Meanwhile, In San Francisco

That homeless guy next to you might just save your broken little heart.

I don’t know if we’ve had a news week this rough in a while. There have been days when it felt like the whole world was in mourning or furious or both. When it’s that dark, you have to look hard for the light. Or sometimes it smacks you in the face when you aren’t enough paying attention.

A day or so ago a homeless man and I were waiting together for the light to change at a crosswalk. It was early morning— pre-coffee kind of early. There wasn’t really anyone else nearby and he was twirling around a blanket, acting a little erratically. It was obvious he was getting ready to do…Something.

I had my guard up, watching cautiously as he prepared. I’ve seen a man in a similar situation throw himself into the path of a speeding car, and the heavy thud of flesh on fast-moving metal is hard to forget. Almost as hard as the silence that follows. Plus, I worry a lot about the suffering of folks like him in my neighborhood, frozen in illness while the city’s latest wave of gentrification indifferently engulfs the streets in reclaimed wood and artisanal cured meats.

His tentative movements shifted as he ambled into the street and spread his blanket out in front of me. And it was tender. Like in old movies when a man throws his coat over an errant puddle to protect the shoes of the woman beside him. The surprise continued.

The man climbed down onto the ground and bowed in full prostration. Like he’d just entered the temple to find a beloved teacher back from a long journey, or a giant family of radiant Buddhas, all holding their arms open to receive him. Whether he could imagine what that bow might mean to me, or the fact that he was just a few hundred feet away from a meditation center I’d been working to help open, it didn’t matter.

There was so much love steeped in that bow, its force alone would have stopped traffic had there been any. He raised himself up, grinning like he knew all the secrets I didn’t, and we exchanged the most loving smiles and sweet, sincere well-wishes I could possibly imagine.

I have received more unexpected ambushes of grace from suffering people on that street corner, with more frequency, than anywhere else in the world. It makes me wish I would pay attention better, walk slower, look more often into the faces of the people I pass. When I do, it’s worth it. Always. There is so much sadness right now— we can’t afford to let ourselves forget the goodness we all have, too