God speaks to each of us in ways we can understand. For Moses, a smoking bush seemed to do the trick. For Noah, forty days aboard the ark had him convinced. But these days, floods and fires don't seem to cut it any more. In an age of cynicism, it seems that the only way that God can reach us is inadvertently, through the back door of our workaday worlds.
Now, it seems to me that God paid such a visit to my father last week, a dermatologist and hardened New Yorker, whose religious conviction stops just short of Atheism. He had been despondent for weeks over lack of funding for his melanoma research.
"Have faith," I told him. "You have faith," he snapped back. "I've got to get to the office," and he headed for his dermatology clinic in a grumpy huff. I shouted after him, "The only way you would ever acknowledge the hand of God was if it showed up in your office with a wart or a pimple!"
Not ten minutes later, his first patient arrived, an Orthodox Jewish man from Israel, who was visiting relatives in Borough Park for the month. His cousins had insisted that he make an appointment with my father after noticing a suspicious rash that traveled in a spiral down the man's arm and across his forehead. After a complete medical history and a battery of tests my father concluded that the man could only be suffering from one thing:"Teffilin Dermatitis." Apparently, his patient was an ardent davener, and wore his teffilin for several hours each morning, thereby enabling his skin to form an allergic reaction to the leather straps of his phylacteries. But that was only the beginning.
Several hours later, a Moslem man came in to the office. He was sporting two enormous lumps of calloused skin on the front of his ankles. A clinical examination and a couple of key questions yielded an unusual diagnosis: "Prayer Nodules." My father learned that the patient was a religious man, having prayed on his ankles three times a day for the last fifteen years. "All of my friends have them too!" the man told my father enthusiastically, while smearing antibiotic salve on his newly diagnosed disorder.
Meanwhile, angel number three was filling out a Medicaid form in the waiting room. She was a middle aged woman who, according to my father, was nervous and sweaty. He recognized her symptoms right away. She had a specific type of physiology associated with Hysterical Personality Disorder-one that enabled her to bleed below the first layer of skin on her arms, spontaneously. In New Testament circles, they call it "stigmata."
Still, my father was unimpressed. Even in the language of skin, he couldn't see the divine. Don't you realize that was God's handiwork, dad?!," I asked him over the phone, after hearing about his unusual case load that day. My father chuckled cynically and hung up the phone. But fifteen minutes later he called me back His voice was quivering slightly, as he regaled me with astonishing news. He had just received a fax from abroad, announcing a three year commitment to funding for his research.
Call me a cockeyed optimist, but I think my skeptical dad may have seen the light, even though its gentle radiance was, in this case, only skin deep.
Lisa Lipkin is a professional storyteller and freelance writer, currently residing in New York City. She can be reached at Lip2@aol.com
Copyright 1999 Lisa Lipkin
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