The Not-So-Good Samaritan, Part 2

“Where do you live, sir?” she asked, expecting some confusion.

He answered without a hitch, “I live at 4033 Spottswood.”

“That’s a long way from here. How did you get all the way out here?”

His answer was firm, slightly defensive, “Well, a man’s got to go to town sometimes, I reckon.”

She didn’t correct his geography. She offered to give him "a ride home, so you can get your shoe.”

“That would be mighty kind of you. And, if you don’t mind…hell, I need some cigarettes. If we could stop at Walgreens on the way.”

Realizing she'd forgotten her manners, “What’s your name, sir?” she asked.

Straightening up, he answered proudly, “Arthur Lee Sommerfield the Third! And you?”

“Terry.”

“Terry? What a delightful name! It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance,” he said with a bow. They shook hands.

This isn’t so bad, she thought. He’s a sweet old man. He doesn’t deserve to be out here wandering around in one shoe away from home, wherever that is.

In front of the Post Office, he stopped, leaned on the garbage can. “City Hall owes me $803.”

“They do?”

“Yes, but I moved and I forgot to give my new address. And that money comes in handy twice a month.”

Post office customers glanced at the suburbanite talking to the homeless man, gave her a questioning look, but none stopped. She adjusted her posture, establishing herself as the Good Samaritan, but wishing someone would join her.

He was in no hurry to leave the garbage can, so she prodded, “The car’s right over here. I’m taking you home, remember.”

“And what a fine automobile that is!” he said gallantly, as if it were a BMW instead of the shabby Mazda in dire need of a new paint job. She opened the door, wishing she had the minivan, dreading the close proximity.

“So, Mr. Sommerfield, is your wife still alive?”

He seemed to think about it for a moment. “I don’t know.” She thought he was confused, but then he said triumphantly, “She got too uppity, so I divorced her!” He made this sound like a war story in which he’d routed the enemy.

She was beginning to think he might not be so sweet after all.

Minutes later, in the nursing home parking lot, she told him she needed to go in and make a phone call. He seemed oblivious to the surroundings, and said, “Take all the time you need.”

Inside, she made her way past the maze of wheelchairs, avoiding eye contact with the people in them, thinking, “Why are they all crowded here in the lobby - people can barely get past.” Old or infirm people like that - always waiting, hoping for some kind of contact, made her feel vaguely guilty. She hurried to the reception desk.

“No Arthur Sommerfield here,” said the receptionist. But, eager to break from her ordinary routine, get in on the rescue mission, she tried to help. She found out after some calls to the hospital that he’d been released from the ER at 4:00 a.m. that day. So, 11 hours later, he was alone, 2 blocks from the ER, missing a shoe.

She headed back to the car, half-expecting, half-hoping he wouldn’t be there. But he was sitting there as normal as could be, as content as he was earlier while leaning on the garbage can, all the time in the world.

The Not-So-Good Samaritan, Part 1

She was proud of herself for holding her tongue. She hadn't said a word when he told their son to take the minivan to school, so he could try to fix the 15 year old Mazda. She didn’t go out there at 8:15 to remind him that she needed to leave for work by 8:25 at the latest. She didn’t say what she was thinking, which was, “Why in the world are you attempting to do this NOW?”

She was good. She held her tongue. She also held her “thank you” and her kiss, giving only a cool good-bye as she hurriedly backed out of the driveway, leaving him with wrench in hand to watch her go, to feel her disapproval without her having marred her resolve to not say anything.

The car still wasn’t fixed. So it was back to the old routine. At red lights, she had to shift into neutral and gun the gas to keep the car from dying. No. She wouldn’t call and tell him. She was going to make it to work on time after all. Her heart softened as she thought about how eager he was to get the car fixed; how disappointed he would be. Nonetheless, at each read light, she still grumbled about his timing.

That afternoon all was forgiven. Work had gone well, she’d left a few minutes early, the weather was beautiful, and she was looking forward to a long walk when she got home. Skillfully navigating the red-lights, she felt grateful and optimistic. He tries so hard; he'll get it fixed, she thought.

