Get Money

My typical week is a predictable engagement with three spheres of relationship: family, church, and work.  I know who I will see, when I will see them, what conversations are likely to be had.  The one variable is my commute on the train.  Every so often, incidents occur which peel back the thin veneer of civilization to reveal another side of life.  On one ride home this week, three people got on who caught my attention.  Two of them, larger African-American women, sat down adjacent to me.  One was pulling a two-wheeled wire mesh cart loaded with stuff.  The other was noteworthy for cropped and dyed hair, lots of arm tattoos, and music audible from headphones plugged into a Samsung smart phone.  Perhaps a mother and daughter, but hard to say.  Then, a third person, a lanky young Caucasian man in very low-riding, very baggy jeans came up to them and initiated a conversation in low tones.  All three were wearing newer clothes, looked healthy and well feed.  His first sentence caught my attention. 

"We need to get some money."  

I could only catch snippets of the rest, something to do with finding receipts and going to Toys 'R' Us to "get money".  This process seemed familiar to all of them.  The older of the two women was mostly silent.  The younger seemed to object to details of the plan, but acquiesced.  There were some other bits about needing to sneak in somewhere, but that would be difficult because of the fence they would have to climb.  It was unnerving to sit with people who, I was reasonably sure, given the slightest opportunity, would take anything I had of value to sustain their depraved and desperate means of existence.  

When my daughters want goods they do not have the funds for, they have developed the habit of saying, "I need to earn some money."  To them, there is no other way to "get" money (except the occasional cash gift on birthdays).  I was seeing first hand the moral corruption that results when individuals learn there are ways to "get" money that take less effort than earning it.

Frankly, I was relieved when they got off two stops later, leaving me with many questions: What hold did the young man have over the two women?  Did they have any thought beyond their immediate need for cash?  Do they have any sense of wrong-doing when they "get" money by lying and stealing?  What paths of experience brought these people together?  To what extent does our society's safety net of private charity and government services, both of which I contribute to, enable their parasitical lifestyle?  At what point did each of them cross that boundary into persistent, active crime?  What does the future hold for them?  

As I thought of them, I remembered the words inspired by John Bradford, "There but for the grace of God go I."  May their blind eyes be opened by that grace...