Tales from the Trail #22: The kindness of the Young …
After making my way pretty deeply into Franklin proper, I pulled into a local Panera to chill out and drink some brown-sugar water for awhile. Now Panera franchises are normally relaxed places to hang out for pilgrims, and there was nothing unusually uninviting about this particular franchise, and yet somehow the vibe there was just “off” that day for me, so I packed up my things and headed next door to the local Noodles & Co. restaurant. I had never been in (or even seen, actually) a Noodles & Co. restaurant before, and therefore had no expectations about what I would find when I entered. And yet what I did find upon entering was a level of raw kindness that had rarely been matched on any of my previous pilgrimages. For no sooner did I briefly tell the cashier (a young man named Brittin) about what I was doing and why, than he simply and joyfully said “Cool! What do you want to eat?” Needless to say, I was completely surprised by the joyous and matter-of-fact way that he had asked this question, and so naturally I thought he didn’t understand that I was a mendicant pilgrim who had no way of paying for lunch there that day. And yet after explaining to him the same – that Peace Pilgrims travel “on faith” with no money at all, and that I hadn’t come in to his store to get any food but simply to sit a bit and rest out of the heat – he smiled again and said “I know. What do you want to eat?”
And so it was at that point that I fully understood that we had there was not a miscommunication at all, but rather simply a young man responding the way we all should respond whenever a pilgrim (or a homeless person – or a “bum” – or anyone else in need) happens to cross our path – namely, with Kindness and with Generosity and with Caring and with Grace.*
*And to make matters even more astounding, this wasn’t the only time a young person bravely faced down the callousness of convention to offer me aid in my time of need that afternoon. For shortly after leaving Noodles & Co., I made my way into the Franklin Dairy Queen, where first cashier Kai and then young employee Nova both leapt at the chance to ask me in depth about my Walk and then offer me something to eat (with the former doing so in an almost comically subtle whisper, being clearly quite earnestly afraid of being reprimanded for the same by his boss). And so it was that I made my way into that same day’s early evening with a belly full of vegetables and French fires (and even a vegan Dilly Bar) and a Soul re-filled with hope.
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