Even though what happened in regards to Leon last week was IMO a very positive thing, I've had nagging thoughts about the evening. The thoughts finally synthesized into the realization that once this guy left the immediate vicinity, my main thoughts were to be glad that he was no longer an immediate threat to anyone having dinner - including myself.
Fortunately, Nathan continued to observe this person as he walked away and when Nathan saw this person accost a single female pedestrian, Nathan moved quickly to intervene on her behalf and sent the guy on his way.
My first thought was that I should have maintained my vigilance. But almost immediately after I was glad that Nathan acted as quickly as he did and that the woman came to no physical harm, This might be the 2nd best thing to happen; not so long ago I might have stay fixated on falling short driven by my own sense of shame. not to mention how my lack of vigilance led to how I got attacked.
It's a fine line I'm still learning to walk. I do think it would have been a better thing to have remained vigilant - but not if it's driven as a backlash of what happened to me. And despite the wealth of mental faculty with which I've been blessed, I can't cover everything.
So I'm going to choose to think mainly about how it's a good thing that Nathan is part of the group/
Saturday, February 21, 2015
Tuesday, February 17, 2015
Leon Chapter II
I've blogged about Leon a while back. Since then, his attendance has been sporadic. He was back last week. He hadn't bathed in a while and just about everyone tried to stay upwind of him. I had to hold my breath when he came back for seconds.
Leon was already at the park tonight when I pulled up (late); his two carts with stuff hanging over the edges were on the sidewalk next to the spot where I normally park on tuesday nights.
Third week of the month, usually about 40 people, we'd just finished serving (down to a last serving of beans) when a person. apparently under the influence of something and appropriately disorderly) came over to our tables and demanded to be fed, the thing is, I'm used to everyone kinda knowing my story and them being pretty courteous and helpful in carrying stuff from my car, no sort of bad behavior you might otherwise expect. so i was caught off guard. Apparently disgruntled by the fact that all we were had left were beans, he walked around confronting some of the other people still eating, during which time, someone else who hadn't eaten yet came up and claimed the last serving of beans. Discovering that even beans were no available only served to irritate this person even further, so he sat down at the table across from me and began to harass me verbally. One of the people stepped and challenged him not to be so disrespectful, which only served to inflame him further. He then demanded proof and began looking through our stuff - the salad bowl, rice cooker, crock pot, etc. When he grabbed the handle to the lid of the cast iron dutch oven i'd used to make the pulled pork, it occurred to me what a great weapon that would make, so I reached out and grabbed his arm with both hands and said calimly: "you need to let go of this, right now." and we stared at each other for what was probably a couple of seconds but seemed a lot longer.
Leon, who was now standing over by his carts on the sidewalk, called out to the guy that he had a light if he needed one. The guy let go of the cast iron lid and walked over to Leon. The guy vented a little more steam. and eventually wandered off. (Actually, the guy then accosted an unaccompanied female walking in the park. Fortunately Nathan saw what was going on and ran over to intercede. Once the rest of us understood what was happening, we followed to back up Nathan. But Nathan was able to send the guy on his way on his own. Kudos!)
Everyone else was ready to bail, but Nathan & I elected to stay and have our devotion time as usual. While preparing for that, we talked a little bit about the guy, and I commented that the only moment where i'd been concerned was when he'd grabbed that cast iron dutch oven lid - had he become violent with a weapon like that, someone could have gotten hurt. Leon at that point mentioned that that was the moment he'd gotten scared.
This blew me away. Despite his own fear, Leon's response in that moment was to draw his fire, so to speak; he tried to defuse the situation by taking the attention off me and onto himself. And this is someone, where under normal circumstances, most of us would go out of our way just to avoid being downwind of him. So I made a point of letting him know that I respected what he did, especially when he was afraid. His response was typically Leon: "i'm used to being beaten up, you know. especially with my childhood".
Sometimes you just find nobility in the unlikeliest of places.
(I should also note that some people who normally leave after dinner stayed on during our devotion time. They didn't participate, but in retrospect it occurs to me that they were choosing to stay to make sure that we'd be OK when we did choose to leave; one of them saw me start packing the car right after dinner and asked if i was leaving, to which i responded, "no, but if we have to leave quickly, now we can." the guy laughed and said that's pretty funny.)
Leon was already at the park tonight when I pulled up (late); his two carts with stuff hanging over the edges were on the sidewalk next to the spot where I normally park on tuesday nights.
Third week of the month, usually about 40 people, we'd just finished serving (down to a last serving of beans) when a person. apparently under the influence of something and appropriately disorderly) came over to our tables and demanded to be fed, the thing is, I'm used to everyone kinda knowing my story and them being pretty courteous and helpful in carrying stuff from my car, no sort of bad behavior you might otherwise expect. so i was caught off guard. Apparently disgruntled by the fact that all we were had left were beans, he walked around confronting some of the other people still eating, during which time, someone else who hadn't eaten yet came up and claimed the last serving of beans. Discovering that even beans were no available only served to irritate this person even further, so he sat down at the table across from me and began to harass me verbally. One of the people stepped and challenged him not to be so disrespectful, which only served to inflame him further. He then demanded proof and began looking through our stuff - the salad bowl, rice cooker, crock pot, etc. When he grabbed the handle to the lid of the cast iron dutch oven i'd used to make the pulled pork, it occurred to me what a great weapon that would make, so I reached out and grabbed his arm with both hands and said calimly: "you need to let go of this, right now." and we stared at each other for what was probably a couple of seconds but seemed a lot longer.
Leon, who was now standing over by his carts on the sidewalk, called out to the guy that he had a light if he needed one. The guy let go of the cast iron lid and walked over to Leon. The guy vented a little more steam. and eventually wandered off. (Actually, the guy then accosted an unaccompanied female walking in the park. Fortunately Nathan saw what was going on and ran over to intercede. Once the rest of us understood what was happening, we followed to back up Nathan. But Nathan was able to send the guy on his way on his own. Kudos!)
Everyone else was ready to bail, but Nathan & I elected to stay and have our devotion time as usual. While preparing for that, we talked a little bit about the guy, and I commented that the only moment where i'd been concerned was when he'd grabbed that cast iron dutch oven lid - had he become violent with a weapon like that, someone could have gotten hurt. Leon at that point mentioned that that was the moment he'd gotten scared.
This blew me away. Despite his own fear, Leon's response in that moment was to draw his fire, so to speak; he tried to defuse the situation by taking the attention off me and onto himself. And this is someone, where under normal circumstances, most of us would go out of our way just to avoid being downwind of him. So I made a point of letting him know that I respected what he did, especially when he was afraid. His response was typically Leon: "i'm used to being beaten up, you know. especially with my childhood".
Sometimes you just find nobility in the unlikeliest of places.
(I should also note that some people who normally leave after dinner stayed on during our devotion time. They didn't participate, but in retrospect it occurs to me that they were choosing to stay to make sure that we'd be OK when we did choose to leave; one of them saw me start packing the car right after dinner and asked if i was leaving, to which i responded, "no, but if we have to leave quickly, now we can." the guy laughed and said that's pretty funny.)
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