This is one of my favorite stories that I was reminded of when I woke up today. It appears in the last chapter of Mashall Rosenberg's book Nonviolent Communication. Perhaps it would be a nice Awakin reading one week?!

I once asked my uncle Julius how he had developed such a remarkable capacity to give compassionately. He seemed honored by my question, which he pondered before replying, “I’ve been blessed with good teachers.” When I asked who these were, he recalled, “Your grandmother was the best teacher I had. You lived with her when she was already ill, so you didn’t know what she was really like. For example, did your mother ever tell you about the time during the Depression when your grandmother brought a tailor and his wife and two children to live with her for three years, after he lost his house and business?” I remembered the story well. It had left a deep impression when my mother first told it to me because I could never figure out where grandmother had found space for the tailor’s family when she was raising nine children of her own in a modest-sized house!

Uncle Julius recollected my grandmother’s compassion in a few more anecdotes, all of which I had heard as a child.

Then he asked, “Surely your mother told you about Jesus.”

“About who?”

“Jesus.”

“No, she never told me about Jesus.”

The story about Jesus was the final precious gift I received from my uncle before he died. It’s a true story of a time when a man came to my grandmother’s back door asking for some food. This wasn’t unusual. Although grandmother was very poor, the entire neighborhood knew that she would feed anyone who showed up at her door. This man had a beard and wild, scraggly black hair; his clothes were ragged, and he wore a cross around his neck fashioned out of branches tied with rope. My grandmother invited him into her kitchen for some food, and while he was eating she asked his name.

“My name is Jesus,” he replied. 

“Do you have a last name?” she inquired.

“I am Jesus the Lord.”

(My grandmother’s English wasn’t too good. Another uncle, Isidor, later told me he had come into the kitchen while the man was still eating, and grandmother had introduced the stranger as Mr. Thelord.)

As the man continued to eat, my grandmother asked where he lived.

“I don’t have a home.”

“Well, where are you going to stay tonight? It’s cold.”

“I don’t know.”

“Would you like to stay here?” she offered.

He stayed seven years.

When it came to communicating nonviolently, my grandmother was a natural. She didn’t think of what this man “was.” If she had, she probably would have judged him as crazy and gotten rid of him. No, she thought in terms of what people feel and what they need. If they’re hungry, feed them. If they’re without a roof over their head, give them a place to sleep. My grandmother loved to dance, and my mother remembers her saying often, “Never walk when you can dance.”

And thus I end this book on a language of compassion with a song about my grandmother, who spoke and lived the language of Nonviolent Communication.

One day a man named Jesus
came around to my grandmother’s door.
He asked for a little food,
she gave him more.

He said he was Jesus the Lord;
she didn’t check him out with Rome.
He stayed for several years,
as did many without a home.

It was in her Jewish way,
she taught me what Jesus had to say.
In that precious way,
she taught me what Jesus had to say.

And that’s: “Feed the hungry, heal the sick,
then take a rest.
Never walk when you can dance;
make your home a cozy nest.”

It was in her Jewish way,
she taught me what Jesus had to say.
In her precious way,
she taught me what Jesus had to say.

—“Grandma & Jesus” by Marshall B. Rosenberg