Driving down Park Avenue, she noticed an old man standing on the sidewalk, stopped, as if lost. He was wearing a coat, blue pants, but only one shoe. Thinking he’d wandered off from the nursing home down the street, worried that he might be disoriented and wander into the busy street, she turned right, found a parking spot just as the car died. She hurried to find the man, still standing in the same stop, staring alternately at his feet and straight ahead at the poster on the side of the bus stop.

Aware of the cars driving past, aware of herself in her bright red coat stopping to help an old man, she asked loudly, “Sir, is everything okay?”

He looked up; their eyes met. He looked back down. “Well, no. It seems I’m missing a shoe. It looks like I’ll need to go to Florsheim’s and buy a new pair.”

“What do you think happened to your shoe?” She guessed he was 80 something. He had two pre-historic looking teeth, was wearing gloves and a hat, but carried nothing else. The blue sweat pants were stained, but he didn’t have the look of someone who lived on the street. He smelled of cigarettes and grime.

“I was at a party at my lady friend’s, and it went way into the night. Everyone left about 2:00 a.m. and when I woke up, my shoe was gone.”

This will be a good story, she thought, already visualizing the telling at dinner that night.

Hunger for God

When I was 17, I had a summer job as a secretary at The Memphis Country Club. In the elegant, old-world dining room with starched white linens even at lunch, I learned to love lamb and mint jelly, grilled cheese with bacon, quiche and other exotic foods. One of my duties was to decipher the chef’s handwriting and make daily menus, requiring frequent trips to ask him to translate. (The girl who took my place when I left wasn’t so careful, so one day when the president of the club sat down to peruse the menu, he saw, “Chicken Crap.” She was fired.)

Though I enjoyed the lunches as much as anyone, I despised the office talk. For 8 hours the women talked of two things: food and TV. Just beginning to think seriously about God, eager for learning, passionate for meaning, I wanted to scream, “Wake up! Don’t you know there’s more to life than eating and watching TV?”

Today I not only can’t recall my former indignation, I’ve become those women, I’m ashamed to say.

For some time, I’ve been sleepily aware of a dullness in my spirit, an inability to muster up much enthusiasm for spiritual things. This is not a state I am comfortable with; my lips confessing but my heart far. One reason I sing in the choir at church is that I want the truths we sing to find resonance in me; if not, to expose to me my hypocrisy. And, of late, I’ve sensed that the words and the reality don’t match.

So when I heard a quote from a book at church on hunger for God, I raced to check it out from the library before anyone else could snatch it. I was providentially deaf when the speaker mentioned the subject of the book and too much in a hurry to read the front cover, or I wouldn’t have bothered. Fasting was the last thing on my mind.

But, it was what I needed. I’d already been ruminating on the sisters of Sodom; their arrogance, lives of careless ease, and unconcern for the poor. In an earlier post I talked about pride; here I want to talk about being overfed. This quote from Piper’s book sums up his thesis well.

“The greatest enemy of hunger for God is not poison but apple pie. It is not the banquet of the wicked that dulls our appetite of heaven, but endless nibbling at the table of the world….The greatest adversary of love to God is not his enemies but his gifts. And the most deadly appetites are not for the poison of evil, but for the simple pleasures of earth. For when these replace an appetite for God himself, the idolatry is scarcely recognizable, and almost incurable.” John Piper, "Hunger for God".

He makes a compelling argument for fasting which I won’t relate here; if your resistance is like mine was, you’ll need to be tricked into reading it, too. I won’t be able to convince you. But, from the first page, I knew this was a message for me, that I felt no desire for God because my soul was stuffed “with small things”, leaving no room for the great. Jesus warned that “the pleasures of this life” and “the desire for other things” would choke out the word.

C.S. Lewis said our problem is not that are desires are too strong, but rather are too weak. “We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” (The “Weight of Glory”, an essay.)

I have been far too easily pleased. Give me a good book, a bowl of ice cream, let me snuggle before the fire; I can’t think of much better. And because I’m a rich American, I can do that or any number of pleasurable things every single day. And I have.

But, by God’s grace and prodding, things are changing. Fasting is a time when, for just a few hours, I stop indulging. I set my heart and my mind elsewhere. I listen. I hunger. I even cry. I identify with “want”. I do believe I am waking up again.