GOOD ENOUGH

Once a month, some of my friends cook up some food and take
it to a local park where some of our Neighbors-Without-Homes
seem to congregate.  I joined them last week and ended up talking
with a man.  He had grey hair, bad teeth, and rosy cheeks.
He kept asking what church we were from. I guess "None" didn't
make much sense to him.  I told him that I had just come down
to share some food with my fellow human beings.  By turns
he would tell me that he wasn't "one of them", motioning
to the others who had come to eat.  Then he would confess
to killing someone, to being a dope addict, that he hadn't
eaten in three days because he had been drinking.  When
those things didn't seem to make a difference to me,
he would say again that he wasn't one of them and ask
again what church I was from.

As I drove away, I thought about what it might take to turn
someone like that's life around. A feeling of hopelessness
came to me. "What's the use?", I thought.  Then I thought
about what we do when a loved one is dying.  We hold their
hand.  We talk to them.  We let them be wrong.  We don't try
to fix them ... We just love them and be 'with' them.

Maybe that's good enough.  In fact, maybe that's the very
best thing we can do for anyone, ever.