Sometimes the confluence of a need to work whenever I can to keep up, cancer treatments, and the desire to save time and a few bucks on fuel come together and find me working in odd places. Like this morning, when I dropped off Annie at school and then jumped on the highway to head for St. Joseph’s for my radiation mapping. Since I arrived at St. Joe’s before 8:00AM and my appointment’s not until 10:00AM, I find myself sitting in a little courtyard between two of the hospital campus buildings.
Cancer treatment creates some strange bedfellows, too. It’s not too hard to figure out that essentially, my radiation treatments are coming from the Catholic church, as St. Joe’s is part of the Catholic hospital system. There’s some odd things that come with that, like the fact that when you walk into the atrium of the Clinical Specialty Center, there’s a roughly three-quarter-scale statue of Jesus, and there’s a larger one here in this courtyard. There’s also a stained-glass window, also with an image of Jesus, here in the courtyard.
While those of you Christians might not find this odd, the oddity comes with this – I’m an atheist, through and through. It seems odd to be receiving treatment from the Catholic church, not to mention that everywhere I turn in this joint, there’s an image of Christ.
The landscape designer who put this little courtyard together was probably thinking something like “place for quiet reflection,” rather than “quiet place for the crass pursuit of commerce.” But one quiet place is as good as the next, don’t you think?