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Amazing Grace

Set your soul free

By Emily PricePublished 3 years ago 10 min read
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Amazing Grace
Photo by Jorg Karg on Unsplash

Penn Station had the usual frantic feel of an ant colony under attack, but this was just another Wednesday in mid-Winter, nothing special just another day to fight through. I hurtled through Penn’s underbelly with its morning crush of commuters; everyone stuck in their own head, oblivious to the world around them. Eyes down, earphones in, playing dodgem with other commuters, but without ever making eye contact.

On the escalator I could feel the edge of a briefcase jammed into my calf and I could smell a damp musty scent on the woman’s coat in front of me. My hand rested gently on the jerking handrail, it was still warm from someone else’s touch and I tried not to freak out at the thought. At the top of the escalator the hordes spewed onto 7th Avenue and scattered north, south, east and west. I hurried across the road, dodging taxis and cyclists, and rounded the corner on to 31st Street. An arctic blast cut tears from my eyes making me squint and bury my nose into my coat collar. It was cold, it was damp and my whole body ached with tiredness and mid-winter misery.

“Screw you New York. ” I mumbled into my collar.

Then I saw him. He seemed so out of place in this scene – like he’d been beamed in from somewhere else. He sat on the cold ground outside of St Francis church, his grey disheveled hair hanging around his face. A face that was lit up; animated and joyful as he intently scribbled into a small black notebook. I have no idea why, with all the homeless people in New York, that I chose to notice him, but I felt drawn to him, envious of the fact that he appeared as if he were living a different reality - and I wanted in!

In a fit of altruism, I pulled a $10 note from my wallet and dropped it down beside him. He didn’t look up or acknowledge me, so I just walked on.

“Hey Madam!”

I turned and he was holding the note and staring directly at me.

“Thank you, but I don’t need this” he put his hand out, shaking the note at me. In that awkward moment I stepped back to him and took the note. He looked at me directly and it was like an electric shock to see such lively happiness in those eyes framed by his scraggy hair and heavily lined, dirt streaked face.

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you.” I stuttered, blushing and cringing on the inside.

“You didn’t, I don’t need this. My soul is free!”

I took the note from his hand and he immediately dropped his head and started moving his lips wordlessly as he continued to whisper his thoughts into his notebook. Mortified, I walked on.

That day I sat through meeting after meeting of people “circling back” and “moving forward” and all the other clichés that peppered our speech and meant nothing. His words kept ringing in my ears “My soul is free!”.

For the next week I watched him as I passed, his head buried in his little black notebook as he whispered his words onto each page. His words to me kept repeating in my head “My soul is free!”.

One morning I decided to bring him a coffee – cream with two sugars. I had no idea if that was how he took his coffee, or if he even drank coffee, but for some reason, that I couldn’t explain, I wanted to find a way to connect. For another week I stopped briefly and left the coffee by his side. He never once lifted his head to acknowledge me, but he didn’t call me out either. To me it felt like a connection and in some strange way it made me feel more human. This tiny act of kindness. This continued for several weeks and winter finally loosened its grip and the fickle rain and shine of March took over. Nothing seemed to deter him from sitting and writing in his spot outside the church and every morning I quietly left his coffee and walked away. Then one damp morning, as the traffic hissed by on the wet road and hassled workers jostled their umbrellas - he spoke to me.

“Hey lady, what’s your name?”

“Grace” I replied, almost in shock to hear his voice.

“Amazing Grace!” He let out a gentle laugh and his face creased into a thousand lines.

“Amazing Grace” he repeated as if amused by his own joke.

“What’s yours?” I asked, hoping to get a window into his world.

He looked at the church plaque behind him

“Francis. My name is Francis” again he laughed and repeated his own joke.

“My name is Francis!”

That tiny interaction changed things. I felt I had permissions to be in his world. Each morning I would drop his coffee down and then kneel beside him for a few minutes. He would look at me briefly, put down his notebook and pull another identical one from a pile of plastic bags, and then turn back to his frantic scribbling. For some reason I felt that I could open up to this man and tell him how my life was not what I hoped it would be. How lonely I found this huge city and how much I longed to feel like I belonged, but I just couldn’t seem to find my way in. He never acknowledged my spoken thoughts, and, in those moments, it felt like a confession, kneeling outside St Francis Church speaking to this stranger who asked nothing of me.

