San Francisco Prose #2

My second encounter with grace during my vacation last June occurred again on public transportation in San Francisco. This time it was on a street car and invovled a homeless man and a couple with Downs Syndrome.

ALFRED

"God has chosen what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God has chosen what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God has chosen what is mean and despised in the world -- things which are not, to put down things that are;"
~ from the First Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 1, versus 27 & 28.

On a typically blustery and chilly San Francisco morning, while waiting to board a MUNI street car, I was approached by a lanky black man with salt and pepper close cropped hair and beard and an anxious demeanor. He wanted to know if the street car I was waiting to board would get him down to Powell Street (My running joke is that everyone always asks me for directions when I’m on vacation!) I assured him that it would as the orange tram pulled forward, and we embarked sitting opposite one another. As it turned out, he was selling the little newspapers that the coalition for the homeless produces, the proceeds of which are used to pay for a night in their shelter. The source of his excitement was the fact that he’d made twenty dollars in just an hour, when he’d previously consider himself lucky to make five after two hours of hawking in the financial district downtown. He confided that it was his first foray into the Castro, adding in a softer voice, ‘”because, you know....” and then confessed with childlike excitement, “but the people here really do care!" It was not what he thought it would be like. He commented that the tram we were riding in was different from all the others, and I explained that it was a gift to the city in 1984 from the city of Milan in Italy. The only car from Europe; something I had learned from the plaque above his head the last time I'd ridden this particular street car. The tram jolted to a stop at the next platform, and a young couple with Downs Syndrome (who I later learned were on vacation from Boston) entered; the young man sat next to me, the young woman next to the homeless man. He was telling me about how people always make assumptions about the homeless that aren’t true. How people think he sells the papers to buy drugs, but that the program is really strict, and anyone who screws up gets kicked out. And because the competition is so tight to sell papers, it's impossible to conceal a lapse into alcohol or drugs, because someone else in the program would notice and turn the person in. By now the young couple was also listening with rapt attention. He went on to explain how hard it is when people look at you with these obviously judgmental assumptions. At a pause in his manic testamony, the young woman put her hand on his and looking ernestly into his eyes, said, “I feel your pain.” He froze, just for a moment, their eyes remaining locked on one another as the now crowded tram rumbled on down Market Street toward Embarcadero. And then he replied, “No one ever told me that before. Thank you.” A new sense of humility took hold of him as he began talking about how God is real to him. And God gives him the strength to love people when they act hatefully toward him. This struck a chord within the young woman and she begins to smile and nod along. Encouraged by her reaction, he continued speaking about the joy God's love gives to him until suddenly realizing that we were nearly at the Powell Street stop. Glancing outside the street car, he turned to me and handed me a paper and then one to the young man and another to the young woman saying how they were a gift. He wanted us to have them. And then he rose quickly to leave. The young woman called out after him, “What’s your name?” “Alfred.” he replied with a smile as he stepped away onto Market at Powell. The woman turned back to her companion and said, “I like Alfred.” then with a huge smile exploding upon her face and sending her eyes into glistening half-moons of ecstasy she added, “I LOVE Alfred! And I love you, too!” And though she meant that she loved her husband, I felt really loved at that moment, too. AMEN.