Pothole

When I woke up, I was lying on the street, my arm tucked beneath my head.  The kind face of a woman with brown curls crouched before me.

“What happened?,” I asked.

“You had an accident.  Don’t move.  The ambulance is on the way.”

I remember hearing sirens in the distance.

I remember when they said, “Let’s get this out from under him”, (I assume that was my bicycle), “Let’s roll him 1-2-3.”

I remember waking up in the back of what I now know was the ambulance.  Another kind face, this time of a man with black hair, who asked, “Do you know what month it is?”

My first thought, “I have no idea.  May?  June?”

I said, “January?  February?,”  not having a clue what those words meant.
”It’s February”, he said.

“Do you know who the President is?”

“Barack Obama.”  Although again, I couldn’t have told you anything about him.

I couldn’t remember his name, but I do remember thinking of Jason Bourne, the hero of the Robert Ludlum novels, who doesn’t remember who he is.   I couldn’t’ either.  I knew I had things going on in my life but I couldn’t say what they were.

I remember when they said, “You are now at Harborview, best place to be for trauma in the world.”

I remember seeing the ceiling tiles go by and thinking, “I should close my eyes.”

I remember two other kind blurry faces (I think they must have taken my glasses off) telling me that they were going to give me an MRI.  I remember hearing that an MRI machine can be rather claustrophobic and that I should close my eyes.

I woke up, once again, on a squishy mattress, in a room made of curtains.

More kind faces.

A nurse who told me she was going to put in an IV, “This may hurt a bit.”  It did.  Although I only remember her putting one IV in and only later realized that I had two.

The kind face of the social worker who asked me who they should call.

And I remembered.

In the next hour, the details of my life came back including the memory of bicycling down 23^rd Street off of Capital Hill on this beautiful Tuesday afternoon.  The car that appeared at the intersection that startled me, and made me move further into the road.  Cutting back to the side of the road and remembering my bicycle being at a funny angle (that would have been the pothole I rode into) and not being able to keep my bike upright.

I remember that I wasn’t afraid.

Before I remembered anything about who I was or before I could say the word, I knew compassion.  I felt it all around me.  Such tender care, compassion, concern, from those kind faces, the people that cared for me after my accident.

Truly compassion knit me together again and brought me back to myself.

I am so fortunate that I really am okay.  No broken bones or bruises, no major cuts and scrapes.  A sore back that is getting better each day.

I was asked yesterday if I had any insights from this experience.  I do know this:  I know that compassion knit me together on Tuesday afternoon.

Compassion can meet a lot of wounds and hurt in the world.  It can make all the difference.  May be the most important thing we can take in and offer one another in the potholes, accidents, regrets, disappointments of life.  Compassion for ourselves, compassion for each other.

This weekend, Marcus Borg shared with us in his Saturday lecture, that the Hebrew and Aramaic words commonly translated as “compassion” mean “womb”.  To be compassionate is to be womblike:  life-giving, nourishing.

“To be compassionate is to feel for another the way a mother feels for the children of her womb; she loves them, wills their well-being, and sometimes becomes fierce when their well-being is threatened.  To say that God is compassionate, as the Bible often does, is to say that God is like this.”  (Marcus Borg, Speaking Christian, p. 127)

What if it really is true?  That we are being knit together, held together, all the time, by the very compassion of God in whom we live and move and have our being.  Held, tended, healed, carried by it.  That the God of great compassion truly wills our “well-being”, and wills us to participate in that.

In the past week, I have had to learn again about being compassionate to myself.  I took the doctor’s advice to take 3 or 4 days of “brain rest” after my accident – no reading, no computer, no TV – and just stay home and rest my brain.  It was just what I needed.    And in the days since, listening to my body, and my need for some extra sleep.  Moving slowly back into the routines of my life.

It is true, buzzing down the road, carried away by the duties, demands and responsibilities of life, I don’t sometimes see it, feel it, remember it, this incredible compassion that is all around us.  Lost in the world of words and getting things done, I sometimes don’t just feel it.

What if it really is true?  That we really do live in the womb of God, in the compassion of God, that is all around us, within us.  That it is the greatest, most healing and life-giving gift we can take in and share with one another

Sometimes, when we hit a bump in the road, we know that it really is true.