The Bag Lady

Annie is a poet. This is a poem that she wrote after attending mass in Jutiquille this past Sunday. It is about watching an interaction between a poor woman and man during mass.

The Bag Lady

“Or suppose a woman who has ten silver coins loses one of them – what does she do? She lights a lamp, sweeps her house, and looks carefully everywhere until she finds it. When she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together, and says to them, ‘I am so happy I found the coin I lost. Let us celebrate!’ In the same way, I tell you, the angels of God rejoice over one sinner who repents.” Luke 15: 8-10

I couldn’t ignore her.

Soiled and worn,
she jabbed uncomfortably
into the smooth choreography
that had become my Sunday mornings in Honduras.

She clashed loudly with the trouble-free rhythm
of bright tambourines and praising hands
and her uneasy, puzzled motions
shattered the liturgy I had learned to expect.

The pling, pling of every coin
spilling forth from her torn plastic bag
punctuated uncomfortably the space between us.

Two boys scurried to a separate bench,
hoping to avoid her disturbing presence,
yet in their haste, left a painful gap
in the body of Christ we so boldly proclaim to embrace.

Paralyzed by an inexplicable distance,
I did nothing to intervene.
I simply watched her and surrendered to the familiar rhythm of the Living Word
floating towards me from the podium.

And then he arrived.
Equally needy and equally unclean,
his awkward presence is unforgettable.

He is the one who, every Sunday, dances on the altar,
who takes communion three times because he doesn’t understand,
who, in his Down Syndrome-colored world,
somehow sparks life into the community that gathers
between these humble walls.

He entered -
With his dirty pants,
his shoeless feet,
and with a large green glass of water.

Interested, she suddenly slowed her frenzied motions,
forgetting her plastic bag,
its growing hole,
and the precious coins falling between bits of food within.

Their eyes met and,
through the force of silent gestures,
the Living Word stopped floating and suddenly gave birth before me.

He shared his cup with her.

In the exchange of saliva, germs, and kindness,
a poor, dirty, peculiar stranger
suddenly became a living parable,
the all-too-familiar woman with the lost coin,
reminding me of God’s forgiveness.

I had done nothing, given nothing,
and yet, he, who has nothing,
gave her something to drink.

Her quick smile unearthed years of memorized lists in Catholic grade school -
Beatitudes and corporal works of mercy
taking shape in the deformed hands of a dancing man
and his large green glass of water.

In the sharing of his cup,
Gospels merged and began to breathe,
and among the beautiful stench of unwashed clothes,
lost coins, plastic bags, and unknown histories,
I heard the angels rejoicing.

Annie

October 2007