Instructions for heading off suicide

A visiting psychologist told my daughter's class in school about a man who committed suicide. They later found in his apartment a note taped to the mirror that read, "I am going to jump off the bridge today. If anyone smiles at me on the way, I won't do it." I cannot prove that it's a true story, but I'm sure it is many a true story. And now I hate all the times I have walked down the street studiously avoiding eye contact.

Early this summer my son was on his way to play softball with the other guys from his glass-blowing studio. The route was detoured because someone had just jumped off the bridge near Fairmount Park. (It was a beautiful Sunday morning, my son adds, editorially.) How interesting to think about this---that on a Saturday night when you're busy laying out your baseball glove and stocking the cooler with beer, someone across town is planning how he's going to get to the bridge.

Smiling at strangers is one of those low-level risks. The worst that can happen is that they won't smile back. I realize it's not feasible to flash our pearly whites at every pedestrian who broaches our personal space. But we are told to imitate Jesus and the Apostles (1 Corinthians 4:16; 11:1), and I would like to broaden that out from mere doctrinal positions to the method of pavement pounding.

We read of the encounter of Peter and John and the street beggar as if it happened in the manner of those stylized cast bronze bas relief Stations of the Cross. No doubt the actuality was not so tidy. An undifferentiated mass of sick, lame, and outcast people draped like wallpaper around the entrance of the temple. "Peter directed his gaze as did John, and said, 'Look at us'" (Acts 3:4). Imagine how special that man felt---not to say shocked.

Paul also met a crippled man in a crowd. "And Paul, looking intently at him and seeing that he had faith to be made well" (Acts 14:9), proceeded to heal him. I would say you have to look at someone pretty closely to see that he has faith to be made well.

These men the apostles helped were all outcasts. Like the man who taped the note to his mirror. Or the one who dropped off a bridge on a sunny Sunday morning. Or like Hagar, who was a footnote and distraction in the great drama of Abraham and Sarah, and found herself dumped in the wilderness, contemplating high bridges, as it were. The Bible says "the angel of the Lord found her" (Genesis 16:7), and it is undeniable that he found her because he was looking for her. Hagar was so moved by this that she gave God a new name: "You are the God of seeing" (v.13).

I want to learn how to see, and to learn how to walk down street. I want to take it literally that "Whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked" (1 John 2:6).

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