To me, it was like any other trolley ride back to Grounds from downtown until the old lady wearing a long floral skirt and a straw sun hat got on with her various grocery bags from the food drive. She floated her way on board and sat down next to a young man about my age with whom she struck up a conversation. I was sitting right across from the pair and happened to catch snippets of their exchange.
She said to the boy, “I can read your heart,” and proceeded to tell him how blessed he was by God. It was a sweet conversation — she gave advice of peace and love to a young person, telling him he had a lot to be thankful for.
All was tranquil until a heavily intoxicated man and his brother boarded the trolley, taking the other seat across from the old lady. I was sitting not six inches from them and could see how out of control the intoxicated man was — he could hardly walk or sit straight, open his eyes or form coherent words and sentences. Despite that, he and the elderly lady engaged in a conversation which was both eye-opening and ridiculous. To me, whatever the man said was a series of slurs, but miraculously the woman understood him perfectly.
The man mumbled out a couple unintelligible phrases, to which the lady responded:
“To be honest with you, the cosmos is a good place. If you think you’re not in a good place that’s only the adversary trying to deceive you because you are blessed, more than you think you are. It’s the adversary trying to teach you that you’re not blessed. You don’t have to believe you’re not blessed.”
The brother of the intoxicated man interjected, rebuttal at the ready.
“If you wanna give us some blessings,“ insinuating the only blessing they had any real use for was money.
“I don’t have it,“ the elderly lady said.
“Then you need not speak.”
The lady tried to extend an olive branch and give them the last of her change, as if it were some sort of compensation for the predicament the two men were in.
“Girl, you said you had a quarter to your name, I don’t want your last quarter.”
“You can have whatever I have. Here.”
“We don’t want it, we don’t want it.”
“God loves us all, he…”
“Buy him a sandwich, can you buy him a sandwich?”
“Don’t have it.”
“Then enough said.”
That ended the debate once and for all. The silence that followed was thick not with tension but with realization. We all know the familiar debate between God’s grace and the reality of materialistic things which lack for some people. The question is always “Is faith enough to get us by?” I know after starting life as a college student you learn to depend on yourself, to trust yourself to fulfill your personal requirements — not your parents or the hardworking professors who see hundreds of faces every day. You are responsible for everything from eating regular and healthy meals to turning in assignments on time. These are things other adults won’t remind you to do or make sure you do.
More often than not work will get you the immediate results you want to see. And very often with work, money is pulled into the equation. Work produces money, money produces food, clothes and shelter. Faith, on the other hand, is abstract and seemingly carries with it a label of ‘dreamer,’ not ‘doer.’
The harsh reality of not having enough is always something that will test the power of faith. Maybe it’s because those in need can’t afford to rely on something out of their control. Maybe it’s because reality is the immediate object, thought or occurrence we are aware of, and faith and religion are something which — while more persistent than the immediate — do not offer perceivable results or change.
Essentially, this conversation boiled down the debate to its basis: faith is hypothetical and money is reality. These two simple facts have created such division in ways of thinking and acting that faith or money almost represent two different lifestyles. This concept struck me the most — religion versus reality as seen in the most rudimental choice. Even sitting across from the old lady, I wasn’t entirely sure which I would choose.
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