A Night
to Remember ...

Getting Lost is a lot like learning humility. After the initial shock, it can become not only a virtuous but a cheerful experience. I managed it once, some years ago, in London. I found myself in a small square lit by street lamps of many colors. People were sitting in little stalls, selling everything from perfume to crumpets. A woman wanted to sell me a pair of lace gloves. "For your young lady?" she asked. I said I had no young lady. But then she smiled so sadly I bought the gloves anyway.

Buying them, giving myself a commitment to love and be loved, was crazy and nice, but it was when I went down into the subway to ask directions to my hotel that I really started to enjoy being lost.

The things I saw, things I'd never have seen otherwise, were wonderful.

I saw an old flower woman sitting on a bench along a subway wall, her flower basket empty but for one yellow rose. She had taken off her shoes and was rubbing her feet, on her face a beatific smile to be done with the day's hassles. From her I bought the yellow rose.

I saw a news vendor on the platform who had a coal-black beard that was all snowy white under his chin, as if a winter sun were peering out between storm clouds. From him I bought the evening edition.

I saw a very old scholar taking a nap in the seat across from mine on one train, an open book on his lap, his brow etched with the tiny lines of a lifetime of learning. Just before I got off, he awoke and smiled down at his book, as if to beg its pardon for dozing in his old age. Then he smiled at me, too, and said, "The great light is growing dim." 

When I came up out of the subway, finally headed in the right direction, I was greeted by a sky where only one star remained to be seen. God had not shut out all the lights in his house. He'd left one on to guide souls homeward so none need get lost.

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