MORE THAN SKIN DEEP

Rachel Joyce in her novel The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry tells the story of a retired gentleman who goes on both an unlikely and unintended pilgrimage. Harold Fry receives a letter from a former colleague who tells him that she is dying of cancer. He writes her a  letter to cheer her up and promises to come see her, encouraging her to hang on until he gets there hoping that his visit will somehow lift her spirits and perhaps even reverse the cancer.

Harold writes the letter, places I an envelope, puts a stamp on the envelope and heads to the mailbox to send it on its way. When Harold arrives at the mailbox, instead of depositing the letter, he keeps on walking, eventually all the way to the nursing home where she resides – 500 miles away.

Harold has no change of clothes and his yachting shoes are not made for such excursions, certainly not 500 miles worth. He has no cell phone, indispensable these days, and little cash; but he does have a credit card which he uses to find lodging along the way when he can’t sleep under trees and pay for food to keep up his strength for the journey. The only problem is that he knows the money he is spending (wasting? he wonders) is depleting the retirement funds he and his wife are counting on to see them through the rest of their lives.

No one knows about Harold’s adventure in the beginning, not even his wife. But eventually word gets out and he begins to attract hangers-on who make part of the journey with him. He also attracts the attention of the press, print and video. He becomes a curiosity piece to many. But he also becomes somewhat of a folk hero as well. Joyce writes: “They believed in him. They looked at his yachting shoes, and listened to what he said, and they made a decision in their hearts and minds to ignore the evidence and to imagine something bigger and something infinitely more beautiful than the obvious.”

What people, at least some people, began to see in Harold went much further than skin deep. They saw what was not visibly obvious to those who see no further than their own noses, as it were. Those who saw with different eyes were able to look beyond the outward appearances and into the depths of this man, this pilgrim, and see so much more. And they knew deep in their hearts that if there were so much more to Harold Fry, then there was so much more to the one who looked back at them every morning in the bathroom mirror. And that gave them hope.

In many ways in his own unacknowledged awareness Harold Fry was a Christ figure. Jesus was constantly reminding those who could not see in themselves what he saw in them: they were good people, people loved by God even though society thought them to be losers, sinners, foolish, whatever. Jesus always looked beyond the surface, beyond the outer appearances, beyond the skin, deep into the person him- or herself. So must we.

We need to see in ourselves and see in others what Jesus sees no matter what the outward appearances may be: a child of God, beloved of God.