hmm...sleep continues to elude me. So more random musings!

Sketches of Faith
My father is an infectious disease physician. He treats people from every walk of life. From the very affluent to the most impoverished, from the highly intelligent to the salt of the earth, from the slight cough to the terminal cancer, he cares for them all. In their sufferings, he sees all that is good and bad in mankind. In them, he views all human dignity and all human fallacy. This knowledge haunts him, for the energy of his agile mind is directed always toward their health; its powers cannot be allowed to assess the lessons his patients afford him. So these stories lay dusty, cluttering the back of his brain like pieces of a mighty jigsaw puzzle whose solution might bring him peace. Might bring peace to many. At night sometimes, his many sleepless nights, you can watch the pieces struggling to put themselves together in the shadow that moves across his eyes, in his silences. His life is too short and too full to do more than simply collect the fragments. Sometimes he shares them with me though, holds them out to me like secret treasures, shimmering with the promise of something majestic, yet fragile still, like the most delicate glass or the weakest wisp of flame. I hold them close, knowing perhaps better than he does that he's given me the keys to the world.

My dad tells me many stories about a Dr. Roberts, the man who inspired him to go into medicine. He was a remarkable man in many ways, but this is the keystone of his character, and it is beautiful.
There are times when a person enters the hospital, and there is nothing that can be done for him. There is no hope for his survival. It is only a matter of time before he is dead. Yet, every so often, defying every medical convention and every sense of reason, a person survives who simply should not have lived, who technically has no right to be alive. There is no explanation. Well, no logical explanation, anyway. In Dr. Roberts' career, this happened but rarely, and whenever it did, he carefully jotted down that person's name and then offered that person free medical care for life. An act of generosity? Not exactly. His reasoning is that this person is alive for a reason. Providing free medical care ensures that he'll come back. Dr. Roberts can keep track of him and hopefully discover why this person had to survive, what great purpose he had to fulfil. A worthwhile curiosity, and I wonder if he ever found his answers...