Waiting for the bus in downtown Seattle earlier this month, I witnessed a scene that I can’t forget. Two police officers on bicycles rode up to an African-American man standing on the street corner. As they dismounted they greeted him cheerfully, saying, “Hi, David.” “David” greeted them back. They calmly explained something to him about his being in the wrong place or having been in the wrong place. He did not argue with them.
Then began a long methodical dance among the three, one they seemed to have danced before. One police officer asked David to show him what was in his pockets. David removed items from one of his coat pockets, held them out in his open palm to one officer, who would examine them and hand them to the other officer to hold while the first officer prompted David to dig again and David dug in another pocket. The three repeated these steps many times, with the pile of belongings growing to an unmanageable mound in the second officer’s cupped hands. For David was dressed in many layers, each layer seemingly full of pockets. As he emptied his pockets, displayed his necessities, treasures, and secrets, and handed them over to the officers, the three talked calmly, all of them good-natured, no sarcasm, no whiff of aggression.
As I stood to the side watching and listening, my heart went out to this man emptying his pockets on the street corner. He was so vulnerable, so exposed, to sudden searches, to indignities of the spirit. Part of me was angry that police officers, however polite they may be, are free to stop anyone and search them, force them to expose their intimate belongings. And yet there was something more. This man was not afraid, and he seemed to meet their intrusive searching with dignity, as if to say, “Be my guest. Look at everything in my pockets. That will tell you nothing about me, what I have done, where I have been, where I belong, nothing about what of me is truly hidden from you and you can never see. Look, but you won’t see me. I know who I am.”
My bus arrived and I got on.
Over the next weeks this man David stayed with me. He walked through the world carrying with him all that mattered to him, and he was required to display it—at any moment, without warning—to strangers, for their scrutiny and approval or punishment. And, to me at least, it seemed that in the midst of this transitory, fragile, and exposed way of living, he possessed a grace and dignity.
His presence and interactions with the officers reminded me of the Hasidic story of the man who wakes up in the morning and does not know who he is, what belongs to him. There are clothes lying on a chair. Whose are they? Shoes on the floor. To whom do they belong? To make it through the next days, he must put notes on his clothes, his shoes, in his pockets: “This is my shirt. These are my pants. These are my shoes.” That way he will know who he is, what belongs to him, as he travels through this world. He, too, in spite of having a room to live in, is vulnerable to a fundamental questioning of his self. Who is he, really? What makes him who he is?
We think we know who we are, but do we? Who are we, truly? What makes us who we are? The clothes we wear? What is in our pockets? Where we stand? Live? Belong? How protected we are from random searches by "the authorities"? We are all transitory, fragile, vulnerable, and exposed creatures living in this world that is continually perishing. When we are required to display all we are carrying, do we have the grace and dignity of knowing who we are?
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