Broken

At a spiritual study group last Sunday I shared a table with a man I will call John. His head was shaved close and he wore a medium weight jacket on a January evening when the temperatures plunged below zero. He has been at this self help meeting on and off for over twelve years.

John rarely talks about the designated topics; he hardly ever speaks at all. What touched me last Sunday were his eyes. Turned down, deep set, dark and sad. John’s wire rimmed eye glasses were obviously bent out of shape. He had tried to put them back together and reshape them to no avail. They sat on his face in a barely usable distorted manor.

Over the years I have had minimal interaction with John. The small details I know about his life are; no family, lack of job in this desperate economy, eye glasses on the verge of complete disrepair. This man, this anonymous invisible man is broken.

With hints of tears for John I realize my sorrow is not just for him. The sadness is for the homeless woman on a cold January night, veterans coming home ruined from this senseless war, our mentally ill tossed aside on our city streets and for the countless families loosing their homes to foreclosure. They are broken. We are broken.