Articles
Check out the following entries.
|
 |
Living and Loving - That We Are All Connected - John Heney
Meeting Pope John Paul II
How much do you know of the person who is working next to you in the office? What will become of them? What have they been through? What are they facing? And how, at a very deep place, are they similar to YOU? To whom are they connected?
When the late Pope John Paul II greeted me in the library of his private apartments at the Vatican in 1980, he was only two years into his historic pontificate. I was only 24 years old. He did not know that he would face an attempted assasination. I did not know that trips to Poland, Germany, England and Egypt awaited me. He did not know that he would face Parkinson's Disease. I did not know that the cerebral palsy with which I was born would fell me at the age of 35 and rob me of my fine motor skills with the sudden onset of a disorder called Dystonia.
I was astonished by the experience of passing through the protection of the Pope's Swiss Guards and up the marble staircase to the pontiff's residence. He, in turn, forever kept in his memory the thrill of boating along Ottawa's historic Rideau Canal in the city where I live, and he would repeatedly refer to it over the years.
Such is the thrill of experience.
"JP2" as some would come to call him, refused to closet the condition that challenged him later in life. Instead he asked that it shine as an example of what those with neurological conditions face. His suffering did not mask the real man, the one with the handshake grip and twinkle in his eye I will always remember.
Upon hearing a few years later that I was getting married, he sent off a telegram of blessings from the Vatican to my wife and myself, and a rosary for Kathy.
He would ask that any concern for him or prayers for him ought to also be directed to people you do NOT know of. Pray also for a woman in Australia who has cancer whom you will never meet, or a boy in Utah who is confused, or a shopkeeper in China having a difficult time. The same change in consciousness that saw the world shift to St. Peter's upon the earthly departure of John Paul II can cause a shift each day -- a special shift -- in our daily lives.
Whether The Holy Father greeted myself or Billy Graham or Ronald Reagan or Jean Chretien, he treated all as equal. Mine is just one of hundreds of thousands of stories connected to one man. And his humour was wonderful.
Go into a corner of your life and make a difference as he did, as he would, and as he will continue to do.
Around the corner of your life is a new meeting, a new experience, a new chance to make a difference. Build on those today so that as life unfolds you can be overcome by gratitude. God knows of your kindness.
Copyright(C)John Heney
|
