The Unclad Soul

Dear God, Jesus, and the Blessed Virgin Mary. Help us in the hour of our need. The lessons you taught us about kindness, tolerance, and acceptance of others, have lost their value in our day. The love you demonstrated has been ignored and replaced with political power, religious hypocrisy, and a spirit of meanness and self-righteous arrogance. We are not, as your followers or as good Americans, guided by the Beatitudes, but by branding forces of money and greed. We ignore the lesson of the Good Samaritan and, like the priest and the Levite who simply walked on by not wanting to get involved with the wounded victim, we too, are self-absorbed and blasphemous in our indifference to the hurting of others. You taught us to love the little children, to care for the poor and forgotten, to stand up to evil, especially when it is disguised as Christianity, as God’s Will, as faith, and yes, as patriotism. I know you cannot make us do what is right and honorable. To believe in you i...

There is a scene in the first episode of the Showtime series "Nurse Jackie" where she consoles a young unmarried girl whose boyfriend, a bike courier, had just died of injuries in a bike accident on his way to work in the crushing traffic of New York City. The girl—poor, pregnant, wearing a stained t-shirt and asking what she is going to do, that she doesn’t even have money to get a cab home—sits on a bench in the hallway outside the chapel in All Saints Catholic Hospital. Jackie, a morally complicated, fiercely dedicated nurse but who is herself addicted to pain killers and whose personal life is a disaster, stands next to the girl and gently puts her hand on the girl’s head and draws her to her. Nothing is said. Just that moment of tenderness. As the scene ends and the camera pulls away from them, we see behind them at the end of the hallway set into the wall, a beautifully sculptured figure of Jesus with his arms extended.   I don’t know what Christianity is anymore....