When you approach from the back you will see workmen and scaffolding. You will see concrete, lines of vehicles and pylons. You will see obstacles. You will see a place you do not want to be. And at the top of the driveway leading to the entrance, there is a small bench beneath an overhang. It’s utilitarian, a place for patients to sit as they wait for transport. There is no view to be had, just cars and cement and shadow, and sitting there you feel like you’re in a parking garage. On the ground beside the bench, sesame seeds are scattered. A patient almost certainly makes a slow procession to this place each day. Feeling fragile and less than he remembered, his bare legs exposed beneath his hospital gown, he would cast seeds to the tiny birds who would come to feed. Amidst all this mess, this construction and revision, this tangle of concrete and flesh, he would sustain them. This mercy, his daily gift. And he would watch the birds hop and cheep, marvelling at their perfect eyes and darting movements, their little, old man legs and mysterious feathers, and how with one small breath they were up and away, lifting into the blue skies just beyond.

returning to the hospital always feels like stepping into a church, into the holy. Everybody there, whether they know it or not, are in a state of pilgrimage, of prayer.

In the atrium a motley assembly of musicians formed. They were a group of people recovering from mental health and addiction issues, with a few ringers tossed in to add some structure to their compositions. The conductor, an energetic and wiry tangle of holistic cliches, worked hard to inspire her students but most of them remained tense, staring flatly at the floor rather than the crowd that had gathered across from them. Their voices were thin and straining, but still, the congregation rose with the music, an original composition called, “Coming Through Darkness.”

And how did they do that?

How did each one of them push trauma to the side to stand where they were that day?

Oh Lord, let their music, that glowing idea, comfort us all.

And then down the hallway there was a display of art created by patients as part of their therapy. Out of all the generic scenes of landscapes and flowers and pets, there was one work that stood out to me.

Mary of the Roses.

As if floating above the others, as if shining.

And I imagined the woman painting it, how with each brush stroke another layer of her anxiety fell away until this new, beatified horizon emerged.

As I left the hospital, a First Nation’s man beating a drum stood outside on the sidewalk, the flames painted on a food truck rising behind him.

We nodded at each other and I remained, watching and listening, as steams of indifferent people passed by.

A tall, homeless man shuffled down the sidewalk and when he walked into the music, without a word he started to dance. First with his fingers. Slow pointing. Cool pointing. And then his body began to move.

His shoulders, his legs, his fingers, his head, all in surprising and beautiful concert with this simple drumming. Suddenly, he was the revelation of hidden genius–he was a burning bush in our midst. He danced for perhaps a minute and then he stopped, and falling back into the broad, rigid silence from which he came, he continued silently through the day.

There was something that seemed miraculous about this, and the drummer and I– the only people who had seen it– grinned at one another.

“It’s part of the magic of the flow, “ the drummer said. “I like to do this in front of the hospital. People are scared and preoccupied, and then they hear the drum calling to their spirit and it lifts them. Spirit takes them places, it unhooks them from their mortal self and for a moment they are free.  We are signposts in this world, here to help people find their way.”

Miracles, right that moment, unfolding all across the city.