It was just a short trip
across town. I was taking a gag gift from Christmas – the Blair Witch Santa
sculpture given to us by a friend as a joke - and a couple of unopened bottles of Mountain Dew left over
from Thanksgiving to my Brother’s house across town. He loves Mountain Dew (G-d
only knows why and She ain’t tellin’) and I left a note under the Santa
sculpture so he and Ruthie Lamb would know this was not a drive by trolling:
“Happy 11th
Day of Christmas!”
No doubt he would know
immediately that it was his crazy Episcopal priest Brother who left it.
I tend to take alternative
routes to common destinations simply to keep my mind fresh and not to fall into
too much of a routine. On the way home I drove down busy Semoran Boulevard and
turned into Baldwin Park.
I drove down the main entrance
of the neighborhood into the development that at one time housed the Orlando
Air Force Base and the Naval Training Center which succeeded it. As I turned
left onto Lake Baldwin Circle, I caught a glance out of the corner of my eye of
a black SUV which had failed to stop at the sign on the southbound lane and was
barreling through the intersection toward me.
I floored the accelerator and
cleared the intersection. But the narrow roadway around Lake Baldwin is
bordered by a rather high and rigid curb. My right front tire hit the curb at
just the right angle and immediately exploded.
Whap, whap, whap.
My only choice was to pull
into the first side street I came to, an entry into a residential neighborhood.
I came to a rest in a parking place just off the main road.
I was going to have to change
a tire. It would be my first time doing so in this new car, a hybrid Prius
about which I know less than any other car I’ve ever owned. Indeed what I’ve
known about my previous cars largely came as a result of having to fix things
that went wrong with them.
I got the jack and spare tire
out of the trunk. I was unsure where to place the jack and so I ended up
placing it under the front bumper (as it were) of the car and began jacking.
Soon I had the car lifted high enough that I could get the tire, with its six
inch gaping hole, off the axle.
That’s when the trouble began.
From Annoying to Grave
The “bumper” under which I had
placed the jack turned out to be little more than plastic. I thought I had felt
a metal strut of some kind prior to beginning lifting the car but apparently I
was mistaken. I heard the plastic begin to crumple, jumping back quickly to
keep the car from coming down on my foot.
It slowly settled to the
pavement, the axle where the tire had been now resting on the pavement. The
jack was trapped beneath the front of the car. I finally managed to shimmy it
out and kicked it from beneath the car.
That was when I saw that the
jack itself had been caught by the weight of the descending car and the end of
the grooved rolling portion that expands and contracts the lift had been bent
at a 45º angle.
Suddenly the gravity of my
situation swept over me. Here I stood in the parking lot of a condominium
complex on the coldest day of the year wearing little more than a sweater over
a polo shirt. The sun was beginning to go down and a chilly wind was blowing
across Lake Baldwin unimpeded.
My car was parked halfway into
the driveway of the complex where I had pulled over to fix the flat and leave
myself enough room from the curb to do so. While my car was not blocking the
entrance road, should another driver as distracted as the one who had just run
me up onto the curb come along, Wilson, my ailing Prius hybrid, could be toast.
Worse yet, I did not have my
cellphone with me. I commonly take it on trips of any duration, down to
Kissimmee to teach, over to Bushnell to work on our family home. But today I
was just making the 8 mile trip to my Brother’s house and figured I didn’t need
it.
Until I did.
I got back in my car and
slumped down in the seat. I felt tears welling up as I heard myself pleading,
“Aw, come on, can’t you give me just ONE break today?”
“Better Things to Do….”
Resident after resident in
SUVs (is there a law that one must own an SUV to live in a ”planned community”?)
passed me on the street as I stood there doing my best damsel in distress
imitation (a pretty mean trick when you have a three days growth beard). The only
person to actually stop was a young man in a jeep. He was headed to the gym and
seemed anxious just talking with me.
I asked if he had a cellphone
I could use to call AAA. He said he’d left it in the condo. (Apparently I’m not
the only one who leaves their needed cell phone at home). He also said he had a
jack but didn’t think it would work to lift the car. He apologized and headed
off to the gym.
If nothing else, I appreciated
the recognition of my humanity. That was more than I got from his neighbors.
That was when the unexpected
began.
A couple minutes later, a
truck from a construction company pulled up alongside. Three young Afro-Caribbean
men were inside. They were headed from one interior reconstruction project to
another within the complex. “Do you need some help?” the driver asked.
I told him my plight and asked
if I could use his cell phone to call AAA. He handed it right over adding with
a sheepish grin “Don’t pay any attention to any naked women photos you might
see.” I smiled.
