Early Sunday morning I embarked on London’s Thames Valley Trail amid brilliant sunshine, gleaming snow and –12 C weather. As I walked along the River Thames, a thirtyish man walked from his small tent at the river edge up to the trail. He asked if I was one of the women who had left some Tim Horton’s donuts for him. I had not. He introduced himself (I will call him “John”) and we shook hands; his enclosed in thin gloves and mine in bulky fleece-lined hide mitts. Asked about being cold with his thin jacket and flimsy tent, he stated that he was warm enough. He then spoke about a sixty-one-year-old friend. The man’s bicycle had been stolen. A month earlier, the man had suffered an injury caused by a tree falling on his ankle - the same ankle that had been fused following a previous injury. The friend had crawled a fair distance through the scrabble along the river edge to John’s tent and John arranged for an ambulance to transport his buddy to the hospital. John had not been able to locate his pal and was concerned. He wondered if his friend would be able to walk again. When I told John that I would pray for him he asked if I went to church on Sunday. He was on his way to meet a pal at a nearby church. He described a church in east London that had become so crowded that a second site was opened across the city. John asked if I knew anyone who might need help for tasks such as clearing snow from their sidewalk. He liked to help older people. I had no suggestions and we amicably continued along our respective paths.
This weekend a convoy of trucks and a multitude of supporters in Ottawa are angrily protesting mandatory vaccines, obligatory masks, vaccine passports, and other covid restrictions. I reflected on my chance encounter with a man who was living in a tent in -12 C weather. He expressed no anger, blame, or frustration about living in a tent, covid restrictions, or food insecurity. Rather, he was cheerful, grateful for an anonymous gift of donuts, concerned about others, and confidently lived his faith in God. I wondered if John would have felt welcomed and at home in my church. And I thought that if Jesus should make an appearance in our city whether he would feel more welcome and comfortable in John’s church than in mine.
-Sister Pat McKeon, csj