Yesterday, I went to the post office in our small town to mail a package. There was no one at the desk, so I rang the bell. A woman came out, took my package, and started typing the address. I said, “My handwriting is awful. I hope you can read it.” She laughed. “I was a high school teacher for twenty years. I can read anything.” She typed it perfectly, but the printer wouldn’t work. “This printer is killing me today.” She tried again, and it still wouldn’t work. Then she moved to the other computer, and she started all over again. As she was typing, she said, “The printer stopped working this morning, just when a really grumpy customer came in. I got so nervous. He comes in a lot, and he is always grumpy. One time, he got right in my face and screamed, ‘You are terrible. I hate it when it’s your day to work here!’ and then he stormed out.” By now, she had stopped looking at the computer screen. She was looking at me, and I was looking at her. Something had happened. Somehow, just for those few moments, we were together in her pain. Somehow, in the midst of this bent world awash in unspeakable violence which I am powerless to lessen, I was given the chance to simply be with someone at one small post office in one small town. I am grateful.
“And though the last lights off the black West went / Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs— / Because the Holy Ghost over the bent / World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.” Gerard Manley Hopkins