2025.05.25 DID YOU KNOW? Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

 

Did you know there are no fences in the fields of Divinity? There are no boundaries, only Presence. AND always a story. 

When I lived in Cambridge, a terrific small city under the wing of a big city called Boston, I used to walk downtown often passing by Harvard Yard, its huge iron gates open. Occasionally I’d wander about inside the Yard, absorbing the air of the Academy. Harvard, however, wasn’t academic or elite, just unlocked.

I learned all this from a street beggar named James. He sat in his wheel chair. He always smiled and muttered something unintelligible, as his trembling hands searched for his cup. At first I felt afraid of James. I passed him by. One day I stopped. I don’t know why, but James beckoned. I gave him a smile and a coin or two. He grinned. I walked on. All of this against the backdrop of the stately Harvard.

One day James motioned me closer and managed to tell me a story in his halting way. He told me that his wheelchair was stolen out from under him by some “hoodlums”.  He teared up. I braced myself. But then he pointed at the great gates of Harvard Yard and said “They saved me.” 

Some Harvard fraternity students had pooled their money and bought James a brand new wheel chair designed for someone with his palsied and mentally challenged condition. James could manage his new chair easily, and it did give his life work—begging—meaning. He lived in a special care home, and begging was his own chosen way of contributing. 

James and Harvard students also healed my habit of making judgmental assumptions about beggary without knowledge of the inside story and the truth. I gave James my last $20 and walked the rest of my way home, begging Divinity to inspire generosity and peace for healing the world over.