Crashing inward

I saw human kindness displayed today, when I wasn't even expecting it, and it left me feeling ashamed...

I blame it partially on my poor Netflix-choice of renting "Crash." So the movie won a bunch of Academy Awards, and a number of friends have really liked it, but I should have done just a little bit of research to figure out that the film is dark, bitter, angry, fear-mongering, and that Sandra J. Bullock plays it totally straight with absolutely ZERO humor (Oh, how I wished she would do that snorting laugh of hers just to lighten things up!) -

We didn't make it too far into it, but caught the jist that it was about racism and dysfunctional relationships... Nice choice for newlyweds, right?

Anyways, so I was heading down to a restaurant at lunchtime today. I was stopped at a light, pondering the rest of the day, and enjoying that acquarium-like feel of staring obliviously out your car window at nothing in particular.

Until I realized that there was something going on right beside me. A middle-aged Asian man was walking around and looking confused. I noticed he was carrying an old school walkman, which for some reason always triggers memories of "Rain Man" for me for some reason.

He was being attended by a roughly dressed woman, who seemed to be trying to calm him down. Our eyes met, and because my window was open a crack (A leak in my acquarium) she came over and started talking to me. I noticed that she didn't have the middle 4 teeth in her bottom row. My heart started beating faster.

"I think he's really messed up," she said, and I flashed back to scenes of a carjacking in the movie. "He's looking for a McDonalds... Is there one around here?" I stammered a bit until I recalled one, less than a quarter of a mile away. "Yeah... Yeah. It's down that way." I gestured, praying that the light would turn green so that I could speed away to my team lunch of mediocre Mexican food at Chevy's. "Thanks," she said and turned back to the man.

And as I looked back, it was like my eyes cleared of the fog of fear. I saw that the man was not disturbed, but just confused by the fact that the sidewalk he needed to cross was under construction. I saw that the woman who was roughly dressed was so garbed because... she was a construction worker. And last, I saw that woman put her arm around this now unscary man and show him the path through the construction site to those fabled arches in the distance.

When we get to be so focussed on protecting our own self, it's easy to forget how our role model came to us saying, "I am the bread of life." The point of life is not living in fear to avoid trouble, but its living in love to help those in trouble to find their way out. Amen...