It was an ordinary Sunday in an ordinary country parish parking lot that could take forty minutes to empty after Mass, of some fifty cars, tops. No need to rush while heavy subjects were being discussed, from the repairs to a leaking roof, to Holy Saturday liturgy. A couple of friends commented on the morning’s homily:

Pass forward a couple of weeks. My husband and I had traveled some 500 miles to visit relatives for Easter, and had just returned from Mass, where the priest gave a fine homily on the meaning of the day, but it took an African-American high school student to offer the right touch of inspiration that would last for the day, and she is still with me in sharp detail after some twenty-five years.

She stands, maybe, at 5’ 5" , small-boned, light on her feet as she gracefully smooths down the spread all around. I begin to offer a slice of sympathy for her having to work on Easter Sunday.

“Oh, I don’t mind,” she replies with a smile, the kind youth usually reserve for a hot date. “Tonight, I’m going to my grandmother’s for dinner, and then we’re going to church service together.”

Work all day, dinner with Grandmother, followed by church services -- a plan delivered without a trace of self-pity. She had her job, a beloved grandmother; she had her church. A wealthy teenager was she, living in a ghetto on the other side of the city. I don’t know her name this day, but I know her. Every Easter, she delivers her homily, and I am inspired anew.

On my desk, is a book of five brief biographies, by Richard M. Cohen, called Strong at the broken places. In 2003, Cohen published Blindsided, his history of intimate association with multiple sclerosis and colon cancer.

Cohen became determined to listen to other voices of the sick, to pry open lives and reveal the hidden stories of illness, and so five ordinary people, trapped in the complex world of serious chronic illness, are this day walking into the lives of thousands of readers, giving testimony to whatever “has made them strong at the broken places.”

Denise suffers from ALS, Buzz from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, Sarah from Crohn’s disease, Ben, a college student from muscular dystrophy, and Larry, once a patient at the infamous mental institution, Milledgeville, Georgia.. :

Though each individual’s illness wreaks havoc in a different way, Cohen shows how their experiences are strikingly similar and offer lessons for us all – on self-determination, on courage in the face of adversity, and public ignorance, on keeping hope alive, and on finding strength and peace under the most difficult of circumstances.

(from the book’s jacket, Harper-Collins)

All the stories will pass the inspiration test, but there is something especially touching about Ben, the college student. Perhaps, it is because he is so young, and so old.

Ben’s father, Big Ben, was a defense analyst who had spent thirty years in the Pentagon, while Ben’s mother stayed at home briefly, then returned to her marketing job at USA Today, and now for the American Council on Education.

It was on Super Bowl Sunday, 1991, that the then three-year old toddler was with his family at the home of a doctor who worked at Children’s Hospital in Washington. The following day, the doctor called to speak with Big Ben and said, “There may be nothing to this, but I noticed how Ben was going up the stairs. Why don’t you set up a couple of dates at Children’s for him to get some tests?”

The series of tests took one day, and the results were not good: muscular dystrophy, with no cure in sight.

When Ben reached second or third grade, his legs began to weaken. Around eight, the youngster was introduced to the task of being an advocate for the Muscular Dystrophy Association, doing volunteer work and participating in the local telethon. Ben began to learn he was not alone in his illness. He said it was a fun experience. “I was meeting people and going on television. Later, I knew it was more than that. I learned about going out of my way to help others and trying to change things.”

Eventually, he found himself at Capitol Hill, testifying before a crowded Senate appropriations subcommittee hearing on health, chaired by Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.

Ben told him: “I am just a regular thirteen-year old boy, just trying to get a girlfriend, listen to hip-hop. ...I am extremely lucky, and God has blessed me because there are people who are a heck of a lot worse than I am.”

Then, the youngster joined the Big Time: “If the government could spend two billion dollars on one plane, the B-1 Bomber, a hundred million on research would not hurt.” He brought down the house.

Big Ben decided that, however talented his son was, he would not be allowed to become a permanent victim before the world. He would lead as normal a life as possible, and he would be punished, along with the other children, when needed: no computer, no telephone.

In high school, Ben began to reach for a life as a writer. It would mean he was winning the war, not against people, but against the demons within him. He explained: “I am fighting anger and self-doubt, spawned within myself and magnified by disability.”

At sixteen, a motorized wheel chair replaced Ben’s legs. Cohen comments:

If a new car is a point of pride in our culture, the wheelchair is a signal of weakness in a society that celebrates physical perfection.”

Ben explained his feelings:

It was tough, I am not going to lie. I was worried about what people would say...If they have gotten to know me, hopefully they say, ‘Okay, this guy is cool. He is not a chair he is a person. ... He is not a part of some piece of machinery. He is an actual human being that has thoughts and dreams and goals and stuff that he has set for himself. So why bother disrespecting him?”

Big Ben relates the power of faith in their lives:

On a couple of levels, faith controls all in our lives. We learned to pray and to reach out. We felt we had to maintain a true relationship with God.

Ben says:

Sometimes I get mad at God, but then I don’t think
I should. At that point, I rely on faith and think of
how bad others have it.

And so, from his wheel chair, Ben reaches into our lives, and inspires us in moments of uncertainty “to rely on faith and think of how bad others have it.” God bless all the Bens of this world, their families and friends. And may each of us make our way through the final days of Lent into the glory of Easter joy.

Amen.

Home

Archives