Medical Fellowship                

The Rabbi... by Brenda Toline, RN   As a new member of the Desert Ministries staff, I contemplated how best to introduce myself to you.  I decided upon the following story, “The Rabbi’s Gift”. The story concerns a monastery that had fallen upon hard times.  Once a great order, as a result of waves of anti-monastic persecution in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the rise of secularism in the nineteenth, all its branch houses were lost and it had become decimated to the extent that there were only five monks left in the decaying mother house:  the abbot and four others, all over seventy in age.  Clearly it was a dying order.             In the deep woods surrounding the monastery there was a little hut that a rabbi from a nearby town occasionally used for a hermitage.  Through their many years of prayer and contemplation the old monks had become a bit psychic, so they could always sense when the rabbi was in his hermitage.  “The rabbi is in the woods again,” they would whisper to each other.  As he agonized over the imminent death of his order, it occurred to the abbot at one such time to visit the hermitage and ask the rabbi if by some possible chance he could offer any advice that might save the monastery.              The rabbi welcomed the abbot at his hut.  But when the abbot explained the purpose of his visit, the rabbi could only commiserate with him.  “I know how it is,” he exclaimed.  “The spirit has gone out of the people.  It is the same in my town.  Almost no one comes to the synagogue anymore.”  So the old abbot and the old rabbi wept together.  Then they read parts of the Torah and quietly spoke of deep things.  The time came when the abbot had to leave.  They embraced each other.  “It has been a wonderful thing that we should meet after all these years,” the abbot said, “but I have still failed in my purpose for coming here.  Is there nothing you can tell me, no piece of advice you can give me that would help me save my dying order?”              “No, I am sorry,” the rabbi responded.  “I have no advice to give.  The only thing I can tell you is that the Messiah is one of you.”              When the abbot returned to the monastery his fellow monks gathered around him to ask, “Well, what did the rabbi say?”              “He couldn’t help,” the abbot answered.  “We just wept and read the Torah together.  The only thing he did say, just as I was leaving-it was something cryptic-was that the Messiah is one of us.  I don’t know what he meant.”              In the days and weeks and months that followed, the old monks pondered this and wondered whether there was any possible significance to the rabbi’s words.  The Messiah is one of us? If that’s the case, which one?  Do you suppose he meant the abbot?  Yes, if he meant anyone, he probably meant Father Abbot.  He has been our leader for more than a generation.  On the other hand, he might have meant Brother Thomas.                Certainly Brother Thomas is a holy man.  Everyone knows that Thomas is a man of light.  Certainly he could not have meant Brother Elred!  Elred gets crotchety at times.  But come to think of it, even though he is a thorn in people’s sides, when you look back on it, Elred is virtually always right.  Often very right.  Maybe the rabbi did mean Brother Eldred.  But surely not Brother Phillip.  Phillip is so passive, a real nobody.               But then, almost mysteriously, he has a gift for somehow always being there when you need him.  He just magically appears by your side.  Maybe Philip is the Messiah.  Of course the rabbi didn’t mean me.  He couldn’t possibly have meant me.  I’m just an ordinary person.  Yet supposing he did?  Suppose I am the Messiah?  O God, not me.  I couldn’t be that much for you, could I?             As they contemplated in this manner, the old monks began to treat each other with extraordinary respect on the off chance that one among them might be the Messiah.  And on the off, off chance that each monk himself might be the Messiah, they  began to treat themselves with extraordinary respect.              Because the forest in which it was situated was beautiful, it so happened that people still occasionally came to visit the monastery to picnic on its tiny lawn, to wander along some of its paths, even now and then to go into the dilapidated chapel to meditate.  As they did so, without even being conscious of it, they sensed this aura of extraordinary respect that now began to surround the five old monks and seemed to radiate out from them and permeate the atmosphere of the place.                There was something strangely attractive, even compelling, about it.  Hardly knowing why, they began to come back to the monastery more frequently to picnic, to play, to pray.  They began to bring their friends to show them this special place.  And their friends brought their friends.              Then it happened that some of the younger men who came to visit the monastery started to talk more and more with the old monks.  After a while one asked if he could join them.  Then another.  And another.  So within a few years the monastery had once again become a thriving order and, thanks to the rabbi’s gift, a vibrant center of light and spirituality in the realm.                        ---excerpt from The Different Drum by M. Scott Peck      Much like this monastery, our nursing homes have fallen upon hard times.  Roughly twenty years ago, at the age of sixteen, God made me painfully aware of this reality when He called me to be a nursing assistant in a nursing home.  God had prepared me well for His calling.  He had blessed my life with a grandfather that impressed upon me total reverence and adoration for my elders.  I can remember as a young child, sitting in my Grandpa’s lap, feeling as if in that moment, I was somehow closer to God.  And indeed, I was.             My Grandpa spent the final two years of his life living in a nursing home.  This was my inspiration.  I was a naïve sixteen year old with a true mission to care for those elderly residents with the same love and reverence I so desired for my Grandpa.  My first day on the job banished my naiveté’ and literally broke my heart!  In my mind, I had witnessed something so grave that it rocked me at my very core.  I had nightmares for months about my Grandfather enduring similar care.             I now sit in awe of God. He certainly knew how to light the fire in me!!  Even so, the past twenty years have been a difficult process for me.  In the foolishness of my youth, I chose the path of self-righteousness…following MY plan for how to change the world.  I now know that you cannot take the path of righteousness without first succumbing to humility.  I know that God has called me to “plead for the widow” but I must yield myself to His plan.              His plan introduced me to Desert Ministries.  Through the work of Desert Ministries, I believe we can bring the “rabbi’s gift” to the nursing home.  In my youth I had a mission to care for the elderly as if they were my Grandpa.  Today when I look into an elder’s eyes, I feel that same closeness to God that I felt sitting in my Grandpa’s lap.  This closeness comes from knowing that I am gazing into the eyes of the Messiah. Register for the next Spiritual Distress Workshop                 Every Friday we meet to pray for your loved-ones, for you and for the care staff.  Please let us know how we can pray for you.