“The grand esoteric themes of theology have their place, but love takes root in those specific moments when we voluntarily and intentionally enter one another’s pain.” -Milton Brasher-Cunningham
The golden light of the setting sun was so bright it blinded, so Ernest and I faced forward, occasionally glancing at each other. We sat on the brick steps outside the South African Reserve Bank, waiting for the prayer announcing dinner time.
“How’s your day going?” I asked.
“Oh, can’t complain. I didn’t fish today, though, so I didn’t get any money,” he said.
Ernest is tall and thin, and always wears the same pale yellow t-shirt and gray cargo pants. His face is permanently dark pink from sunburn and his thinning hair and thick beard have gone mostly gray. He comes to city feed almost every night, to get a free meal from Love Story that I have helped ladle out this month.
There in the fading light, Ernest told me his story. His voice got thick as he talked about his seven-year-old daughter, who lives with her mom. “I don’t see her much,” he mumbled. “I have to make an appointment to see her, but I don’t have a phone because, you know, I’m a fisherman. I don’t work on a paycheck.”
Ernest’s voice evened out when he told me about his brother. He’s a doctor who also lives in Port Elizabeth, in a nice neighborhood nearby where we were sitting. “My brother gets frustrated with me. He says, ‘you only call me when you need money!’ You know what he tells his friends about me?” Ernest looked me in the eyes then. “He tells his friends I’m dead, because he doesn’t know how to explain my situation.” The pain in his green eyes was dull, a tender bruise he has learned to work around when it wouldn’t heal.
I shivered in the cool breeze, holding back tears. I couldn’t imagine caring about Alex so little- no matter what happened- that I would tell people he was dead when he was alive, and living on the streets in my own town. We were silent for a second.
“But that’s life, you know,” Ernest said, “life sucks.”
“Still, you get to enjoy nice weather- and the ocean. There’s still beauty in the world.” I said.
“Yeah,” Ernest said. He made eye contact with me again, and didn’t look away. “And you know, I tell people I’ve got a house in every neighborhood. I sleep in my truck. I can go anywhere.”
He went on, joking a bit about his many mansions, but the tension coiled in his shoulders since the mention of his brother relaxed. There was genuine peace for him in that moment, counting his blessings even though they didn’t seem like blessings to me at all.
It made me realize how much of this nomadic lifestyle of the Race is a game to me. I call it abandonment, but I get to go home to a bedroom, and parents who love me, and a brother who will never tell his friends I’m dead.
Some moments on the Race feel like an enormous chasm is opening up between me and the people I’m serving. But sitting on the steps in my daisy-print shorts, I felt honored that a man like Ernest opened up to someone like me. How brave he has to be, to reach out for genuine human connection when life has so often told him he is unworthy of it. How much love I felt for Ernest, someone who must be very hard to love.
How much grace there was for us.
Grace for me, an American girl playing nomad, and grace for a man who society ignores when he walks down the street.
I met Jesus outside the South African national bank, and fittingly, he came in the guise of a fisherman.
