Today, there had to have been a full moon. One of those days where you certainly do not leave your room if you cling to any sense of personal safety.
It started innocently enough. Some folks from the Mennonite Mission Network staff came out and asked questions about why we were doing the program, what we hoped to get out of the year, and invited us to evaluate the experience thus far.
As we left the church to break for lunch over in the house though, I noticed David Graber (a member of the Brazil team and also a member of East Goshen Mennonite Church) talking to a man outside of the church building.
Plenty of people pass by out front and stop to talk, or at least express wonder at what in the world such a large group of white people are doing in the largely African-American neighborhood of Garfield Park. That is to say, nothing seemed that out of the ordinary so far.
Inside Faith House, I spent some time catching up with Jeremy Kempf, a good buddy who had come out with the MMN staff. Everyone was inside cooking, talking, or reading when the doorbell started to sound. As I went to answer the door, I immediately recognized the man at the door as David's conversation partner from the sidewalk earlier.
Sticking my head out the door, I greeted the man, who introduced himself as Daniel Lucas, and asked what had brought him up the steps. He asked about whether David was around, and mentioned that David had invited him over for lunch. I called David out to the porch and listened in uninvited to make sure that everything was alright.
Daniel explained, in no uncertain terms, that the five dollars that David had loaned him to get home on the bus had just been stolen by two guys with guns who had knocked him down and, "oh, don't shake my hand so hard 'cause I fell on that arm." What he really needed, he explained, was eighteen dollars to get a taxi home. Daniel said he was a city engineer, and repeated over and over how embarrassed he was that he was in this position and asking for this much money. He had been at a meeting close-by with an architect when his Porsche Cayenne had been towed for being illegally parked. If we could only lend him the money, he would make sure to return and double, no, triple any money we could lend him.
David was obviously in an awkward position. This was a matter of making an on-the-spot judgement of someone's character, honesty, and need. I suggested that we all step inside, eat the lunch of potato soup that was waiting for us, and (to myself) mull over our options.
Let's pull no punches here. Daniel Lucas was a big guy. (I would later joke with him that he could break me in half if he wanted to.) He was also black. The only black man currently standing in a house full of about twenty white Mennonites. I cannot nor should not speculate on what was running through the minds of the rest of the people in the room when David and I informed them that Daniel was joining us for lunch, but to their credit, the table that Daniel, David, and I sat down to eat at quickly filled up and we talked about Daniel's job with the street department, where he grew up, and Michigan-Ohio State football. He is a Wolverine. I am an unashamed (at this point in the season) Buckeye.
The light topic of conversation allowed for my backup brain to race for some kind of "third way" solution that could fulfill Daniel's request, keep David's funds intact, but also allow David and I to show Daniel that we trusted him, no matter how many stories about con artists we have heard.
If you really look closely at the life of Jesus, you'll find, I think, that the guy was simply creative with his responses to the corners that the Pharisees tried to back him into. I'd like to think that the solution that popped into my head originated from a similar source.
Our group has been travelling around Chicago by using month-long transit passes, so I had the idea to borrow one and get David to come along with me and simply take Daniel home. Wherever that was. I checked it out with David first when he and I had a moment alone in the kitchen, and he was ready to jump on board. The idea was, if Daniel was being sincere about his need to get home, then our offer would cover his need and only take an hour or so out of our orientation time.
Daniel, almost to my surprise, took the offer right away. I had of course advertised the plan to him as a win-win situation. He would get home and we, as newcomers to the city, would get further training on how to get around with an experienced guide. Whether David and I needed the extra training is debatable.
Daniel grabbed a banana for the road, and the three of us headed off toward the Green Line, taking us into the center of the city. Our guest had laid out the plan: Green Line to Clark and Lake, transfer to the Red Line, and then his stop would be somewhere near Wrigley Field.
While in route, we talked more about his job, and his life in general. A couple kids, he is divorced, his wife being a lawyer for the State of Illinois. I asked whether getting divorced from a lawyer made the process harder or not, but I can't remember exactly how quickly he changed the subject. Daniel also mentioned a couple famous immediate family members and that he had briefly played football for the University of Michigan. Judging by his exposed forearms, this last claim could easily be accurate.
After a short ride downtown, we got off to change to the Red Line, and I ran over the plan again with Daniel. He said again that he lived right off the Red Line, so I told him that, in light of David and I needing to get back to orientation, we would get him in through the Red Line turnstiles and then head back the way we came.
He seemed okay with this change to the playbook, but curiously avoided asking me and jumped right on David for the eighteen dollars again, asserting that he would have no way to go and reclaim his car. David and I had talked earlier and I told David that I would leave any funding decision up to him, but there on the corner of State and Lake we both assured Daniel that we would love to help him further by taking him to wherever we needed to go to get his car, but that we simply did not have eighteen dollars to give him.
What was running through his mind is anyone's guess, but instead of any of the responses that I thought might be possible, he stepped back from us and exclaimed that he should run over to his friend Cecil's office now that we were downtown and that Cecil could definitely help him out. He thanked the two of us profusely, bear hugging both of us and saying that we had restored his faith in humanity.
The next five minutes of the return journey for David and I was spent reflecting on where exactly our faith in humanity lay at that point. We both agreed, we wanted to trust Daniel. That seemed like the right thing to do. But there were so many weird aspects to his story. If he was meeting with an architect, why was he in jeans and a T-shirt? If we could get him home, and his apartment manager could get him in, why did he need money from us? (Now that I type that last line, it makes the whole thing seem even more naive.)
Riding the train back didn't provide any answers though. It in fact just produced more strange happenings, with a subway musician hitting on a couple of University of Illinois girls.
Bottom line: David and I just left convinced that there was a full moon out, and that we had better just lock ourselves in our rooms for the rest of the day. We had had enough of singular experiences.
(Since I first wrote this, there have been two Daniel sitings, one by me as I was jogging near the church, and one by David on Blue Line heading toward the church. Both times Daniel responded positively to us.)
