Sitting in a cafe today enjoying my lunch when a sudden scream is heard. I look around and there in the corner is a young girl about 13 years of age sitting in a wheelchair, her body twisted and her head looking down and to the side. Her parents feeding her and not saying a word. Then suddenly another scream, and another. More will follow that. I sit back realizing that for this girl there are probably many screams in the course of her day. But each time she screams something in me responds. The waves of painful emotion seem to wash up against my body each time like a relentless tide. I begin to pray...for her, for me, for all of us in that cafe. Somehow , I pray, may we all feel something. May we embrace this young girl, her suffering, her parent's suffering, our own suffering, in some secret loving way . And if possible, may we communicate to her our gratitude and respect. For this person and her parents are people of courage. Perhaps, in some sense, her screaming is a reminder . It may be that our silence in the midst of all the insanity and needless suffering in this world is indeed the stranger response. God give me the courage to scream, to cry out in a public place when everything in me says -" Enough !"
Br. Stefan
We are as the flute, and the music in us is from Thee; we are as the mountain and the echo in us is from Thee.
