Back in the early 1970s I was working in a hospital for the mentally handicapped. In that hospital was a boy who had broken all the records and puzzled and perplexed the doctors. The question was: with such a severe deformity and compromise to his internal organs, how did he manage to stay alive? His body was so deformed each of his limbs was bent and wrapped around one or two others. He had virtually no mobility. Moving him led to a constant challenge to administer enough soft cushioning to avoid bedsores and set him into some reasonable position to enable him to socialize, watch TV, or engage in some minor task, like eating or reading. In the past his bones had protruded through his skin. Prone to bouts of easily justified depression, nonetheless he had an extremely humorous and witty personality that made his predicament seem all the more pathetic and poignant. Just the sight of him was enough; no one who saw him could fail to be deeply affected.

One day I stood by and watched him as he painstakingly moved himself millimeter by millimeter across a single bed to fetch his hair comb. Combing his hair was extremely important to him. He was obsessively interested in his appearance but his vanity was surpassed by his pride. If you interfered with his independence, slight as it was, at the wrong time, he could be cutting. Watching his epic journey to his hair comb was one of the most excruciating and painful occasions of my life.

I am able-bodied and sound of mind. That wasn’t my point of convergence with the pretzel boy. But I did have one. Typically with me though it was inner. When I was growing up I had a powerful impulse toward the spiritual, toward God, toward the spiritual life. But I was born into a family that may as well have been aliens in this regard. There was no point of reference for what manifested as sensitivity in me toward sacred things. I was humiliated by my father who called me a mommy’s boy and a sports master who called me a Nancy boy, ridiculed when I hung a palm cross over my bed or framed a painting of Jesus for my bedside table, and shamed for asking for a crucifix from a seaside gift store at the end of a family holiday when children my age should want a toy gun or a model of a car. None of these preferences of mine were important in themselves, but what they symbolized was valuable beyond measure and that was the sacred impulse to become one with the Divine.

My personal ordeal was to last for almost twenty-five years. Only then did I encounter anyone who could understand and by that time I had to lever the deeper tendencies out of myself. Over time they were so pressed down and concealed by wounds and scars. Like the pretzel boy, I could only inch myself forward millimeter by millimeter and, like the pretzel boy, I was puzzling and perplexing to others – parents, teachers, employers. Pretzel boy to me was an integral life form, a being, a human, an individual. I have always had this inclusiveness or lack of prejudice to others, not through any unusual virtuousness, but simply because I always felt as removed from humanity as I imagined they did.

If you are a spiritual traveler, an aspirant for awakening, a human being with the heart of the devotee, or a fledgling gnani or mystic, I encourage you to embrace your disability, your unusualness, your greatest wound. For in it you may well discover your greatest gift.

BLOG entry #35