Bound

"I want communion."
She looked at me steadily.

"I wish I could, ma'am. But I didn't bring Jesus with me today," I said as steadily.
"I've been here since March. I can't wait to get out of here," she continued.

"I need communion too," her husband added.

It had taken Trúc and I 30 minutes to get to the rehab center when it was usually only a 3 minute drive. We were about to give up on the confusing detour signs. Until we saw another car drive the wrong way down the street and decided upon the same risk.

We were about to leave the center when I heard a distinct comment.
"Look, some nuns are leaving."
Doris Jahn was wrapped in a soft tan afghan and did not appear any less formidable for being wheelchair-bound.

"One nun, ma'am. One nun. My sister here is still in training," I turned around and said pleasantly, pointing to my aspirant Trúc. Every resident we encountered at the rehab center was an enigma. One could never tell if they were unstable because they were mentally incapacitated or they chose to be incapacitated out of despair.

"I want communion," Doris repeated.
"Besides us, there are others who want it too. It's like, we're inmates here," Carl, her husband murmured.

It was suppose to be a short visit to the rehab center because Trúc was busy. The detour had drained time. We had already visited a friend whom we both knew before she suffered brain damage. I was going to return another day to visit my other two "regulars."

Then we met Doris.
"I want communion."

She said this unabashedly.
She said this three times in our fifteen-minute conversation.

She was referring to Holy Communion, when Catholics receive Jesus in the Eucharist.
Most people think of Jesus in the bread and the wine.

Communion (communio) in Latin means fellowship.
To know the other fellow is on the same ship with you.
The ship of human frailty, human wonderings, and human yearnings.

Yearnings which refuse to be wheel-chair bound.
Or time-bound.
Or earthbound.

I wondered what Lazarus felt when he walked out of his tomb that day.
He had been dead for four days.
He smelled awful. (John 11:1-45)

He was bound in strips of cloth.
And Jesus had told his friends to unbound him.
Yet, he knew he was going to die again anyways.

I wondered what he let bound him.
Strips of cloth? Time? Earth?

I wondered what I bound others in.
I wondered what I bound myself in.

Are you truly free, living in this land of the free and the home of the brave?
Are you brave enough to be free?

ps. Explanation of picture:
The caterpillar, bound by the cocoon, becomes free in the end.