Ya gotta smile

There are plenty of reasons to feel lousy.

Tonight's message: get over it.

We got back from our night out, wondering if we had done anyone any good. At the Operation Nightwatch Shelter Dispatch Center there was still a room full of homeless guys, and the prospects for getting into shelter were looking pretty dim.

There are reasons to start ranting about the economy, injustice, addiction, lack of mental health services, whatever.

But some random homeless guy just stopped outside our door for a moment. "Are you guys Catholic?" he asked us, out on the sidewalk.

"I'm Episcopalian, he's Methodist," Fr. Kim pointed. "No one group runs Nightwatch," I chip in.

Then, out of the blue, the homeless guy smiles a million dollar smile and says, "Well, thank you for what you guys do. God bless." And off he trudged to shelter, at 11:30 pm on a night in April.

Suddenly I felt less whiney.