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Friends United Meeting |
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October 2000
Invisible People, Invisible Christians
By Crissa Hoy
Working late in the newborn nursery at the hospital, all I had left to do before going home was to check the babies who were spending the night in their mothers' rooms instead of the nursery. The last room was dark, the mother asleep, so I crept over to the crib to look at the baby's chart. Noticing the blankets in the crib all wadded up, it suddenly registered--no baby was in the crib! My stomach immediately tied in a knot as I felt a sick wave of dread pass over me. This was my worst nightmare--a baby missing. The nurse and I came back to the room, turned on all the lights and saw, in the mother's bed, curled up next to her, the baby, safe and sound. When the lights were on, it was easy to sort out things, but darkness had a way of making people invisible.
Who are invisible people?
Invisible people are, first and foremost, silent. Some people are silent by choice, but the silence I am referring to is imposed on a person so he or she is silenced. In Alan Paton's book, Cry, the Beloved Country, this passage describes the agony of being silenced--"She watched him walk in the door of the church and then she sat down at his table and put her head on it, and was silent, with the patient suffering of black women, with the suffering of oxen, with the suffering of any that are mute." Although this described the social conditions for women in South Africa during apartheid, it is often true that those who are not heard are not seen either.
In the fall semester of my senior year, I had a nursing home patient who was an out-of-control diabetic. A recent stroke paralyzed the left side of her body; her kidneys were failing; she had both legs amputated above the knee, and the stitches were still fresh. Because she could not sit up, she developed large sores which became infected, and the infection eventually spread to her bones. The only time she communicated with me at all was when I would turn her to relieve the pressure from the sores, and she would let out a heart-breaking moan. Large, silent tears would stream down her face. She had long ago retreated to some private, unreachable place within herself and hardly ever spoke aloud. I was shocked to discover the medication record showed she had not been given pain medication for 48 hours because, "The patient is not complaining of pain." She died five days later. I pray that no one will ever know the agony she must have suffered in her final days. Her silence made her invisible.
Lost causes
The second group of invisible people is lost causes. We live in a society that values progress, development and achievement--so much so that when we are faced with people who are never going to improve, we don't know what to do with them. In our culture, people with chronic conditions tend to become a source of frustration for those around them. Children with physical or mental disabilities are at a higher risk for abuse or neglect. It is easier to make someone invisible, once you see them as a lost cause.
Once a month, I met with a mentally disabled man as part of my nursing course. He was autistic. When we got together, we played games. I was a college senior, and he was a mentally disabled man, so in the interest of fairness, I chose only games of chance, like Uno, mostly because he always beat me at games of skill. He could do arithmetic, but he couldn't tell you what his favorite color was, or if he liked the shirt he had on.
For caregivers, autistic people are hard to work with. Caregivers like people who reciprocate affection, make them feel good about themselves and are appropriately obedient and grateful. In the case of the autistic man, I had no reason to believe that he cared one way or the other if I came or not. When there are no gains to be made with someone, or it seems pointless, it is easy to give up. When we give up on someone, we make them a lost cause, making them invisible.
Indifference
When we are indifferent, we make ourselves and other people invisible. By not valuing a global perspective, many people have the attitude "if it isn't happening in my backyard, then it doesn't concern me." It is disturbing that the suffering of other people, whether they live in Kosovo or Africa, should ever be deemed irrelevant. We should never assume because an event takes place in another part of the world or to another person, that it has nothing to do with us. On the Holocaust Monument in Boston is the following quote by a Lutheran minister:
"They came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up."
The moral erosion of our society should not be measured by acts of hat-red committed in the Holocaust or in Colorado, but by the pervasive and growing indifference younger people have to the suffering and even deaths of others.
Invisible Christians
Are you an invisible person? Or maybe the more important question is, Are you an invisible Christian? As a Christian, have you allowed yourself to be silenced by an American society that is turning its back on traditional Christian values? Are you suffering from the malignant apathy infecting most of my generation? Do you have the "anything goes" philosophy? When people die in Kosovo, do you sigh, feel helpless and chock it up as a lost cause?
I certainly don't have the answers to all these problems; they seem overwhelming. But I do know this: Christians are not called to be indifferent, silent or helpless. You don't have to lead a crusade to fight invisibility, but you do have to care. In nursing, we talk about compassion, but compassion is really the courage to enter into the suffering of another person. With compassion instead of indifference, there is caring. Instead of silence, there is beautiful expression; instead of frustration for lost causes, there is understanding. Isn't this the way to be a visible Christian?
Reprinted with permission of Signatures, of Anderson University, Indiana.
Copyright (c) 2000 Friends United Meeting
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