Time: The Great Healer

You wouldn’t expect to have a spiritual experience at half past seven on a Tuesday morning while going for the paper, would you? Well I did. It was nothing huge and there were no flashes of bright light or images of saints, there were no voices either, it was just a very personal, very freeing realisation that gave me an immediate sense of peace and more importantly a great barrel of hope, something I sometimes sorely lack.

I live above the Passage Day Centre in Montfort House; I’ve been there for nearly eighteen months in a bed-sit, prior to that I was at Passage House hostel and before that I was on the street and a regular at the very same day centre. It used to open at 7am back then but now it opens at eight. I’ve learnt a lot about the organisation, mainly because they’ve been my crutch while I’ve had to limp through part of my journey.

So this morning as I came back from buying my paper, the queue as usual was quite long with a varied group of homeless and vulnerable people lining up to get a hearty breakfast or a hot shower. I pass them most days and only once in while will I recognise someone from my time, someone who didn’t make it off the street or whose luck just never ran long enough to get back on their feet. It pains a little to see them, especially when they don’t acknowledge me, or sometimes can’t. But this morning it wasn’t a client I recognised, it was Lloyd, one of the project workers; He was marshalling the line and taking names for entry down stairs. Not a very remarkable happening as I have seen him doing this many times in the last year or so, this time though he beamed a huge smile at me as he returned my “Good Morning”. And that’s when it happened.

I suddenly remembered two and a half years ago, I was in the depths of despair, a broken, ill man living on the steps of the Cathedral and praying most nights not to wake up in the morning. It was a Saturday afternoon and there was a craft fair in the square, I was too ashamed to go anywhere near there and so I sat away, wrapped in my thick coat of self-pity and sadness. A car parked not far from me and a happy family came past on their way to the festivities, I recognised Lloyd immediately - as he did me. I merely nodded and said good afternoon to him, I must have looked wretched but it was nothing he hadn’t seen many times before, I’m sure. He paused as he passed me and he said the words which have now become manifest in my life, he placed faith in my future that afternoon and somehow I have nurtured it, I cannot deny the miracle because I am the proof of it, do you know what he said?

“You are going to be fine, just give it time and it’ll be alright.”

I smiled all the way back to my room this morning, you see Lloyd has seen through his promise - because with help I have given it time, I’m actually fine and things are all right. I just needed reminding.

Boyce Van Rensburg