To Make Us Proud

Three years ago, I saw a little boy with bright red hair screaming for his mother from a bench outside South Station. I didn't have money on me to give to his mother, who was holding a crumbled coffee cup out to the tired travelers, asking for change. My bags weighed me down and I was exhausted from the four hour bus ride. Her hair was frazzled and had been let loose in chunks from the frigid Boston air. She was missing teeth, and when I looked close enough, her son's eyes were crossed, probably from a complication during pregnancy. All of it was high risk, and I ached for his little soul, shivering ontop the bus station bench, yelling at more than just his mother.


I clenched my bag close to my shoulder, and slowed my pace toward the two. I had a banana in my bag, with some books and an empty wallet. I thought for a moment that even though I only paid twenty odd cents for the fruit, I was reluctant to give it away. I wasn't sure how they might respond to food, but it was all I had. I didn't want to leave without knowing I could soothe something of the situation. The other pedestrians strolled on by...some took a moment to glance at the little boy, but quickly continued on their way. If at least for a moment in time, we all were on the same wavelength of compassion for his sorrow. For his innocence.

"Is he hungry?" I asked.

The mother looked at me for a second, and looked back at her son. I held out the banana from my bag.

"You want a banana, huh?" The mother said.

His tears slowed. Unsure of what was happening, he looked at me, his mouth open and his cheeks blotchy.

Precious.

"Here you go," I said, handing her the banana.

His mother walked back to the bench, and sat with the little boy, now consumed in the banana transaction. He yanked the peel from the outside and ripped the top half of the banana off from his mother's grip. The tears stopped. He was calm and so was I.

I stood for a moment at the scene that I had just created before me. I removed myself slowly from the situation, and held back from any new ideas that popped in my head. I wanted to keep talking to her, to help with anything else they might have needed. I wasn't sure what that could have been, but as I slowly retracted from the scene, she looked back at me, for only a second.

Our eyes met. Her cup was placed to the side of her hip. The little boy laughed. She drew him near, and closed her arms around his shoulders.

It was a miracle.

And although I experienced that moment with the same emotional intensity I recall for it today, I am able to see this pivatol moment in a new light. For a split second, we three shared feelings of discomfort, hopelessness, loss, grief, glory and God. I will remember her piercing brown eyes, and his bright red hair. There was understanding beyond any well formed definition of love. The experience was limitless.

And when I recall that day, I think back in wonderment at the miracle of miracles. They are deserved by all, and experienced within each and every one of us. It is when we go within, and chose the outward expression of this love, that we sharpen our own lens, and clutter clean our understanding of spiritual unity. Of the power within our beings.

We three were joy in that moment. We were safe. We were loved.

And therein lies the power, glory, and simplicity of God's infinite compassion.