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You Can Have My Liver

SARA BOYLES
My friend Harry has a special way of seeing the world. He is the Toronto Community Chaplain for men released from federal correctional facilities. This recent column, taken from his newsletter, reflects his creative vision. By the way, Toronto Community Chaplaincy is looking for volunteers. If you are interested, speak to Sara.
Sara!

"You Can Have My Liver"

This past Sunday one of the lectionary texts came from Philippians 2, that great hymn to Christ who "emptied himself…and became obedient to the point of death".

A few years ago a social worker asked me to see a young prisoner at Guelph Correctional Centre (since closed). "His name is Mark", she said, "He's the worst little ‘&%#$' disturber in our institution." It wasn't the most clinical assessment that I'd ever heard, but certainly accurate as I was to discover. His own self-description was "the wild man".

In comes this wiry little guy with a thick head of black hair, a crazy grin, and a glint in his eyes. I came to know that glint. It usually meant trouble. I asked him if he would like to meet a couple who could be his volunteers. "Why?" He asked.

"Well, "I said, "I think they'd find you interesting."

"I'm not a subject" he said, "I'm a human being!" I never used that expression again.

Mark had been raised in a home where he was unwanted. His father would chain him outside like a dog as discipline. He suffered all his life from painful seizures that would leave him unconscious on the street. As a child he was taken away and put into the provincial training schools where he was abused again. Like thousands of kids, he was a throwaway and he learned to live hard on the streets.

But somewhere along the way he had met Jesus and he loved Jesus and he loved the scriptures. He thought of himself as preacher on the streets. Most people thought of him as a pest. Like Jimmy Dean carrying cigarettes rolled up on his shoulders, he would carry Bibles - on both shoulders, like weapons, and when you walked down the street with him he would greet people with, "the Lord Jesus Christ loves you, sonny" - with that glint in his eye.

When he started evangelizing the police officers on the street, I tried to hide.

He would call our home regularly and he loved my family. He called my son Matthew "the little lion". Sometimes he would call in terrible anguish, "Harry, you've got to get me off this corner, the wolves are after me." There were nights that I woke up worrying about him. Eventually, he got his own bachelor apartment in a United Church facility in Parkdale.

Around this time the symptoms of my liver disease were worsening and I was told by my doctors that I would eventually need to have a transplant (which I graciously received in 1994).

When Mark heard this he said immediately, "Harry, you can have my liver!"

I said, "No Mark, I couldn't take your liver" (And I really couldn't – I knew about some of the things he had inflicted on his liver.)

But he was serious. "No really…you've got 'the little lion' to take care of, and you've got Shirley… Harry, you can have my liver."

A few years ago Mark died in his apartment after suffering a seizure. I don't even know where his unmarked grave lies. But when I think of self-emptying love shaped in the image of our Lord, this throwaway kid is at the front of the line.

Harry Nigh

November 30, 1999