A quiet church. Off hours. The huge expanse is empty. I’m unlocking doors. On Sunday these pews are filled and there is a lot of activity. But now, no one. No sounds. I don’t notice anything different. The same shades of darkness fill this place. Then, a shadow moves at the rear of the church.
Until he rose up, I simply hadn’t noticed him hunched over in the darkest part of the church . He had been lying on a bench lengthwise. Somehow, I hadn’t seen him in that pew when the church was locked up after Friday’s evening devotions. When he heard me open the sacristy door the next morning and enter the sanctuary, he awoke and sat up. It scared the h-ll out of me.
He acted as if he had done it all before, and he probably had. He was homeless and neither of us thought it necessary to belabor the point. We exchanged “good morning” and that was it. I never saw him again. And, I don’t think I’d recognize him if I did.
These days I notice people more than I used to. It could be because my life is simpler in retirement. Different people deliver my groceries once a week but each one impresses me. Neighbors walk before supper and pass by my porch. I’m beginning to recognize the regulars.
At the state park not far from my home, I sit at a picnic table and just watch people. The same Asian couples come about twice a week to fish along the solid banks of the Illinois River as it flows through Morris. The women wear straw wide-brimmed sun hats and the men baseball caps.
Moms walk down to the slow moving water in shorts and loose tops hand-in-hand with their toddlers. They watch them throw sticks and pebbles into the gentle river. The kids smile when they hear their stones go “plunk!” One boy looks up at his mom with a huge grin on his face as if to say : “Look what I did!”
An elderly man with a narrow, metal loop around his head sporting a microphone which clings to his right cheek comes regularly to lounge at a nearby picnic table and smoke a few cigarettes.
There are dog walkers of all kinds, some with two or three house dogs lunging forward straining their leashes; other walkers are ambling as slow as their old sniffing companions. Plus, there is a whole set of people wandering around the park quietly who I haven’t focused in on yet.
In one of her short stories Flannery O’Connor described a scene where a young man is asked about God. The boy affirms that he believes in God and says, “but I don’t think he notices me yet.”
I’m thinking: God notices the homeless man in church, sees every individual in this park and His regard is weighty. I want to see what He sees.