All through the summer I looked forward to these moments more than I cared to admit, it was my weird form of therapy, even though Francis just kept writing in his little black book.

I realized that there was something odd about the black notebooks he wrote in. They were elegant and seemed out of place with this disheveled and other worldly man, but I never thought to question it. They just seemed to be part of him, his closest confidant and another world that he stepped into. My curiosity was to know where he went in his mind, but not once was he forthcoming. All I knew was that his soul was free, and his name might be Francis and that he was my “priest” in New York city.

I realized one morning in early October that I had continued my ritual of bringing coffee to Francis, who sat outside St Francis’s Church on 31st Street, every workday for almost nine months. Each day I confessed a little more of my fears and hopes to this man, who never actually seemed to listen, but who’s presence I found so comforting. He was my safe place in a city that was eating me alive. I’m not sure why I found the city so hard, but the years of trying to fit in and keep up had taken their toll on me and I felt myself hardening my shell and shriveling my core to survive. These daily moments with Francis allowed me to be me and to be vulnerable.

I was thinking this as I rounded the corner of 31st Street with his coffee and saw his shape outside of St Francis’s Church as usual. When I reached him, I realized there was something different about him – he was still. There was no frantic scribbling, or lips whispering into his notebook. He was still and staring directly at me. In shock I sat down beside him, almost dropping his coffee.

“Are you OK? Is everything OK? You’re not writing?” I babbled these words at him, alarmed that our routine had changed.

He continued to stare at me. His eyes were so incredibly clear and piercing against his weathered face.

“This is for you Amazing Grace” he pushed one of his black notebooks into my hands and clasped them gently. His hands were warm and remarkably soft to the touch.

“I want you to have this and I want you to really, really examine it.”

“Why are you giving this to me today? Are you leaving? I don’t understand!” my voice cracked, and tears welled in my eyes. I just knew that he was leaving me – my friend, my priest, my confessional, my sanity. Just like that he was going to leave me.

He pressed his hands tighter against mine.

“Yes, I am leaving, but you will be OK Amazing Grace, I am giving you this notebook with my heart.”

I stayed a few more moments to try and pry more information from him, but I watched as his eyes took him away to his other world and his whispering and scribbling into another black notebook began.

I walked the long way to the office to try and compose myself. Why am I so emotional about a homeless man I hardly know! Why did I let myself let my guard down in such a stupid way? I felt crushed and lonely and let down and I wanted to scream my way through Manhattan “WHY!”.

I decided not to look at the notebook in the office, it was too private, too raw a wound to touch right away. I tucked it into the pocket in my backpack and tried not to think about it, but all day I could feel its presence there. I counted the minutes until I could hurtle myself back into the underbelly of Penn station, get home and read it.

Finally, at home in my tiny studio apartment I took the notebook from my bag and got into bed to read.

The front page had the title:

“Amazing Grace”

The first page was dated on the day that I first told him my name and it read:

“To Amazing Grace – your random acts of kindness do not go unnoticed”. Each page after that he wrote more and more, and I realized that each page was a response to the once sided conversations/confession I had with him that day.

“Amazing Grace, you worry so much about the things that don’t matter. I hope in time that you’ll learn nothing matters more than love. You don’t love yourself yet, but you will. Find the beauty in yourself and you’ll find it in life!”. And so, it continued day after day a response to my confession, weighted with wisdom, experience and most of all joy. That is what emanated from this little black book, it was a study of a life lived in joy. He meant it when he said his “soul is free” I knew it now from the lightness and love that emanated from each page of hurriedly written scrawl. My friend Francis his soul was truly free.

On the very last page of the notebook he had written in capital letters:

“AMAZING GRACE – SET YOURSELF FREE!”

I thought about what he had said – “Examine this, really examine this.”

“I need to leave New York”. That thought came to me immediately.

I realized that all of his advice to me in this precious book of joy was a gentle reproach for staying in a place that made me miserable. My soul was not free in the gridlock of Manhattan, my soul was being buried in the hard shell I had built for myself. I needed to be set free.

It was then I noticed that there was a pocket at the very back of the notebook, where you would store stamps or receipts. It had a slight bulge to it, so I opened it and pulled out a piece of paper that had been folded over and over and over. Slowly, I unfurled it and realized – it was a check! $20,000 made out to Grace (no surname, just Grace) from Gregory Francis Bergen III. Memo: Amazing Grace - Set Your Soul Free.

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About the Creator

Emily Price

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