9/8/10 - Being blessed in the street

You try to avert your eyes as you walk by--she is sitting there on a dirty blanket with a tattered cardboard sign, probably penned at a shelter from a bit of trash. You try to be inconspicuous, thinking of times when you do have more than 34 cents in your pocket, or what they could do with the coins. And regardless if you are thinking that, or whether you are feeling superior because you pulled yourself up by your own bootstraps so they should be able to, too. Or regardless if in your mind you are writing a check to an agency to help them, or memorizing the streetcorner and the hour so you can come back tomorrow or next week with a five-spot. Regardless of all that, here is someone who materially has so little, and yet she offers you a blessing. You have received a blessing.