The Guest

 

The Guest by Wendell Berry

Washed into the doorway
by the wake of traffic,
he wears humanity
like a third-hand shirt
–blackened with enough
of Manhattan’s dirt to sprout
a tree,or poison one.
His empty hand has led him
where he has come to.
Our differences claim us.
He holds out his hand,
in need of all that’s mine.

And so we’re joined,as deep
as son and father. His life
is offered me to choose.

Shall I begin servitude
to him? Let this cup pass.
Who am I? But charity must
suppose,knowing no better,
that this man is a man fallen
among thieves,or come
to this strait by no fault
–that our difference
is not a judgment,
though I can afford to eat
and am made his judge.

I am,I nearly believe,
the Samaritan who fell
into the ambush of his heart
on the way to another place.
My stranger waits,his hand
held out like something to read,
as though its emptiness
is an accomplishment.
I give him a smoke and the price
of a meal,no more

–not sufficient kindness
or believable sham.
I paid him to remain strange
to my threshold and table,
to permit me to forget him—
knowing I won’t. He’s the guest
of my knowing,though not asked.

I think a lot about memory and the blessing it might bring. I also think a lot about strangers and the needy and whether I have done enough or merely avoided or sideswiped and deferred. This poem calls me to re-member times when I was called to an encounter which itself was an unforeseen blessing, so long as I brought myself fully along.

I am entranced by the line “the Samaritan who fell into the ambush of his heart”. I can remember that “falling” the summer of doing CPE (clinical pastoral education). My “guest” was a frightened middle aged man who faced open heart surgery. I witnessed a conversion of immense magnitude. It was not my doing but God’s. What was my doing was simply staying in a room which had at first been unfriendly but somehow filled with grace. 

He remains the “guest of my knowing though not asked”. What he asked for was accompaniment. 

My spiritual director calls it adopting a hovering, loving witness. Indeed!