Fr. Don's Daily Reflection
Psalm 62: “In you alone is my soul at rest. My help comes from you.”
San Francisco 2018. Reflection based on July 2018 travels
These notes on my time in San Francisco (July 2018) are not meant as ads for ride-hailing (RH). That’s a generic name for the procedure whereby you call for a ride by an app on your smart phone. This system figures so much here due to my ‘graduating’ from a cane to a walker because of balance issues. (When I mention to students that I am unbalanced, invariably they say: “Oh, we knew that.”) Hearing about these often foreign-born men and women speaks to an important subject in these United States. (I will use the first 3 letters of their names.) Reading about a visit to San Francisco in days still darkened by Covid-19 makes this seem like escapist literature. We might need it.
My RH driver this morning is Mec. About 20 years ago he came to the U.S. from the Philippines. He seems genuinely happy to hear about my connecting with alumni and simultaneously having some vacation in San Francisco. Ideally, he thinks, vocation and vacation should be the same. -- Ascending an unavoidable slope, I stop for a breather at parking meters along the way. A young fellow ahead turns around and says: “Are you good?” “Yes, thanks,” I say. -- Another day my RH driver to Caffe Greco is Abd, a very lively and serious man in his 30’s from Afghanistan. Drivers over the course of a month also hail from Algeria, Eritrea, Lebanon, Syria, Thailand, Vietnam, Mongolia, China, Japan, Brazil, Spain, Ethiopia, Jordan, Russia, Nepal, Palestine, India, Taiwan, Pakistan, France, Libya and Iran.
At Old Saint Mary's I go to the 10:15 AM Mass one Sunday, mostly in Cantonese. The Chinese Deacon gives a lively homily both in Cantonese and English. Part of it is about respect for the homeless as fellow human beings. Two of them regularly sleep nights in the church doorways. -- Later my driver is Mar. He has a wife and three offspring, the oldest being 29 and she has given him a four-year-old grandchild. He asks about my marital status, and when I reply in the negative he is incredulous. “No wife, no children?” I quiet his amazement a bit by telling him that I am a Catholic priest. -- Going to Mass requires going up a bit of steep hill and getting help to lift my walker up four steps. Invariably someone offers that help. People seem eager to help and it confirms my experience that most of us like the opportunity to help.
On probably the warmest day of the month, 77° and the only day I wore a short sleeve summer shirt, I stop at ideally situated Café de la Presse to have coffee and to observe the passing scene. I have a handwritten letter from friend Susan with me, and when I open it the couple on my right, she an Israeli and he an American, gasp: “Wow! A handwritten letter!” I will have to tell Susan how amazing she is. -- Entering the church for Mass one day at the corner of Grant and California I hear someone call out “Don!” It’s Byr, a constantly exuberant cable car conductor familiar from former summers when I enjoyed riding the cars. I wave back. -- I took this from a poster at Grace Cathedral: "Make America civil again."
In Caffe Greco one of the regulars is an elderly man who often lifts the walker up the two steps into the shop. He wears a red kerchief around his neck as does a woman who is a regular there. Both of them seem to be in their 70s or 80s and ambulatory. -- The news in late July about fires raging in the Redding, CA, area hits home in Minnesota when we hear sadly that fire has destroyed the home of a student of ours from that city. -- Back to Old Saint Mary's, my driver is Sam. He is from Jordan; he is amazed that I had been to Amman years ago, and says his name is Simeon in English. The rosary hanging from his rearview mirror indicates, he tells me, that he is an Orthodox Christian. -- Another RH driver is Shiva, age 39, with a clean-shaven head, from Nepal. He seems very interested in my work and takes a selfie of the two of us. -- Speaking to a middle-aged fellow helping me get settled at a café window I use a sort of ‘mantra’ of mine: “The first 90 years are the most difficult.” He: “Thanks for the heads-up.”
Psalm 27: “I believe I shall see the Lord’s goodness / in the land of the living.
Wait for the Lord; be strong; / be stouthearted, and wait for the Lord!”