Today I got on the bus and there was Jesus sitting in back, all alone. There were three or four people clustered up near the front, but no one sat near him. I wondered towards him and sat down one row in front of just opposite him. His face was white, nearly a milky white in fact. His face was permanently twisted in a grimace with his lips pulled back slightly revealing brown and decayed teeth.
I sat there just able to see him out of the corner of my eye. He sat leaning forward, his hands clutching the back of the seat in front of him. His shoulders hunched over and I could hear him breathing and softly talking to himself just over the headphones were pouring music into my ears.
I wondered if maybe I should talk to him. I already regretted not having made a point of smiling at him as I watched an older man at the front of the bus stare back at us. What must it be like to know that everytime you leave your home, if you have one, that you will be different than every single person you pass in the street? That most of the people will stare and the ones that don't will avoid you like the plague. That particular expression hurts because the disease that disfigures your face is much more real than the expression taken from the Middle Ages...
I wondered what his reaction would be if I turned and said hello. Why was I pondering talking to him anyways? Was it out of pity? Did I think that by me talking to him I would be helping? All week I had been thinking about the kingdom of God as I am to talk on it shortly. The last are truly first. The weak are really the strong. The small are the truly great. And I hadn't been on the bus more than 45 seconds when Jesus got on at the next stop while the phrase whatever you do to the least of these was running through my head.
She nearly sat down with a friend two seats in front of me when she saw him out of the corner of her eye and swung around with a big smile on her face. ¿Que nos encontramos? She exclaimed cheerfully, and swung herself down beside him. For the next 15 minutes she steadily chatted away with him occasionally grunting a response, and the bus slowly filled up.
The bus emptied at the first university stop and I was one of the last to get off at the following stop. I was thinking about how God´s kingdom grows bit by bit. Decision by decision made by little people, by normal people. I was thinking about how that girl hadn't talked to him out of pity, but out of love and friendship. I never did see either of them get off the bus but I would have liked to have walked behind them for a few blocks, listening to the conversation banter back and forth, slightly one-sided on the talking end but completely equal in their appreciation for the other presence walking alongside them, taking joy in simply being with.
Thursday, October 05, 2006
on the bus
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3 comments:
Anthony please do tell me how it went opn Sunday, preferably in English but I can handle Spanish now as you know ;).
This is profound... I have my own experiences taking public transit on the poor side of bloomington to go to the chyropractor a couple of times a week. The other day, i was sitting at a bus stop and this guy came and sat by me... kind of rough looking. After mentioning the weather we fell silent and I sat debating whether to try and talk with him a bit more or to just continue reading an article for class. Deciding that it would be a good thing to do since he seemed to want to talk, i decided to strike up a conversation again... hard be it to find something to talk about though. My inquiry of where he was heading went no where... so i sat pondering what I could talk about and feeling kind of awkward that I could sit their sportin my IU shirt knowing how different my life was headed than this guy's 9-5 job which probably didn't pay enough to let him afford a car. We were on the bus for very different reasons... I would probably earn enough one day to have a car and the bus was probably just a fact of life for him. I fell silent again racking my brain for a common topic to chat about... should it be that hard? The usual college banter about majors and such wouldn't work... and then he spoke up. "Do you like art?" This was probably the last thing I expected him to say. And from there I was humbled... because this guy could humbly relate to others regardless of his life situation. I could tell from our conversation that he was someone that would probably thrive at college and I almost wished I could offer him my opportunity of going to college. I haven't quite processed it yet but sitting at that bus stop I was disgusted with how hard it was to talk to others whose lives were so different and how I could actually talk to them out of sympathy and pity. Do they deserve that? This guy would go to the art gallery openings at IU and here I had the audacity to assume that we didn't have much in common. I have seen the community that the regular bus riders have created among themselves... greeting each other with a friendly hello every morning and discussing the local coming and goings... where I sit and complain about having to take a bus and when I do step on a bus, I sit their and zone out thinking about the million other things I have to do. Is what I have so much better?... or are some people finding a beauty of life and community amidst the harsh ,rawness of life that I am missing out on?
sorry! I am taking over your blog! I just get caught up in your writings and it gets me thinking b/c this is what I have been processing lately!
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