We were headed into the pet store to get our weekly rations
for the three dogs and three cats currently living in our household. While I don’t
credit Francis with my life-long love of animals, I was overjoyed to discover
that there was a name for this kind of craziness years ago when I was introduced
to the Third Order of St. Francis.
Right at the doorway to the pet store was a man sprawled
out on the sidewalk. He appeared to be unconscious. Whether asleep, passed out
or perhaps comatose was unclear. His body did not impede the doorway and people
came in and out, some with dogs on leashes, largely ignoring him.
The Prince of Fools
I could not ignore him.
He lay on his side at an angle to the sliding glass doors
opening and closing a mere few feet away from his head. And he wasn’t moving.
As I slowed down to look at this man, my husband took off,
headed to the dog food section of the PetsMart, leaving me behind. As I stood looking,
I saw there before me a white, bearded man who looked a lot worse for the wear,
dirty jeans and tee shirt, face on the pavement itself.
Truth be told, I could not tell if the man was dead or
alive. His breathing was so shallow as to barely move his chest from the
pavement. What alarmed me was a tell-tale stream of fluids from his mid-section, trickling
across the sidewalk to the asphalt beyond. This man had clearly lost bodily
functions, or at least a concern for them.
Francis was often called the Prince of Fools in his younger
days. Prone to carousing and entertaining his bourgeois friends, no doubt
Francis had himself been no stranger to awakening on the streets of Assisi, passed
out, frightening passersby wondering if this young scion of Assisi was dead or simply
facing the morning after another night of reveling.
What does one do in such a situation? I have virtually no medical
training at all. I had no authority to rouse the man nor did he appear
interested in being woken. What he did appear to be was in trouble. But I wasn’t
sure whether my own clumsy interventions would be perceived – or even actually
be – helpful.
I went through the doors to the check-out counter. A young
woman with a beautiful name, Santina, asked me if I need help.
“Actually, I don’t but I think this guy by your door does,”
I replied.
“Oh yes, we know about him. Don’t worry. We’ve checked him
out. He’s not going to hurt anyone,” she said.
I smiled.
“I’m not worried about him hurting someone else. I’m actually
worried about him,” I said. “He’s lost control of his bodily fluids. And I
cannot tell he’s breathing.”
The woman’s face paled and she said she would call someone
to help immediately. I thanked her.
At that point I left it in her hands, heading to the back
of the store to find my husband. He was gathering up the last of the dog food
at that point, cat food already in the cart. As he took the last cans from the
shelf and began pushing his cart to the front of the store, I asked “So how do
you know what to buy?” I said.
“I spend a lot of time on line trying to find healthy food
they’ll eat.”
“So it’s a two step trial. One to pass the healthy food
test online. Two to pass the test of whether they’ll actually eat what you buy.”
“Right.”
By now we were back up to the counters. The same woman with
the kind face was there to check us out. She began ringing up our purchase.
Outside, a rather chubby African-American woman in the
uniform of the shopping center’s security force had arrived on her golf cart. I
went out to watch the interaction.
The guard was cautious. She shook the man to wake him and
he began to try to stand up.
“Sir, are you OK?” she asked.
What the man said in response was unintelligible. But what was
clear was that the security guard was insistent upon respecting his dignity.
She inevitably called him sir. And, somewhat surprisingly, he responded with Ma’am
each time.
Amazing what honoring the dignity of another can do,
regardless of how dire the situation.
Within minutes he was up and walking, and after several
assurances to her questions of whether he was OK, the officer finally left.
"I know. I was there..."
Upon returning to the counter, I said to the woman, “I
think he’s going to be OK.”
What she said then caught me completely off guard.
“You know we should not judge him,” she said. “Anyone could
be in his place,” she continued.
I responded, “The statistics suggest that many of us are
one paycheck, one event of being fired from our jobs, away from the streets.”
She nodded. “I know. I was there.”
She then went on to relate how her Mother had lost her job
and, as a result, their house. “She had three children. We lived in the car for a long time,” she said.
“I was homeless. Anyone can be.”
I didn’t ask her whether she was still living in her Mother’s
car or how they had turned that around. It was none of my business. So I simply
said thank you for being concerned enough to call for someone to help this man.
I then told the young woman that I was a Franciscan and
that this was his feast day. “Francis truly cared about the poor,” I said. “That’s
where he did most of his work.”
She smiled and said, “I didn’t know that. That’s so cool.”
By now our transaction was ending. I told her once again thanks
for her help with this poor soul who by now had disappeared around the corner,
perhaps looking for a less traveled space to once again lose consciousness.
“Happy St. Francis Day,” I said. She repeated it back to
me. But in her small act of kindness to a stranger and her willingness to relate
to his desperate situation from her own life story, she had made that day more
real than she could possibly have imagined.
Somehow, it seems only too appropriate that this encounter happened
on the Feast of the Prince of Fools. And as I walked to the car with bags of
dog and cat food in hand, I swear I could see Francis smiling.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Harry Scott Coverston
Orlando, Florida
frharry@cfl.rr.com
hcoverston.orlando@gmail.com
If the unexamined life is not worth
living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is
not worth holding. Most things worth considering do not come in sound bites.
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 2019
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