Sunday, July 30, 2017

Small steps - steps nonetheless...

“Our duty is not to overcome inequity everywhere.
Our duty is to overcome inequity in ourselves…”
– Anonymous

Dateline: San Diego
Time: 07:30
Temperature: 71 degrees (21C) – Humidity 72%

It was a typical summer’s morning in this west coast city. Locals say, “It’s just another day in paradise.” Molly and I lived here for five years and it would be hard to disagree that this is one of the loveliest places on the planet to live. It’s said that only three percent of the Earth's land mass has San Diego’s year-round temperate coastal-climate.

The spine meeting was in a hotel on the shore of the harbor, just west of Charles Lindbergh International Airport – some sixty yards from the water’s edge.

I headed out for a morning run, according to the Lindstrøm method, a Scandinavian approach I learned from its originator. It is a combination walk-jogging that works well for my aging architecture – in particular, ankles, knees, and hips. Think of Goldilocks and three bears as an example, but rather than porridge, it is about exercise intensity. Too little and the rewards are limited. Too much, and there is a risk of injury. The Lindstrøm method is intended for the movement to be just right! The guy who invented it is much better at it than I, but I continue to work on my technique in hopes that one day I will reach the mental and physical state he displays with such ease.

Usually, in the mornings, there is a marine layer along the coast. It forms from the cooling effect of the ocean water on the warmer air mass. In its most benign form, visibility is not affected, but a grayish cloud cover overcasts the sky that makes newcomers think it’s going to rain. In its strongest form, it cloaks the coastal city streets and highways in thick fog restricting visibility. Either way, by ten in the morning, most of it has burned off, and sunlight makes its way to the ground, covering everything in sight.

Loping along the harbor pathway, it was hard not to appreciate the beauty of the many sailboats moored off shore contrasted with the calm water and gray sky. Soon the sun would appear and make the boats against the San Diego Skyline look like toys on a shimmering carpet of blue water and framed in an azure blue sky.

There was another sight that caught my attention as I moved along the water’s edge. On several benches, meant for folks to sit and meditate at their good fortune as they quietly absorbed the beauty of this magnificent harbor, were homeless people just sitting up on the bench where they had spent the night. My clothes and belongings were in a dresser drawer and on the bathroom sink, theirs in a re-appropriated shopping cart or in one or two large, well-worn backpacks. At the end of my ‘Lindstrøm exercise,’ I would shower, change clothes, and get ready for the rest of the day. They would do neither.

My first experience in seeing a homeless person was in an early morning run in New Orleans decades ago. As I jogged around the person lying right in the middle of the sidewalk I was surprised to see him there. Later that morning, I felt as though I had been one of those Pharisees who bypassed the man eventually taken care of by the Good Samaritan in the Bible story I had known from my youth. It was a lovely story told by my mother as she tucked me in at night. I slipped into a reverie, content in the knowledge that God was good and all things eventually would work out. In New Orleans, the seeds were planted that everything would not work out in the end. It was a visceral reality that haunted my sleep for weeks.

Over the years, I have encountered hundreds of the homeless in situations just like this. There have been times when I provided a meal or a little cash, but in doing so, realized my impotence to make any kind of impact. I have come to understand there are many reasons people find themselves in a’ roofless’ life circumstance, many of which the result of poor mental health.

Whatever the reason for this outlier life journey, I have never come to grips with the real-life ‘Beauty and the Beast’ world in which we live. My upbringing in a modest minister’s family was on the ‘Beauty’ side of things. As challenging as circumstances might have been, I have never known the reality of the ‘Beast….’

As I headed back to the hotel, I was reminded of the story regarding the young boy and the thousands of sand-dollars on the beach. As he tossed them back into the ocean one by one, a man said to him, “Son, you will never be able to save these Sand-Dollars, there are simply too many.” The boy picked another one up and threw it into the water and said, “I saved that one!”

I thought to myself, I couldn't even save one...

- ted

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