Now it is acknowledged weakness, dependency, that has finally opened all the doors between us. I am closer to the physical man than I have ever been because I had to wash him the first weeks, because I knew his every muscle and stiff place as if they were my own. And in that time some warmth began to flow through him. I shall never forget the way he clasped my hand when at last he could use his hands again—the strength of the love in that handclasp! After that, and in all these weeks, we have moved into a deepening phase where we are closer as souls than ever before. Sometimes the communion is through words—we have talked and talked about everything under the sun, including ourselves, and our parents, and very often about Willard and all it means. Cornelius turns Willard over and over in his mind as if it were a kaleidoscope and the pattern shifted and reassorted itself as he is aware of new elements in the design. Heavens, how little we ever had time for talk of this sort until now! Partly, I suppose, because his chief concerns were beyond my understanding, and didn’t, au fond, interest me enough—the bank, the state of the market, the trends—all that. The very words bore me as I write them. I have never found money a fascinating subject, only an embarrassing one. But at last we have been able to talk even about that—about being rich, and how it both enlarged us in one way and in others, certain human ones especially perhaps, has been a limiting thing, a kind of enclosure.

Oh, it is so wonderful to have time to talk at last! Sometimes I feel that it is pride that has been peeling off, like the skins of an onion. We now, for the first time in our lives, depend on others. We could hardly manage without Ellen, without Nick, without the village. But, on a different level from that one of physical dependency, we are learning so much about the human beings here. I am so moved by the way Cornelius listens—to a dear thing like Susie Plummer, for instance, whom he would have regarded as a figure of fun even a year ago.

Must we be weak and accept our weakness to begin to see? Is it in just this sense that power corrupts? (Money is power, of course.) Is it only when power goes, ambition in a worldly sense, that driving need, as in the old Cornelius, to manage, instruct, dominate everyone, including his own children—is it only when one becomes humble—humble as a cripple—that one begins to live?

I started this long sermon to myself because I felt so lit up by Eben. Then, as so often happens, it became something else—it drew me back to Cornelius, the deep, fulfilling center.

Chapter 6

CHAPTER 6