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Beautiful inside and out

Invisible

I gave a little start when those words flashed onto the screen during a presentation by the poet Elizabeth Bradfield. Liz was in the process of describing six-word stories, modeled on Hemingway’s heartbreaking For sale: Baby shoes. Never used. The photograph showed a wall from the 6 Words Minneapolis project, in which city residents were asked to briefly describe themselves. This entry spoke directly to an experience I’d been having of late but hadn’t quite been able to name.

Consider: I smile at a young couple who are walking with their baby out of the grocery store as I enter. Their eyes flit briefly over my face and body without expression.

Waiting in a loose group of people for service at a food truck—there doesn’t seem to be a line—the fellow taking orders looks straight at me and then asks the guy in back of me what he’d like.

I’ve been doing one of those intense, year-long spiritual programs, where meditating on a daily lesson will, I hope, bring me bit-by-bit closer to the divine. It’s been hard, really hard, but also amazing. I have 47 days to go.

Today’s lesson is “My heart is beating in the peace of God.” Sounds wonderful, right? Only problem is, my heart isn’t the least bit peaceful. Actually, it’s smokin’ angry. My husband and I had an exchange this morning. Let’s say it involved money. Let’s say one of us has been spending more than the other, and that it isn’t me.

“I need you to be a part of this community.”

More easily said than done, especially when the place in question is a poor neighborhood in Detroit.

I was spending the afternoon with the Reverend Faith Fowler, executive director of Cass Community Social Services (CCSS), a nonprofit organization that for many years has worked to transform a cluster of largely abandoned city blocks into a functioning community, an oasis of truly normal life in an urban center where a typical “normal” day may include sporadic gunfire.

What does it take to help people in our most blighted cities?

Rain was coming—again. In anticipation Jeff and I pulled up our hoods and hunched our shoulders, although we were long past the point where the incessant patter bothered us. It’s supposed to rain a lot in Alaska; that’s why the landscape is so green. I tried not to think about the two weeks of pure sunshine that had preceded our vacation, when I’d been working in Anchorage.

We were taking a short walk to Riley Creek near the campground where we were staying in Denali National Park. Our Alaska explorations had exceeded all our hopes, except for the weather, and we’d made a conscious decision not to mind the clouds and drizzle. At least it wasn’t cold. We’d managed to stay comfortable, except for the night we awoke to find water flowing through our tent. Now the trip was drawing to a close. The following afternoon we’d be leaving for Anchorage and our flight home. We strolled through alder and spruce, past moss and fern, reveling in the moist freshness of the north woods.

To reach the creek we had to pass beneath a high railroad trestle. As we neared it we heard an approaching locomotive. “Let’s go catch it!” I said, and

The man (or was it a woman?) lay facedown on the cobblestone street, his knees folded beneath him, his forehead pressed to the ground in a posture of supplication. He wore a shapeless, dirty blue tunic and a rough piece of dark cloth over his head. The begging cup in front of him was empty. He might have been deeply asleep, except for his right arm, which shook with spasms. Dozens of people stepped around him, almost over him, barely taking notice.

Jeff and I were in Florence, Italy, for a few days,