Imagine having the worst day you could ever have. Your coffee spills on your hand, you realize Spanish 103 was not something you should've tested into and your communication class has yet again to be something you find ridiculously hard to keep up with. Its your typical Thursday at Loyola and I'm sitting in line waiting for the shuttle to take me home and away from the world for 20 minutes with my iPod....never mind it just died.
Continuing my conversation with my friend Jeff as I put away my iPod and we wait together I try to forget about the stress of this day and ask God for just some answer to help me get through this day. I don't know where I'm going, or why I'm going this way...give me a freaking answer. Within a moment a small frail woman in a red pea coat came down the corridor with a stack of small white pieces of paper. She began handing them out to each person in line and sometimes saying hello to familiar faces. This woman was cute in the way that she would smile as if she had given you the world and all its answers within that one grin.
When the woman with the red pea coat had reached my friend and I she handed me a paper, smiled, and continued to walk through the line. The whole line began to draw quiet and like a row of dominos, lifted their heads after reading and awe. Quickly I scanned the paper that read:
"Nothing is more practical than finding God, that is, than falling in a love in a quite absolute, final way. What you are in love with , what seizes your imagination will affect everything.
It will decide what will get you out of bed in the mornings, what you will do with your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, who you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything."
- attributed to Pedro Arrupe, S.J., from 1965-1983, Superior General of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits)
Who was that woman with the red peacoat? I may never get to meet her. The lesson of the importance a stranger can make in your life continues, she may never know that she brought the answer to my problems that day but she felt the need to share her love for the community. By supplying the bus line with a reflective thought she has made a small difference in the world.
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