'He shall dwell apart, making his abode outside of the camp.'
They would be outcasts, prohibited from the security and protection of
the community.
The command is from the reading in the Christian
liturgy for the last Sunday before Lent. The book of Leviticus is
proscribing treatment for the Israeli man or woman afflicted with the
dreaded disease of Leprosy, a scourge of humanity well into the last
century. Only recently- within the last seventy years- have we
understood the anti-bacterial protection offered by hand washing and
developed medication for those afflicted with Leprosy, thereby making
the exile of the infected unnecessary. In Biblical days, the infected
individual was required to constantly cry, 'Unclean' in order to
announce the danger of touching him or her to others; a practice we now
decry as barbaric and cruel.
No longer do we need to exile the outsider due to disease or illness with our 21st century knowledge and medical systems, right?
Only
three months ago, we witnessed the fallacy of that statement. One man
returning home to Dallas who lied about his travel to Liberia was the
catalyst for a short term panic. Had the number of Ebola cases continued
to increase one could see easily the panic escalating to hysteria
followed by easily imaginable consequences like isolation and exile. But
that's Ebola... justifiable due to terrifying risk of contagion and
then of death, right?
It was Sunday morning and I was writing,
working to complete my second novel when I heard my husband approach
from the several mile walk he takes along the beautiful Oceano coast
where we've been staying through the winter.
"Is it OK to bring in
my friend Umberto?" John was talking about a homeless man he has met, a
schizophrenic veteran who lives under the bridge.
I stared at him, mouth agape, realizing he was going to bring the man in here...
to our RV, the RV I work so hard to keep clean. I looked at the stack
of prayer books for the Divine Office I had been praying earlier, before
dawn and nodded, wordlessly.
"Beautiful roses, a belated Happy
Valentine's day to you," Umberto said as he sat on the leather chair
where I just had been sitting, writing on my laptop.
Hastily
grabbing the laptop just as he was about to sit on it, I smiled at
Umberto, shook his hand, and thanked him for the good wishes and asked
if he'd like a cup of coffee; working hard to ignore the pungent odor
surrounding him and to stop wondering when the hand I had just shaken
had last been washed.
"I prefer to drink rather than eat," he
replied to our offer of something to eat but did accept the deviled eggs
I had made the night before and graciously accepting the beer John
offered him. Umberto agreed that yes, a glass would be nice for the beer
and a fork too would be very nice to eat his egg.
My husband, a
retired psychologist, worked for over twenty years with former combat
veterans. His respect and affection for these men is profound; at times
like yesterday morning, he shows me what real hospitality looks like.
Lin Wilder, DrPH is a former Hospital Director. She now writes full-time.
Her web site is http://www.linwilder.com. Lin suggests that you check her recently published novel at Amazon http://www.amazon.com/The-Fragrance-Shed-Violet-Wilder/dp/1630632619
Contact Lin at lin@linwilder.com
Article Source:
http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dr._Lin_Wilder
