you are. Seeing God begins with turning to the person next to you on a bus, asking how they are with great interest. In turn, you are learning to love the people around you. You are not only turning their heads, but their souls.
