I had my annual physical scheduled for today, exactly one year after the last one. Granted, this has been a busy year physically, what with an old knee problem addressed as well as repairs made to my jaw after the unfortunate surfboard collision last summer. However, July 25th has been, for a few years now, the standard day on which I have my comprehensive physical examination. More comprehensive than ever, considering I turn 50 this fall.
In the middle of the night I had this nagging feeling that something wasn’t right. It occurred to me, too late to do anything about it, that no one from the doctor’s office had called to remind me like they usually do. However, this doctor’s office for the past year has been remarkably disorganized. Lately I’ve treated them like a third-world clinic, with a combination of great patience and low expectations. So, I guess I wasn’t really too worried. After all, who’s going to forget a long-time, paying customer?
Maybe I should have been worried. Did I say today was to be the day of my annual physical? Yeah, well, the best laid plans, etc. I suppose it would have been one thing for the doctor’s office to have marked my appointment, scheduled for the last twelve months, as “cancelled”, which they did, but to be told that my name could not be found on the computer system just lent a kind of splendor to it all. "Are you sure you're a patient of the doctor's?"
They were willing to re-schedule me for October. Thanks. I’ll just have the doctor look at this possible case of skin cancer in a couple of months; it’ll wait.
After some begging, they did take my blood. I think there’s a metaphor in that somewhere. Unfortunately, this was done only after the woman at the reception desk engaged in a whispery conversation with the nurse about "this patient". Ladies, please, I'm here for my physical, not for a hearing test. If you're going to whisper about me, at least do it from more than ten feet away.
I returned home earlier than I expected and, since I didn’t want to let the entire morning be a complete botch, decided that it was time to update my online profile with the Church Deployment Office at ECUSA HQ in New York. This is all done on computers now, of course. Since I’m about to be, yet again, unemployed for a questionable period of time, and since prospects in my profession are slimmer than ever, it pays to be on top of these things.
After accessing my site, I went to update my work history, something I haven’t done for a couple of years. Now I’ve worked in and for the Episcopal Church almost exclusively since 1982. Given that I change parishes almost annually, and that I’ve served in seven different dioceses as a monk, seminarian, school and port chaplain, seminary instructor, vicar, priest-in-charge, and interim rector, it claims a lot more space than does the resume of the average ordained member of the Church. Well, at least it should claim more space.
My work history was empty. As in nothing there. As in nada. Skint. Zero. Kaputski.
For all intents and purposes, today I ceased to exist both professionally and medically.
While this may mean I won’t ever be able to get another job, perhaps I’ll never have a medical condition either.
It is a remarkable thing to become "invisible" in one day. This is one of the reasons that, in the early church, the practice of excommunication was so terrible. Not only could the punished not receive the sacrament, but it also ostracized them from the rest of society. When the church did everything from run banks to hold the rights to property to place the crown on the king’s head, to be removed from all of that left one virtually invisible and intangible.
Going back further to the Jerusalem of the 1st century, that spiritual, and sometimes social, invisibility felt and shared by many of the Jews drove them, as “sheep without a shepherd”, to Jesus, who not only related to them as an average rabbi might to the finest members of the Temple, but he also reminded them that God was God for all, not just for those pre-approved by an obtuse body of men.
It’s not a terminal thing to have nine years of your medical history, or twenty-four years of your professional history, erased, as these things can be restored rather easily these days. It took me about an hour, but I was able to re-enter all of my work history; because of medical insurance companies and their sublime fussiness in record-keeping, it took less time to create my own copy of my medical history.
There is, however, a belonging that, in its liberation and communion, impossible to erase, even by fissile-necked humans who often feel unworthy or beyond the love of God. For all the changes and chances that we encounter in the mortal realm, for all of the unexpected moments, God’s love is there, changeless and total, and ever ready for us to receive. It never disappears and we are always known. "I have not forgotten you. See, I have carved your name in the palm of my hand."