I know this post may sound weird. I can't be sure, but I truly think God has been testing me for the past two days. He has heard me boasting about my firm belief that "you should always look for Jesus on the road" and has decided to test my compassion. I'm convinced of this.
OK...so some of you know I live on the southeast side of Atlanta. Up-and-coming...granted...but let's face it...still the ghetto and still a little threatening. I get panhandled every fucking day. And you know what? I'll always give whatever change or bills that are in my pocket to them. You never know. I figure you can't judge...only God can. Someone is in need and they are asking me for help. I will not turn my back. I will not fucking lie and say I have nothing when I have a few incidental bills and coins in the front right pocket of my designer jeans. I will always hand them whatever measly amount I have stashed there.
It never hurts me financially. It certainly never hurts me spiritually. I never shun them and I never deny them. I know that Jesus is on the road.
How do you feel when you lie to someone that pleads to you on the street and tell them you have nothing to share, when there are coins and dollar bills shuffling around in your pocket? Do you feel good? No you don't. Do you feel threatened and then relieved when the person leaves you alone? What have you accomplished in that moment? Is it a sense that you have escaped another unpleasant encounter with a fellow human being that you feel superior to? By denying that person a quarter or a dollar, do you feel that you have in anyway bettered them or yourself? No you don't.
So anyway...I always give something out of my pocket to someone in the street that asks. I can't help but think that this is just the best policy....Christianity, Karma, Chi, Humanism...I mean whatever you believe in...that humble gesture that anyone can make in their daily lives has just got to be the most rudimentary and simple gesture of faith you can share.
I've had some chance encounters with a handful of characters in the past 2 days. After talking to a very cynical friend of mine tonight about this, she just laughed and said it was because it's a full moon, but I'm not buying that.
1) Elizabeth. Elizabeth and her husband shop in the store weekly. They live in the neighborhood. When Elizabeth and her husband were in law school, she experienced a traumatic head injury. Now she is like a child...functional and literate as she was in post grad, but otherwise behaves like a 5 year old. On a whim yesterday afternoon, she packed up all her stuff in a suitcase and brought it into the store and started unpacking it in the middle of the sales floor. We had to convince her that she should go back home and wait for her husband to get home before she made any decisions like that. I stayed calm and helped her stuff everything back into her suitcase. I made sure she knew how to get back home. She said "of course". I also had to promise her that she could come down and see Gracie and Rex when we brought them to the store. I had shown her and her husband a picture of them one time and she remembered.
2) Last night, this guy that shows up about every other day at the store came in. He always buys a little something when he come in. He is getting a little more open and a little more sorta peculiar each time he visits us at the store. He started crying last night after telling us that he had just heard about an old mountain climbing friend that had died on a trip. I had to console him on one of the sofas as he was telling me that was why he stopped mountain climbing...because he was "burned out on seeing his friends die".
3) Ok...so this morning I am headed out the door. I hear the dogs raising HELL at the front door. Then from the back of the house, I hear knocking, so I put down my bag and head for the front door. When I open the door, Gracie and Rex bolt out and chase this poor boy off the porch and out the front gate. He slams the gate and stands there, looking at my house and starts crying his eyes out! What the fuck was I supposed to do? I walk down the walk and go outside the gate and ask him what's wrong...duh. He's this like 17 year old african american gay boy that has just had the last straw. The boy just started his first week on his first shitty job selling Bellsouth plans door to door. He said that everybody in our neighborhood had been mean to him and that people from the last 2 houses had even sicked their dogs on him. So here I was, on the stoop in front of our mailbox, sitting with this sobbing boy, trying to console this terrified and diminished black kid, trying to boost his courage and trying to find some words to help him regain some dignity, all the while on the cell phone to a vendor I was supposed to be in a meeting with.
I think I passed the test, but shit...that all was weird, right?
Maybe I'm just working on my honeypot. We'll see.
T
