Thoughts and Deeds

I walked through the double door and back into the chapel, new to me in the low light. Bouncing off the century old stone walls was the organ’s chant: the chorus of “Amazing Grace”. Hard to believe that a place like this had survived 100 years, through the ups and downs of life in New York City. Not a large house of worship when compared to St. Patrick’s or one of the other cathedrals, but the Bowery mission reeks of history, of winters where it has housed the cold, of veterans with nowhere else to go, of years and years of three meals a day to anyone who is hungry.

I’m standing around, taking it all in. Out of the corner of my eye I see a guy in the back, mopping the floor. I walk to the back and introduce myself, ask him his name. He says his name is Abraham; I had to ask twice because of his thick African accent.

“Abraham” he repeats.

I ask him how long he has been at the mission, and how he likes it. He says that he has only been there for two or three months and that he likes it ok. “They are pretty strict, they don’t let me smoke”, he says, “but it is a good place to stay.”

Abraham is tall, an imposing figure, he looks like he should be in professional sports. He is dressed in a jumpsuit and leaning on his mop. As we talk he tells me that he doesn’t drink or do drugs like most of the other homeless men that enter the mission, he simply has had some bad luck.

“I am from Mali.” he says in a deep enthusiastic voice. “One day my friend calls me from New York City, says he has a job for me.”

This happens a lot. A construction job in New York means money to send back home to family, means living a completely different kind of life. Immigrants still see America as a land of promise, just as much as our ancestors did as they sailed into Ellis Island.

Abraham goes on to tell me that he sold everything he had to buy the plane ticket. He was putting all his eggs in this one basket. He arrived with nothing but the clothes on his back and his friend’s phone number in his pocket.

He calls his friend, someone else picks up, a stranger. He dials again, carefully making sure that he enters the digits in correctly. The same stranger. He had copied the phone number down incorrectly.

Put yourself in this situation, in a foreign land where you don’t speak the language, with no money, no way of getting a job, and no idea what your next step is.

Flash forward a year. Abraham had struggled, found a job and taught himself english. A monumental achievement in my book. But as rent goes up, and the cost of living goes up, it can get difficult for even the hard worker to stay on his feet. So he ended up here, at the bowery mission, scrubbing the floor, taking computer classes in the evening, and getting three square meals a day.

As I listened to his story I had to think to myself, “Surely this is what we are all about, this is what we do: meet people with a need and show them a little mercy.” Sometimes it isn’t as complicated as we make it out to be. Sometimes it is a simple as the Bowery Mission. Sometimes it is just about meeting Abraham.

I came upon this while reading Protagoras. Socrates here is semi Ironically deconstructing this poem to poke fun at Protagoras, and this quote stuck out to me:

“… For I am not fond of blame.
Infinite the tribe of fools”

“The implication being that a censorious person would have his hands full blaming them”

This made me laugh for some reason, I can’t put my finger on it.