I WAS walking through the lobby of an ‘assisted living’ facility when I saw a touching sight.
Someone had brought in a glass tank filled with straw. It was placed on a table in the area where residents gathered to watch television or to sit staring into the distance. Racing about in little circles inside the tank were small, fuzzy, energetic baby chicks.
An old woman — partly balding, obviously no longer in possession of her full mind, out of touch with the world — sat in front of the tank, lit with a incubator light. She was riveted. Every particle of her being seemed fixed on the sight before her. Sitting as close to the tank as possible and hunching over to see as much as she could, she stared at the chicks without moving or speaking, simply drinking up the sight of these ditzy little birds.
It was genius, who ever brought the chicks there. These baby creatures were filled with an energy and newness the old woman no longer possessed. And, like her, their existence was caught up in the tiniest of things. They gave her a taste of new life. Something inside her was reborn.
Old or young, rich or poor, happy or sad, smart or senile, we all have the capacity for resurrection. You may seem dead — and yet rise again. In that way, our daily dramas reflect the greatest event in human history, the mystery which we celebrate today.
