Monday, October 20

Danny

Early Autumn sun filters past urban obstacles; stray rays brush past me as I pump dollar after dollar into our gas tank. Out of the corner of my eye I glimpse a loitering man: clean, just a little taller than I, black cowboy hat comfortably lodged on his aging head.

I pay him no mind (considering instead what I'll be paying at the till in just a minute), then I notice that he's moved closer and is, in fact, leaning up against the pump I'm using. He's gesturing at my oldest son who's seated in the front seat of the car. I turn to face him.


"Hey! Are you giving my kid a hard time?" I tease. I look more closely at him then. I see that he's leaning on the pump because his own legs will likely fail him if he doesn't lean on something. His brown-as-earth skin is beautifully wrinkled and weathered but, in his drunkenness, he's failed to clean the mucus and muck from his face. His right eye is seeping and crusty, both; it is milky white, blind.

I can't squeeze any more liquid gold into the tank so I hang up the pump and turn my full attention toward my new acquaintance. "What can I do for you today, sir?"


"Just need some bus fare. 'Trying to make it to Fort Macleod. Just need to get to the edge of the city so I can hitch my way."


His words are slurred and mumbled and difficult to catch. "You're looking for bus fare to Fort Macleod?" I ask with surprise. "That's a little more than I can help you with!"


He grins and then laughs at my misunderstanding. "No, no, no! I just need fare to the edge of the city!"



I laugh too and ask for his name. I ask him if he'll wait for me there while I go settle my bill and get some cash. "We'll talk about this more in a minute, Danny," I say as I move away from him.


Inside the station I'm surprised by the worry and anger etched into the faces of the staff and other patrons. A woman steps toward me and demands, "Are you okay? Do you need help?" The attendant, worried, mumbles "Is everything okay out there?"


I laugh my surprise and say that Danny and I are just having a quick conversation. I'm grateful for their concern, I say, but every thing's fine.


I make my way back outside and pull the bills I've just received in change back out of my purse. Careful to shield the transaction from the growing number of curious eyes both in and outside of the station, I press them into Danny's hand and suggest that there's enough there for a good supper and fare to the edge of the city, if that's where he wants to get to.


I tell him I'm glad to have met him and suggest that the few dollars I've given him won't get him very far. Would it be okay, I ask, if I talked with my God with him? He readily agrees, immediately taking my outstretched hands in one of his own and removing his hat with his other.


We approach God then, Danny and I, in the gas station parking lot. I ask Jesus if He'll heal Danny's blinded eye and keep him safe as he continues his travels (Why does inspiration always fail me in these moments? There are never any sparks or blinding lights or flashes of insight. Only mumbled, stumbled attempts at drawing God and man into the same moment.). We say our amens and our goodbye's. I jump into the car and he staggers on his way ~ not toward the bus stop, but toward the corner pub.


Just days later I received this in an email from my friend. She said:


Last night I had dream. I was sitting on the ground, just in the dust or dirt with an (East) Indian woman. We were, together, taking one of my cleaning rags and cutting it in half. In my mind, I was cutting it in half to give a piece to a man who had lost an eye. This rag would serve as a patch to cover over the place where his eye would have been. Then I realized that the other half of the rag was for ME to do the same thing to my own eye. I was no different from the man who was poor and blind.

Here I was thinking I was "saving" him (or rescuing him or helping him) and at the same time, reminded of my own need for rescue and of my own imperfection. The rag was for both of us! There is some sort of significance in it being shared.


When I read her dream I thought of Danny. I thought of how easy it is to feel sanctimonious. Good. I love the reminder that my "eye" is as much in need of clean rags as ever his was.

The exchange of stories and gifts and prayer between ourselves and hurting strangers -- they are as much (more?) for us as they are for the ones we are reaching out to. God reaches into both lives with different lessons, kindnesses, convictions.

We need that clean rag, split off from the one we've used to serve another, to bandage our own eye: an eye that sometimes skews our vision and indulges temptation and looks for glory.

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