The Price of Redemption
A holiday meditation on the shortest day of the year...
21 December 2005
Berkeley, CA
The skies were overcast as I drove down to Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley this morning. I was headed to Masse’s, a lovely little sidewalk café situated in a block of other pleasant shops and bookstores and such. I was planning to sit under the awning, drink some coffee, and write my Morning Pages. Pulling into the parking space near the café I had this thought: Well, I thought to myself, if there is going to be any sunshine today, it will have to come from inside me. Unfortunately, the weather inside was about the same as outside.
Suddenly, a man appeared next to the car. A homeless man in soiled clothes with a matted grey beard, and deep, dark eyes. His age could have been anywhere between forty and sixty. He had a face that seemed to measure age as occurrences of humiliation and degradation, rather than the number of days he has lived – be they sunny or overcast. As he peered into the car, he motioned with his thumb and forefinger rubbing them together in that same pantomime I once saw Shylock use in The Merchant of Venice. Is it universal? Could I ask for yuan on a sidewalk in Beijing, or euros in Venice, just by making those same gestures? Probably so. In any event whether I was startled by his sudden appearance, or whether I was just asleep in that moment, I shook my head gesturing No.
I don't know what it was, maybe it was his complete resignation. Or maybe it was his complete lack of either anticipation or expectation, and then his lack of disappointment, or resentment. I do not know. Whatever it was, his reaction as he walked away woke me up. I immediately regretted my response. In that moment I felt lost. Utterly alone.
He continued walking down the street stopping to gesture to a clutch of shoppers standing on the sidewalk in front of Saul’s Deli - a bit of New York City without the cold weather and transit strikes. I got my bag out of the back of the car and stood for a moment watching him. I almost called out to him, but didn't. I stood there silent, trapped in a paralysis of my own self-consciousness and private shame. And I realized that I had this opportunity to make amends, but I didn't. And then he was gone. He seemed to just disappear, as if he turned a corner in the middle of the block. It all seemed like magic.
And then I had this thought – What if he is the least among us? What if his suffering is a vast ocean to my little duck pond? What if this were the moment when I could save my own soul and I let the moment pass? And then as quickly as it emerged, the thought receded into those dark crevices in my mind where such thoughts seem to go after a time.
I bought my coffee and sat at the little round green metal table outside the café and began writing, feeling as unsettled as the wobbly table was on the uneven pavement, but determined to write through it anyway. I was just about finished my last page in the entry, maybe five or six lines left. I had just written this part:
“Not mattering” is so different from “whatever”. Strange how differently I experience the world these days. Not all the time certainly, but much of the time. How insubstantial every “thing” is. How much solidity there is to a thought or a feeling.
Then suddenly he appeared again. The same homeless man. I looked up at him and this time, rather than gesturing, he spoke to me. He said simply and directly, “Can you give me some money to get some food?”
When he walked off toward the store at the far end of the block, this is what I wrote on those last few lines of Page 81 of my journal:
My soul was just saved. A homeless man who I refused to give money to when I first got here returned. He did not remember my refusal. In his forgetfulness I found forgiveness and redemption. I asked, “How much do you need?” He said, “Two dollars to get something to eat.” I did not know that the cost of redemption was $2.
I guess I thought salvation would cost more. I have no idea where that idea came from.
Be good to yourselves, be kind to a stranger,
and as always, be careful out there.
Edd