Sleeping in the Park

Monday Mornings are just not good times for me to deal with people on the telephone. I seem psychologically incapable of communicating with people if I can't look them in the eye. My secretary knows this quirk and does her very best to screen my calls. She knows that by 10:00 a.m. I am back in the groove and can handle just about anything. So when she warned me early one Monday morning that the woman on the line was a neighbor who sounded quite upset, my instincts urged me to have her take a message so I could handle it later. But I didn't. I took the call, which was my first mistake.

"You don't know me," the voice on the phone said, and red flag number one flashed before my eyes. "I've been your neighbor for months." Red flag number two. "I really like all you do for the community, but . . ." Red flag number three. "You know, I don't go to church, but I'm a religious person." Red flag number four.

"Just what is it you are trying to tell me?" I asked. Any more red flags and I'd feel as though it were May Day in the Kremlin. "It's those disgusting street people in your park. You know they aren't homeless at all. They are just a bunch of drunken bums. I know." I wondered how she knew. Who knows? Maybe she drank with them at the local establishment on the corner. "They sleep in your park and scare us honest people away." Since when did sleeping become dishonest? "You should have a rule that says no sleeping in the park."

At that point, I broke in and explained how hard it would be to enforce a no-sleeping rule. I wasn't about to go out there on a regular basis to make sure everyone on the benches was upright and conscious. Besides, the park was always filled with nannies and their carriages, college students from the university down the street, elderly folk from one of the local senior buildings taking a walk and sitting awhile, couples obviously in love, and kids just being kids.

I didn't want to talk to her anymore. So I recklessly invited her to call the police whenever she saw something in the park that she thought was dangerous or illegal. I told her to feel free to say that she was calling in the pastor's name. That would turn out to be my second mistake.

A few weeks later, I had a break of an hour or so before any of my evening appointments. It was one of those incredibly mild, early summer evenings. Since I had been cooped up in my office all day, I decided to sit in the park and work on the next Sunday's homily. The park was empty and quiet except for the gentle trickling of the fountain. The breeze was warm. My stomach was full. I started to nod off. I remained upright, even if I might have been listing a bit to my left.

Abruptly I was jolted awake by two uniformed Chicago police officers. The hand on my shoulder made me jump to my feet. In a panic, I asked what the problem was. They told me gruffly that I had to clear out of the park. I asked them why, since I was the pastor who had raised the money and built the park just a few years earlier. They told me that was impossible, since the call had come from someone complaining in the Pastor's name about the people drinking and sleeping in the park and scaring everyone else away. I pleaded guilty to having fallen asleep. I had no container of drink with me. And while I couldn't deny that the sight of me asleep on the park bench might scare away some particularly squeamish people, I did point out that the park had been empty when I sat down.

It took me a little while, but I was finally able to clarify who I was, and the police left. I realize that I had failed to get the name or number of the voice on the phone, the nosy neighbor who had caused this trouble. If I could have, I would have called her back and said, at least, "Get a life!"

But eventually I was struck by the irony of after all, if she truly was afraid of me sleeping on the bench I had installed in the park I had built on the property of which I was pastor, of course she would be frightened of disturbed street people. She has never called back or stopped to identify herself to me when I was sitting in the park, awake.

No wonder God laughs with us and at us. We are made in God's image, and so is the world we live in. Yet we find ourselves at such odds with this world and with each other-and over the silliest things sometimes. I think that God designs certain humorous situations just to wake us up to see God's face in someone else, in some setting we don't except.

Anonymous

December 4, 2005