Today we have moved from Las Vegas to Ranchos Palos Verdes, California. For the next ten days we will be hanging out in sunny-rainy Southern California with the Don Vitos. They come complete with Sofia and Connor. I call the kids the “Bonus Round” as they were a complete surprise. Today we went to the Chinese Lunar New Year Celebration at the South Coast Botanic Garden. Thank goodness we got there very early and I got a park bench way in the back.
I am now beginning to understand why my parents, at these kinds of events, were more interested in comfort than standing. I got my perch and was feeling pretty smug—then a crowd of about 300 poured in and most of them had to stand. MK took off to be closer to the grandkids and I had the whole bench on the back edge to myself. I was soon confronted with a small conundrum. I could see a woman walking towards me with a pronounced limp. She asked if the space next to me was available. I answered “Yes, I think we can squeeze three of us on here. My wife is over there playing grandma”.
She sat down and the pleasant conversation began. She told me she was recovering from knee replacement surgery and was very thankful for a place to sit. She asked me my name and offered the same. Her name was Fatima. Soon I learned that she was from Sir Lanka but she and her late husband immigrated to Toronto 50 years ago. She asked me what I did and I told her that I was a local pastor for 45 years and now I am a writer. She offered up, “I am a Muslim.” Being the clumsy butt I can be I said, “Muslim with the name of a Catholic Saint”. She laughed and said, “It’s the world we live in”.
MK returned for a brief time and then scurried off to grandma land. Fatima and I could not see much of the performances but that did not stop the conversation. As I looked out on to the grassy park with kids running everywhere, and music and dancing complete with dragons filling the afternoon’s warmth, I said, “This is a scene that makes God smile”. She looked at me and said, “We are all one people. The lines we draw are not God’s lines, when we are cut we all bleed red”. I started crying.
She got up and went to find her three children somewhere in the crowd. All of them now live in Southern California. Soon the performance ended and people were clearing out. I saw her walking toward me with some folk about my own childrens’ age. They all came and stood by the bench where I was still semi permanently ensconced. She introduced me to them. They wanted to know all about my 8,000 mile road trip and thanked me for being so kind to their mom. I laughed and said, “Today this park bench became an altar”. One of the daughters smiled and said, “That is Fatima”.
I thought the rest of the afternoon about my visitation with a Muslim woman who bears the name of a miracle story that took place in Fatima, Portugal in 1917. I suspect that Mary’s face, who the three shepherd children encountered back then would resemble this woman with whom I shared an hour this morning.
In the park this day the blood that pumped through every heart knew no race, creed, or gender, but only joy.
Onward and Upward,
Mark
Lyfting Me Up 