Reading the book You Are Here by a Vietnamese Buddhist Monk Thich Nhat Han reminds me of an experience I had at Lourdes in last July.

Throngs of sick people come to Lourdes every year hoping for healing in the miraculous waters where Our Lady of Lourdes appeared to a young peasant woman named Bernadette Soubirous in 1858. I had heard so much about the transformative experience of helping bathe the sick. It seemed that the bathes of Lourdes is the place where you heal along with those who came to be healed.

As a first time volunteer, I was sent wherever the help was most needed. To my dismay, I kept getting sent to the plateau, the waiting area covered by an awning where weary pilgrims seeking healing patiently sit for hours in order to be admitted into the baths.

If the bathes are the main attraction of Lourdes, plateau is the purgatory where the sick wait outside in the sweltering platform for hours and hours. If the bathes are too full. the line closes, sometimes causing a small riot to break out. There are people in wheelchairs and stretchers, children with feeding tubes, cancer patients with their families, and the elderly with walkers. The volunteers distribute water to waiting pilgrims and follow a convoluted system of letting people into one of the three open doors using hand signals that often get misinterpreted.

I stood in front of one of the doors that guard the bathes. The more experienced volunteers stayed inside the bathes, and periodically someone would come out and tell me a number of people we can let in. I would then hold up this number as a hand signal to the person guarding the people at the end of the waiting line.  I kept lamenting the fact that the process was slow. I felt like I could fix it. There had to be a way to make the line go faster, to make communication clearer between the volunteer who’s guarding the end of the line and the volunteer receiving the people into the baths. Optimizing the process would lessen the sufferings of already suffering pilgrims. The engineer inside of me was screaming. If this was an algorithm, it had an exponential runtime when it did not have to be. I voiced my frustration multiple times to the Lourdes volunteer, Tricia, who patiently listened and empathized with me.

I am tired of the plateau. My feet and my lower back hurt. I’m frustrated by the inefficiency of this system. I want to be somewhere else. I want to be inside the bathes, helping the sick, witnessing miracles.

This is what I thought to myself, rather bitterly, on my fifth hour of the second day on the plateau. But God, or the volunteer director at Lourdes, kept sending me back to the plateau over and over again for multiple days in a row. 

It must have been around my fifth or sixth shift on the plateau that I started asking why. Why God, are you sending me to the plateau? What’s here for me? Then surprisingly, I heard a small voice that whispered back to me. I will teach you everything you need to know on this plateau. I will teach you everything you need to know on this plateau.

The next day, where I again found myself on the plateau, a skinny and petite girl with dark unruly strands of wavy hair from rural France stood next to me. Her name was Annelise. She caught my eye because she reminded me of one of my best friends, Maryann. Annelise wore round Harry Potter glasses and started chatting to me about her housemate, a Polish exchange student who always stayed indoors, did not care to dance, nor bike outside even though she was overweight. All this was said matter of factly with genuine bewilderment and without meanness. She offered me a chocolate-covered biscuit during the second shift when I was seriously lacking glucose. I immediately took a liking to this little friend who carried snacks!

What struck me about this petite new friend of mine was that she moved with mindfulness. Each of her movement was never urgent nor rushed. Annelise floated on the plateau like a little angel dressed in white, smiling and gently ushering people to move up the line. She gestured like a ballerina, whereas I patrolled like a traffic cop. And she was suffering from mononucleosis all the while volunteering like a champ with a smile. I figured she was sent to the plateau by God to teach me a lesson in humility.

I started observing and imitating Annelise. I moved slowly with mindfulness, accepting the slowness and respecting the system that was put into place before I was even alive, and trusting that it works. I felt peace in this new way of surrendering to what is. Then insights came pouring in like rain. I finally acknowledged that I was a first-year volunteer, here at Lourdes to serve and not to fix or overthrow the existing system. I also realized that I was being watched. My energy reverberated to everyone around me. When I moved urgently, behaved sternly, or betrayed frustration, the people in line mirrored it. I added to the agitation and suffering of the pilgrims. When I found quiet acceptance in my heart, I could then give peace to those in line. The plateau, all of a sudden, transformed from hell to a place where community of those in seeking healing could pray the rosary together. It became a holy place.

After many days on the plateau, I was asked to serve inside the baths. That too was a spiritual experience. I was privy to vulnerability and faith of those who came heal. I remember my hands; they had never felt so warm with loving compassion. They had touched so many people, helped them in and out of their clothes, their soiled diapers, their thick socks, their wheelchairs, helped bathe the sick, witnessed their prayer, suffering, and deep faith. But somehow that experience, as powerful as it was, did not teach me as much as my experience in the plateau. God finds us in unexpected places. He answers when we ask. Then he supplies us with insights that we didn’t even know we needed. 

When I shared this story with my friend Maryann, she said that everything that happened - the disappointing breakup, my experience at Lourdes, the pandemic, and the indefinite postponement of my thesis film - were all happening for a reason. “Grace, he’s trying to teach you about faith!” She shouted gleefully. I think I know what she means; faith, the kind of faith that frees oneself from the desires and fears. The kind of of faith that will help me confidently surrender to God and allow me to be open to the holy spirit. I am grateful for the plateau and all the events that force me to surrender in order to find peace.