Prayer From a Homeless Man

It was a cool Sunday afternoon in Oakland, and I was letting someone out the locked front door. On the sidewalk alongside the church walked a man pulling a large wheely bag. He seemed to be mouthing some kind of question my way. He certainly looked decent, so I stepped out to see what he had said. Here’s when the tables turned, a pure moment of asking who’s helping who.

He was three days out of a rehab center, temporarily “homeless” (he put those words in quotation marks as he spoke) and looking to do volunteer work - anything - painting, drywall, landscaping; he was good at handy work, he said. And he was tired of the rough neighborhoods the city sent him to for volunteer service, and wanted to work in a nice environment with good people. He had big clear blue eyes.

Early in the conversation I congratulated him for the big shifts he’d made, and honored that it’s no small feat to begin one’s life over again. He had a gentle easygoing resonance, and seemed sincerely eager to share. I leaned in.

He told his story quickly, then switched the subject on a dime. “May i offer you a prayer?” What  else could I say but “Of course!” Then he leaned in and I’m going to paraphrase this because I wanted to just listen fully and not try to think, and well I was deeply moved. It went something like this: “Mother-Father-God bless us to return to the family of man, where there is no separation and we know we are one. Bless us to love each other again. Bless us to join in helping each other because we are one. Amen.” 

Then he scribbled down his name and email and reminded me he did not yet have a phone. I promised to pass his message and contact info on to the ministers and we said good bye, and he wheeled on across the street. I went back in, and suddenly thought perhaps the tea pot was still hot - it was - so i poured him a cup of hot water and grabbed two tea bags, and went back out to see if he was still there. Right across the street. When I gave him the tea he said he needed it, and thanked me again. I floated back to the church, picking up some plastic cups strewn across the front lawn before i reached the steps to the door.