Nude photos were the least of
my worries this day.
My telephone encounter with
AAA can only be described as adding insult to injury. My husband had created
this account for me only last year and I’d never used it before. I called the
number on the card and not surprisingly got a telephone chain. The first
announcement essentially said “If you want service, download the app and use
it. Otherwise we’ll get to you whenever.”
Not having my own cellphone to
work with, I simply pressed the number to wait. The voice cheerfully announced
it would be at least 10 minutes. I told the guys in the truck what I was up
against and the driver simply said, “Don’t worry, man. It’s cool”
After nearly 15 minutes of enduring
some of the most irritating wait time music ever, I hung up,
called Andy’s cell phone and left a message. I knew he’d never answer a number
he didn’t recognize. So I simply told him I was in trouble, where I was and
that I’d be waiting for him when he arrived. With that I handed the cell phone
back to the driver and told him thanks for his kindness.
Back in my car, angry tears were
brimming in my eyes. I was truly feeling sorry for myself. And I thought “Dammit,
I have better things to do with my time than sit in a broken-down car enduring
the cold.”
It was just at that moment
that some of the teaching Richard Rohr had imparted to me in the Living School
came back to me: Our irritation and anger
usually result from not having our expectations of life met.
The reality was, I was safe
and I would be rescued eventually. Everything that had occurred this day was
reparable. I was simply inconvenienced.
Then a Living School reading
from Thich Nhat Hanh swam into focus: Suffering
results from attachments, starting with our presumptions about the way life
should be. Today, life was having nothing to do with those presumptions. My
job was to accept the reality I faced and deal as best I could. And my initial
response left a great deal of room for improvement.
Strangers Willing To Help
It was only about five minutes
later when a maintenance man in a golf cart drove up. He was a working-class
man of Celtic descent with an Australian accent. I asked if he could call a
towing service to come get me, that I was broken down and concerned that I was
partially blocking his driveway.
“What’s the problem here?” he
asked. I explained what had happened. He came over to look at my poor disabled
Prius. He asked to see the jack, thinking perhaps we could jack it up and get
the tire on. When I showed him the jack with its bent end, he smiled, no doubt
thinking some variant of “Dumb Yuppie.” And in this case, he would have been
close.
“That’s not going to work
anymore,” he said. “But hang on.”
In a minute he had called a
fellow maintenance worker to the site, another Afro-Caribbean man whose English
bore a strong Latin accent. His Aussie coworker asked him to go get a jack. The
man appeared within five minutes bearing the jack and looked over the situation.
“I don’t think that’s going to
be enough,” he said. He took off in his golf cart only to return five minutes
later with a second, larger jack. With the first jack, the men got the axle up
off the pavement and enough space under the side of the car to get the second
jack under it. They then lifted the car, put the spare on and let it down
again.
“You’re going to need to take
your car directly to the Wawa right over on Semoran,” the second man said.
“Your spare is almost flat. You can’t drive it around like this.”
Just like that, I was ready to
go.
I fumbled in my wallet to find
some cash to give them. I didn’t know if it would insult them by cheapening
their good deed or be appreciated as recognition of their good work. Guessing
that condo associations probably are not the most magnanimous employers, I
erred on the side of the latter. They both grinned as I profusely thanked them
and handed them each a $20.
Before my little adventure
with my Prius was over, it would cost me another $90 for a new tire and an hour
and a half wait at the Firestone. I still needed a jack. Moreover, I was
hearing a scraping noise when the car came to a stop.
I headed to the Toyota dealer.
Two hours and $50 later, I
emerged relieved. The bumper had folded in when the car settled on the parking
lot enough to rub against the tire. The dealer also had a replacement jack
which set me back another $230. But I was back in business, a new tire, a jack
and a full spare just in case.
I hope whatever had distracted
that driver in the black SUV was damned important. It ended up being pretty
costly to me. But it could have been much worse.
Reflecting on Unexpected Generosity
As with all the events of my
life, I have spent a good bit of time the last few days trying to make sense of
these exchanges. What occurred to me as I thought back over these events was that
while it would seem on the surface that I was the victim of some bad luck, in
fact I had been the recipient of unexpected generosity. Had it not been for the
folks who came along and were willing to help a complete stranger, I’d have
been sitting in a disabled car partly blocking a residential street for a lot
longer, possibly placing my car and my life in danger.
The Christian tradition has
long described such unexpected generosity of spirit as grace, the evidence of
the active love of G-d in the world. Problem is, we too often want to taint the
goodness of that generosity with egocentric adjectives like undeserved or unmerited, notions more inclined to foster feelings of dependency
than gratitude.
