Across From Me...Beauty.

There is an older woman here at the coffee shop who is shaking like she has Parkinson's disease. Her manner is a little unkempt as she sits, drinking coffee as she stares out the window. She breaks my heart...but should she? Is it not possible that she is far more content, far more joyful about who she is and where God has her in life than I will ever be? Is it not possible that she has untold treasures that I know nothing about? Why do I think that she is miserable, while assuming that the man walking down the street is just fine? We [the snobs, the elitests] think we know so much, but we really just a bunch of arrogant bastards and I hate it.

This woman sits here as she probably does every morning. She is a wealth of the beauty of God's creation and at one glance she is boxed up and ready to be shipped out without a second thought. I bitch about how the church has marginalized so many of God's children, but now I feel that I am far worse than the church will ever be.

So she sits with her purse around shoulder and on her lap, jeans tucked into her white athletic socks. She has long curly brown hair that began to turn grey after her last haircut. Under her is a winter coat and a thick winter sweater. Her large coffee is in a to go cup, and she is ready to step out into a cold winter night...

...but it is june in Minneapolis and it is 80 degrees outside and right now, at this moment, she is the most beautiful person I have ever seen.

Lord, please magnify your blessings upon her and make your light to shine upon her. I pray that she would bask in paradise with you in the age to come. I pray that one day I will look as she does right now, a simple, quiet beauty as she waits, prepared for winter that will eventually come.