As Friday was looming, I found myself needing $10,000—otherwise I’d be handing out IOUs. I was entering the panic zone, so preoccupied with worry that it became difficult to attend to my duties as pastor. The day before payday, a woman pulled up to the front of the parish office in what the homies would call a “bucket,” ignoring the designated parking signs. She said that it was urgent that she speak with me, so she was brought into my office. She was in her late seventies, dressed not too differently from a bag lady, layered and oddly arrayed. Her husband had recently died, she explained, and
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