I walked into the hospital room to visit my cousin Jean Marie. She told me to come closer so she could smell my perfume. Spunky girl, that was her trick to get me to come near. "What's the good word for today?" she asked, apparently spotting my prayer book in my purse. She almost made me uncomfortable; she could see more about me than I wanted her to. "You brought the Good Word," she repeated and asked me to read to her the last psalm, Psalm 150. It was her favorite, she said. Her terminal heart disease did not dim the vision of the final triumph, "Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Alleluia!" that soon would be hers in a final and complete way. Even though young, forty-six, and a good candidate for a heart transplant, she said she didn't want someone else's heart.

   Only now does it become clear to me how Jean Marie could see with the eyes of her heart. For some it would be a blessing; for others, a burden; for others, a vocation. Henri Nouwen said, "My deepest vocation is to be a witness to the glimpses of God I have been allowed to catch."

   We've all seen the pictures. Who of us hasn't looked into the wide-open, soulful eyes of starving children and felt something tugging at our hearts? I wonder if this is the way that God looks at us. Perhaps that is the way God tricks us to come close.