THE TRUTH WE SEE

Now that I know that at least a few people still look in on this blog occasionally, I sort of wish I had refrained from venting after my experience the other day. I fear that in recounting the story I made myself sound like I had somehow managed to do something heroic while those other pathetic souls just stood there and watched her burn. The truth is that I really didn't want to go across the street and had I been on that side to begin with I probably would just have run (I didn't mention the fact that she was in front of a gas station). The woman who got there ahead of me was really the hero because she never paused long enough to think about herself. She just acted in the interest of the other. She helped a burning woman while I just helped a woman who had been burned.

For the next couple of days I really wanted to go by the hospital to find out if she was oaky, maybe to find out her name and perhaps to tell her that me and a few of my friends had prayed for her. The hospital is only a couple of blocks from where I work. But I think, in the end, I was too afraid to get too close and to enter her suffering (which, I take it, goes far deeper than just the burns on her body). I've said on more than one occasion when teaching that we all want to help the poor, we just don't want to know them. I think I proved my own point on this occasion.

Almighty and most merciful God, we remember before you all poor and neglected persons whom it would be easy for us to forget: the homeless and the destitute, the old and the sick, and all who have none to care for them. Help us to heal those who are broken in body or spirit, and to turn their sorrow into joy. Grant this, Father, for the love of your Son, who for our sake became poor, Jesus Christ our Lord. (Book of Common Prayer, 1979)

I know that this blog is pretty much dead, so no one may actually read this post. But I need to write it anyway. Therapy, I suppose.

I saw a human being on fire today. Literally.

I was sitting at a restaurant near the seminary waiting on my food when the lady behind the counter began to scream. “Oh my God! He’s on fire!” I turned and looked out the window to see a person (it turned out to be a woman) engulfed in flames across the street. Her entire upper body was ablaze. She fell to the ground and lay on her back waving her arms in the air. And several people standing nearby just stood and watched. They didn’t move toward her or attempt to help her. They just stood there and watched.

I ran outside and shouted for them to roll her over in the grass to help put out the flames (which no one did) and then ran back inside to try to get some water and to tell someone to call 911. The woman in the restaurant who first spotted her had already got some water and headed across the street. I got two more containers of water and ran behind her. When I arrived on her side of the street, the flames were out but her skin, hair and clothes were still smoldering. We poured some more of the water on her and then someone else from the restaurant brought some towels that we soaked and laid on her until the ambulance arrived. They loaded her up and left with sirens blaring. A small group of us who had stayed with her until they arrived just stood there in stunned disbelief.

She was a homeless woman, apparently inebriated to the point of numbness. None of us standing there know how it started. She was, for all intents and purposes, invisible to the world until she caught fire. Apparently she was still practically invisible to some who stood nearby.

They just stood there and watched.