Last week I was walking back to my office from another location downtown that I support. Waiting to cross a busy street at a corner, there was a disheveled unfocused looking guy in a wheelchair behind me nearby, and just as I stepped off the curb, I thought I heard him say "Sir, sir...", as if to ask a question.

In a fraction of a second I decided to keep walking and not look back - after all, I was already stepping away, and he waited too long to address me - as though the fact that he was an unwashed, disheveled black man had nothing to do with it. But by the time I reached the other side of the street, it felt wrong for me to have ignored him. Who knew what distress he might be experiencing? How presumptuous for me to dismiss his attempt to communicate with me so casually. Suddenly, I was the embodiment of many of the aspects of the city that troubled and distressed me daily.

Reaching the other side, I turned, saw him back there on his corner, and started back toward him as the light changed again. I walked directly to him, and as he looked up at me, said, "I'm sorry - were you trying to speak to me before?" In a sort of jumbled diction, he asked something along lines of just what I had expected when I ignored him before, asking simply for a handout. "Maybe get something to eat?", I asked, as I looked in my wallet, as though I didn't know if there might be a dollar in there or not. As I handed him a bill, I smiled at him and then, with a gentle touch to his shoulder, I apologized for ignoring him earlier. He looked up at me, and with the most radiant half-toothed smile, gave me the look one might expect from a best friend, or expressing the affection of a dear brother or sister during a heartfelt chat.

Then I turned again and hurried back toward my office building.   About half way across the intersection, the lingering image in my mind of his unjudging warm brown eyes almost made me cry...

 The picture is 'Woman giving alms', by János Thorma