Just Beyond Yourself: On Paying Attention
The angels have no wings
they come to you wearing
their own clothes
they have learned to love you
and will keep coming
unless you insist on wings
(Lucille Clifton)
At first, I did not think this encounter mattered enough to write about. It is made of quite ordinary materials: a doctor’s lab order, my taking a ticket and waiting, an open door and my name being called searchingly—Katelyn?—across an empty waiting room, as if there were anyone else to choose from. But if what happens in the waiting rooms and routine appointments of our lives does not matter, then what does? The most profoundly ordinary moments of our lives can and will reveal something beautiful and unexpected—if we are paying attention.
So here it is, the story of how an encounter with a phlebotomist reminded me of my humanity:
“Hi! I’m Alejandro,” he said while virtually bouncing into the sterile room, taking care to roll the r in his name with playful gusto, “And I’ll be your phlebotomist today. Do you have any questions before we get started?”
“Yes,” I said with trepidation. “How many vials of blood will you be taking?”
“All of them. We’re gonna do like sixteen vials,” He said—perfectly deadpan.
“You’re gonna take all my blood? Okay,” I grinned, rolling up my sleeve.
And then he asked the one question that dentists, nurses, and apparently phlebotomists ask to distract you from what they are about to do next:
“So, whatcha got going on the rest of the day?” he casually asked. (inserts needle)
“Hmm” (winces) “I’m just going home to do some work.”
Sensing by his swift intake of breath that he was gearing up for the inevitable follow up question, “Oh, and what do you do?” I hastened to add,
“I’m a freelance writer, so I’ll just be working on some writing projects.”
“Cool.” He said.
Apparently he sensed enough of an ‘Us-creatives-gotta-stick together; it’s-a-tough-world-out-there’ connection to casually volunteer what came next:
“I’m working on a suit of armor. But it’s not chainmail, it’s scale mail. Like chain mail, but made out of scales.”
(a beat of silence while taking this in)
“Wow. That’s so cool,” I responded, a bit stunned.
In my mind, there is only one obvious follow up question for someone who makes their own armor, so with my blood still steadily filling that single vial I asked,
“Are you, like, into Dungeons & Dragons?”
“Yeah,” he said with a rad nod of his head. “And Ren Fairs and stuff…it’s kinda dorky, I guess.”
“No it’s not!” I assured him, because I do believe that people who can role play their way into creating an entire world and embark upon an epic quest with only a piece of paper and several dice are extra in a very good way.
“I’m about to finish the top half,” he continued, “It’s copper plated, so it’s heavy. It already weighs about 15-20 pounds.”
Keeping in mind that the only local Ren Fair in the Seattle area I know of happens in the dead of summer, I was impressed. By this time he’d pulled the needle out and was screwing the cap on a very full vial.
“So when you’re done, it will weigh around 30-40 pounds?” I asked incredulously as he pressed a bit of cotton to my inner elbow.
“Yep!” He said while sliding to the other side of the room on his rolling seat, still holding my blood.
Not knowing if or how to end what had rapidly become a most intriguing interaction, I stood and asked,
“So. . . is there anything else you need from me?”
“Everything,” he said once more with a great deal of playful gravitas.
“Nahhh,” he continued, “Just for you to watch me put this sticker with your name on it onto this vial. See?” he said, holding it up to me, “This is your blood.”
As I watched this newly labled vial of vitality lifted exultantly into the air with the same reverence as the Holy Grail, I felt two things at once: the desire to lean in and contemplate its rich ruby hue, and the need to back away from a bodily fluid that had just seconds ago been happily pumping through my veins.
“Cool. Thanks,” I said with affected calmness as I turned to go. But after a couple of steps into the hallway, I remembered what was most important: “Good luck on your armor!” I yelled over my left shoulder.
“Thanks! Good luck on your book!” he yelled back.
I never told him I was working on a book.
I mean, sure—it’s an easy thing to intuit if someone tells you they’re a writer. But still, I was struck with the specificity of it, along with the vulnerability that comes from knowing we’ve been uniquely seen—whether they are aware of it or not—by a complete stranger. I had been working on my book proposal just that morning, and it was very much on my mind.
Sometimes I think that there are angels who confidently roll their r’s when introducing themselves and make copper scale mail in their spare time, when they’re not working on polishing The Full Armor of God.
Often I think God sends divine serendipities our way as a gentle nudge—a way of asking, “Are you paying attention?”
My interaction with Alejandro reminded me that I want to be a courageous person who lives and bleeds and creates and never gives up, even when the suit of armor is only half-finished. I want to make someone smile with the buoyancy of life, the sheer giddy exuberance of knowing we exist—a truth so easy to miss if we are not looking or living slowly enough to really savor our days, to pay the price of attention and reap its rich rewards. Most of all, I want to be someone who lives without the armor of suspicion towards my neighbor who is not like me, yet so very kindred.
Perhaps attention is the small price we pay when our eyes, tired of looking down and weary with virtual living, look up and re-behold the sacred wonder of our being, and of our being here—of sharing ‘here’ with a whole world of Image Bearers, and not only the ones we prefer to recognize. I wonder how many bushes, people, birds, sunsets aflame with God’s presence we walk past because we are checking our text messages. Rather than the aggressive introspection to which I often fall prey, my brief encounter with the burning bush named Alejandro helped me realize that my best hope for a sense of rootedness amid the chaos of our world lies in looking outside of myself.
In an On Being interview with Krista Tippett, poet David Whyte suggests that paying attention to what is both beyond us yet quite near actually expands our sense of presence, or rootedness, in the here-and-now:
I began to realize that my identity depended, not upon any beliefs I had, inherited beliefs or manufactured beliefs, but my identity actually depended on how much attention I was paying to things that were other than myself, and that as you deepen this intentionality and this attention, you started to broaden and deepen your own sense of presence.
It well may be that our encounters with those we will likely never see again are most poised to jolt us awake, to re-align and re-member our hearts with the beholding kind of vision we most long for as we seek the Kingdom in all things. In my life, I have found that strangers (angels?) do, in fact, “come to us wearing our own clothes” as the poet Lucille Clifton once wrote—holding up a mirror to our shy and reluctant selves as if to say, “Look up! Remember who you are. Remember you are here.”
Put another way, our encounters with ‘the other’ put us, mercifully, just beyond ourselves:
Just beyond
yourself.
It’s where
you need
to be.
Half a step
into
self-forgetting
and the rest
restored
by what
you’ll meet.
(David Whyte)
As I walked up the front steps of my home, eager to tell Drew of my unexpectedly delightful encounter with a phlebotomist (never thought I’d write that sentence), a flash of color caught my eye. Exultant velvety pink flowers that I hadn’t noticed before were beginning to bud and bloom, dotting our swarthy green bush with vibrancy and signs of new life—a minor miracle in February.
The camellias have begun to bloom, I whispered to myself with a sense of awe, before taking the next step towards the familiarity of home.
And so I ask, with tenderness and conviction, knowing I need to hear this question most of all:
Are you paying attention to what is just beyond yourself?
If not,
Look up!
Remember who you are.
Remember you are here.
(may it be so.)
Going Deeper: Listen to David Whyte recite his poem, “Just Beyond Yourself”