Sometimes I read people saying that God is disappearing from the public sphere. Some people think it’s a good thing and some people don’t. I go to coffee shops a lot, though, and I’m not so sure it’s happening, around here at least. At one table a group of international students doing a Bible study. And at the next, a disaffected millennial disavowing his religious upbringing. Now he’s into being kind to people. He glances sidewise at the slightly older acquaintance he’s trying to impress, who listens with noticeable patronage. They speak in moderated voices because they want to hear and not be heard by the Bible study at the next table, which is why they started taking about any of it in the first place.
It’s common. It’s complicated.
On Saturday I left my motorcycle with my mechanic up in the Northwest part of town, and took a series of buses home. When I don’t have anywhere to be, there’s nowhere better than the city bus. On the 1, an old man wearing a dirty cap blazoned with “man of faith” sat in one of the front seats, chatting with a woman who had a little cart to help her walk parked in front of her.
“It’s the gap,” he said, “between rich and poor. It keeps getting wider.”
The woman nodded.
“They’re laying up for themselves treasures on earth,” he said. “I’m a pastor, myself. I’ve been a pastor for 30 years, and I see it. Seems like it gets worse and worse. People want things. They don’t listen to the spirit.”
“That’s right,” the woman said.
“But that spirit, it will tell you to do some hard things. When I started church under the bridge a long while back, me and some other people, that was hard. I still go sometimes and just talk with people, you know what I’m saying? They come to eat, you know, they think they’re just coming to eat, but then we talk to them too, see. The spirit talks to them. That’s how we do it.
The women nodded. A lull in the conversation. He pointed at her cart. “Now, which kind is that? You can get a medicare payment for that, you know. I’ve helped several people I know sort it out.”
An hour or two later, after lunch and several more bus changes, I was on the 20, close to home at last. In the same seat as that old pastor had been sitting in on the 1, a man with bird bones, white and brittle like onion skin, sat with an enormous Bible open on his lap, fingering through a rosary. He had on a broad-brimmed hat like Bunyon’s pilgrim. A young man got on and sat next to him, tattooed and baggy-pantsed and vague-eyed. The bird-man turned to the young man. “Do you go to mass?”
“Naw, man. I mean, I used to.”
“You should go to mass. You know where I go? San Jose, on Oltorf. We’re on Oltorf right now.”
The young man gave him generous attention. “Yeah, I should go to mass. My mom used to take me.”
“Do you believe in it?” The bird-man’s voice was high and lilting.
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Well,” the bird man said, “we’re on Oltorf right now. So if you got off this bus, you can go to the other side of the street. Go to the other side, and take the 331 all the way to Congress. It’s not very far. That’s where San Jose is.”
“Okay.”
“Confession is at four. Confession is at four, but I always recommend getting there early, like three thirty, because sometimes it’s busy and if you don’t get there early you might not get a turn.”
This afternoon I’m making the bus pilgrimage back across the city to pick up my bike. Wish me luck and good listening!
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CC image courtesy of Paul Kimo McGregor on Flickr.