Thomas Merton wrote, paraphrasing from some other saint I'm sure, that a monastery is a school of love. But for those of us outside of cloistered walls, the whole world must be a school of love.
9 am on a Monday morning and I am standing above the body of a man who less than 48 hours ago was dying in a hospital bed on one of the clinic's floors. A lateral incision through the chest wall reveals diaphragm and pericardium, esophagus and lungs. I crowd with my classmates to one side and peer into the cavern opened up before us, nodding my head in time to the discussion of trauma surgeries and aortic clamps. This is a school of anatomy and physiology, biochemistry and histology...the threads run together in my mind, reminding me of how much I do not know.
But his skin is pink and marked by the faded ink of old tattoos. And when the surgical cloths slip for just a moment so that I catch a glimpse of thinning gray hair at the base of his skull, I know suddenly that this too is a school of love.
This is my body, given for you. Given that you might learn. Given that you might one day heal.
And so I offer thanks, through lips as mute as his. May his soul rest in peace, Lord, and may perpetual light shine upon him.
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