a part together

As I prepared to leave my apartment the other day, I noticed an old man across the street. In tattered black I could have taken him for a monk, and upon reaching the curb he lowered himself to his knees. This prayerful attitude was odd and inspiring, but before my admiration had a chance to take root he had dropped himself into the gutter, beard and belly down in the dusty trough.

As I watched, grabbing my backpack and patting my pockets, I realized that the man outside my window was acting with mysterious purpose; looking closer I discovered in his hands a crooked stick, and with it he was reaching through the opening of a storm drain. But I was in a bit of a hurry, so I bent down and tied my shoes.

After several more minutes had passed, I turned off the lights and stopped a final time at the window. What is he looking for? What of value could he find while lying in the gutter, thrashing about at the bottom of a storm drain? I stood transfixed as the drama unfolded before me.

Soon it became apparent: after several minutes had elapsed, he carefully brought up from the pipes and waterways a single aluminum can. Is that it? I thought. All that for a single can? 

I was a bit put off. Surely there are better ways to earn one’s sustenance, which is what I assumed was the point. At the very least he could get food—and many other services—from us at Sacred Heart. This stick business seemed at best a poorly-thought-out strategy.

Only later that evening did it occur to me that maybe sustenance was not the point of his exercise. What if it were not simply the attempt to fish a couple pennies worth of scrap from a hole in the street? What if there were something more, something that involved me, the observer? What if--and this is what made me shudder--I were not merely an observer, but a participant in the event? And if I were not a spectator beyond the bounds of the scene, What role did I play within it? 

More importantly, Had I played it well?