Shameless

            A colleague sent me an email today in which he made a remark that filled me with shame.  Is he reading these personal posts?  Does he think I am irredeemably odd?  His remark seemed to set his life in pointed contrast to mine?  I read his message and was momentarily confused by shame until I went for a walk in the rain and saw bright yellow leaves falling silently against a gray sky filled with noisy rain.  For the first five minutes of the walk, I was even ashamed that such simple things bring me pleasure.  I thought of Francis—Saint Francis—and how he taught his followers the technique of attending to their shame, saying that “shame is the enemy of salvation” and that they should not be “confused by shame.”  Shame confuses because it obliterates the sacred plane while re-establishing the conventional world.  The walk washed away most of these feelings, and I was almost as present in the present as my little dog when busy with a scent or trying to touch noses with Jack, the black pit bull on the neighbor’s porch.

St. Francis giving away his cloak

 

            Later in the afternoon, I was in the car, headed for the expressway to get Katya from school.  The rain was coming down, and I had the wipers going, clearing leaves and water.  Swipe, swipe, swipe.  Someone was on foot coming down Third Street without an umbrella.  No umbrella!  I’d been thinking about the poor a lot lately, and I wished I’d brought my umbrella so I could try to give it away.  The man was wearing a garbage bag, and it was jutting way off his shoulders as if he had a two by four underneath it to create this makeshift poncho.  I recognized the frizzled afro and wide set eyes, and I realized it was Gregory.  I know him well.  We’ve talked to each other in passing for many years:  “How’s my beautiful wife?,” he used to joke.  Last year he was still driving a dented black pickup, and he used to live on Avon, but times have gotten harder.  Now whenever I see him, he’s on foot and looking tired.  The rain is making him move along quickly today, and as I get closer I start to wave like he’s my brother or something.  He breaks out into a wide smile of recognition, and I see that he has almost no upper teeth.  There is a very big gaping hole with two square jack-o’-lantern teeth hanging down inches apart.  His smile is imperfect that’s for sure, but it is truly happy.  If he ever felt shame, it’s obvious that he faced it down and won.  

            Now I get why the poor and the poor in spirit will see God.  Because they can't wait, and don't put off seeing God for some hazy future date.  Because they aren’t anchored to the conventional world by the weight of stuff and aspirations.  Gregory was bouncing or floating in his plastic bag through the East Village, and when that wide-open smile broke, he seemed as weightless as the orange leaves that for a split second I saw as indistinguishable from little birds—flown or blown.  I want to be that shameless, that light, that poor.