In my youth, great things were expected from me. My father was a man of God, and my mother was his faithful wife. They taught me in the ways of God, and they loved me dearly. I was to become a man of God like my father. That all changed when I became ill.
At the age of 18, I developed a skin infection. Soon this infection spread throughout my body, and I was declared a leper. I was cast out of my father’s house and into the streets. I was spat upon and kicked by those whom I had once considered my friends. My once-beloved parents would not even look at me.
I was alone.
I lived this way for years. How many, I do not know. As a leper, I learned to ignore time--to bear my suffering outside of time. For if I were to live within time, I would surely go mad.
So I suffered my sufferings in the Eternity. I lived every moment in anguish and despair. But I gave no thought to how much longer it would last, for I knew it would never end.
And in this way, I became bitter. I became angry at the world. I learned to hate my father and my mother because they now hated me. I hated the “men of God” because they were the reason I was cast out of the city--the cause of all my suffering.
For far greater than my physical suffering was my spiritual suffering, the suffering of being unwanted and unloved, the suffering of being Untouchable.
And so it went. I lived each day as an Untouchable. The days turned to months turned to years turned to an eternity. But what was worse, is that within each year were months, and within each month were days, and within each day were Moments. These Moments were more tortuous than any year. For it is only within the Moment that we live. A day, a week, even a year, of suffering is bearable, but the Moment of suffering is always too much.
I lived off alms, off the scraps of food and loose change that were too burdensome for society to carry. They gave them to me because they needed room for greater things--for their feasts, for their mounds of gold, for their love for their children. And I hated them for it. I hated them that they had feasts, had mounds of gold, had children to love. And I suffered.
But most of all, I hated their God. I hated Him because He hated me. He cast me out from the city, ostracized me from my friends and family. He gave me this disease. And-the reason I hated Him most of all-He didn’t understand me. He only understood the Chosen Ones. The Clean Ones. He had no room in his heart for us. For the dejected and downtrodden. He Himself refused to touch us, the Untouchables.
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I lived Untouched and Unloved until that day.
That day, I was lying on the hard ground outside of the city, as usual, wallowing in my suffering. I looked upon every face that passed by me with spite and bitter hatred. No face looked back. They never looked back.
I saw in the distance a crowd approaching. They were a group of about 15-20 people, and seemed to be following one man, listening as he talked.
I sat and watched, figuring this was one of the men of God, lecturing on the merits and mercies of his God. Then I went back to watching the faces as they passed. They never looked back.
The crowd stopped when they reached my resting place.
I was startled when I realized the people were looking at me. Rather, the people were not looking at me, but at each other, wondering why they had stopped to visit an Unclean One. I wondered also.
Then a man emerged from the midst of the crowd. He was the one they seemed to be following. He alone looked at me. He alone saw me. He alone looked back.
He gazed into my eyes for a long time. For Eternity. For a Moment. And with that Moment of seeing me, he healed me for Eternity.
I broke first. I dropped my eyes, almost ashamed, but not quite, that a man would look at me like that. A Clean One. However, in my heart I felt unashamed. I felt proud, even. Proud to be me, proud to be a man. Perhaps I would have remained staring into those eyes forever, but I felt the gaze of the men around him penetrating our Unity. So I dropped my eyes.
The man knelt down, I looked up at him again. He smiled. In that smile was Understanding. In that smile I saw my own pain, my own suffering. I saw my pain wrapped up in the arms of the Eternal and transformed into Joy. I did not understand. But that smile meant everything.
Next, he touched my hand. I had not been touched by another person since my illness had left me a leper. I grasped his hand with my own. His eyes brightened and his smile grew as I did so. He seemed to be saying “I love you” with his whole being. “I accept you.” He made me, an Untouchable, touched.
We sat there, hand in hand, for an Eternity. And somewhere in that Eternity I learned to love. I learned to let go of my hatred and contempt, and to Forgive. Somewhere in that Eternity I forgot my suffering. Somewhere in that Eternity I was a leper no more, and I became a Man.
We returned to the realm of time at the prompting of one of his followers. He reminded him that he had a dinner appointment to keep. The man looked up to look at his follower, first with a look of annoyance, but, as if he suddenly remembered something sweet and precious, he smiled again and gave him a small nod.
He looked at me one last time, squeezed my hand firmly, let it go, and stood up. Then he left me.
He didn’t truly leave me though. Just as the sun’s warmth is still felt on a summer’s eve long after the sun has set, his warmth has stayed with me, and even after though he no longer inhabits this earthly plane, his eyes still see me, his smile still understands me, and his hand still touches me.
I am made whole through His love.