Truth is, I’m not sure there
is any living being who does not deserve compassion. I have never been
convinced that constructs of a G-d who did not love all of Creation without
exception or condition were worth taking seriously. The whole point of Creation,
as I see it, is the inception of loving relationship between Creator and
creation.
I also find notions of merit
unhelpful. By even introducing that notion into the equation it brings the idea
in through the back door that one must somehow earn the love of G_d through
one’s thoughts, words or deeds before G-d is willing to love you.
There is no such thing as conditional love. Attitudes, words and behaviors induced – if not coerced - by the conditional acceptance of another may be a lot of things but they simply aren’t love.
There is no such thing as conditional love. Attitudes, words and behaviors induced – if not coerced - by the conditional acceptance of another may be a lot of things but they simply aren’t love.
What I experienced Friday was
neither undeserved nor unmerited. It was simply unexpected. And yet it
occurred. In the end I was not so much blessed as lucky. But I am grateful for
that unexpected good fortune. And in that moment I experienced myself as the
beneficiary of grace.
Those Who Looked Like Me Looked Away
Today it occurred to me that
there is a parallel to this encounter in the parable of the Good Samaritan. Scholars
believe that parable is one of the few we can authentically trace back to Jesus
himself and not a later developing Christian tradition and it has long been one
of my favorite bible passages.
In that story a man going down
from Jerusalem to Jericho is set upon by robbers who take his goods and leave
him seriously injured and vulnerable to the elements. The people who pass by
the man, averting their gaze to keep from even looking upon his afflictions, were
the religious leaders of the day – the Pharisee who defined himself by his
right actions in the light of the developing oral tradition, the Sadducee who defined
himself by a purity code that permitted him access to the Temple complex.
In the end the one who helped
the man in need was totally unexpected. Samaritans were seen as inferior by the
Judeans, country bumpkins whose tainted religious ideas were a threat to the
pure religion practiced in Jerusalem, unclean people to be shunned at all cost.
And yet it was the Samaritan who “proved neighbor to this man,” the point Jesus
is raising in this provocative parable which he ends with “Go and do likewise.”
What was striking about this
incident with my car is who the players were. I don’t know who the person was
who ran me off the highway, I just know they had a nice recent model black SUV.
Chances are, given the neighborhood, this person was from a socio-economic
background and professional status not much different from my own.
The people who did help me
were people very different from me. With the exception of the working class
young man with the Australian accent, they were all people of color. The young
construction worker in his truck who handed over his cell phone and then waited
15 minutes for AAA assistance that never came was of Afro-Caribbean heritage,
speaking to his coworkers in Spanish and to me in English. The second
maintenance man who rounded up all the jacks was also Afro-Caribbean working
class.
The ones who shared my achieved
and ascribed characteristics were the ones who passed me by unnoticed. And the
ones who had every reason to resent the privilege usually afforded white,
professional middle class middle aged men like me – the ones people like me
have been told to mistrust and view with condescending contempt – were, like
the Good Samaritan, the ones who ultimately saved me.
“Which one was neighbor to
this man?” was the rhetorical question Jesus posed at the end of the parable,
adding “Go and do likewise.“
May I Go and Do Likewise….
I believe that unexpected
goodness in the world is what grace is all about. I think it occurs around us
all the time in unexpected situations waiting to be noticed. I see that
unexpected goodness as the evidence of the goodness of a Creator G-d who loves
all of creation without condition or partiality. It is a Creator G_d who
freely showers grace, like the rains, “on the righteous and the unrighteous
alike.”
While thoroughly egocentric if
not anthropocentric concerns about whether such goodness is deserved or merited
have long been part of the Christian tradition’s construction of grace, they
are completely unhelpful in appreciating the role that unexpected goodness
plays in our daily lives. What is clear to me is that it is precisely through
the agency of people we often least suspect that the grace of G_d is made
manifest in this world. And for that lesson learned on the side of a condo complex entry road on a cold, blustery Friday, I am deeply grateful.
I pray that when the time
comes, I, too, will go and do likewise.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Harry Scott Coverston
Orlando, Florida
If the unexamined life is not worth
living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is
not worth holding.
For what does G-d require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your G-d? (Micah
6:8, Hebrew Scriptures)
Do not be daunted by the enormity
of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are
not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. - Rabbi
Rami Shapiro, Wisdom of the Jewish Sages (1993)
© Harry Coverston 2018
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
2 comments:
Thanks, Harry, you're my man.
Lovely, Harry. Thank you.
Post a Comment