Grace

 San Francisco is a town with the kind of weather in which one can survive sleeping “rough,” that is, outdoors.  It rarely gets real cold or real hot.  We have a lot of homeless, and many of them are on drugs and alcohol.  When I see one of these people on the street as I walk by, I have gratitude, rather than judgment or distain for their actions.  Why gratitude?  There but for the GRACE of God, as the saying goes.  No one takes their first hit of these highly addictive drugs, saying, “Oh, I want to become homeless, jobless and addicted.”  The first intake is for other reasons such as loneliness, alienation, self-pity, anger, resentment, and all the other common feelings that many of us can have as human beings.  I never took that first fentanyl, crack or cocaine.  I am often weak and stupid and delusional.  So it was GRACE.