Over the past ten weeks, I’ve had the great honor of getting to know Meshia, a woman I spend a few hours a week with. We read a Psalm together every Tuesday morning and she teaches me about her faith and what it means to trust God. I’ll drop by to hang out with her once or twice a week outside of that and we talk about life together. Philip, my field ed supervisor, introduced me to Meshia during my first week in Wilmington, and I’ve been drawn to her ever since. She lives on a park bench near the Cape Fear River. Our relationship started by talking about friendship and life in Wilmington. Since then, our relationship has deepened and our conversations now are usually centered around prayer or our faith.
When I sat down with Meshia this morning for our reading of the lectionary Psalm, I felt disconnected from God and my spirit for some reason. I love Meshia, but I didn’t want to have a spiritual conversation with her because I knew she would probably challenge me in some way and I didn’t feel in the mood for that. Nevertheless, we read Psalm 52 together, which I wasn’t excited about because it feels like doom and gloom and judgment. Not fun. Mostly we sat in silence, which is normal for us. Meshia mentioned that verse 6 stuck out to her but didn’t elaborate. We lapsed back into silence. People were walking around the boardwalk, as usual. And as we sat in silence, a woman came up to Meshia and me, saying, “Is she bothering you?” I assumed she was addressing me, so I responded, “No, we’re sitting together.” She cut me off and said, “I wasn’t talking to you.” She was asking Meshia if I was bothering her.
Meshia looked at the woman, then looked at me with a little smile on her face and didn’t say anything. Meshia’s smile was hard to read so when I saw it I didn’t know what to think. For a moment, my stomach felt like it was going to drop out of my body. I realized I hadn’t asked Meshia lately if it was okay for me to join her. I just sat down with her, instead of asking permission like I did when we first started spending time together. I started to think that I had crossed a boundary and I felt awful. I never wanted to do anything without Meshia’s express consent, but I started to think maybe I did just that. About 10 seconds passed and Meshia still hadn’t answered the woman’s question. I gestured to Meshia and said something like, “You can tell her if I’m bothering you.” I thought maybe Meshia felt awkward and didn’t want me to feel weird if she told this woman I was bothering her while I was sitting next to her. Why I thought offering my permission to speak was helpful or a good thing to do, I’m not sure, but it’s what I did. Meshia remained silent.
I started feeling the need to defend myself to the woman, so I said to her something about how I try to get permission from Meshia to sit with her. The woman cut me off again. She was clearly upset by my presence with Meshia. She said to me, “As a white woman, you don’t know what she [Meshia] needs. You can’t try to fix her. She doesn’t need God, she needs food and shelter.” I responded with something like, “You’re right, I don’t know what she needs.” (Let me note here that this woman was also white.) The woman made another comment about me using my privilege poorly and stormed off. As she walked away, I was almost immediately brought to tears. I felt like maybe I was bothering Meshia and maybe I was trying to fix her. Maybe I really was making poor use of my privilege and harming Meshia. Besides that, what the woman said to me hurt my feelings, and I didn’t feel like she gave me the opportunity to defend myself. To tell her I really don’t know what Meshia needs. That Meshia doesn’t need to find God, but I do. That I’m not trying to bring God to Meshia, but Meshia is undoubtedly bringing God to me. That I have never tried to force Meshia to read scripture with me. That, in fact, Meshia knows scripture much better than I do. That Meshia is my teacher, not the other way around.
I think there was also a part of me that deeply understood where the woman’s concern was coming from. I am also likely to be skeptical if I see a person of significant privilege sitting with a person who’s homeless and it looks like the privileged person is trying to preach to them because they’ve got a vulnerable and captive audience. I get where she was coming from. It hurt to know that it appeared I was trying to take advantage of Meshia’s vulnerability. I didn’t think I was doing something harmful, but maybe I was.
Back to Meshia. As the woman is walking away, and I can’t speak because the encounter overwhelmed me, Meshia looked at me and said, “This is what I’ve been warning you about. That woman didn’t understand. That was the enemy trying to get to you. That’s why I always ignore people I don’t know. They just want to talk and they don’t know anything about me.” Then she started howling with laughter at the absurdity of the woman. “And she’s not even the same color as me!” She thought the woman’s lack of understanding about Meshia’s and my relationship was hilarious. She laughed and laughed. Interestingly, the verse she brought up just before the woman walked up states “The righteous will see and fear; they will laugh at you.” And Meshia was overcome with laughter.
As Meshia’s bout of laughter ended, she looked at me with a straight face, all traces of laughter gone and she said, “She doesn’t know you’re holy like I do. Did you hear me? Remember when I told you God thinks you’re holy? You gotta remember that.” I felt like I had been punched in the gut. I am sure I will remember that moment for the rest of my life. There is so much I have learned from Meshia this summer, and especially this morning. It’s too much to unpack in one reflection. But if there is one thing I know to be true, it is this: I am convinced the bench Meshia lives on is the most holy square foot of land in Wilmington.