The Thanksgiving holiday in the United States has its roots in the Pilgrim days, when the early settlers and colonists, in spite of the hardships and turmoil, set aside a day to give thanks and be grateful for what they had. Death from starvation and disease was an everyday occurrence. Life wasn’t the world of ease that we know today.

Yet there are people even now, even in the United States, who are suffering, hungry, cold. Most of us see examples every day, in the homeless under the bridges, the soup kitchens, the parks.

What do you think of when you see these people? What do you feel? Contempt? Aggravation?

Yes, some of them are there by choice. Not many, though, I’ll bet.

Most of them fight for survival, in one way or another.

A couple of years ago, I returned to Portland to visit for a couple of days. I parked my truck in one of my old favorite places, Powell’s Books, took my camera, and went walking.

I walked through the Saturday Market, photographing the colorful people and booths. Then, for some reason that I still don’t know, I took a ‘wrong’ turn, away from the festivities, on the other side of the Burnside Bridge. I wandered; I photographed the darker side of Portland–the alleys, the doorways, boarded up windows and doors.

I turned a corner and saw a man sitting up against a building.

He didn’t look hurt, he didn’t have a bottle in a sack beside him. He was a little dirty, street grime, but a lot less than you’d expect to see. As I walked past, not intending to stop, he said to me, “Are you ok?”

I stopped. “Excuse me?”, I said.

He said, “I asked if you were ok. You looked a little disturbed when you walked by.”

Huh. I looked disturbed? I’m the one with the thousand-dollar camera and clean clothes, and I looked disturbed? Well, yeah. Maybe I was.

“Yeah, I guess I am, a little. You mind if I photograph you?” Where the hell did that come from?

“No, go right ahead, I don’t care.”

I don’t, now, really remember his story. He was on his way from somewhere to somewhere else, and Portland was where his money ran out. He was saving up, here and there, so he could get back on a bus and keep on going.

So far, his trip had taken him six months, give or take. He thought. A shrug of the shoulders. “Don’t really know,” he confessed. “Don’t actually have anywhere to go in particular. Buddy I was going to see passed on a month ago or so. Somethin’ like that. Thought I might head to San FranSICSO. I ain’t never been there.”

I gave him the ten dollars I had in my pocket. “You don’t have to do that,” he says, “but thank you.”

Yeah…I did have to do that.

When I went back around that way later that afternoon, the man was gone. I wonder if he got to where he was going.

***

I was listening to a CD on the way home from the bookstore tonight. It’s one I’d burned a long time ago, of songs that, I realize now, haunted me in some way or another.

The road is long
With many a winding turn
That leads us to who knows where,
Who knows where.
But I’m strong,
Strong enough to carry him.
He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother.

So on we go.
His welfare is of my concern.
No burden is he to bear,
We’ll get there.
For I know
We would not encumber me.
He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother.

If I’m laden at all,
I’m laden with sadness
That everyone’s heart
Isn’t filled with the gladness
Of love for one another.

It’s a long, long road
From which there is no return.
While we’re on the way to there,
Why not share?
And the load
Doesn’t weigh me down at all.
He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother.

He’s my brother.
He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother…

In Conversations With God, Neale Donald Walsch questioned God, wanting to know that when God actually speaks to someone, how does he do it? Does he just talk, like now? The answer was that God speaks all the time, but people don’t listen. A snippet of conversation accidentally overheard, a passage in a book that just happens to be lying around at just the right time. A song you might hear and pay attention to.

Was I spoken to? I have no idea, but it was a powerful enough experience that I had to put it here, and to show you the man I spoke to. I didn’t even ask him his name.

Whoever you are, or were, Godspeed.