who has taken the time to speak with me and find out how I’m doing.”
Though the matter was quickly laid to rest, it seemed to be a turning point for Matt; from then on, some acquaintances say, he began to take life more seriously and to engage in fewer antics. Others disagree. According to them, the real change came later, after Matt spent a five-month stint at the Open Door, an Atlanta outreach that runs a soup kitchen and a shelter for the homeless. In a letter to his parents, he wrote:
This morning I served breakfast and noticed several people who must have AIDS. They’re obviously in pretty bad shape but are still out on the street . . . A lot of people are sick with colds, too, and tired from having to walk around all the time. Every night we give out blankets to whoever needs them. The homeless aren’t allowed to sit in public places; the police run them off if they have no permanent address. But it’s pretty amazing that almost every one of them is cheerful, or at least makes the effort to look cheerful, when coming through the food line. You know that they probably didn’t get much sleep last night, and that it was down to about 35 degrees. They have every reason to be upset. They don’t really have anything to live for. Yet still they smile at you and say good morning. It sure challenges me.
Last Sunday we had a pretty good meeting. The theme of the sermon was John the Baptist and his call to repentance. It sounded really familiar, but sort of refreshing. . . .
A few months later, Matt returned to the Bruderhof and asked to become a member. Shortly afterward he was baptized. A few days before this, in a meeting where he and several other peers were asked to explain why they wanted to be baptized, he said:
I need to find a relationship with God and with everybody here . . . I’ve been a rotten example. I am determined not to talk a lot, but to show my faith in deeds. Up till now . . . I’ve been pretending to be focused on God when I really wasn’t; I made people think I was a Christian, or that I was dedicated to this way of life. I haven’t been. That’s where I’m going to change . . .
It was this same honesty about himself that touched many people a year and a half later, in the days that followed Matt’s return home from the hospital. Understandably, most patients who have just been diagnosed with a serious illness are primarily concerned with their physical condition. Matt, too, was worried about that, and peppered his doctors with questions – What was the cause of the lymphoma? How effective was the treatment supposed to be? What were his chances of survival? What did this or that medical term mean? But his overriding concern was his spiritual state. It was, Jonathan recalls, as if Matt sensed that his life had taken an irreversible turn, and that no matter what the outcome, he needed to set his life in order.
I dropped by Matt’s room two days after he’d been discharged and noticed that he’d been crying. I asked him what was up and he told me, in brief, that he had had a long talk with his dad, and that he felt he had to deepen his life. He said there were things on his conscience that he needed to tell someone about. He also said he felt “scared and lonely.” I suggested that he try to get out of the house in the next few days, even if he felt rotten. Maybe that would help. But he just looked past me and said, “My relationship with God is not what it should be.” I assured him that all of us needed to deepen our lives, not just him, and that his illness was helping us all to realize our need for God. Matt just lay there with big wet eyes, staring straight ahead, absorbing the gravity of his personal situation. Looking at him I suddenly realized that each of us needs such a moment.
Two weeks later, Matt wrote Christoph, a trusted friend and senior pastor of the Bruderhof:
There is a passage in the Bible [James 5:13-16] which is very important to me right now. It talks about telling each other your sins so that your prayers will be heard and answered. Making sure that all of my sins are confessed and forgiven, and asking forgiveness of people whom I’ve hurt, has never been so important to me as it is right now . . . more important than physical healing. When your need for God outweighs your need to appear flawless in front of the people around you, repentance becomes something you long for, not dread. I experienced this very personally when I came home from the hospital. I knew it was literally a matter of life or death to straighten out my relationship with God if I was going to get through my illness.
In the weeks and months that followed, Matt would often confide in Christoph, and the answers he received were a source of deep comfort to him. To recount just one conversation, in Christoph’s words:
I told him that having cancer means having one’s personal power dismantled, and that perhaps God was trying to speak to him through it. I also reminded him that he had everything going for him up till now: he was young and strong and handsome and gifted. He had the world by the tail. But now God was saying, “Uh-uh. You’re no good to me.” God had allowed him to have cancer. It was a terrific blow – there was no question. But perhaps God couldn’t use him with all his gifts. I said, “Matt, God had to bring you low, because God works in the weak. Now you have to ask for strength to accept it.” Amazingly, he agreed. He said, “I hear what you’re saying. It’s going to be hard, but that’s what I have to do.”
Cynthia
Around the same time that Matt came back from Atlanta, Cynthia, an old friend of his, returned from Haiti, where she had been doing similar work. Though Matt lived in Pennsylvania and Cynthia in New York, they had kept in touch for years.
Cynthia, a feisty young woman, was a little on the wild side. She was also known for her capacity to talk nonstop, to get into heated arguments, and to hold her own when someone stepped on her toes. She was, in other words, a perfect match for Matt.
After high school, Cynthia first tried college, and then a restaurant job at a four-star resort. Neither seemed to click. It was only during a stint in Haiti, where she worked for the national press corps (and later at a hospital), that things began to happen. In her words: “I went to Haiti with very little need for God, my parents, or my friends. I felt like I could handle anything the world could throw at me. I soon found out that I was wrong.” She also found out that the rules people played by at home in New York meant nothing in Port-au-Prince, a teeming city that often seemed more like a simmering cauldron of destitution and violence.
After a few months there, Cynthia moved to Cap Haitian, a smaller, less frenetic city. She arrived sick, and found her room crawling with cockroaches. What weighed most on her, however, was a nagging sense of helplessness. She felt directionless and alone. Writing to her parents, she said:
My main problem at the moment is the social life. Wherever I go here I have to run away from men. Everybody wants me because I’m white. There’s a girl working at the hospital here whom I like, but her crowd smokes weed and parties all night. Basically I have to say no all the time to everything that comes my way, and I don’t think I’ll be able to last much longer.
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