Snapshots of Self-Differentiation
Some of the most poignant lessons I have learned seemed to occur on my Meals on Wheels route in Abilene, Texas twenty years ago. For almost a year, the route had remained relatively unchanged. Same people, same faces, same routine. After a hiatus of several weeks, I discovered three new people on the list living on new and different streets. I also noticed that several people had dropped off of the list. I feared asking the reason.
As I crept along the street, eyeing the house numbers, I located the numbers 454 with the 5 hanging upside down by a lone nail. Bad part of town, run down houses, junked out cars lining the streets.
Reading the instructions for Ruby Davis, I sensed that this would take longer than I expected. “She is blind. Ring the doorbell. Announce who you are. Take the meal into the kitchen, unwrap it and read her the contents. Then, put the meal back together and place in the refrigerator.” Great. I was hoping to finish the route early today.
To my surprise, at about the same moment I rang the doorbell, the door opened, and before me stood a home health worker.
“Ruby! A young man is here with your lunch meal,” she shouted.
I hesitantly entered the home, glancing around quickly to size it up. Sitting alone in the dark living room, the focus of Ruby’s face betrayed her blindness. Curlers in her hair, bathrobe wrapped tight around her, she sat with her ears perked. She was tall, perhaps close to 6 feet, and as I would later learn, she was 92 years old.
After introducing myself politely to her, then making a move for the front door, she held her finger in the air to make an emphatic point. “God loves you, I love you, and there ain’t nothin’ you can do about it!”
Wow. I didn’t see that coming.
Now, to a third year seminary student, my initial reaction was to analyze this pivotal theological statement. Did her theology inhibit my freedom of choice? Is there something I can do about it? Is this essentially a Calvinistic statement, indicating what in my opinion might be a fundamentally flawed deterministic statement? For all of these thoughts, I was appreciative of her gesture, and hastened on my way.
The next week, I delivered meals on Thursday and substituted for someone on Friday. On both days, Ruby informed me again with dramatic emphasis, “God loves you, I love you, and there ain’t nothin’ you can do about it!” This time, it occurred to me that this was indeed a strong theological statement. I want to believe everything this statement asserts about God and man. That unconditional love actually exists. Could she, Ruby Davis, really love as God? I don’t know, but why not?
There is something that makes me want to be good, when I hear that I am loved no matter what. The unconditional-ness of love provides a much better motivation than guilt or fear. In fact, I resent guilt and fear-based manipulations. But open-armed love…we all need this.
Over the following weeks, I simply received from this remarkably gracious lady. In later years, it has occurred to me that of all the wise and prominent people I have had the good fortune to learn from and to hear in person, perhaps some of the best theology I ever received came from an unlikely theologian…a blind, 92 year old lady named Ruby on my Meals on Wheels route.
Worth Repeating
The ultimate lesson all of us have to learn is unconditional love, which includes not only others but ourselves as well.
-Elizabeth Kubler-Ross
