Goddess of Wal-Mart

Dear Ma’am,

You don’t know me. I’m just the guy who helped you switch out the Diet RC Cola you accidentally dropped  at Wal-Mart today at 3:54 pm on October 18, 2017.  I confess I was following you, but not in a weird way.  I was praying for you and thinking about what your life must have been like.  I can’t even imagine it.  It’s like you are a whole universe unto yourself.  You look about eighty years old so let’s say you were born in 1937.  Then there’s the fact you are black.  What in God’s name must that have been like to grow up black and female in 20th century America?!?  I'm imagining you may have been a little girl during WWII. Your daddy may have been drafted into the war but assigned to a “colored division.”  I mean he could’ve been a hero like one of those Tuskegee Airmen! And you may have had to watch your father fight for this country only then to discriminate against him in horrific ways upon his return.  God, that would have turned me into such a bitter person, yet you aren’t! You are kind; I can tell from our brief interaction.  I can see it in your eyes. I would have hated this country though. How is it that you don’t?  There are some other things I can’t even imagine that may have happened to you. Of course, I don’t know because you are a total mystery to me, but if you grew up here in Illinois and came of age here in the '60s or '70s, you must’ve faced monumental mental challenges as a black female -- challenges I could never dream of.  Being mistreated at restaurants, being denied service at a small gas station, having uppity university students assume you’re poor trash because you shop at Wal-Mart and buy Diet RC Cola. People like me.  People who automatically assume because we are “white liberals” that only poor trash shops at Wal-Mart.  We have no damn clue.  We are so snide and judgmental of so many people unlike us.  We can’t help it: we are human and therefore petty, fearful, and distant from the Other.  But you are not distant from it.  How is that? May I sit at your feet and learn from you, ma’am?

Then there is your female-ness.  God, I cannot even understand that!  You likely, it seems to me right now in light of my Facebook feed, were attacked or abused at some point. How the hell does anyone recover EVER from such a thing?!  Is that why you are alone? Or did you have a loving husband who just died recently? I don’t know.  Either way, you are kind. In fact, you’re a goddess, an angel walking among us in disguise.  Most of us just pass you by.  

Almighty God, thank you for this angel walking alone in the aisles of Wal-Mart. The beauty, humility, and grace within her might save us all if You would only give us eyes to see.  

Amen.