Jesus Before the Metaphor

Attending to the Soul with the Body

This is a picture of me with my firstborn son. It was on the desk of a woman who loved us, who died this week. She was not a relative, or a confidante. We did not speak the same language–her English was better than my (non-existent) Spanish, but I doubt either of us ever understood much more than a paragraph or two that the other spoke. I know nothing of her inner life, or even of most of the external circumstances of her life, either before or after the years that we saw each other weekly. She didn’t know my politics or my favorite color, and all I knew about her at first was that she was a kindly lady in Relief Society and wanted to earn some money cleaning houses.

I had never had anyone clean my house, and I was embarrassed at how desperately I needed help. I had a healthy but difficult baby who didn’t sleep much, and was just learning what an utterly incompetent housekeeper I am. She came, maybe once a week, maybe more often; I was too tired to remember. The dust bunnies disappeared, as did the sticky spots on the floor. Bookshelves were straightened and mounds of laundry turned into tidy, sweet-smelling stacks. Soon she started to clean the refrigerator, which somehow always meant turning little scraps of leftovers into delicious soup. I suspect, though I was never able to prove for certain, that she started bringing a few things from her own house for the soup. That, or sorcery. She worked miracles with rice that I believe the good Lord would envy.

Every week when we got to church, she met us at the door and scooped my baby out of my arms. Occasionally, he would get hungry and she’d bring him to me, but mostly he enjoyed being cooed at in Spanish for three hours, and I occasionally enjoyed a nap in a quiet classroom. One of my baby’s first words was “Dia,” his approximation of “Sister Diaz.”

I was grateful, awkwardly. I gladly paid her for her work, and I tried to be generous. But I worried about where the lines were between work and love–I knew that she was giving me more than I was giving her, and that she was not counting the cost and didn’t want me to, either. So we went on like that–she helped me, graciously, and I appreciated it, awkwardly. And then I moved away, and it was hard to keep in touch, because we didn’t have words for each other, because my life turned out to be as much of a mess as my house had been–definitely not Christmas-card worthy, nothing to write home about, as they say.

A few months ago, knowing, I think, that she was ill and might not have a long time left, she sent me a message on Facebook, with this image, which she had kept on her desk for all of my prodigal years. (It was a lot of years–that baby is almost 25). After that, we exchanged messages a few times–hers were all in Spanish, mostly with extraordinarily cheesy memes and lots of hearts. Only now I understood. Well-scrubbed Christmas cards wouldn’t have changed her feeling for me any more than my endlessly messy house had. She had seen me with eyes of love, always, seen me steadily and held my image in her heart, not because I am special, but because I needed her.

I am ashamed still, to tell this story. It could be read as condescending. There are layers of class and race all over it–a film of greasy dust as ugly as what’s on the top of the fridge if you forget to clean it for a year. It could seem like a sappy bid for absolution for not having been a good friend, a hopeful penance for not staying in touch. A sentimental eulogy that doesn’t begin to cover the most important parts of her life. All of that is true. But the truest story, I think, is just this:

She saw (before I did) that we needed each other, and was willing to be devoted to me and my child in ways none of us quite understood. It is precisely in such need and such devotion that we learn that Jesus did not come to offer us metaphors. When he said “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst,” he meant that his disciples should actually feed each other. There are metaphors there, but first there is bread. Rice. Soup. Perhaps “come unto me, ye that are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,” is best translated “hand over the baby and take a nap.”

When Jesus recognized his mother’s earnest care for the wedding guests she was serving, made that care the occasion of his first miracle, he was teaching us that tending to the comfort and simple joys of others is not only “women’s work,” but God’s. When he noticed the work of the woman who swept the whole house looking for what was lost, and compelled us to see her, he was teaching us that the women who sweep are the queens of heaven. When Jesus asked the Samaritan woman at the well for water, he was teaching us that the first act of discipleship is to care for the bodies of the holy creatures around us.

Rest in peace and light, Sister Diaz. Thank you for teaching me what it means for the hungry to be filled with good things

This essay was originally published at By Common Consent in October, 2021.

Kristine Haglund is is a Wayfare Senior Editor, a past editor of Dialogue, and the author of Eugene England: A Mormon Liberal.

Art by Diego Rivera.