It was an event that had been a long time in the planning, and those responsible had planned well. Nearly a year ago I agreed to travel to another city to speak at a conference for single adults – and when the week arrived, I felt prayed-up and ready to go. There were four other speakers on the agenda – and I was most decidedly NOT the star attraction. Others whose names were readily recognized were slated to speak before me, and I was glad.
Well – I was glad until I saw them illuminated on a gi-normous (that’s giant + enormous) big screen behind the podium while each of them spoke. Not that they didn’t look great. They did. What unnerved me was that in a few short hours, I’d be that big and looming down on my real, smaller self – and I didn’t want to be super-sized in front of a lot of people I didn’t know. (Who would, really?)
It would be impossible to count the number of words that have been spoken and penned in the last few days about the poet, philosopher, priest and prelate who died on Saturday. News networks have opined non-stop: from interviewing almost anyone who would sit still long enough for questions about what the pontiff’s legacy might become, or what their single, shining moment in his presence had been like, to the value of the Vatican’s vast art collection (one euro on the Holy See accounting ledger; inestimable according to Christie’s and Sotheby’s.)
Much of the information offered about the life of Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II was fascinating; bits of it were endearing – almost all of it was inspiring. But the news “factoid” that stopped me cold was this one: the Pope, since his most recent hospitalization, had been undergoing speech therapy. At the age of 84, with muscles frozen by Parkinson’s, a fresh tracheotomy scar and a new feeding tube, the old man was quietly and resolutely working to regain…his voice.